First of all, I know it doesn’t say “Draft Style” on the bottle. However, their website, as well as several other websites that sell it, do call it “Draft Style” so I’ll go with that name. The label itself is pretty cool. I really like the whole skyline and the search lights. You can’t see it from the picture, but it’s also shiny and reflects light at certain angles. I had resisted getting this one for awhile because it shares a recipe with Cool Mountian Root Beer (which as of this posting I haven’t written a blog post on). However, after a (rather profitable) correspondence with Bill, the owner of both Chicago and Cool Mountain brands, I learned of the slight differences. It comes from the fact that they are not bottled at the same facility and thus the water and sugar used will have slightly different flavors. It’s still pushing the limits of a new root beer, I know, but I felt I had to give it a side by side comparison at least. Since didn’t want to buy a full case I snagged three bottles in a variety pack from Beverages Direct and then got a bottle of Cool Mountain. First I’d review Chicago on it’s own merits.
The Body is nice and full. It’s almost creamy but not really. I want to say there’s vanilla in there somewhere. There’s also the slightest hint of cola in a Barq’s-y sort of way. Bite is prickly from carbonation but not really spicy, neither is it smooth. The Head is very tall but fizzes down quickly. The Aftertaste is some vanilla and that very tiny cola-ish-ness that doesn’t really last long.
Not a bad root beer. Nothing overly special special, though not bad in any way. Then I did my side to side comparison with Cool Mountain. After half a bottle of each I swore there was a slight difference. I had my wife administer a blind taste test and 2/2 times I correctly identified the right root beer. It wasn’t up in the air either, as soon as I had tried the Chicago I definitively pronounced it so. From that I’d say that there is a >75% chance that they are different brews and so I’ll stick to it. The Cool Mountain also seemed a bit better than I remembered, but I don’t like to go back and change reviews. Plus, the differences weren’t that big so the Chicago gets the same keg rating even though it rates slightly higher. Anyways, not a bad root beer to get a keg of for your party if you live in Chicago. See how it rates against other root beers.
Not the Roman Empire nor the Galactic Empire, or even the lesser known Ajuuraan Empire, this is the Empire Bottling Works which seems to have no ties to any empires at all. Rather they are from the smallest state in the Union which would be a more pathetic empire than the Ajuuraan (should Rhode Island empirify). This leaves me completely lost as to the reason for the name. It’s not even like they’re from New York with the whole Empire State nickname and whatnot (why you would want to call a state governed by representative democracy the Empire State is an entirely different matter all together) so really I’ve got nothing. They don’t even have a website (their empire is too small evidently) so it’s not like you can just look it up. They do provide a phone number on the bottle so I suppose if I really cared (or cared during business hours in the eastern time zone), I could just call them. Besides the phone number, the bottle has a little crown which is the only empire related thing other than the name. 
I love my coworkers. They’re always willing to bring me back root beers from their trips. This one was brought back from Texas by my esteemed colleague Jimmy Jeff, who has family there and goes often. H-E-B is a grocery store chain in Texas and northern Mexico. The fact that they not only have their own root beer in glass bottles, but have one of the coolest and completely original bottles puts them in a class above almost any other grocery chain in existence in my opinion. An added bonus, if you like being bilingual, is that the label is also in Spanish, which sets this also in a class of its own since all other root beers I’ve encountered with bi-lingual labeling did so in French and English (to keep the Québécois happy). So they’ve got about everything going for them up to this point. How is the brew itself?
