River City

The Pooj pours one for his friends sent up the river.

(Rocket Fizz Thousand Oaks, December 2011)

In celebration of Blue Dog Beverages' recent unveiling – recent as in this-was-really-just-announced-on-Sunday, and yes-this-blog-at-least-pretends-to-be-hip-to-current-trends-in-the-carbonated-beverage-world-however-irrelevant-they-may-be-to-the-real-life-important-news-world recent – of their Blueberry Lemonade, only the second soda in their River City line, we look back fondly on the days when they were but a single-beverage label. …Actually, Blue Dog Beverages distributes over 450 kinds of soda, so they really aren’t strangers to that aforementioned carbonated beverage world…so…never mind…

Moving right along, then…

Although company owners Janet and Bob Lake did not create their own River City Soda label until 2009, they've been in the soda distribution business since they opened shop in 2003. When the time came to make their own mark on the carbonated community, the fizzy fraternity, the pop proletariat (OK, maybe I should be more generous), the soda society what have you, the Lakes spent 12 months developing a recipe that would become River City Root Beer – named for their hometown, the River City itself, Sacramento (the rivers in question being the Sacramento and American Rivers). The company website states that River City Root Beer was made specifically with floats in mind, but I don’t know if that’s true or just press, seeing as they’re not the only people who describe their root beers within the float-making context. Personally, as much of a fan of the root beer float as I am myself, I feel that one should never adulterate a good root beer with any add-in, particularly something as potentially overpowering as dairy (which now that I think of it, adding cream to Manhattan Special Espresso Soda does sound good, but that’s a different discussion for a different time and probably a different webpage). Consequently, I generally perform my float-related activities with just-above-average root beers, and prefer to take the truly good root beers neat. Should a root beer actually require a plug of vanilla and cream to make it good, I feel its makers have missed the root beer mark.

That having been said, while I would certainly be interested in making a float with River City Root Beer, just to keep my root beer bases covered in case that is the intended method of serving, I do think it stands up pretty well on its own, with a few qualifiers that I will enumerate later. A freshly-opened bottle yields a decidedly molasses-slanted scent, though it’s still generally within the root beer spectrum of smells. On the contrary, the initial taste is not particularly molasses-y, though it’s actually a little bitter, akin to when concentrate is not diluted enough or something. It’s kind of strange because what I taste on both sides of my tongue is somewhat unpleasant, while what I taste on the top of my tongue is quite nice. Now I do realize that the idea of a “tongue/taste map” has long been disproved even though different parts of the tongue are still believed to be more sensitive to certain flavors than other parts, but that’s why I think this it’s strange that I taste distinctly different things.

Past that, the flavor grows on me the more I drink it – the bark-y bitterness isn’t necessarily that licorice-y though there’s definitely some essence of anise in the whole herb mix, in which molasses is still marginally the dominant flavor. Vanilla becomes more evident as I get further down into the bottle, more so in scent and aftertaste than in flavor. The aftertaste is also sweet, but retains that same bark-y kick, starting as a well rounded nice root beer aroma that leaves quite a bit of the kick once the sweetness fades. As far as head goes, there really isn’t any, but there are lots of little bubbles that result in a pretty balanced amount of carbonation.

So here’s where the qualifiers come in. On the one hand, I do like most of the flavors that are in the mix in River City Root Beer. And those flavors do blend well enough to give a full root-y experience. However, that initial bitter taste can be rather off-putting, so I don’t really enjoy it until I get past that point. Now this could in fact be what Blue Dog means when they say it was made for floats – perhaps the flavor purposely has that "concentrated" taste so that it can cut through, holding its own against the ice cream, which may in turn smooth out that bitterness. It’s hard to say for sure until I’ve actually tried it in a float, so I think I’m going to have to revisit River City. For now then, since I did like it enough to at least want to try it float-style, I’ll give it a 3.5.