Root beer number 2 from The Soda Pop Bros! It’s a limited edition Maple Root Beer! Because what could be more Canadian than putting maple syrup in your root beer? Apologizing for your coworkers missing a meeting because of opening day of moose season (true story by the way)? Eating poutine at a hockey game while sipping a cup of Tim Horton’s? Being all dressed as a Mounty while eating All Dressed chips and a Coffee Crisp? Maybe but maybe not, because those Canucks love their root beer like their neighbors south of the border, and maple syrup is the glue that holds their country together. The only thing I really don’t get is the beaver. Like what’s a beaver got to do with maple syrup? Maybe they cut down maple trees for their dams? I don’t know, but it’s a cute beaver that somehow feels very Canadian. Anyways, root beer.
The Body has a rich maple syrup flavor on initial contact which is followed by vanilla and aged sarsaparilla. The flavors mix well. The Bite is mild and smooth with a good mouthfeel from the maple syrup. The Head is top notch. The Aftertaste is sarsaparilla and maple. The more you drink the more the maple diminishes and the sarsaparilla grows to almost taste fruity, sadly.
Dang, I wish that Aftertaste weren’t so strong of sarsaparilla. My first drink of this and I was like “Ah, now this is the stuff!” But as I drank more I was all “Is this the stuff?” and unfortunately by the end, I was like, “This is not quite the stuff”. But it’s still better than average, and I prefer it to their normal root beer. The fact they used real maple syrup rather than maple flavor really improves the mouthfeel. It’s definitely worth a try if you can find it. See how it rates against other root beers.
I saw someone post a picture of this on Facebook and I curiously asked where I could find it. They said QuikTrip in Minneapolis area. There are tons of those all around me! Alas the downside of driving electric, you have no idea what is being sold in local gas stations anymore. I mean, why would I go there? Root beer milk that’s why. So I did and I bought some. This root beer milk is actually made for QuikTrip, so it’s their house brand. It is also made locally. I have high hopes for a root beer milk. I’ve heard about it before and it seems to me like it could taste a lot like a root beer float if done correctly. So how was it?
Back in June I took a day off to make another small three day Minnesota road trip. Plan was Duluth to Ely and back. Since I’d already been root beer hunting in Duluth, I wasn’t planning on finding anything. Yet, the day before I tried “root beer duluth”s into Google and found a drive in called A & Dubs. They seemed to have root beer, so I gave them a call and they said yes, they make there own. Well, I knew where I was headed for dinner then. The little drive in was originally an A&W some 60 years ago but they decided not to renew the franchise at some point and just strike out on their own, with their own root beer recipe. They changed the name to A & Dubs, which is about the least creative thing to name your former A&W since the drive in named “The Drive In”. It’s a proper drive in with car service and 3 booths inside (closed sadly for Covid) and two picnic tables outside and offers the standard drive-in fare of burgers, dogs, chicken baskets and the like. Their sign says “Home of the Power Platter” which is a burger root beer combo meal. So that’s what I got. 
