So I’d had this sitting around for awhile. The problem is that I’m pretty susceptible to caffeine since I hardly ever drink anything caffeinated. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that I usually taste test in the late evening, not the time you want a cup of coffee portion of caffeine. Then last night, as my wife began to go into labor with our second child, I realized that, like with the first baby, we would be spending the entire night in labor and delivery, without sleep, and with a lot of waiting. That’s when it hit me, this would be the perfect time to taste test the two bottles of G33k B33r. So, in addition to all of the other things we had packed, in went the G33k B33r, my A&W mug, and a bottle of Henry’s for comparison. In the wee hours of the morning, as the miracle of life was manifesting itself, I passed the time and kept my energy up by drinking this root beer. Though, I must admit, because of its genre, I didn’t have high expectations.
The Body is sweet but with a strange fruity watery flavor. Something in it just tastes out of place. The Bite is sort of weird like teeny tiny needles on the tongue with some strange acidy burn. After that mild assault it goes down pretty smooth. The Head, however, is wonderful! It builds to a good height and is very frothy and foamy. It lingers long after the drink is finished. It doesn’t taste the best though. The Aftertaste is a fruity weird guarana herbal-ness.
Though this stuff is not good, it is probably the best energy drink root beer I have encountered. Sadly though, that isn’t saying much. It did accomplish its task as I was able to temporarily escape the inevitable fatigue that comes with an all night labor and an early morning birth. I hope our new daughter, Liliana, and my wife don’t begrudge me for using my time thus. See how it rates against other root beers.
Update: This has since been renamed to be simply Bawls Guarana Root Beer.
I remember as a child watching the movie “Santa Clause is Comin’ to Town” with the main bad guy being the Burgermeister Meisterburger. From that I thought it would be fun to add the suffix meister to different foods and refer to certain people as that. The Pizzameister, the Steakmeister, etc. By my teenage years Pauly Shore had come along to make just about everyone a <noun/adjective>-meister, and I naturally went along with the trend. Then over 10 years later, here comes the Baumeister (said in my best Pauly Shore impersonation) with some sweet new root beer for me to try. I don’t actually know what a bau is and though Wikipedia gives many different possibilities, it turns out that none of them are much associated with root beer. Seems that the soda company was started in 1907 and the Baumeister named the soda after himself. Maybe he was a relative of the Burgermeister or at least from the same area. Anyways, on to the root beer.
Death Valley is a dry and arid place, not the sort of area that you would expect to find good root beer. But they are going for the old west theme it seems, as evidenced by having “A Taste of the Old West” on their bottle. Both of my parents are from California and so the whole Death Valley culture is not lost on me. But still, I always wonder about these Old West root beers since Hires didn’t start marketing root beer until 1880’s. I suppose it all depends on your definition of old. Then again, there were other root beer recipes out there before Hires and there was Sarsaparilla so I suppose a root beer could be an Old West thing. Anyhow, on to the root beer.