Crater Lake holds a special place in my heart. My family, on the way back from Sacramento, took a detour to visit Crater Lake when I was 17. It was the summer before my senior year. It was beautiful and awe inspiring. I even took some pictures that I used as senior pictures. I’ve longed to return and camp and hike and fish and whatnot. When I first saw this root beer at a local QFC, I was immediately flooded by the good memories. The picture on the label, while nice, doesn’t capture the true majesty of the place. With pure cane sugar to boot, I hoped that this root beer would capture the majesty of the lake and caldera in a brew beyond description. Sadly it was not to be.
The first thing noticeable when drinking this is a very sweet cane sugar flavor. That is about all that this root beer has going for it though. The Body is watery with a sweet sassafras and wintergreen flavor. Not creamy at all. The Bite is pretty weak but still not smooth going down. The Head is pathetic. It is less than a centimeter and fizzes away in seconds leaving the root beer nearly flat. The Aftertaste is sort of sticky sassafras and wintergreen which are two necessary ingredients to root beer but not the only ones.
What a disappointment. It’s all weak and watery, which I suppose brings it close to the authentic lake flavor or something. This reminded me a lot of Flathead Lake Monster Root Beer in that respect. Maybe there’s an agreement that all root beers named after a lake have to be bad and watered down. See how it rates against other root beers.
Sometime in the past three years since I originally reviewed Oogave, they broke up with Esteban. I’m not sure what happened, but it must not have been pretty. Not only is Oogave’s root beer no longer named after him, but Esteban’s Seal of Approval is also gone. It may have had something to do with reformulating the recipe, for somehow, though the ingredients listed on the bottle are still the same, they managed to drop 2 calories from their brew so they could list it as a 100 calorie beverage. To be fair, the “natural flavors” from Esteban’s Root Beer could have been completely different from the “natural flavors” in the Agave Root Beer. Or maybe they just dropped half a gram of agave nectar to reduce it from 25.4 g to 24.9 g, as both would read the 25 g which is listed on the labels. Perhaps there was a great argument over the matter with Esteban storming out over the final decision, vowing they’d never get his approval again. Gone with Esteban is a sensible label. While it’s cool to have the bottle painted, what little yellow and white paint there is, when on a clear bottle, hardly shows up at all in the picture. Grrr!
This is made by Matt Brewing Company which just happens to be the second oldest family brewing company in the United States. The family, who suffer the affliction of having a first name for their last name, have been making beer there since 1853. Though in 1888 they changed their name or something and so that’s the date that features prominently on the bottle. They’re most popular line is Saranac Beer and their root beer is part of that line. Why it’s called Saranac is beyond me. The closest landmark called Saranac I could find is a lake about 140 miles away from the brewery. I like the label. It’s classy and not overly busy with a picture of their historic brewery to boot. The frosty mug on the neck of the bottle also sets high expectations and the brew doesn’t disappoint. 
