Summit is an Aldi brand. Aldi is a discount market where they don’t give you bags and you need to put quarters in to get shopping carts. Their standard store brand root beer is Summit Suds, which comes only in cans. They’ve done glass versions before, though they weren’t very good. I was very happy last year when I heard this root beer was being made. But, despite living near an Aldi now it never showed up, and I was left to mourn when it disappeared from all of the shelves. Then, later this year, I got a random text from my wife who was shopping at Aldi with a picture of a four-pack of this asking if I’d tried it. What luck! My son felt very proud too, as he was the one who found it. It’s not often I get a second chance at these, so reviewing it became my top priority. I don’t understand the whole aviator dog on the label. I get that there are a lot of dogs on root beer labels, but why is it an aviator? The bottle gives no clues, and maybe we’re not to know. They probably did it just to annoy me, cause they know I rant about these dog labels. Anyhow, my review.
The Body is sweet with a classic root beer flavor and a sarsaparilla tinge. It’s a little on the mild side though. There’s a decent spice Bite, from some cloves. The Head is medium tall and very foamy. The Aftertaste is a mild vanilla with sarsaparilla.
It’s pretty good, just not quite all there. I don’t know It’s a lot better than their previous try with the Vintage root beer, so there’s that. See how it rates against other root beers.
Back when I did my Duluth trip to hunt root beers, we made sure to stop at Tobies in Hinkley on the way back. Tobie’s is a bakery that makes famous caramel rolls. Stopping at Tobies is something of a tradition for all travelers to Duluth I’m told. So who am I to stop tradition. While there I found these root beer drops. Abdallah is a candy maker in Minnesota that’s been around since 1909, so though they aren’t made at Tobies, at least they’re a local brand that you can’t buy just anywhere. Their website calls these “Sanded Root Beer Drops” but that label clearly calls them “Old Fashioned” so I’m going with the label. These are only my second root beer drops, and I wonder if they are just like these other. 
Last week I was in Madison, Wisconsin doing what I do best, working and finding root beer in the evenings. Madison is kind of a disappointment in that regard, for while they have cheese aplenty, and many small craft breweries, the amount of root beer in said breweries is rather lacking. Which strikes me as odd since cities in Minnesota with half as many people will have multiple craft root beers on taps just waiting for me to try. But it took quite a bit of searching for me to find one. To be fair, a lot of places do have Sprecher and Baumeister on tap there, and fine brews they are, but still, they can do better. But anyways, Delta Beer Lab was started only in February of this year by a couple of brewery veterans who’d worked their way up. One of them even was head brewer at a place in Minneapolis. Perhaps that’s why he, unlike so many others in Madison, decided to do a root beer. The brewery itself is like a chemistry class/lab, which is fun, as you can get little beakers and flasks full of brew. They are also very socially progressive there, take that as you feel inclined, which includes refusing tips and just paying their employees a living wage with benefits. I loath paying tips (just tell me how much it really costs) so I can get behind that. But more importantly, can I get behind the root beer?
