Oct 022024
 

Back in July I went out to the TriCities for a work conference. It felt good to be back in my home turf, having grown up in that area. Since it had been a few years since I’d been there, I figured it was worth trying for more root beer. I found, though not through their official site, that Rattlesnake Mountain Brewing Company made their own root beer, but tries to keep it a secret, evidently. I only learned of its existence through a review that someone left about them. I called and they confirmed it existed, but when I finally got there, it wasn’t even on the menu. I felt like part of an exclusive club at that point, you gotta know about it or they won’t even tell you. Another interesting thing is that, if you know the local geography, you’ll immediately notice that this brewery is much much closer to Badger Mountain than Rattlesnake Mountain, but there already is a Badger Mountain Brewing though that isn’t anywhere near this Badger Mountain, so maybe there’s more than one Badger Mountain in the same state? I think I’ve really strayed from my root beer story. So anyways, I showed up with a crew in tow of coworkers and customers and we sat down and they informed us trivia was going to start and if we wanted to play. So we were all like, “sure” then they wanted a name for our team, my coworkers looked to me but I replied, “I don’t know, I’m in a root beer mindset.” And thus team Root Beer Mindset was born. So while I got to reviewing this brew, I would interject answers to the surprise of the team “Anne of Green Gables”, “Baltic Sea”, “Weird Al Yankovic”, “Bushido code”, etc.

The Body is sweet and complex with a sassafras and licorice flavor with a little vanilla and wintergreen coming through. The licorice is very tame, just enough to add but not anywhere near overpowering. The Bite is nice and spicy and prickly but it still is rather smooth on the finish. The Head is non-existent. This is very sad. The Aftertaste has a caramelized sugar with a bit of licorice.

It’s a good complex flavor, but that utter lack of head really ruins it, which is sad. It was still quite nice and went really well with the apps we got. We also managed to win trivia, surprisingly, making this for quite the night for all involved.

Three and a half kegs

The Rattlesnake Mountain Brewing Company
Some bacon wrapped jalapeno popper things that were amazing.