Bottled Root Beers – Page 25 – Eric’s Gourmet Root Beer Blog

Rogue Soda Root Beer

Jun 062018

Rogue Root Beer Bottle I had already reviewed this in a growler a long time ago, and then they started bottling. This put me in a difficult position as to what to do. I like having a bottle for the collection, but I wasn’t sure if I should review it again. My Facebook followers were all of the opinion that I should review it since it is in a bottle it is a different root beer. Then I checked the recipe and realized it was different. If you remember my first Rogue review I mused over their inconsistency of whether they used 6 or 12 ingredients. This was due to their own site. With their new recipe they decided to take a nice happy medium of 9 ingredients to no doubt satisfy the dueling factions within the brewery. Two of those nine ingredients are just different types of honeys, and the only sweetener is brown sugar. They also added sarsaparilla flavor to it which was definitely not there before. The bottle itself is very cool; 22 ounces and painted. You almost never get painted bottles anymore.

The Body is dark and complex with licorice and a slight hint of vanilla. However, the dominant flavor is fruity sarsaparilla which is also a little sour. The Bite is spicy and sour, it is okay. The Head is excellent anyway you look at it. The Aftertaste is sour with a fruity sarsaparilla flavor

Yeah, I do not like this. It’s much worse than it was before. I think too much brown sugar but really it was too much sarsaparilla. I wish they had toned down the sarsaparilla in it. And where was the honey flavor? I mean if you put two different types of honey, you would think that it would be noticeable, but no. I suppose if you like sour sarsaparillas with licorice; this may just be the brew for you. I will pass. See how it rates against other root beers.

Raley’s Root Beer

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May 302018

Raley's Root Beer Bottle Way back in 2016 when I went on the Amazing Tesla Gigafactory Root Beer Road Trip, I found a supermarket near Sacramento named Raley’s. I noticed they had their own brand of bottled craft sodas but there was no root beer. I searched that display for around 20 minutes confirming this. I did get a sarsaparilla for a friend though. Later I learned that they did, in fact, carry a root beer, but it just wasn’t in stock at that time. The great Root Beer Tracker Sagi, came to the rescue, and sent me these bottles. What a pal. Now a great curiosity of this brew is that while Raley’s is headquartered in West Sacramento, the bottle says this is a product of Canada. So are they really making this up in the Mystic Land of the North and shipping it down to California? That seems a little absurd. Maybe the bottles are manufactured in Canada? Who knows? I could find out if I really tried but I just don’t feel like it. Instead I feel like drinking it.

The Body is sweet and creamy and minty with some birch flavor. It’s got a lot of nice vanilla in there as well. The Bite is nice and spicy but finishes smooth. The Head is tall and frothy. The Aftertaste is wintergreen and vanilla that is a little bitter.

This is lovely. I reminds me a lot of River City Root Beer, which makes sense seeing as they both are from Sacramento. But this is really from Canada and they have different ingredients, but I’m sure those Raley’s folks were influenced by it. This, of course is a good thing, because they made a top notch brew. See how it rates against other root beers.

WBC Chicago Style Root Beer

Bottled Root Beers 1 Response »

May 162018

WBC Root Beer Bottle WBC’s “root” is in Goose Island. If you’ve been following the root beer world closely these last few years, you’d know that it used to be called WBC Goose Island Root Beer, and long before that, there was merely Goose Island Root Beer, without any WBC. The first version was made by the Goose Island Brewery in starting in 1988 and lasted into the early 2000’s when I got a hold of it and gave it a slightly above average review. Sometime later WBC, the WIT Beverage Company (got to love nested acronyms) took over production of the root beer and changed the labels. This continued until late 2014 when Goose Island was dropped entirely. This was done for two reasons. Number one was that minors were supposedly sneaking Goose Island beer into the root beer carriers and fooling the tellers. And the supposed reason two is that the licensing agreement for the Goose Island name had expired and why bother renewing it. The bottle says that they have remained true to the original recipe which is never pasteurized and continue in a tradition of quality and innovation. Part of that innovation has been changing the recipe from the original, as a comparison of the late 90’s Goose Island that I tried and this bottle reveal slightly different ingredients and nutrition. Let’s see how innovative they really were.

The Body is sweet and full with creamy vanilla and a caramelized sugar flavor. The Bite is rather smooth but there is some spice in there, giving a nice little nip. The Head is nice and frothy, though it could be taller, it is sufficient. The Aftertaste is a light vanilla flavor with some spiced cane sugar that lasts the right amount of time.

No one aspect stands out as amazing, but taken all together this brew is high quality. So they have innovated properly, and earned an extra half a keg over the original. Nicely done. See how it rates against other root beers.

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