Eric’s Gourmet Root Beer Blog – Page 146 – The blog of the gourmet root beer site.

Silver City Brewery Root Beer

Jan 222014

A pint of Silver City Brewery Root Beer Across the Puget Sound from my home is the city of Silverdale and the Silver City Brewery. They’re unique from the other breweries that also do root beer in that they use it in their cooking and are proud of it. They make a root beer barbeque sauce and use it on their baby back ribs and their pulled pork sandwich for example. But that’s not all, they also have a “BBQ Root Beer Burger” on the menu, which has bacon, onion rings, lettuce, tomato, and lots of the root beer BBQ sauce. Now that’s what I like to see. Name your burger after the root beer. There should be more of that. Back in June, on a nice sunny Saturday, my family and I took the 1 hour ferry (our first time) across the Sound to Bremerton to try out this brew and the food made with it.

The Body has a sweet honey and sarsaparilla flavor that’s a little weaker than I prefer. It isn’t really creamy either and is almost fruity. There’s is a good carbonation fizz in the Bite but not a lot of spice. It’s very smooth going down. There is almost no Head, sadly, which always surprises me from a draft brew. The Aftertaste is more honey with sarsaparilla that lasts the right amount of time.

Not bad at all, in fact, it’s pretty decent. It’s not my preferred flavors though and I wish it were a little stronger. Plus it losses some points on the Head, but it’s drinkable and goes really well with the BBQ Root Beer Burger. That burger is delicious! One of the best brewery burgers I’ve ever had. I LOVE their root beer barbeque sauce. So sweet and tangy and spicy. The ribs are really good too and the portions are large. You’ll definitely leave feeling satisfied, unless you really just wanted a Seal of Approval brew. Otherwise, if you’re in the Seattle area, the trip, with the wonderful views on the ferry and food, is well worth it.

Three kegs

The Silver City Brewery BBQ Root Beer Burger

Baby back ribs with root beer barbecue sauce.

Ferrying through the Puget Sound on a quest for root beer!

Capt’n Eli’s Root Beer

Bottled Root Beers 1 Response »

Jan 152014

Capt'n Eli's Root Beer Bottle One day, out of the blue, I get an email from the people at Capt’n Eli asking me if I’d like to try their root beer. Yes, I responded, that is my primary reason for existence. If only more companies would follow suit. They sent me a 4-pack and a comic book about Capt’n Eli, an orphan boy genius who loves the sea, has a pet dog, builds his own submarine, and may be descended from Captain Nemo (I only had the first issue so I’m not sure how the plot developed). It’s called the Undersea Adventures of Capt’n Eli. One of his first inventions was making a root beer machine. I’m guessing that the root beer they’re selling is supposed to be from his root beer machine. This is the first and only time I’ve encountered a root beer with its own comic book, unless you count Snoopy with A&W though Snoopy wasn’t invented to push root beer so it’s a bit different. They’ve since expanded their soda line because why not.

The Body was sweet and creamy but with too much anise and no honey. The Bite was spicy and the Head was perfect. The Aftertaste was of vanilla and anise that wasn’t bad but at the same time not overly good.

This is a well crafted brew with attention to detail. I could taste the fact that they used natural flavors. It was really good, but I just don’t like the anise flavor too much, if they just had a little less of that and some honey or something. It pained me to not give them a Seal of Approval because they were so nice, but the root beer wasn’t quite up to my tastes. See how it rates against other root beers.

Rocky Mountain Root Beer

Bottled Root Beers No Responses »

Jan 082014

Rocky Mountain Root Beer Bottle Another acquired through trade from anthony. I should probably be more diligent in getting these Western root beers without having to appeal to the East Coast to get them. I almost love this label. The shiny, the bighorn sheep, the mountain scenery, the classy seal that … doesn’t quite … line up with the text … gaaaah! Really, why? Why would you put your classy shiny seal slightly off center? Just to grate my nerves I suppose. This root beer also has the distinction of being made with “Colorado Water” which I hope has some tasty minerals or something. I’m still going to just leave it as water in the root beer ingredients list (fun fact, I actually don’t list water as its pretty much given). Another curiosity is that they claim it’s “All Natural” so I suppose the potassium sorbate is naturally occurring. Maybe that’s what’s special about the Colorado Water.

The Body is mild but spicy with licorice and wintergreen and I almost want to say vanilla. It’s also a little bitter. There’s a solid spicy Bite and the carbonation level is nice too. The Head is very tall but fizzes down very quickly. The Aftertaste is mostly a sugar. The first bottle of this that I had, however, was really hollow with no spice and with a bitter chemical flavor.

Hmm, it is rare to have two bottles of the same brew be so different. I know it is batch brewed but I shouldn’t think that the difference between batches would be so pronounced. Though the second bottle was much better than the first, and raised the overall rating substantially, I don’t think I’d risk drinking it again just in case. See how it rates against other root beers.

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