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.
The Body is sweet and a little creamy. It is also a little watery at first. There is a noticeable cinnamon flavor that comes in after the initial contact. This makes for a pretty sharp Bite combined with the carbonation. The Head is kind of weak and fizzes down quickly, but the last half a centimeter lingers around for quite some time. I prefer better, but this isn’t too bad. The Aftertaste is vanilla and cinnamon, kind of like a Myers but not quite as much. The cinnamon flavor sticks around for awhile and masks out the wateriness after about half a bottle, so it’s pretty darn good after the first half. I think, however, to get a Seal of Approval, it should be pretty darn good for the whole bottle, not just the second half.
So the Baumeister makes a pretty decent brew, definitely worth trying now and again and I’m sure that it could pair really well with certain food combinations. But, I don’t think its good enough on its own. See how it rates against other root beers.
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.
I can’t help but get excited when I see a picture of some old man with a huge beard on a root beer bottle. I don’t know what it is, but it makes me imagine some gruff man who won’t take no watered down crap masquerading as root beer. Other than that, the bottle says that it is gourmet root beer and that is what I ultimately seek. Also, after just coming off of a run from two Seal of Approval root beers in a row, I was hoping that my luck would hold. Sadly, it didn’t at all.
