Relaunch and Root Beer!

Webpage redesign……………….!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Well, I never thought I’d ever step onto the oft-tread food blogger path, but the missus had a good idea – and while I don’t know much, I know that when the missus has a good idea, I should do it. So I’m going to start cataloguing all the different root beers I try from here on out, and review them based on my subjective preferences (Just face it, fellow bloggers – even though you have a blog, rate things on your blog, and people read your blog, you’re not as objective as you like to think you are).

This should result it, at the very least, a list that I can refer back to prior to making a root beer run so I can remind myself what I liked and what I didn’t. This should also make it easier for me to remember, when I see an unfamiliar label, whether or not I’ve tried that particular brew before.

Or perhaps the missus only wants me to digitally catalogue my root beer conquests so that the physical catalogue of my root beer conquests (i.e., the bottle collection sitting on the shelf above the stove and on the windowsill) doesn’t overwhelm her kitchen… Hmmm…

Ahem…

To begin, I need to set up some sort of rating system so that I can rank my favorite root beers. For now, let’s use the following:

5 – Where have you been all my life?!? (God, my wife, this root beer – in that order.)

4 – Thank you sir, may I have another. (I like it; I will buy more in the future.)

3 – Meh. (I’ll drink it, but it’s nothing special; a step above mass-market brands.)

2 – Charlatan! (Maybe good soda, but not really root beer; lacks root beer flavor.)

1 – Dear God, is this durian juice?!? (Umm, I didn’t like it.)

Onto my first beverage!

Gale’s

The Pooj gazes upon the beverage hopefully, expectantly.

(Rocket Fizz, June 2010)

The label boasts “cinnamon, ginger, and vanilla” as ingredients, which piqued my curiosity. As a disclaimer, I should note that I usually prefer my root beers fairly traditional in the sense that I don’t typically like it when there’s a whole lot of extra stuff added to it. That may explain why I don’t particularly like Virgil’s, which is probably tantamount to root beer sacrilege. The overly herb-y flavor leaves an unpleasant aftertaste, like I just chewed on some bark. And while I generally prefer root beers that have a more traditional root-y flavor, I don’t generally like beverages that are too bitter, hence why I’m also not a big fan of Dad’s – I like that flavor in old-fashioned root beer candy, but not so much in a drink, where it can come off slightly medicinal. It’s got to be sweet enough to not taste like cold fizzy black coffee.

But I digress….

So as I was saying, the label states that Gale’s Root Beer is cinnamon, ginger, and vanilla flavored. Unfortunately that’s at the expense of being root beer flavored. The first taste has a slightly-better-than-mass-market-root-beer flavor to it, better in part because of a nice vanilla richness, followed by a ginger aftertaste similar to that of a good ginger ale. There’s heat there, probably from the combination of ginger and cinnamon, like Reed’s Ginger Brew, but it’s not overwhelming and fades quickly. As I got further down the bottle, there was more of a cinnamon scent, but the cinnamon taste was never really that noticeable. On the whole, it’s a pleasant drink – good balance of sweetness (real sugar) and spice.

But since Gale’s calls it root beer, and it doesn’t really have much of a root beer flavor – more of a ginger ale with slightly rooty taste – as nice as I found Gale’s as a soda, I’m going to have to give it a 2.5.