Another one which I received in trade from the great root beer collector Jon. It also seems that this has been discontinued so he gave me one of the world’s last. Truly I must sing his praises. Okay, here goes … ♫♪ Oh Jon, oh Jon, oh great and glorious Jooooooon! ♫♪ … Alright, now that’s over with, on to this Cold Spring. It’s a brewery, you know, with a storied past. There’s a spring there and they use the water to make beer. And root beer, or they did at least. It’s been around for 125+ years so they’ve probably made root beer several times in their “storied” history. Springs seem to been another reoccurring theme with breweries. It makes sense, you kind of need a source of water. They took a Spartan approach to their bottle. A simple circle with the name and the flavor. Some small text above. Who needs anything else? Well most other brands do, that’s who, but not Cold Spring they are so above that, or they were when they were making this at least.
The Body isn’t super sweet and has a nice creamy vanilla flavor to it but it’s light on the other root beer flavors. There’s also something slightly off in the flavors that I can’t place. There really isn’t a lot of Bite to this one, it’s nice and smooth. The Head is medium-tall and lasts a good long while. The Aftertaste is creamy vanilla.
This is pretty decent but not all there. It’s almost more cream soda than root beer, which I don’t mind terribly but I prefer it reversed. Still, I miss this already, even though we just met. Not in a sobbing and crying way, but still. See how it rates against other root beers.
Still in Denver, though fleeing from the land of exorbitant parking fees, I went to a microbrewery I knew was closed yet knew they had their own root beer. They had a parking lot! Since I had an hour before they opened, I wondered if I could find something else that was open right away. My search led me to Dry Dock Brewing Company, out in Aurora, a 20 minute drive from where I was. Parking there was also not a problem (I asked on the phone before I made the trek). Coming from the West Coast, I find a lot of nautical themed breweries. I didn’t expect there to be one in Colorado, because, you know, there’s not really any major lakes or oceans or even navigable rivers. Knowing this inconsistency, they went with Dry Dock, nautically themed sans water. 
I found this in Seattle shortly after I began my eternal quest to review every gourmet root beer in the world. It was the first spring actually. I’d gone with some friends to a Mariners game and across the street from Safeco Field I found three different varieties in a mini-mart. Since the security was much less stringent, I actually took them into the game with me since I didn’t want to go back to the car. This brew is microcrafted, which I’ve never seen before. I’ve seen plenty of hand crafted and microbrewed, but never microcrafted. The label on this has got a lot going on, but it’s all very patriotic. It is Americana after all, so there’s got to be a bald eagle and The Liberty Bell. Then add some old fashioned squiggly lines that I’m sure have some sort of formal name but I don’t care to check and voilá, a truly American label, nay, an Americana label.
