Finally. Finally, finally, FINALLY! I was able to get a hold of this root beer. I’ve been trying to find some since 2011. The company would never answer answer my calls or emails and none of the distributors around here would carry it. I didn’t think that the company go under, they’ve been around for over 100 years at this point, but I was still worried that for some reason I would never get it. But then, about a year ago, The Root Beer Tracker got a hold of some and sent it to me. Yacht Club is the official soda of the state of Rhode Island, which isn’t actually an island, but if it were, it would make sense that they’d have a nautical themed root beer as their official root beer. I don’t know of any other states that have official sodas, so props to Yacht Club for making it happen.
The Body is pretty standard and generic with a creamy root beer flavor and a little vanilla. There’s a little fruity bit to it as well. The Bite is sharp on carbonation but light on spice. It doesn’t finish smooth either. The Head is solid, full points there. The Aftertaste is light and a little fruity.
Not bad. Not amazing by any means, but refreshing and nice. It’s a decent run-of-the-mill root beer that probably everyone will think is just good enough to be worth drinking when they’re in the mood for some yachting or some Rhode Island festival … stuff … ? Yeah, I don’t know what they do over there. See how it rates against other root beers.
Polly’s Pop has its roots back in the 1920’s when a man named Louis, for some reason known as “Polly”, and a woman named Dorothea started the Independence Bottling Company in Independence, Missouri, which made Polly’s Pop. In 1972, however, it closed its doors. Then, in 2015, a lawyer by the name of McClain, who enjoyed Polly’s Pop as a child, resurrected the brand. He brought back bottling a year later. They use a 66 year old bottling machine to keep it as close to the original in every way possible. Because it’s called Polly’s Pop, they of course have a parrot on the label. Polly want a cracker? No he want’s a pop as evidenced by the bottle clutched in his zygodactyl foot (which has been one of my favorite words since elementary school). As with many in the craft root beer revival, this brand uses only pure cane sugar. Now the real question is was it worth bringing back.
