Eric’s Gourmet Root Beer Blog – Page 160 – The blog of the gourmet root beer site.

Scuttlebutt Root Beer

May 082013

Scuttlebutt_Big The Scuttlebutt Brewing Company is a micro-brewery in Everett, WA on the waterfront, about a 40 minute drive from where I live. When I learned about it earlier this year, I immediately set about making plans to visit it. The company I work for has season tickets to several local sports teams that they raffle off to employees. As luck would have it, the same week I learned of this brewery, I won four tickets to the Everett Silvertips. The brewery itself is very kid friendly which is nice, and has very reasonable prices. They’ve got one of the coolest logos I’ve ever seen, which features prominently on their pint glasses. The root beer is tapped from a keg into pitchers which the servers then carry around to fill your glasses.

The Body is very sweet and spicy yet light on the core flavor. There’s a fruity hint as well and it isn’t really creamy at all. It is rather crisp and clean which I suspect comes from a lack of preservatives but the waiter didn’t seem to know much about its ingredients. The Bite is solid from the aforementioned spices and carbonation. The Head is wonderful. It is tall and frothy and lasts as long as it takes you to drink your pint. The Aftertaste is fruity, sadly. I really don’t like the fruity.

This root beer is ok. I really like the spices but it’s too light for my tastes, and then the fruity. The superb Head boosted it up a notch but it’s still only a low 3.5. The food was delicious. Reading all of Yelp reviews it seemed like their fish and chips were divine. After a 3 piece order, I must agree, especially their tartar sauce. I’ll probably drop by if I win any more Silvertips tickets.

Three and a half kegs

Scuttlebutt Brewing Company’s Famous Fish and Chips, so delicious!

The Pop Shoppe Root Beer

Bottled Root Beers No Responses »

May 012013

The Pop Shoppe Root Beer Bottle This has a really cool bottle. I’ve never seen another bottle like it. It’s really neat when a company has their own unique bottle. It’s a classy bottle as well. With the diamonds, the embossed name, and the short stubby look to it. The label is even painted on, so it makes me wonder if they still reuse their bottles. The company is Canadian in origin whose founders seem to be anti-hippies according to their website which is more to their credit. Their original gimmick was that they would have their own pop outlets to cut out the middle man and reduce prices. While it worked for awhile they were eventually bought and now, thankfully, you can get them through other distributors, which is how I cam across this on.

The Body is sweet on the initial contact and then is a little creamy with a hint of fruity. It is a little light on some of the essential root beer flavors and isn’t really creamy enough for a quality root beer. The Bite is very smooth, which isn’t a bad thing. The Head is how a Head should be. Frothy, foamy, and it lasts forever. Seriously, I do believe the pyramids will erode before the Head fully disappears. I have never seen a root beer Head last so long. Maybe it’s the propylene glycol they put in it (I’ve never had a root beer with that either.) The Aftertaste is sweet and slightly creamy and fruity.

So the fruity really ruins this one, as well as the light flavors. It does recoup a lot of points on from that eternal Head, but still not quite enough to win a Seal of Approval. It does win the Diamond Head Award, if I had such an award, but I don’t so it really only gets 3.5 kegs. See how it rates against other root beers.

Steelhead Root Beer

Bottled Root Beers 2 Responses »

Apr 242013

Steelhead Root Beer Bottle I’ve long passed up reviewing Steelhead because I thought it was identical to Bulldog Root Beer due to the fact that the website actually calls it their identical sister brand, which is a pretty good indicator that they are just relabeled. I prefer the Steelhead label though. It seems to take the classy look a level higher than Bulldog, plus they ditched the dogs and “The Original” thus escaping the cliches. Did I mention that I’m a sports fisher? I am and I have caught a few Steelhead in my day so that’s another plus. We need more fish themed root beers. So, during a root beer lull last year, I got curious and dug a little deeper. They aren’t bottled at the same location so I wondered if they would taste different like Cool Mountain and Chicago. So I bought some bottles and started side by side comparisons.

The Body is wonderful. Lots of honey, vanilla, and the other essential flavors. Sweet and creamy, the kind of flavor you could just snuggle up to if that were possible. The Bite is not much but sufficient. The whole thing has a very rich and smooth mouth feel from the maltodextrin. The Head is medium height and very foamy. It forms increasingly larger bubbles as it begins to fade and lasts a good while. The Aftertaste is of vanilla and honey and very pleasing though a little sticky.

If you go back you’ll notice that my description is nearly identical to Bulldog. Over several months of blind taste testing multiple batches of each, I could not tell them apart. The Head, however, is another story. The Steelhead has a superior Head, one that’s taller, lasts longer, and with a different consistency. While the Bulldog’s is short and frothy with small bubbles, the Steelhead’s is medium and foamy with larger bubbles that lingers several minutes longer. It’s enough to have it rank a little higher against its peers such that when presented with the choice between the two, I’ll take Steelhead every time. An email with the people at Orca Beverages (bottler of Bulldog) even confirms that the two recipes are slightly different and that the website is out of date. So they probably just toss a little extra foaming agent in the Steelhead. That works for me. See how it rates against other root beers.

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