Root Beer Field Trip: Galco’s Summer Soda Tasting 4 – The Great Root Beer Taste-Off

(July 20, 2014)

As one of Southern California’s few root beer-dedicated bloggers**, I regarded it as nothing less than my solemn duty to attend Galco’s Summer Soda Tasting 4 a couple weeks ago, so advertised as The Great Root Beer Taste-Off. Were the sunny weather and free-pouring sugary beverages of a typical Galco’s Summer Soda Tasting not already reason enough to draw the masses, certainly the soda inspiring (possibly) the most variation and (possibly) the most polarizing opinions amongst the pop-pantheon would be sufficient motivation to party hearty, wouldn’t you think? 

**a position that is, admittedly, self-bestowed and simply based on the fact that most of the other root beer blogs that I personally follow are based elsewhere in this great nation – that having been said, if you are also one of Southern California’s root beer-dedicated bloggers, I’m really not trying to take any more credit than I’m due, so please leave me a message in the comments so that maybe we can start a Southern California Root Beer Meet-Up Group, or something like that, or at least compare notes and run-on sentences.

Believe you me, with an infant in the house, the complications that merely getting out of the house entails needs some serious incentive to make worthwhile, so I don’t say this lightly.  Clearly, infant-ed and non-infant-ed alike shared my sentiment (the former, not the latter)(well, probably the latter, too) – a volunteer at Galco’s pointed out that this was the highest turn-out to date for one of the Summer Soda Tastings. Observe:

With no fewer than 49 root beers represented – not including 6 birch beers, 7 sarsaparillas, and a sad, lonely table of 9 diet root beers (and a table inside the store serving up Jones Peanut Butter and Jelly Soda…) – it was indeed a good time. …not to mention a serious sugar high... Had even a single hot dog vendor had the foresight to set up shop on the sidewalk outside, he/she would have made a killing. As is, we needed to head into the store to grab some salty snacks, where I ran into John Nese’s doppelganger.

Mr. Nese was actually around, but understandably quite occupied, keeping order inside the store as well as keeping tasting stations stocked outside. Since there was no particular order in which we were directed to hit up the tasting stations, we decided to start with Galco’s/Highland Park’s very own White Rose.

From there, we flittered about, eventually camping out in front of the “Flavored Root Beer” table, which may or may not have had something to do with the fact that it was in the shade.

Consequently, we also ended up spending a considerable amount of time partaking of the sarsaparilla and birch beer stations immediately adjacent.

Otherwise we kept it respectable, each downing probably the equivalent of 2-3 bottles of soda, one 1.5 oz shot at a time. Here’s the full lineup:

Did I mention that this was all for a good cause (besides keeping local dentists in business)? The entire event was a fundraiser for the Friends of the Southwest Museum Coalition, who are trying to get the nearby Southwest Museum reopened on a more regular basis. Currently, the museum is operated by the Autry Museum and is only open one day a week – and only for a few hours, at that. You’ll recall that this is the same Southwest Museum that a portion of the proceeds from White Rose soda sales goes towards (there’s a little more information in my White Rose post from way back when). So even if we didn't feel so good afterwards about ingesting so much sugar, we could at least feel better that it was for the greater good of our community.

Until next year, then…

Happy National Root Beer Float Day!

It says "National," so that means it's our patriotic duty to celebrate.

...God bless America...

Starbucks Fizzio

Call me Porta-Pooj.

(Starbucks, July 2014)

So I’m assuming you don’t need me to give you the background story for Starbucks, right?  OK, good.

Nearly everybody has an opinion about Starbucks’ coffee, so I’ll spare you from going into detail about mine. Suffice to say, when I heard that they were rolling out a line of “handcrafted” sodas this summer, I wasn’t all that enthusiastic. Don’t get me wrong, I think Starbucks is actually a great organization – they treat their employees very well, and they teach them to really know and love their product. For the most part, this results in a very good customer experience, so no complaints there, either.  It's just that I don’t typically think “coffee shop” when I want a soda (and for that matter, I don’t typically think “Starbucks” when I want a cup of coffee, but that's a different story…). But, of course, root beer is a great motivator, so I visited my local Mermaid to give their “new twist” on a “beloved classic” (their words in quotation marks, not mine…) a whirl .

