Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Dreaming of a Kind-of-Christmas Root Beer, Part 1: Tommyknocker

The Pooj can dig it.
(Rocket Fizz Westwood, February 2012)

‘Tis the season for marginally holiday-themed root beer…

While the North Pole should be more than sufficiently staffed with good elves this time of year, we now turn our attention so some of the ambiguously moral characters in the fey realm. Tommyknockers are the US equivalent of the Cornish bucca (also called the Welsh bwca), two-foot tall elfish creatures who live in mines, dress as miners, and are said to steal mining equipment, blow out lamps, tip lunch-pails, and cause general mischief. Called knockers because of the knocking sound that happens prior to a mine cave-in, some say the sound is caused by tommyknockers chipping away at the mine shaft, causing the collapse; others say the sound comes from tommyknockers tapping out warning that a collapse is imminent. Still other stories say the knocking is tommyknockers alerting miners to gold locations. Regardless of what they were, miners wanted the knockers on their side, so they would throw the last bites of their meals into the mines to keep the knockers happy (source).

I didn’t have to propel anything, edible or otherwise, into any sort of shaft to acquire Tommyknocker Root Beer; I just had to hand my money to the nice lady behind the counter at Rocket Fizz – life is somewhat easier these days. Tommyknocker Root Beer comes to Rocket Fizz by way of the Tommyknocker Brewery, which has has a presence in the historic mining town of Idaho Springs, CO in one form or another since the town's founding in 1859 . During the Colorado gold rush in late 1800s, it served the local miners, many of whom were Cornish immigrants, hence the name. As far as I can tell, the mines are no longer in use except as tourist attractions, though Tommyknocker Brewery continues to operate as a brewhouse and restaurant.

At first, the bottle gives off a traditionally root-y scent, but that’s quickly followed by another scent that is slightly savory, but that I can’t quite identify. It’s not clove or nutmeg, which aren’t uncommon in root beers, though not really considered savory; nor is it one of the more commonly available savory herbs like thyme or rosemary.  For an extreme lack of better terms, it smells like someone is cooking dinner. Odd, yes, but maybe not so much when you consider the next scent coming off: maple syrup. Maple syrup is indeed listed in the ingredients, and it is, if I had to name one, the dominant scent. What I may be smelling, then, is possibly caramelized maple, which when mixed with the more earthy smells one more commonly associates with root beer, I may be perceiving as savory.

Maple syrup likewise factors heavily into the flavor, and definitely carries the aftertaste. In addition, there’s a moderately strong organic flavor (organic in the plant-based sense, not in the natural foods sense) with a slight edge, probably birch, and a slightly fruit-y finish. The ingredients also list vanilla, but I’m not detecting any, mostly because the maple flavor is so dominant. Halfway through the bottle, it’s a little hard for me to disassociate any other flavor present with the maple aroma, so there may in fact be more nuance than my taste buds can wade through (which, I suppose, wouldn’t then qualify as nuance…). It’s worth noting that Tommyknocker has a much stronger maple flavor than Vintage Soda’s Canadian Cola, which is supposedly sweetened with maple syrup but still only tastes like cola to me.

Like other brewery-sourced root beers, Tommyknocker has a nice head, with a decent amount of foam that holds up well inside the bottle. The head disperses quickly when poured into a glass, but the overall texture is still pretty smooth.

Normally, I prefer root beers to taste more like root beer than its secondary ingredients, a preference that would typically drop a root beer like Tommyknocker down a few notches in my estimation. True, the root/herb flavor is not particularly strong, but I do like maple syrup, so I’ll let it slide this time. Tommyknocker Root Beer gets a 3.5.

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