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?
This is one of those brews with a nice, creamy, full Body. It has a nice spicy caramel type flavor that surfaces after the initial contact. The Bite is good. It grabs you with those spices and a carbonation tingle but then lets you go slowly and smoothly for an excellent finish. The Aftertaste is lovely vanilla and a hint of spicy caramel that you could just swim in (you’ve never swum in vanilla?). The Head is a bit perplexing. The first bottle I had didn’t have much of a Head, but it was very frothy and lingered long enough to not be fatal to the rating. The second bottle had a huge Head that was medium frothy and fizzed down until the last centimeter. That last centimeter stuck around awhile. So either way the Head was good enough, though, I prefer a Head I can count on.
So this is quality stuff. Clearly Mr. Capone would settle for nothing but the best. Dare I say it, if he had focused on selling this, he wouldn’t have needed any other of his ‘businesses’. Or, I’m sure he could have had his sentence commuted if he had sent this stuff to the Governor or the President. Perhaps his greatest crime was keeping this under wraps for so long. Either way, I’m glad it’s been released now so we can all enjoy it and I am proud to award it my Seal of Approval. See how it rates against other root beers.
My $100 review. What, you say? I spent $100 to drink two bottles of this root beer? No, I didn’t. But, I found out that since I had bought it and before I got around to drinking it (I have a rather large queue you see) it got discontinued. The only store that still had any had decided that since there was almost nothing left the price per bottle should be $50. Supply and demand they say. Fair enough on the supply side, but where is the demand? I don’t know if anyone would pay $50 to try one bottle of root beer except for maybe someone like me, who was intent to try all of the root beers (I know, there are already ones I’ve missed). But, I already had my two bottles at that point so I didn’t need any more to accurately review. I’m not sure about other reviewers. I’m also not sure if I would pay $50 per bottle if I didn’t have them yet, but I really only paid about $4 so I don’t have to make up my mind about that yet. Then again, maybe it is so amazing good that I would spent hundreds to buy up the last bottles.
So I had heard about Dick’s Root Beer from Anthony’s wish list. I found it was made in Centralia, which isn’t too far from me. Before I planned a trip there, I figured I would send a shout out on Facebook to see if any of my UW friends (Zombie Tag comrades) were from there or going there. Lucky for me a good friend and CFH member Brian lived there and said he would get me some over Thanksgiving. I told him I needed three bottles. Well he left a message on my voicemail over the break that they didn’t sell their root beer in bottles, only draft and growlers (filled from the draft) and that he got me a growler. So this caused a conundrum. I only rate bottled root beer. Though, technically, I should rate draft root beer from kegs and growlers as well, or at least drink them, since I rate my root beers with a keg system. Clearly, root beer from a keg is gourmet, as well as a growler filled from a keg. The problem is that I can’t really hold growler root beers to the same metric with the head since the bottling process preserves the head while pouring it in the growler will lose it. So I decided that I’ll review root beers from growlers, using the same Body, Bite, and Aftertaste metrics. The Head metric will be thrown out. The reviews will be on the blog under the Growler Root Beers category but there will be no short format reviews in the review tables since I am a stickler about my bottled root beer. I am not sure how I will rate root beers only available in kegs, but I’ll figure it out when I happen upon a keg root beer.