Saranac Root Beer
This is probably the most amazing head I’ve ever seen on a root beer – it simply does not diminish after sitting several minutes. To be quite truthful though – it doesn’t really impress me. For example, I’m trying to get down to the amazing taste of the root beer itself and I’ve got to wade through 3 inches of some chemical induced foam. Ahhh . . . it’s not all that bad, but just not all that impressive.
Early on in my root beer days . . . before the days of www.professorrootbeer.com, (at that point I had www.rootbeerreview.com,until I was jailed in Hungary and viciously had the web-site stolen) I tried Saranac and loved it. Those early root beer days were the good ole days of Spike, Anthony and myself . . . sprinkled in were a few posts by Luke and the gourmet.
But in rebuilding my web-site, I couldn’t find the original Saranac review and that’s why I have to do it all over again. Years ago, Saranac sent me a few brews for free, but this one I paid for myself . . . like the true and honest professor that I am. But anyway, I loved Saranac back then and I still love it now. Classic root beer taste, extremely creamy with a hint licorice and vanilla I think. Because of some nostalgia I’m probably giving this a little better than I should, but it’s still a pretty good dang brew.
The Professor’s Grade: A –
Oogave Root Beer
I had my mother-in-law over, and being the health conscious woman that she is, I pulled out the Oogave Root Beer to share together. She prefers diet soda over regular soda, but being that diet soda is getting a bad-rep lately, I thought this Oogave might be the ticket to drinking root beer, safely, healithy and responsibly.
You see, it only has all-natural ingredients, and is sweetened with only organic agave nectar. It has a total of only 24 grams of sugar, with no diet ingredients added. I actually really like root beers who try alternative methods of sweetening such as, honey, molasses, brown sugar and now agave nectar. Sometimes these alternative methods of sweetening add something unique to the flavor – I’m not sure the agave adds anything to the flavor – but it’s cool nonetheless.
As suspected though, the flavor doesn’t quite match up with it’s superior counterparts. That’s not to say it’s gross or anything . . . I would gladly drink this from time to time to forgo the obscene amount of sugar that’s found in other root beers. But the root beer is pretty light on flavor. It does have a sharp bite throughout the beginning to the end of the taste . . . which gives this a nice distinctive difference. It’s a little hard to place what this “bite” is, but it reminds me of a one-note sarsaparilla flavor.
On a side note, this is another Colorado soda and thus another opportunity for a factory tour.
The Professor’s Grade: C
