Ah Fentiman’s. Makers of Dandelion and Burdock soda and some other English flavours. Long have I hoped for the day when they would release a root beer, figuring it was right up their alley, despite the fact that it is a uniquely American drink. And now, they finally have! And called it Old English Root Beer, which is something root beer is most decidedly not. Maybe, I suppose, one could argue that there’s a old English way of making sodas, like dandelion and burdock, and when those techniques are applied to root beer it makes it an “old English” root beer, but that’s a stretch. Whatever, they made a root beer, in the UK, and are selling it all over America so I can drink it and complain about it’s name in both print and video form. Truly no greater gifts were given to me by company without a history of making root beer. Any ways, UK root beers are generally bad, almost exclusively, so how is this?
The Body is sweet but not overly so. There’s a complex botanical sarsaparilla flavor with accents of fermented ginger and sweet pear nectar that somehow all works together in a way that makes it intriguing to drink. The Bite is mild but it isn’t smooth. The Head is amazing. One of the best ever. The Aftertaste is a nectary sarsaparilla.
So, um, huh. I expected it to be kind of nasty, what with the “pear juice concentrate” in the ingredients. And yet, they’ve managed to keep it tasting root beer enough to make me acknowledge that they’ve done better than other British brews. It’s not bad. It’s not really good either, but it’s unique enough that it’s worth trying once. And while no one will say that it’s a good root beer. I think most will probably think of it as a decent soda and an experience worth having once. Just not multiple times. See how it rates against other root beers.
Perhaps it was Rocket Fizz that spurred the creation of this brew. They made 
On New Year’s Day the weather was beautiful and it hadn’t snowed for a few days so I thought I’d take a scenic drive with the family. I figured something the drove along the Mississippi River would be nice, and I knew that in the city of Red Wing, there was a brewery that also made their own root beer. So after a nice drive on the Wisconsin side of the river, we found ourselves at the little Red Wing Brewery. The city of Red Wing actually has a storied past with breweries, but they all were closed by the 1950s. The Red Wing Brewery is the first to open there since 1951. Now the root beer is called Good Old Zimmie’s and this time I actually had the presence of mind to ask why it was called this. I was told that they looked through the long history of Red Wing beers and chose from those names. Good Old Zimmie’s was the name of some old brew. Go figure. 
