Olde Philadelphia

The Pooj gets his bell rung.

(Rocket Fizz Pasadena, October 2011)

Olde Philadelphia’s website says that the company is now owned and operated by Philadelphia natives, so one wonders where its previous owners were from, if not Philadelphia, and if not, why it’s called Olde Philadelphia. Research suggests that they may have once been based out of Wilkes-Barre, PA, over 100 miles from Philly, part of the Lion Brewery, but I can’t confirm whether that is still the case or not. I can confirm that Lion Brewery also makes a root beer that is not under the Olde Philadelphia label, but that will be covered in a future post (I can confirm that as well).

Unfortunately, I can also confirm that Olde Philadelphia Root Beer doesn’t really taste like root beer (well, at least not to me, so maybe I can’t really confirm something so subjective…). It actually tastes more like cola, despite an initially herb-y scent, as if I mixed Coca-Cola with a mildly-flavored root beer (which might be an interesting SCIENCE! posting, assuming we even want to cover such experiments in the SCIENCE! postings…). The scent fades fast, as does the rest of the flavor, so there’s no discernable aftertaste, either cola-ish or root-ish. There’s perhaps a little bit of an artificial vanilla flavor in there somewhere, so it’s more of a Vanilla-Coke-mixed-with-a-mildly-flavored-root-beer flavor. While there are both quillaia and yucca extracts listed with the ingredients, presumably as foaming agents, there’s no head to speak of, even though the carbonation has a hard bite that burns the back of my throat.

In short, I’m not impressed. Let’s hope Lion Brewery represents Wilkes-Barre better than Olde Philadelphia represents Olde Philly. Olde Philadelphia Root Beer gets a 2.