The bottle on this one is pretty cool. It’s got a picture of the god Mercury drinking from a mug and has root beer bubbles everywhere. I don’t really like the fact that they call it root beer soda pop, as I like to think of root beer as a premium brewed carbonated beverage and not something as low class as a soda pop. Though, Sprecher’s calls theirs root beer soda and that is amazing, while Virgil’s calls theirs premium micro brew and it is pretty bad. So I guess what you call it isn’t nearly as important as its Body, Bite, Head, and Aftertaste. This is also sold as Freaky Dog Rooff Beer, the two are exactly the same.
The Body has a strong, dark sassafras flavor with slight licorice and wintergreen bits coming through. The Bite isn’t that good. There are not really any spices though the carbonation is at the right level. The Head is short and gone fast but not one of those two second root beer Heads. The Aftertaste is heavy wintergreen with a bit of licorice that lingers too long. It’s not really bad; it’s just not really good either.
So I guess it really is more soda pop quality, though it’s flavor isn’t really what I think of when I think of soda pop root beer, as this is distinct instead of generic. I find it curious that on the side of the bottle they have a picture of two kegs. I didn’t notice that until after I had rated it. I suppose if they were looking to make two keg root beer they can take pride in knowing that they almost hit their target. See how it rates against other root beers.
So I’d had this sitting around for awhile. The problem is that I’m pretty susceptible to caffeine since I hardly ever drink anything caffeinated. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that I usually taste test in the late evening, not the time you want a cup of coffee portion of caffeine. Then last night, as my wife began to go into labor with our second child, I realized that, like with the first baby, we would be spending the entire night in labor and delivery, without sleep, and with a lot of waiting. That’s when it hit me, this would be the perfect time to taste test the two bottles of G33k B33r. So, in addition to all of the other things we had packed, in went the G33k B33r, my A&W mug, and a bottle of Henry’s for comparison. In the wee hours of the morning, as the miracle of life was manifesting itself, I passed the time and kept my energy up by drinking this root beer. Though, I must admit, because of its genre, I didn’t have high expectations.
I remember as a child watching the movie “Santa Clause is Comin’ to Town” with the main bad guy being the Burgermeister Meisterburger. From that I thought it would be fun to add the suffix meister to different foods and refer to certain people as that. The Pizzameister, the Steakmeister, etc. By my teenage years Pauly Shore had come along to make just about everyone a <noun/adjective>-meister, and I naturally went along with the trend. Then over 10 years later, here comes the Baumeister (said in my best Pauly Shore impersonation) with some sweet new root beer for me to try. I don’t actually know what a bau is and though Wikipedia gives many different possibilities, it turns out that none of them are much associated with root beer. Seems that the soda company was started in 1907 and the Baumeister named the soda after himself. Maybe he was a relative of the Burgermeister or at least from the same area. Anyways, on to the root beer.
