A lovely pun though I didn’t get it myself until I was telling my sister about it over the phone. What struck me about this was just how unimpressive the bottle and label look. I mean, a Valley Girl on a root beer bottle? I suppose it is more original than a dog. Even before I looked up the company, I just knew it was from California. So with low expectations and quotes from the movie “Clueless” going through my head, I cracked this one open to give it a try.
When I poured it into the mug and the Head built I said to myself, “Ah, now that’s a proper root beer head.” It is tall and frothy. It lazily built to the top of my 20 ounce mug and just sat there enjoying its freedom from the bottle. On the first drink I was delighted with the Body, the fairy tale marriage of cane sugar and honey, and it didn’t stop there. The sassafras and other root beer flavors were creamily mixed with natural vanilla. It could use a little more sassafras though. The Bite is fantastic too with spices aplenty in the right proportions and a little prickly from the carbonation while still keeping it smooth going down. The Aftertaste is sweet honey with vanilla and spices coming out as it drifts away leaving the tongue begging for more.
The final keg assignment was a tough call. I really like this. I think it is one of the best sodas I have ever drank. I drank a bottle of Henry’s and a bottle of Bulldog in between bottles 1 and 2 to make sure I really liked this one as much as I did. Giving it a 5 was something I wanted to do even though it has a light bodied sassafras flavor instead of a full. I see this as a delicious honey root beer (my favorite type), much like the original Tommyknocker was an amazing maple root beer. But ultimately, I felt I just couldn’t do it. See how it rates against other root beers.
My first blog post! I’ve been running the site for over 10 years and a lot has changed in the web since then and so I’m adding the blog to get more with the times. I’ll write a “long format” blog post review of every root beer I taste test from now on and as time permits, go back and write up blog posts of the old “short format” reviews. Other blog posts will be added as seems appropriate. So, another root beer with a dog on the bottle. What is it with dogs on the bottles of root beer, I mean; mug, dog n suds, sea dog, bull dog, etc. Everybody (and their dog it seems) wants to put a dog on their root beer bottle. But beyond my canine quipping, it is a pretty sweet bottle. It’s got a fancy label and it doesn’t have a twist cap. I like it when they do that. I had to use a bottle opener like with Mason’s and Mendecino Taubold’s Private Reserve. It’s more old fashion (maybe its cheaper too?) So how did this old doggy root beer stack up?
