Americana

The missus represents for the Swiss cheese.

(Mac & Cheeza, September 2010)

The missus and I recently hit the (D)town for an evening of art and short film, stopping for a bite in a small storefront that enticed us with its backlit cheese-wedge sign. A restaurant specializing in mac n’ cheese? Brilliant! A specialty soda cooler in the corner?? Brilliant-er!! A specialty root beer in the specialty soda cooler??? Brilliant-est!!! Nearly $20 for mac n’ cheese and root beer???? Um… not so brilliant… (!!!!)

Nevertheless, there was root beer to be had, and such that it was, I had a job to do.

Americana uses cane sugar, then adds licorice and sassafras to the cache. Said licorice adds a slight kick, but doesn’t sacrifice drinkability to do so. Overall, I really liked it – good blend of herbs and sugar where the sugar doesn’t overpower the herbs and the herbs don’t leave a bitter aftertaste. The flavor is full – perhaps a little on the lower end of what I would ordinarily call “full-flavored;” not particularly rich, but certainly not hollow – that progresses from an initial sweetness that gives way to a spicy/herby spike before returning to sweetness, which lingers just long enough to smooth away any edge from the roots and spices. Good root beer should be a symbiotic relationship between herby-ness and sweetness, where each plays off of the other like the lead singer and lead guitarist of a great rock band to elevate the whole above the individual merits of its members. Plant & Page, Lennon & Harrison, Axl & Slash – off-stage antics of the latter pair aside, they all knew how to blend, and when they did, the results were glorious. Same goes for great root beers. Lofty words for carbonated beverages? Perhaps. But still true? Absolutely.

All in all, Americana is a good solid root beer – it gets a 4.