The problem is that this “new twist” barely acknowledges any of what is beloved about the “beloved classic.” At first, it tastes a little fruity and a little floral, so there’s probably a healthy dose of birch syrup – that’s where the similarities to actual root beer end. I can’t really taste anything else aside from nutmeg and clove – A LOT of nutmeg and clove (otherwise, it’s rather tart). Now they do advertise it as "spiced," so it certainly meets that criteria – just too much for my liking. Were there ever a time to say something tastes like Christmas, this is it – the aftertaste even tastes like a gingerbread cookie.

At least I had a gift card, so I didn't really have to pay for it. In fact, I didn't even finish it. Given its “handcrafted” nature, I suppose that there’s a chance that it might be better if a different barista mixed it next time. But is that enough for me to want to try it again? To borrow from another Starbuck, “No frakking way.” Sorry Starbucks Fizzio, that’ll only get you a 1.

Dorothy's Isle of Pines

The Pooj feels a rumbly in his tumbly.

(Old Town House of Jerky & Root Beer, May 2012)

So…evidently I’m not as “back” as I thought… When there’s an infant in the house, you become much more cognizant of the fact that there are only so many waking hours in a day, and only so many of those hours in which the child is also awake, and only so many of those hours in which the child is in a good mood. During the first of the three, you try to get as much of the stuff done that you can’t do during the second; during the confluence of the latter two, all you really want to do is hang out with the child. It’s not that you don’t want to do anything else, like say, drink tasty beverages, take goofy photos of a stuffed giraffe (but don’t tell the Pooj that I referred to him as “stuffed”), and blogging – you would just much rather enjoy the fact that the child is awake and in a good mood. But enough excuses; moving right along…

It’s probably fair to assume from the that fact I’m writing this and the fact that you’re reading this that root beer is the one drink you and I would choose to have with us were you or I ever stuck on a deserted island (OK, maybe water would be more conducive to, well, staying alive, but I’m assuming the deserted island is akin to the spring-filled one from Lost, except, you know, with fewer magic corks and polar bears). Dorothy Louise Molter was perhaps the only person who could say that she actually lived that claim. Called “Knife Lake Dorothy” and “Nightingale of the Wilderness,” Ms. Molter first visited the Isle of Pines Resort in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness bordering the US and Canada during a fishing trip in 1930, and decided to stay there as a nurse for the resort’s owner and visitors. She ended up staying in the 2 million-acre collection of Minnesota’s 10,000 lakes for the rest of her life – 56 years in total – becoming the last non-indigenous person to live in the area.

The Feds actually tried to remove Dorothy on several occasions – first in 1948, when roads and buildings were demolished and seaplane traffic banned in order to return the developed areas to wilderness; then again in 1964, when the Federal Wilderness Act prohibited habitation in the BWCAW. Public outcry on Dorothy’s behalf caused the Government to relent, and she was allowed to stay until 1975, at which point the National Forest Service appointed her as a volunteer and let her stay permanently. When motorboats and snowmobiles were banned in 1978, access to the Isle of Pines (willed to Dorothy by its original owner, and no longer a resort) was limited to canoe traffic, and Dorothy became well known as the “Root Beer Lady” for serving homemade root beer, cooled in an old-fashioned ice house with ice cut from the frozen lake, to passing canoeists. Here Dorothy stayed, 36 miles away from the closest town, until her death in 1986 (Sources: 1, 2)

Dorothy’s 1986 obituary (source)

Dorothy’s Isle of Pines Root Beer initially smells like root beer candy and vanilla in the bottle, though there isn’t much of a scent once it’s poured into a glass. It has a hard carbonation, with larger bubbles and no real head (the bubbles only stay for a couple seconds). While it’s not too sweet, the sweetness build as you drink it, finishing with a pleasant sweet aftertaste. The flavor is not remarkable (I’m not sure if they use Dorothy's recipe), but does have a nice little bite – it doesn't taste vegetal enough to be birch, but I can’t quite place it otherwise (I might be out of practice). As far as I can tell, there’s no anise or licorice of any sort, and the aforementioned vanilla is more apparent in scent than in taste.

