Last week I flew to Billings Montana for a job interview. That’s right, I’m thinking of changing careers. So I was out there to interview and since I needed to buy lunch I figured I’d try to find a root beer. I’d looked up and found the Montana Brewing Company before I arrived, but the path there was fraught with disaster and setbacks, like accidentally renting a car in the middle of town instead of the airport, to trouble with the GPS, to finding parking. All of this had to be done to give me enough time to eat before my interview. On the way I saw a broken box in the middle of the road with loads of wrapped chocolate bricks littering the road. I almost stopped to pick them up, but then remembered, root beer is the focus. Speaking of which, the Montana Brewing Company. I don’t know how long its been there, they don’t say on their website and I forgot to ask, but I do know that it is the most awarded brewery in Montana. So they must do some good stuff there.
The Body is a little mild, with a classic, soda fountain flavor. It’s almost creamy with hints of vanilla, but nothing else strong. There’s a little Bite from spice and the carbonation is almost too harsh. The Head is okay, but on the short side and fizzes away too quickly. The Aftertaste is light wintergreen and cane sugar.
This is a pleasant, but entirely forgettable brew. Nothing special, yet nothing bad. It’s good enough to drink with your lunch, though. I had their Holy Cow Dip sandwich with sweet potato fries. This was also good but not super amazing. So this whole thing was good, but not really worth a pilgrimage.
My lunch, the Holy Cow Dip and sweet potato fries. I’m not sure why it’s called what it is.
The Montana Brewing Company taps. The root beer tap is the far left.
The brew vats.
Another root beer with crowd funding roots. Like the others I donated, shared on social media and even wrote a 
Levis is an old root beer. From back way in 1895. It was originally served at a marble soda fountain at a place called Levis, that served hot dogs and fish cakes and what not. After seeing the success of Hires’ brew, Levis made his root beer even better with a bold flavor, if the back of the bottle is to be believed. The hot dog stand is actually still there and has been continuously operating since its inception. It doesn’t say when the root beer started to be bottled, but currently the bottled version is owned and distributed by Amazing Beverages. The back of the bottle claims that it’s bottled with the same flavor used for almost 100 years, but they can’t be using exactly the same recipe because they only use part sugar and part sucralose. It still has enough sugar for me to consider it not a diet (25g) but it kind of is some strange hybrid type almost. I can’t imagine that does anything to improve the flavor. It does only have 100 calories per bottle which was probably the reason for the sugar dial down. To appeal to some strange health conscious subset of the population. 
