Another trade with anthony. Bowl & Basket is a ShopRite brand, which was something I didn’t know about before I went looking. They don’t have Shoprite anywhere I regularly visit so I’m rather out of the loop when it comes to what they offer. They’ve got all sorts of taglines on their label, “Quality Assured” “Small Batch Crafted” “Cane Sugar Soda” and more, which is ironically typical of generic store brands. Each bit of text has a different font and size for some reason, I get not trying to be monotonous but it is a little all over the place. But they at least put it in glass so I can’t ..read more

I do love a seasonal root beer. I love root beer in general and then that variation that is flavored root beers, but seasonal flavored root beers are much more rare so they make me happy in a way that few things can. Parlor I’ve reviewed before. They do a fine job with their original and butterscotch root beer. Every fall they also release their pumpkin root beer, which is done in partnership with Blackcraft Clothing. They specialize in goth, cult, witch type clothing stuff, which fits the theme of Halloween. I got this in a trade with anthony, which is good because I didn’t want to mail ord ..read more

Ah Samuel Clemens, that father of American literature and great humorist. His life bookended by Haley’s comet. Writer of one of the oldest isekai novels. Born in Hannibal Missouri, his childhood home is now a museum. The town markets itself as America’s Hometown. Therefore it is only natural that there would be a drive-in with a big root beer mug sign that’s been operating for over 80 years, making their own root beer. I, sadly, did not visit this place, though I feel now such a trip is both warranted and very doable. Rather it was the magnanimity of anthony who sent me this along with some o ..read more

Last month I was in Atlanta for my final work trip of the year. It’s been a rather busy one with over 100,000 miles of air travel and probably two full months in hotels. But anyhow, I was finally done but had one last DERMS hurrah to be made in a new city so once again ended up dragging my coworkers out for a brew. The Red Hare Brewing and Distilling have a brewery and a still in Atlanta, and one was rather close to my hotel. They don’t really have an “about” section that I could find on their website so I couldn’t tell you much about them other than that. But they also make a root beer and ..read more

I got this off of a trade with that great root beer reviewer anthony. Weis is a store chain founded in 1912 in Pennsylvania. They currently have expanded into Maryland, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Virginia, and West Virginia, nowhere near where I live. I am, however, once again very pleased to see store brands carrying glass bottled gourmet root beer. The bottle looks the sort of generic that you’d expect from a store brand, brown root beer color with a barrel on it. I like it, obviously, because I like root beer. A curious thing about this is in the ingredients. They list “citric acid po ..read more

Back in August I found myself in Albuquerque for the final end of my project. If you’ve been following you’ll know that I’ve found several brews down there but I had hopes I could find another one. I searched for a couple of days, reaching out to every brewery and distillery I could find online, but no luck, so by Wednesday I’d given up on root beer and we decided to hit our favorite pizza join, Restoration Pizza. If you can’t get a new root beer, at least you can get an amazing pizza with green chile. When the waitress asked what we wanted to drink, we asked what kind of root beer they serve ..read more

This one comes from a trade with that great collector and proprietor of The Museum of Root Beer, Vince. Pop Singles is an interesting brand that has a record on the label of their bottles, you know like it’s an old pop single. It makes googling the company rather difficult because there seems to be an actual single that was released about every flavor they carry (maybe that’s the idea?) and I couldn’t actually find a website. Maybe they don’t have one. I’m always very cautious about a clear root beer. A lot of real root beer ingredients are naturally a darker color, so if your root beer is cr ..read more

In June I took a lovely long road trip with the family to Idaho. On the way back we went through Idaho falls and I had discovered this place the day before while scoping out if there was anything worth seeing near the supercharger. Snow Eagle Brewing is about a 15 minute walk along the Snake River park from the charger, right across from the scenic Idaho Falls themselves. Their website is very scant on details on their history, but they brew beer and have food and most importantly, brew their own root beer. Their glasses feature a samurai, which is a bit odd for Idaho, but Idaho Falls has a s ..read more

I always appreciate it when brands make new root beers for me to drink. Take Aldi, that wonderful store with strange off brands and low prices. They also make their own gourmet root soda line, Summit. Why? Not sure, as that doesn’t seem to be the standard thing a cheap store does, but they do it. Now I’ve given middling reviews to their root beer before, and maybe that’s the reason they just keep changing their recipe, in an eternal struggle to gain my approval. Now being the considerate store they are, they also change the label and the name slightly, so it’s very easy for me to categorize i ..read more

Back in May I was in Winnipeg doing DERMS. You know, you’ve read my last review. That review was for the place I knew about, planned about, and was prepping for. However, on the way between our meeting site and our hotel, was the Lake of the Woods tap room. After meetings were done, and we were walking back to the hotel before heading to lunch, I thought I’d drop in to just see if maybe, just maybe they also had root beer? They did. And not just on draft, they actually had big ol’ bottles of it. Well isn’t that just perfect. I immediately bought two to take home. I also took a picture and dro ..read more