When I made my pilgrimage to A&W of Lodi , among the various merchandise I found these lollipops for $0.25 a piece. These little unassuming lollis marked simply with Rooty the Root Bear. These have been made for ages, but my brief internet searching couldn’t reveal much about them. Other than lots of people remember them from their childhood. For my part, I’d never seen them before but was overjoyed to find more things to write about on my trip.
It’s got a strong root beer flavor that tastes unsurprisingly like A&W. This is a welcome departure from the standard generic hard candy root beer flavor, though A&W is still pretty middle-of-the-road. It seems to have a little more minty flavor than normal A&W, but maybe that’s just a function of being in hard candy form, what stands out. It’s quite a sticky flavor too, but all in all yummy.
Hey, it tastes like candified A&W. Who would have guessed? I rank these as some of the better root beer hard candies, even though they’ve all been pretty good so far. Worth snagging a few if you can find them.
So last Saturday my wife said that she had heard the town of Excelsior was rather neat and touristy and we should go down there. I also wanted to make my way to the Minnesota’s Largest Candy Store, which is vaguely in the same direction so we sallied forth on an adventure. Excelsior is a fun little town. Lots of those touristy shops and site seeing cruises on Lake Minnetonka. After a long walk she suggested that maybe there was a brewery with root beer as we rested in the park. I felt like I had already done such search awhile ago but I pulled out my phone and Google Maps suggested to me Excelsior Brewing (Google knows me too well). It is situated right in downtown Excelsior, a short walk from where we were. So yeah we dropped in and saw that there were sodas to be had including Big Reggie’s Root Beer. It was a really hot day so perfect time to get a pint. Another serendipitous review!
Two weeks ago I was out and about with my lil’ sister who’s moved to my area. We were shopping some second hand stores and I noticed that there was a brewery in the same little strip mall that I’d never heard of. So we dropped by. I sauntered up to the bar and asked if they had root beer. To my surprise they said they did make their own root beer. In fact I was so surprised I couldn’t decide on whether to try and review it right then and there or just come back later since it was a mere 10 minute drive from my house. I opted for the former, but such indecision definitely undermined my whole sauntering act. Oh well. The brewery just opened earlier this year, a reason I’d missed it in my root beer searching when I moved here. It is all nerdy and medieval, with armor and medieval style candle chandeliers and armor and what not. They have signups for MTG and DnD games and chess boards built into some of the heavy solid wood tables. The brewers sport some amazing beards as well. It’s definitely my kind of place. The root beer though…
