Dominion

The Pooj is for lovers.

(Galco's, July 2012)

Happy Independence Day to all! And what beverage is more American than root beer, right? Drinking root beer on the Fourth of July, therefore, is not only a privilege, but my patriotic duty! To that end, Dominion seems the perfect root beer for such an occasion.

Much, of course, has been written, re-written, alleged, and disputed regarding the history of the beverage we now know and love as root beer, but Dominion Root Beer may be the only root beer to have the weight of government behind their historical claims – it’s made according to root beer recipes preserved at the Library of Congress. Company founder Jerry Bailey, a Federal employee (not sure if he actually worked for the Library of Congress though), used to brew beer for his own enjoyment until 1989, when he opened one of the first brewpubs in the DC area and started brewing it for a living. Bailey called his brewpub Old Dominion Brewing Company after the Virginia state nickname, since his establishment was technically in Virginia (source). Though the company was sold to a Maryland tavern owner in 2007, then to Anheuser-Busch 2 years later (who moved production to a larger brewing facility in Delaware), the subsequent owners all still maintained brewpubs in the DC area. Aside from root beer, Old Dominion makes ginger ale and roughly a dozen different beer varieties. Root beer, however, is by far their best selling single item, accounting for a full 20% of their production (source).

For good reason, too, because Dominion Root Beer is pretty good! It has an herbal-rooty scent that fades quickly, but the accompanying herbal-rooty flavor thankfully does not. Although there’s nothing particularly distinguishing about its flavor except for a slight molasses edge, it does hit all of the expected “root beer” marks. There’s a nice amount of sweetness that doesn’t distract from the herbs, so the honey listed in the ingredients doesn’t take over, yet still smoothes out the texture just a bit (not as much as honey typically can though). Pressed to find a word to describe the flavor, I would say that it is “clean,” and the aftertaste has the same crispness, with some herbs that fade away to leave a very slight menthol feeling. Head is decent as well – the bubbles are pretty big, so I wouldn’t necessarily call it foam, but it does stay around for a satisfying amount of time.

So while I haven’t been too keen on some of the things my government has done as of late, as far as root beer is concerned, I’m definitely proud to be an American. God bless root beer and God bless the USA – Dominion Root Beer gets a low 4.