Dang! That's Good Butterscotch

The Pooj attempts to nab a dag.

(...yeah, I know that one's a stretch...)

(BevMo Pasadena, January 2012)

Dang! That's Good Butterscotch Root Beer comes from Imperial Flavors, a syrup, beverage concentrate, and beverage-dispensing equipment company out of Milwaukee (actually, it's pronounced "mill-e-wah-que" which is Algonquin for "the good land"). Aside from the fact that the company was first established in 1964 and that the company also makes a line of energy drinks, there's not a whole lot more information available about them on their website. Some sources say that the name of the root beer comes from someone's grandmother's exclamation upon sampling it, but I'm not certain as to the veracity of such claims. I do know that the Dang! line does make a regular root beer in addition to the Butterscotch Root Beer I have here today, but all I can get a hold of at the moment is the latter version.

Undaunted, we press on...

Appropriately enough, the beverage smells like ... ... wait for it ... ... butterscotch and root beer! ... which also smells oddly reminiscent of a Sharpie to me, so I might need to get my nose checked out ... It foams up a little bit in a glass, but not much, so I can't say it has much head. From the bottle, it tastes more like butterscotch – very much like butterscotch, actually – but from the glass, it tastes more like root beer. My taste buds get used to the butterscotch flavor fairly quickly, so I don't notice it as much later on, which allows the root beer flavors to come through more. The root beer flavor itself is actually somewhat mild, so there's nothing particularly distinctive about it. When I take smaller sips, the butterscotch flavor takes over by-and-large, which understandably results in a very sweet confection and makes the whole experience rich and smooth, despite a fairly strong carbonation. Butterscotch flavor returns in the aftertaste, which actually gets sweeter the longer it sticks around.

Not having visited any of the Harry Potter theme parks, this is what I'd imagine a butterbeer would taste like. At least this is what I’d hope a butterbeer tastes like, as opposed to, you know, actual butter-flavored fizzy-drink (maybe a new Fizzies idea?  Certainly wouldn't be their worst...). Returning to the topic at hand, however, while I do like the butterscotch flavor – and you’d have to like butterscotch itself to enjoy the Butterscotch Root Beer – it really drowns out most of the root beer flavor. Since there is some modicum of noticeable root beer flavor in there, I wouldn’t go as far as to say it’s not root beer at all, but it does make me somewhat ambivalent about it as a root beer. Do I like it as a butterscotch root beer? Yeah, sure, if that someday becomes a category of root beer. But do I like it as just a root beer? Meh. That having been said, I do want to try the Dang! regular root beer to see what the flavors are like without the butterscotch overpowering them. So we'll revisit the whole Dang! universe soon, but for now Dang! That’s Good Butterscotch Root Beer gets a 3.