A rare find indeed is this brew. All the way from the London borough of Hackney. That’s right another UK brew. They are as rare as they are awful, historically speaking, though this could be just the brew to break that losingest of streaks. I mean, it seems like they’re going for a pun, Square Root and root beer, and I just love puns. Plus a math pun with the square root sign on the label. That’s pretty … radical … The rest of label is way cool too, what with those nifty plants and bordered text. You can’t see it in the picture, but the label is textured so it feels really nice on the fingers. But then again, there are things that don’t bode so well for them. Square Root London Soda was started in 2012 with ginger beer as their first flavor, which kind of dashes the whole pun, though not entirely as ginger is a root. The math is still cool. But then there’s this on the label: “Root Beer is not for everyone. If you like it you probably don’t understand why you like it but you just do. Sit back, think rooty thoughts & enjoy this medicinal mix of unusual flavors.” Yeah, um that’s not generally the best way to introduce something that you think is amazing. The ingredients listed seem legit though, so who knows.
This has a Body that is sour with lots of bitter root and herb flavors mixed together like so much medicine. There’s a lot of strange complexity to it but none of it do I find pleasant. The Bite is lacking though it isn’t smooth. There’s some spice presence but it doesn’t really bite as it were. The Head, however, is a wonderful exception that makes it look like a proper root beer when poured. The Aftertaste is more bitter, medicinal flavours, sourly fading but not quickly enough.
Ugh. that was painful. I know that most English despise a good root beer, but I can’t imagine that they’d think that this tastes like the fine brews I enjoy. It seems that despite promising ingredients of sarsaparilla, wintergreen, vanilla, and caramel (amongst others) their description of “unusual” and “medicinal” and “not for everyone” is spot on. At least they realize it. It does have a very pretty bottle though. See how it rates against other root beers.
