Deep in the heart of New Hampshire the five generations of the Conner family have at the Conner Bottling Works churning out Squamscot Old Fashioned Beverages. They called their label Squamscot because, why not? They have 22 different flavors including Fruit Bowl, Yup, and Half and Half, the latter of which sounds absolutely awful, unless they make a coffee soda to mix with it (imitation flavors of course, I don’t drink coffee). The label is very plain and kind of reminds me of the Avery’s label but thankfully they use a few different colors and don’t recycle letters. I’m not sure why they insist on everything being written in a different font but that seems to afflict a lot of small bottlers. Whenever I get a new root beer I think to myself, “this could be the best root beer ever.” This time, I couldn’t have been more wrong.
The Body is weak and watery with slight hints of root beer flavors. It’s not good at all. It’s not really anything at all. Then the Bite attacks you. It is a weird, sharp, baking soda-ish Bite. It comes out of nowhere, masking out the other flavors (which is next to nothing to be sure) and bites the tongue, leaving a sort of sickening feeling, and then dissipates into realms unknown. I’ve never experienced anything quite like it. The Head is dismal. The first bottle I had was completely flat and the others were hardly better. The Aftertaste is a light cane sugar flavor haunted by the ghosts of the unknown Bite.
Ok, what the heck was that? It’s really hard to find a redeeming feature with this brew, there’s just nothing right about it. I don’t know how they’ve stayed in business so long with this. It must be the Yup sales that keep them afloat. Perhaps they should call the root beer Scumscot instead. See how it rates against other root beers.
The Scuttlebutt Brewing Company is a micro-brewery in Everett, WA on the waterfront, about a 40 minute drive from where I live. When I learned about it earlier this year, I immediately set about making plans to visit it. The company I work for has season tickets to several local sports teams that they raffle off to employees. As luck would have it, the same week I learned of this brewery, I won four tickets to the Everett Silvertips. The brewery itself is very kid friendly which is nice, and has very reasonable prices. They’ve got one of the coolest logos I’ve ever seen, which features prominently on their pint glasses. The root beer is tapped from a keg into pitchers which the servers then carry around to fill your glasses.
This has a really cool bottle. I’ve never seen another bottle like it. It’s really neat when a company has their own unique bottle. It’s a classy bottle as well. With the diamonds, the embossed name, and the short stubby look to it. The label is even painted on, so it makes me wonder if they still reuse their bottles. The company is Canadian in origin whose founders seem to be anti-hippies according to their website which is more to their credit. Their original gimmick was that they would have their own pop outlets to cut out the middle man and reduce prices. While it worked for awhile they were eventually bought and now, thankfully, you can get them through other distributors, which is how I cam across this on.