Still, I liked it well enough, and I think it’s a fitting tribute to a unique individual who furthered the cause of root beer. All proceeds from the sale of Dorothy’s Isle of Pines Root Beer go back to funding a museum in Dorothy’s honor in Ely, MN, which is nice, too. I’ll give it a high 3.5.

In other news, this is happening:

Any fellow root beer fanatics/root beer bloggers/root beer blog readers in the Greater LA area interested in joining me for the festivities? It’s at a great place and it’s for a good cause. Leave me a message in the comments if you want to meet up – let’s put our “skills”/obsession (/cavities…) to good use…!

Root Beer Field Trip: BrewBakers & Surf City

(BrewBakers Huntington Beach, September 2012)

Aaaaaaaaand we’re back…! …for the time being, at least… There’s a pretty big back-log of root beer sitting around the house right now that needs drinking, but having an infant doesn't really allow much time for any real hobbies, even those as simple as drinking and cataloging root beer. Not that I’m complaining, of course, since the little guys is pretty entertaining all on his own. Besides, one of these days, when he’s older, he and I can head down to BrewBakers to make root beer together and thus make root beer a multi-generational/family kind of thing instead of just dad’s weird obsession (not that root beer is weird; only the obsessive levels at which I regard it). 

Baker-by-training and food-broker-by-trade Dennis Midden got caught up in the budding craft brewing movement of the 90s and decided to open a unique kind of brewery where customers could bud their own brewing craft. Not satisfied with just that, Midden also decided that he would utilize his expertise with wheat and barley to convert the freshly spent grains in the brewing process – otherwise discarded and wasted – to bake bread at the same time the tipple is brewing. From the merging of Midden's passions, BrewBakers was born in 1996.

Gets you where you wanna go.

Here, customers can choose from anywhere between 80 to 100 craft beer formulations, or develop their own, and cook it all up in one of BrewBakers 6 26-gallon brew kettles, each named for one of Midden's 6 brothers.

The got a party growin'

Two weeks of fermentation later, customers return to complete the sugar-carbonation process (in the meantime, they get to take home a loaf of bread made from their own brew's spent grains) and bottle their concoctions at one of BrewBakers' 4 bottling stations (each named for one of Midden's 3 sisters and his wife Linda), which they'll leave for another week to carbonate before coming back to custom label their bottles. All the while Midden makes somewhere around 15 varieties of bread (pretzel rolls!) which he'll either sell in his shop or deliver to local businesses (along with their custom brews) in his restored vintage Helm's Bakery coach (sources: 1, 2).

Not a Woody, but still a goodie.

And as great of a story as this already is, we of course wouldn't be talking about BrewBakers if not for these:

Two root beers for every Pooj!

In addition to the DIY beer facilities, as alluded to in the first paragraph above, BrewBakers also lets customers try their hands at soda-making (a birthday party for the child is happening here at some point, mark my words). Midden also supplies custom root beer formulations for local businesses, just as he does with craft brews – we’ve actually already had a taste of his handiwork, since BrewBakers makes root beer for Twohey's house label. Surf City, our subject for today, is BrewBakers’ own label root beer.

First of all, Surf City Root Beer does not taste like Twohey’s Root Beer, which suggests that business-specific root beer recipes are, in fact, proprietary. I may be wrong, so there may need to be a SCIENCE! post devoted to a comparison later (much later, given the aforementioned back-log…). The scent from the bottle is slightly acidic and slightly yeasty (though the first ingredient is carbonated water, which seems to imply that sugar fermentation isn’t used to carbonate their sodas – more on that later), and otherwise generically root-y. 

Right after I took a swig, the bottle bubbled-over, so there is a real, soft, foamy head to speak of. Most likely this comes from the inclusion of maltodextrin in the ingredients, commonly used for head retention and smoothness in sodas – it works well, seeing as the head even stays in a glass for a long time. The maltodextrin may also be responsible for giving the beverage some body despite its HFCS sweetening. Raw honey is also included, though not particularly apparent in the flavor, but which probably helps the maltodextrin in providing said body. I also think the maltodextrin’s starchiness might be where the yeasty smell and taste originate, given that there’s probably no actual yeast used in the brewing process.

