Adult Root Beer Tasting

Hard root beer has become a growing thing around hear and so I took some time to track down a few varieties and give them a try.

The Best Damn Root Beer You Ever Had was an assault to the tastebuds.  It tasted vile and had virtually no traditional root beer flavor.  The creators seem to think that calling it root beer and adding an alcohol content will satisfy a large portion of adult drinkers.  That and the clever packaging will probably get them quite a few sales.  The beverage tasted most similar to Thomas Kemper, that is it tasted harsh and bitter.  It had a smell of bubble gum and hint of it in the flavor as well.  The alcohol flavor overpowered everything else.  Overall the flavors are completely unbalanced an unredeemable.  I do not recommend trying this root beer unless you like wasting money.  (I was unable to finish even half a bottle.)


Coney Island Brewing Co has created a decent hard root beer.  They advertise it as an ale with added flavors.  The smell is what you would expect from a manufactured root beer, subdued.  The root beer was sweet and delicate to taste.  There's a definite taste of beer in the after taste.  It's stronger than I would like, as I don't like beer, but the root beer flavor is delicious and lingers longer on the tongue than the beer taste.  This is one worth trying, especially if you like beer and ale.


NW Atomic Root Beer advertises itself as hard cider with spices to make it taste like root beer.

Verdict on Homebrew #3

The flavor of this batch is the best yet by far.  I'm not sure why this is, but it's the first batch to have a nice head.  The flavor was full, diverse, and dessert-y.  The robust flavor profile filled the pallet with unique flavors - flavors that you wouldn't get out of an over the counter bottle of root beer.  The yeasty flavor that I've complained about in the past was not present in the majority of the bottles (we did have a half bottle that had an overpowering yeasty flavor).  We believe the dessert-y taste is coming primarily from the Star Anise and the Molasses.  Each of our guests enjoyed it enough to take multiple bottles home.

The flavor is still not where I would want it personally, but I feel like we're narrowing in on perfection.

Home Brewing Round Three

Our second attempt at making root beer turned out to be very tasty.  We had a bunch of people over for a board game night and served fresh root beer.  Everyone enjoyed it and we even sent some bottles home with our friends.  My wife and I had some objection to the yeasty flavor that was still present but the root beer flavor itself was great.

For Round 3 we used the same recipe as last time (full batch) with a couple modifications:

*Star Anise was cut in half

*1oz of Dandelion Root was added

*Ale yeast was replaced with liquid English Dry yeast

The pre-carbonated flavor tasted exactly like a bitter root beer.  The flavor was the closest I've experienced to over the counter root beer to date.  It isn't the flavor I like in root beer, I prefer creamy and rich, but the fact is we're getting closer and closer to understanding what each element does to the overall flavor.  I think the flavor I'm not enjoying in this batch is the molasses.  If the same flavors are there after carbonation, I'll experiment with dropping the molasses from the mix in the next batch.

Because we were using a liquid yeast we had to change the method of incorporation.  I strained the mixture through cheese cloth and back into the stock pots.  Instead of putting the yeast directly into bottles, it was incorporated into the mix while still in the stock pots.  I used a submersion blender to mix it in and then filled up the bottles with the mix.  The carbonation process took about a day longer than it has in the past.  I don't know whether this is due to the type of yeast, the method of incorporation, the amount of yeast used, or the fact that the yeast was a bit past its best by date.  Further experimentation is required.

Verdict

Steph & tried the two root beers and they are GROSS!  We did discover that the second method seems to be a bit more refined so we will make some creative ventures using that method.  More later...