Root beer number three from my Montreal adventure, it was the serendipitous brew of the trip, for I didn’t even know of its existence before I went on my trek to find the Marco Root Beer. At my second stop, the Fruiterie du Plateau, when I found their soda section, I was overjoyed to discover that they had this brew that I’d never heard of before. They had some other Canadian ones I’d already had as well. I grabbed these along with the rest, and then had that wonderful hour long walk in the slushy snow/rain while carrying the box back to the hotel. This is actually made in the US, but Smucker Natural Foods, and is the Canadian version of Natural Brew, albeit with different listed ingredients and nutritional information. I don’t think it’s the exact some thing at all, though I’m not sure why they would do that. Anyways, different ingredients, name, label, nutrition equals new root beer as far as I’m concerned. I don’t like Natural Brew, and this?
The Body is mild with some sweet birch flavor accented by a bit of vanilla and some other herbals. It’s not a very standard root beer flavor to be sure, though it has a lot of the standard ingredients. The Bite is pretty mild with not much other than some carbonation. The Head is medium height and foamy; where this brew excels the most. The Aftertaste is some mild herbal birch that is gone very quickly.
Yeah, I also don’t like this as a root beer. It definitely tastes different than the Natural Brew I remember. Instead of overpowering licorice, this is just too far out of the standard root beer spectrum for me to consider drinkable. I do like it better than the original Natural Brew, so there’s that. See how it rates against other root beers.
Another brew from my very early days of reviewing. This one, like Health Valley, was also found the the “Health Food” section of the local Safeway. It was actually the root beer I reviewed right after the Health Valley as the next day I went to Safeway to see what other glass bottled root beers could be found. This stuff was the very first product I ever encountered that listed “Evaporated Cane Juice” as an ingredient. This is a pet peeve of mine. Anyone who knows anything about how sugar is made knows that all cane sugar is evaporated cane juice and beet sugar is evaporated beet juice. All crystallized sugars start as liquids that are then evaporated. Do the people who label sugar this way believe that we think crystallized sugar is mined somewhere in solid form like salt or something? I mean, seriously, we’re not that dumb. This also has one of the highest non-sugar carbohydrate level (5g) of any root beer. I’m not sure what makes it a “draft” root beer when it’s clearly in a bottle, but that’s another rant for another day.
