Old Town D-n-A

The Pooj examines the evidence.

(Old Town Root Beer Company, June 2011)

As we had covered earlier, the Old Town Root Beer Company makes three different varieties of root beer. This particular version is named D-n-A, after Dallas-n-Austin (yes, those are really their names), the youngest generation of the Montgomery clan and hopefully the future of the Old Town Root Beer Empire – I mean, when your pictures are on the bottle label, how can you not go into the family business…?

Just as the label depicts the lesser generation (in the classical use of the term, not to imply the young’uns are of diminished quality), the contents of Old Town D-n-A Root Beer are a lesser, milder version of the flagship brew. Which is not to say it’s of any diminished quality either – in fact, it’s quite good. D-n-A starts with a nice head and a slightly harder carbonation, with a good licorice-heavy scent. The taste is a lighter honey flavor than the original, but not really in a less-honey way, almost like the original uses a richer, darker honey and this one uses an actual lighter honey. I could be mistaken, since there’s also a distinctly cane-like flavor to the sugar which I may be reading as the honey. Either way, the result is a refreshing sweetness, not unlike that of sugar cane tea. As far as herbs go, there’s a slight horehound leaning in addition to the licorice, with a wintergreen finish that leaves a faint menthol-y cool feeling. Perhaps it’s just a matter of perception, but it did seem that the herb flavor grew fainter as I got further down the bottle, resulting in the sweetness getting stronger – I wonder if this is simply my taste buds getting accustomed to the root-y flavors.

Of the three Old Town root beers, I think my favorite is still the original, followed by the Route Beer 66, followed closely by the D-n-A. There’s one more Old Town beverage to try, but that will be the subject of a SCIENCE! posting:

Hey, hey, the gang's all here.

Having said that, though, I like all of the Old Town offerings, so while Old Town D-n-A is down the rankings from its sister brews, I still liked it better than most other root beers out there. I’ll give it a 3.5.