Eric’s Gourmet Root Beer Blog

I got this on trade with another reviewer who goes by the name of Cosmo. He’s pretty much the Anti-Eric – He thinks Henry Weihard’s (pretty much my standard) is the worst root beer in the world and that IBC (his standard) is the best. To each his own I suppose but I can’t help but think that he looks down upon me for liking Henry’s so much (and IBC so little). Though I’d never spoken with him, I figured I would make a preemptive strike and out of the blue offer him one of the world’s last bottles of Thomas Kemper Purely Natural since he hadn’t reviewed it. The plan worked perfectly, though he still disagrees with me about many of my brews of choice. He sent a reciprocal offering of Blumers, though it isn’t the last in the world but that’s ok, I’ve never tried it. This stuff is made my Minhas Brewery, the same people who make The Cubby Bear, but the ingredients and nutritional info are different. It’s got a pretty cool label all frilled like a postage stamp and the bottle has and embossed ‘M’ in the glass.

It has a sweet and creamy medium Body with noticeable vanilla. Then there is a strange caramelized corn syrup herbal flavor that tastes a lot like bubble gum. The Bite is solid and spicy. The Head is short and fizzes down much too quickly, though it doesn’t leave in mere seconds so it could be worse. The Aftertaste is the bubble gum flavor that last way too long. It builds the more you drink until that is almost all you can taste. At the end of the long and gross bubble gum Aftertaste, it turns bitter.

Ugh. What a disappointment. That weird and bitter bubblegum flavor progressively overpowers everything else so the more I drink this, the less I want to keep drinking. I suppose it’s a good one to pass around amongst a group but really, a bottle by itself is not good at all. So Cosmo sent me a nasty root beer and I sent him a nasty root beer. Fair trade I suppose. See how it rates against other root beers.