This one was tricky to track down. It is close, brewed by Phillips Soda Works in Victoria, BC, but yet they wouldn’t mail order and don’t sell anywhere stateside. I also utterly failed to find it when I was in Vancouver. When a friend of mine posted on Facebook that he was heading for a weekend in Victoria I peppered him with requests to bring me back some. Then he posted a picture of two closed and one open bottle and tagged me on. What a relief. Thanks Jaron you’re awesome. I had to go pick it up from him in Seattle. As he was working he said he’d leave it on the front porch in a paper bag. I showed up and much to my dismay, there was a large husky and a black lab inside the fence. I may have hinted at it before, but I am quite scared of dogs and the thought of getting past two of them, on their enclosed turf was utterly terrifying. However, my desire for a new root beer trumps all it seems, and I successfully made it in and back quite alive, calmingly saying “nice doggy” in the most meek and friendly voice possible. When I look at the label of this brew, all I want to do is sing “Intergalactic planetary, planetary intergalactic … ” over and over and over again. Good job Captain Electro. It has an impressive array of natural herbs and spices including black pepper, a new one for my ingredients list. It also has an all natural version of Sodium Benzoate evidently as well. I don’t know how they get away with that. One last bit on the bottle is that it’s a slightly different height and shape compared to all of the US brews I’ve encountered so far and it weighs more too. They must use thicker glass up there in Canada.
The Body is sweet and complex, very complex. It starts with a creamy vanilla sarsaparilla flavor that is augemented by dark molasses and licorice. Then a very solid and spicy Bite comes in; the spice and flavors of cloves, cinnamon, and black pepper. The Head is very tall and frothy and just impeccable. The Aftertaste is spicy vanilla that gives way to sarsaparilla.
Whoa, there’s a lot going on here. It works pretty well, but there is a distinct lack of core to really tie it all together. A solid sassafras flavor is what’s missing. This has got all of the peripherals of a top quality root beer but without a core it kind of seems empty. The above and beyond and, dare I say, intergalactic Head does bump it up a little extra though. See how it rates against other root beers.
Last week I was in Charlotte again on business. It was a rather unexpected business trip and as such there were no downtown hotels. We usually get a hotel in Uptown and walk to the meetings. Instead we rented a car. This got me thinking that maybe there was a brewery out further that had some root beer. I searched and the only clue I could find was a Yelp review of Heist Brewery mentioning they had a sarsaparilla root beer. The website was not helpful in confirming the existence of the brew, nor was their menu. Nevertheless, when the boss, who was driving said that he really needed a beer, I suggested we try Heist. When got there the restaurant had closed and only the taproom/bar was open. I asked if they had root beer and they said they did. I asked them the name and they said Sarsaparilla Root Beer. I asked if they had a pen and I grabbed a little paper take home menu. Thankfully my phone has a decent camera.
Back when I traded for the the Ithaca, I also got two bottles of Lehman’s Root Beer and two bottles of 
