This was the first root beer I reviewed after returning from my mission in Madagascar and South Africa. I was gone for two years and the only root beer I had was my mission recipe from some extract my parents sent me. When I returned home there was a case of this, a case of Henry’s, a case of Hank’s, and a case of Iron Horse waiting for me. I waited about two weeks before trying this, drinking the others to make sure I fully remembered what good root beer tasted like. The name of this annoys me. It should be Jumpin’ or Jumping. I don’t know who Johnny is, but he clearly has some mad skills. He’s jumping over a root beer keg on speed skates while holding a foamy mug of root beer. I know I couldn’t even jump over the barrel with a mug of brew if it were on grass, let alone speed skates. The reward for this feat was of course getting his own root beer named after him.
This root beer has an exceptionally sweet and delicious Body but although it is delicious at first, it proves rather hollow. There is not much Bite and it has very little Head on it. The Aftertaste is nothing special and even turns slightly fruity after awhile which counters the sweet flavor at the beginning.
They put real sugar and clover honey making this one of the sweetest brews I’ve ever encountered. Because of the sweet delicious flavor, it does go very well with food and therefore is drinkable and actually very desirable in that a food like pizza is greatly complimented by the sweet flavor, and the pizza flavor will fill the hollowness and mask the unpleasantness of the Aftertaste. See how it rates against other root beers.
One of the first five gourmet root beers I ever had. I can’t remember when I first saw it show up at Safeway, but it was after I had fallen in love with Henry’s yet before I became The Root Beer Gourmet that I am. I almost never got it since I had Henry’s (spoiler alert: I liked the Henry’s more), even though this was made with pure Washington honey. With my small sample size (four or five root beers at that point) I was wondering if all quality root beers would be named after somebody. Another special thing about this brew is that it was one of four brews in my blind taste test. You see, someone at my work said that all of my root beer preference was just hot air and I really couldn’t tell the difference. So I went home got a bottle of Henry’s, a bottle of this, a plastic bottle of A&W, and Safeway Select in a can and had my family administer the blind taste test. I correctly identified each root beer, and reported back to my coworker in the sort of taunts you’d expect from a 17 year old working on a farm.
In the tiny town of Arcadia, OK, on Route 66, there exists a place called 
