Eric’s Gourmet Root Beer Blog – Page 38 – The blog of the gourmet root beer site.

Sweet Candy Company Root Beer Float Taffy

Oct 162019

Root beer float taffy

Another find from the Minnesota’s Largest Candy Store, which, as an aside, how do they verify that? I mean, I’m sure they’re just saying it, and it is pretty big, but what if someone opens a bigger candy store, maybe they already have but I don’t know about. It’s something I’ve often wondered about and now you are too, or you’re calling me an idiot but I digress. So Sweet Candy Company has been making candies since the late 1800s and is still a family owned and operated business. They specialize is shipping bulk candies, so probably most candy stores you’ll visit will have something of theirs. They specialize in salt water taffy, which is probably why they originally relocated from Portland, OR to Salt Lake City… More salt water… yeah I’m just gonna move onto the review.

The root beer flavor is strong, generic and a little spicy. There’s noticeable wintergreen. It reminds me of a lot of the root beer hard candies I’ve had. The vanilla portion is rather mild. It’s not near as rich and creamy as it could have been. The combination of the two sides is more like a creamy root beer than an actual root beer float, which isn’t bad, but not really the intention.

These aren’t bad. I kind of like them though they’re nothing special. I’m kind of surprised they call them root beer float and not creamy root beer, but what ever. They’re fine if you want a root beer taffy but not worth seeking out otherwise.

Chocolate Storybook Root Beer Cotton Candy

Root Beer Candy No Responses »

Oct 092019

Root Beer Cotton Candy

In early August I went to Minnesota’s Largest Candy Store to sweep it from top to bottom looking for any and all things root beer. They also have a nice soda selection and found three new bottled varieties. I also got a nice haul of new candies, though not as many as I expected. This cotton candy was probably the last one I found. Chocolate Storybook has been around since 1985 and makes chocolates and sweets for masterful gift items. Their cotton candy is hand spun and has many traditional as well as quite unique flavors including Spicy Jalapeno, BBQ Sauce, and Trump Hair. All of those seem interesting to try, but I’m more interested in the root beer flavor.

It has a strong generic, creamy root beer flavor. There’s almost a fizzy texture that you get as it all melts in your mouth and it also seems like there’s a bit of spices in there. The whole experience is nice and balanced between strength of the flavor and fizzy fluffiness of the texture to really give a nice root beer feel.

I like this. Yet, I’m not usually big on buying cotton candy in a tub, as I feel it’s more of a fair/circus sort of food that you eat off of the paper cone. I’d love to get this directly from the source in that manner. Still. It’s yummy, so you won’t be disappointed with it.

Real Brew Draft Root Beer

Bottled Root Beers No Responses »

Oct 022019

Real Brew Root Beer Bottle Root beer number three from my Montreal adventure, it was the serendipitous brew of the trip, for I didn’t even know of its existence before I went on my trek to find the Marco Root Beer. At my second stop, the Fruiterie du Plateau, when I found their soda section, I was overjoyed to discover that they had this brew that I’d never heard of before. They had some other Canadian ones I’d already had as well. I grabbed these along with the rest, and then had that wonderful hour long walk in the slushy snow/rain while carrying the box back to the hotel. This is actually made in the US, but Smucker Natural Foods, and is the Canadian version of Natural Brew, albeit with different listed ingredients and nutritional information. I don’t think it’s the exact some thing at all, though I’m not sure why they would do that. Anyways, different ingredients, name, label, nutrition equals new root beer as far as I’m concerned. I don’t like Natural Brew, and this?

The Body is mild with some sweet birch flavor accented by a bit of vanilla and some other herbals. It’s not a very standard root beer flavor to be sure, though it has a lot of the standard ingredients. The Bite is pretty mild with not much other than some carbonation. The Head is medium height and foamy; where this brew excels the most. The Aftertaste is some mild herbal birch that is gone very quickly.

Yeah, I also don’t like this as a root beer. It definitely tastes different than the Natural Brew I remember. Instead of overpowering licorice, this is just too far out of the standard root beer spectrum for me to consider drinkable. I do like it better than the original Natural Brew, so there’s that. See how it rates against other root beers.

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