Firemans Brew is the creation of some fireman in LA who thought it would be cool to both make a whole line of refreshing micro-brewed drinks, made by firemen for firemen, and confuse spell checkers by not putting an apostrophe in between the ‘n’ and the ‘s’ in their company name, even though it is clearly a possessive. Well, actually I don’t know if the second was truly one of their stated objectives but they accomplished it nonetheless. Maybe they were trying to say firemen in a cooler way, like firemans, but you’d have to be an L.A. fireman to get the joke, I’m not sure. I do love the idea of a fireman root beer, because you know, things are pretty tough for firemen and they run into burning buildings and save people so they deserve a good brew to relax into after saving little Timmy and then getting the cat out of the tree and whatnot. It’s got a pretty classy look too, probably to impress the ladies, since they always go for a guy in uniform, or a root beer for that matter. I love the line “Extinguish your thirst” even if it is entirely expected in this case.
The Body is dark and a tad creamy from what seems a hint of vanilla. There seems to be some anise and wintergreen. It tastes rather generic though; I swear I’ve had numerous root beers with this same flavor repertoire. It is toned down from some of those stouts so it isn’t too bad. The Bite is decent, and the overall brew is pretty smooth. The Head is tall and pretty frothy. It fizzes down a bit quicker than I prefer but it is still good. The Aftertaste is a dark anise flavor with accents of vanilla and wintergreen.
So it seems that these firemans like stout anise-y brews. I can’t say that they’re my favorites but this one isn’t bad. I really struggled about where to rate this one. It’s a decent brew but doesn’t seem to have any really distinguishing qualities about it to boost it over the top. The nice Head though was eventually enough to push it above a 3 to a low 3.5. See how it rates against other root beers.
Another one from England. My project manager goes there so often so I’m always trying to find more gourmet root beers for him to bring back. Sadly, I think this is the last one available in glass bottles. I’ve spent hours looking for others to no avail. This one I had to order from Amazon.uk and have it delivered to his house since he’s getting a bit tired of spending his time off running to stores to look for root beers for me. Of all of the UK root beers I’ve had so far, this definitely looks the cheapest. No fancy wax dipped bottle or coat of arms or nothing, just a cheap little green bottle like what they use for wine in airplanes on transatlantic flights. It also says “sweetened with fruit juice” which I must say didn’t give me high hopes for the brew.
Another one for the dogs it seems. But this isn’t just any dog themed root beer. No, they’ve named their company after their dog Margo (and her bark), and all of the profits from this root beer go to shelter dogs. Who couldn’t like that, unless you don’t like dogs. You know, those people who growing up didn’t have a dog, and the neighbors’ dogs were mean and scared them when they were small and other dogs chased them until their dads taught them that the best way to escape a chasing dog is to charge it as if they had a rock or a stick because they’re bigger than the dogs and the dogs smell fear. So they’ve pretty much had a fight or flight relationship with these animals their entire lives and they have this complex because society tells them that they should be nice to dogs but their personal experience leads them to believe otherwise … I’m sure you know tons of people like this right, there are loads of them. Well anyways, those people might be a bit ambivalent towards the theme here but everyone else would like it and not judge those others because they don’t know what it’s like to be chased by big mean dogs on a daily basis. 