Only the vanilla, listed relatively low in the ingredients, seems to have had a noticeable effect on the flavor, which isn’t particularly distinctive on the whole. There is a slightly spicy herbal aftertaste that coats the sides of the tongue, but again, the flavor is fairly generic. Since this is a small batch brew, there might actually be quite some variation between one bottling and the next – I would be curious to see if this is the case in subsequent productions. For now though, Surf City Root Beer rates a high 3.

Pseudo-SCIENCE: Cooking with Root Beer

As much as I like root beer, it's somewhat surprising that it's taken me this long to use it as a cooking ingredient. It's not for lack of suggested uses available on the interwebs, what with all the root beer bbq sauces, roast enhancers, and cocktails out there. Perhaps it has something to do with not wanting to dilute the full root beer effect, opting to experience my root beer in pure form? Or maybe it's my lackluster response to other root beer-inspired/flavored/what-have-you items that I've sampled in the past.

But wait no longer! Thanks to the wonderful folks over at Serious Eats, I'm now sufficiently inspired to go to the store to pick up some ingredients. I present to you Root Beer Sherbet:

Stand back; churning in progress.

I used Steelhead Spicy Draft as my base, since it has a stronger flavor and has little carbonation to muck with the mixing and churning process.  Since I didn't have enough corn syrup on hand, I added more sugar and a little more Steelhead, but I'm thinking that might have made the finished product a little too sweet.

Sassafras and horehound drop garnish optional.

The finished product basically tastes like a root beer float, which should come as no surprise. Next time, I'm going to try using Anacapa. Eventually I'll try making Serious Eats' actual DIY root beer recipe, but I'm not quite that ambitious yet...

Wonderful World of Root Beer: Cariboo

The Pooj gets run over by a reindeer.

(Steamworks Brewing Co., Vancouver – June 2012)

Cariboo is part of Pacific Western Brewing Co, established in 1957 in Prince George, BC on a fresh water spring. Originally called Caribou Brewing, it claims title as the longest-running BC-based Canadian brewery, as well as title for first Canadian brewer to export to China (1991) and Russia (1996). Although it's now just one line of many Pacific Western products, it still does hold additional significance in that each case of Cariboo-label product sold results in a new tree planted in the Cariboo Regional District (presumably near Cariboo bottling plant). So far 150,000 trees have sprouted (and a lot of beer ingested....), part of an eventual goal to plant 1 million by 2020 (source). No comment thus far from Canada's collective liver...

This was the first uniquely Canuck brew I came across during our brief jaunt to the Great White North a couple summers ago (not the first Canadian root beer I've ever had; just the first encountered during the trip), so I'm pleased that it's a local brew. It's also the first root beer I've encountered so far that actually has ABV (albeit just a small amount – only 0.5%), harkening back to the days when root beer was still called small beer and was still fermented like beer beer. Does the retained alcohol, however, positively affect root beer?

Positive or not probably depends more on what your feelings are regarding beer beer. I, myself, am not really a fan of the taste of beer (which is not to say I'm not fascinated by the process of making beer, and the endless variations of beer that can come about just by making small changes to that process), which might make the presence of the alcohol in Cariboo more pronounced to me than to others more accustomed to the taste. Though it does taste a little yeasty, the "beer" flavor is actually more in the smell and aftertaste (which is also slightly acidic, slightly sour), and in the slight alcohol sting in the throat, than in the "root beer" flavor itself, so I wouldn't say it's that prominent. However, it may also seem more prominent to a non-beer-beer drinker like myself because the root beer flavor isn't particularly prominent by comparison – some notes of birch and molasses, but otherwise generic.

The yeast fermentation process does have one clear benefit: head. While not as foamy as a typical beer, the head builds up to a pretty decent amount of medium-sized bubbles before it dissipates in the time it takes to drink the first couple ounces (a few minutes, depending on how fast you drink). Given the opportunity, I would like to give it another shot – since my can of Cariboo is a year and a half old, there may be some loss in flavor. At the very least, there is a metallic smell that might come more from the fact that it has been sitting in its can for so long than anything else. For now, Cariboo Root Beer gets a low 3.