Red Arrow is an old brand of root beer that came from Michigan in the 1950s through 70s. According to the bottle “Folklore says that the brand was a tribute to the Red Arrow Brigade.” Now the Red Arrow Brigade was formed in 1967 from the deactivated 32nd Infantry Division. It was made of three battalions of light infantry as well as support and engineer units. The 32nd Infantry “Red Arrow” Division was formed from the Wisconsin and Michigan National Guards in 1916 to serve on the Mexican border. The Red Arrow Division was active through WWII and had many Metals of Honor and other awards. So most likely folklore (or at least the root beer bottle) meant that the brand was named after the Red Arrow Division and not the Brigade. Either way, the brand died out and for decades the only trace of it was old bottles and crown caps peddled by collectors. Then in March 28, 2011, it was resurrected, the recipe having fallen into the hands of a Redmond, WA man who decided it was something the world needed once again.
It has a full Body that is loaded with wintergreen. Wow! So much wintergreen! There is also a very noticeable licorice flavor that makes the whole Body rather dark. I don’t really like it that much. The Bite is solid, with carbonation first hitting the tongue followed by the spice kick, largely from the wintergreen. It still has a rather smooth finish, though, I prefer it smoother. The Head is pitiful, the classic Two Second Head. It’s like they aren’t even trying. The Aftertaste is strong wintergreen and licorice. There is too much licorice and it is sticky.
If you love wintergreen and licorice, inseparable at every turn, this is definitely the root beer for you. I on the other hand, think that it’s not good at all. The bottle says that the recipe is from Michigan, “known for authentic root beer flavor.” The fact that this brand didn’t initially survive in such a place should have been the first clue that maybe it wasn’t meant to be. Alas, like some horrid zombie it was unearthed from the grave in which it rightfully belonged to wreak its havoc upon the root beer world. It could have been much worse, however, so I don’t think an angry mob with pitch forks and torches will be required at the dark mansion of the man who brought it back. See how it rates against other root beers.
This is probably the most anticipated root beer I’ve ever drank. Ever since I began reviewing root beers in 1998, people would always ask what I thought of Barq’s. It is the main root beer pushed by Coca-Cola and is sold in McDonald’s restaurants, so everyone knows it. The problem though is that I only review glass bottle root beers and I could never find Barq’s in glass. I searched everywhere, throughout Washington State and all up the West Coast. I even scoured the internet, but alas, it was to no avail. I’d always have to shamefully admit that I’d never tried Barq’s, well at least not since I became The Root Beer Gourmet. I still kept up the search over the years, though I had mostly given it up as a lost cause. Then, a few months ago, I tried again. I searched and stumbled across an old discussion board where someone mentioned a market in New Orleans from which Barq’s in glass bottles could be obtained. I pounced. I quickly called the market where they confirmed that they carried Barq’s in glass bottles. I was overjoyed. At long last, it would be mine. “How much to ship it?” I asked. The reply caught me off guard, they wouldn’t ship it. No matter what I offered, the employee then hung up the phone. What? I wasn’t about to be thwarted so easily. But how. My options were few. Fly to New Orleans (I’ve never gone to such extremes for a root beer but maybe), wait until my travels take me to New Orleans (sooner or later I’ll go everywhere), wait until I have a friend go to New Orleans, or find someone there. Then I remembered, wasn’t my Grandmother born in New Orleans? Don’t I have relatives living there? As an aside, this grandmother was of French descent and I had visited France and the region from whence they came. I saw the house that the family lived in for generations and I even met the decedents of the family that stayed in France so this type of family history is rather important to me, it’s my heritage after all. Well that settled it. I was going to close the missing link in the Constantin (the French relatives) heritage of mine and get my Barq’s in the process. I called my dad who directed me to my aunt who put me in contact with my second cousin whom I’d never met, nor even really heard of growing up, named Cynthia. After several wonderfully informative calls about the family over there, she said she would drop by the store and send me a six pack. After what seemed an eternity, but was more like three weeks it finally arrived. One of the bottles was smashed in shipping but the other five were still in pristine condition. They’re pretty sweet looking bottles at that. They’ve got the same vintage style that they did 50 years ago, maybe even older. I bumped it to nearly the front of the root beer queue and finally, after 13 years of searching, was able to try Barq’s. So thank you Cynthia, you’re the greatest cousin anyone could ask for.
I discovered this brew when the Capos-Capone Pasta Sauce ‘liked’ my page on Facebook. I looked at who they were and discovered that they made this root beer. But wait, why would they ‘like’ me if I hadn’t even tried their product? So I shot them an email, apologizing profusely for not having tried their esteemed brew and asking them how I could acquire it (you don’t want to anger Mr. Capone’s ‘family’ after all). They were very understanding and offered to send me some to review. Maybe they were a little too friendly. Great, now I’ve given them my address, I hope they weren’t mad about my ignorance of the Capone Family Secret, I mean, it was a secret after all. But a few days later, instead of receiving a hail of 0.45 calibers delivered from a Tommy gun and a quickly passing 1928 Cadillac Town Sedan, or a pair of cement shoes and a new apartment at the bottom of Lake Washington, I received two bottles of root beer each in it’s own burlap sack. That’s pretty cool. I’ve never gotten root beer shipped like that before. I would expect nothing less from the Family. It says on the bottle that this is soda was the only thing ever found in Al Capone’s warehouses during the many times they were raided (along with pasta sauces it seems). So how did Mr. Capone like his root beer?
