My 300th root beer review! For such a special moment I had to pick a special brew and this one is special indeed. Sprecher Honey Root Beer is a limited edition celebratory soda made in honor of Sprecher Brewing Company’s 30th year. They did a limited production run of only 3000 cases. So it was the natural pick for my 300th, to complete the trifecta of 3 times increasingly larger powers of 10. Also this brau is sweetened with only raw honey. Which is a bold move as too much honey can be dangerous. Yet, I love honey and I love Sprecher, so this should be good. I love the honey themed label, with the demonic raven thingy now clutching a hive. It also says “Craft Soda”. While I prefer to go with the label of gourmet root beer, craft soda/root beer is an appropriate label as well. I’ll write more about those distinctions another day, because the Sprecher is waiting.
The Body is light on standard root beer flavors and very heavy on the honey, being the only sweetener. It’s sort of a fruity raw honey which overpowers the rest of the flavors. The Bite is a light honey bite on the back of your throat. If you’ve ever eaten a spoonful of raw honey, you know what I mean. The carbonation is severely lacking, sadly, which makes the brew even heavier. The Head is pitiful, just pitiful, which is very disappointing. The Aftertaste is more raw honey, some fruity raw honey.
I do love me some honey, but this was too much honey and not enough of the other wonderful flavors that Sprecher has. The low carbonation really killed it for me as well, not only was there no Head, but it was too thick and syrupy without all of those bubbles in it. What a shame. At least it will not be missed after those 3000 cases are gone. See how rates against other root beers.
One of my favorite Jethro Tull songs is The Whistler, and I always start humming it to myself when I think about this root beer. Just thought I’d throw that out there. Whistler Classic Soda is a different kind of company. They wanted to bring back the days of yesteryear when the local bottling plant would have returnable bottles you’d pay a deposit on. They think less carbonation and simpler ingredient and real sugar (is beet included?) is the way to go. I like the idea of returnable glass bottles, more environmental and stuff and other than weak carbonation the premise seems promising. They actually liked my 
Check out this cool stubby bottle. I haven’t had many root beers in little stubby bottles like this. Maybe only twice before. I was very fortunate that a storied root beer collector and fan by the name of Vince lives close to the Peace Tree Brewery in Iowa and was willing to trade with me. In addition to it’s cool stubby little bottle, it’s got a pretty neat label. With lots of shades of brown and a picture of an old school jug that almost makes the root beer seem to come from such a jug. That’s probably what they were going for, and it works. It’s also handcrafted. Because aren’t they all. I’ll give a whole 1 keg bonus to the rating of the first brand to put “Machine Crafted” or “Foot Crafted” on their label. This is also made with beet sugar rather than cane. 
