Two weeks ago I was out and about with my lil’ sister who’s moved to my area. We were shopping some second hand stores and I noticed that there was a brewery in the same little strip mall that I’d never heard of. So we dropped by. I sauntered up to the bar and asked if they had root beer. To my surprise they said they did make their own root beer. In fact I was so surprised I couldn’t decide on whether to try and review it right then and there or just come back later since it was a mere 10 minute drive from my house. I opted for the former, but such indecision definitely undermined my whole sauntering act. Oh well. The brewery just opened earlier this year, a reason I’d missed it in my root beer searching when I moved here. It is all nerdy and medieval, with armor and medieval style candle chandeliers and armor and what not. They have signups for MTG and DnD games and chess boards built into some of the heavy solid wood tables. The brewers sport some amazing beards as well. It’s definitely my kind of place. The root beer though…
The Body is mild and fruity and herbal. There’s a sarsaparilla flavor with hints of sour with a complex mix of other flavors. It’s not very sweet, for a root beer, either. The Bite is also mild. There’s a little cinnamon bite but not much. There’s low carbonation too. The Head is short and not particularly foamy. The Aftertaste is a little sour with sarsaparilla.
So, it’s an herb tea root beer, and while being quite refreshing, doesn’t taste much like a root beer should in my opinion. They did say that this is their Version 2 Root Beer which they make sometimes and they were out of their signature Barely Root Beer. They it’s similar but different, so I’m hoping I like it more, as the place deserves to have a root beer that I’ll enjoy as much as the ambiance there. Until then, I must sadly give this a good drink/bad root beer rating, but I’ll be back when their Barley brew is ready.
The Under Pressure Brewing brew vats and some of the decor. I couldn’t get that whole trumpet in the picture. I will blow it next time I go there.
You know what I haven’t done in awhile? An Old Fashioned Soda Fountain review. Why? Turns out those are significantly more rare than I initially thought when I accepted the category into gourmet root beer-dom. Even rarer is the fountain that uses their own home recipe for their root beer. So I was extra excited when my favorite store around these parts, Blue Sun Soda, announced they were adding an old fashioned soda fountain, while keeping all of the other goodness like $0.25 arcade games (hint hint Northern…) Anyways, so they have this awesome new soda fountain, with tons of flavors using the Whistler syrups which they make. You can mix and match them too, giving you near infinite flavor combinations. However, that doesn’t seem right from a review standpoint, so I’m going to stick with a classic soda fountain concoction, the phosphate. If you don’t know what a phosphate is, you have lived an incomplete life thus far, but it’s something that the jerks would put in the drink to add acidity and saltiness that would enhance the flavor. All of the old soda fountains would have it. I’m not sure how common root beer phosphates actually were, but I wanted to try theirs as it’s both a unique take on the Whistler while being a base flavor. One final note, I didn’t ask them for no ice, and while I regret doing so, if the jerk was competent, and added the correct syrup ratio for the amount of liquid to be added while accounting for initial ice melt, the ice shouldn’t mess up the flavor like it would if the root beer were coming from a bottle or a keg. Nevertheless, it is a mistake I shan’t make again, I assure you. 
Two weeks ago I took a nice long vacation and went and visited my parents back in Central Washington. We took the train which I highly recommend. One of the days we went to visit Ohme Gardens in Wenatchee, which is a lovely alpine garden with lots of trails and fountains and ponds and streams and the like. Very picturesque. But since it’d been awhile since I’d been there, I did the search and you know what’s coming, Root Beer! I started calling breweries, and stopped as soon as I started, because the very first place I called, Badger Mountain Brewing, said they did, in fact, make their own root beer. Where to eat for lunch was settled! Badger Mountain Brewing was started in 2012 and has produces nearly 2000 barrels of brewed stuff a year. They also have a restaurant in their tap room with some of the most epic food imaginable, which I’ll get to in a bit, but first, the root beer.
