root beer

Root Beer Review: Hank's Gourmet Root Beer

I have only one issue with Hank’s Gourmet Root Beer:

When I visited Hank’s website, the main page’s short introductory paragraph leads off with “Hank’s Gourmet Beverages Takes a great deal of pride in it’s dedication to quality.” If Hank’s “Takes” so much pride in “it’s” dedication, you’d think they’d find more dedicated grammar-checkers (if you find similar errors on this page, keep in mind that I have never stated any such dedication). The rest of the website is similarly spotty.

Naturally, I sent them a pleasant e-mail to inform them of their shoddy work.

Fortunately, there’s no such lack of quality control in Hank’s soda line. A smooth, creamy root beer, you only need to take a sip to realize that this is a high-quality product. The product decision reads “pure cane sugar and gourmet quality ingredients enhance the body, head, mouth feel, and flavor. Hank’s has created the richest, smoothest, and creamiest soda possible.” As a connoisseur of root beer, I have to say: the makers of Hank’s seem to be the only ones who recognize that that switching away from corn syrup isn’t an end to itself – adding sugar doesn’t make anything a quality beverage, it’s just one more ingredient. What’s more, the bottle doesn’t advertise “Cane Sugar!”  as if sugar has suddenly become a healthy ingredient and consumers need to know about it.

Speaking of the bottle, Hank’s is one of the finest-looking sodas I’ve ever purchased. From their embossed metallic label to their classic logo and design, it’s as good a glass bottle as I’ve ever seen. Apparently, it was the winner of the Glass Packaging Institute’s “Clear Choice Award,” so bully for them. It’s a well-deserved award.

Plus, Hank's is a readily available soda - you can find four-packs stocked in a lot of grocery stores across the country. It's no fun being a fan of a regional soda that's hard to get ahold of. That's why I treasure it whenever I get a chance to get Kentucky's "Ale-8," or New England's "Moxie." It's not available anywhere down here.

Of course, none of that matters if the product inside isn’t top-of-the-line, but this time that’s absolutely the case. Hank’s gives credit to its “Philadelphia Recipe,” as apparently Philadelphia is the birthplace of root beer. I had not known this fact and can find nothing on the internet to either prove or disprove it, though in my search I did learn that December 4th is “International Root Beer Day,” an ironic occasion when you remember that root beer is a distinctly American phenomenon.  With my luck, this December I will remember Root Beer Day, and forget my mother’s birthday the day before. Again.

Grade: A

Root Beer Reviews: Virgil's

Virgil's is a cocky sort of root beer. The label, not content to just make one overly exaggerated claim, is packed so full of superlative that it manages to claim twice, in two separate contexts, that its taste is "so pure, you'll swear it's made in heaven." The website is equally verbose in its praise:

Think of Virgil's as a gourmet root beer. We're what Ben and Jerry's is to ice cream, what Dom Perignon is to champagne. We're a micro-brewed root beer made with all-natural ingredients. We use herbs imported from around the world and unbleached pure cane sugar.
That's the introductory paragraph on the website, which also includes a number of recipes to which you can add Virgil's, which include Pecan Pie, Rootin' Tootin' Chocolate Torte, and Prawn Tempura (really!). This is a root beer with a high opinion of itself.

Unfortunately, it's not really a root beer that's all that great. I mean, it has some good qualities to it - it's creamy and has a nice taste to it right as it hits the palate - but it fails on a number of other levels. It's major problem? A nasty aftertaste that forced me to keep drinking to try to cover the strange sensation. When I finished the bottle, I was forced to dig up some pretzels to take out the taste. Not a good way to finish up a root beer experience. It also didn't translate well into other formats - it tasted pretty good cold, but was lousy once it got closer to room temperature. To be fair, I didn't try every available option for experiencing Virgil's Root Beer. I didn't make the prawn tempura.

More intriguing is the rumors of other taste sensations produced by Virgil's, including - wait for it - Bavarian Nutmeg Root Beer, which sounds just thrilling. If someone knows how to get their hands on a bottle, I'd be curious to learn just why Bavarian Nutmeg is superior to all other nutmegs.

All it in all, Virgil's is an acceptable, tasty root beer with some strong marks in its favor and equally strong ones against it. But if this is the Dom Perignon of root beer, Moët & Chandon should double-check their vintage.

Root Beer Review: Stewart's

Stewart's is a go-to bottled root beer, the glass bottle you're most likely to find in restaurants after IBC. It's produced by Stewart's Restaurants and is so famous that the chain is now called Stewart's Root Beer, and it has it's own Facebook page. It was started in 1924 by a man named Frank Stewart (hardly startling, I'll admit), who thought he'd open a drive-in restaurant that served root beer in a frosty mug and salty popcorn. He then made the popcorn extremely salty, so that people would order more root beer. It's this sort of ingenuity that made America great.

He wanted to make his root beer stand out, so he spent time "working extensively with Flavor scientists" until he had a "unique blend of roots, herbs, and spices." That's a well-lived life, right there.

I figured I'd start this series of reviews off easy with a fairly comfortable, classic root beer - and I wasn't disappointed.

The Review:
Frank was right: Stewart's is a root beer to be served cold, in a frosty mug, with salty popcorn. It's one of those root beer where serving it under just the right conditions exponentially increases its quality. Served warm, it's just another root beer, maybe even a little weak. But deep-chilled and cracked open late at night after a long day - top notch. After drinking a couple Stewart's, I came to the conclusion that it's chief selling point is its excellent smoothness. It's similar to IBC, but with a touch less kick, and a refreshing hint of a creamy aftertaste.

The downside is that it's perhaps too smooth, its trip down your gullet too uneventful. After finishing about half a bottle, you'll put it down for a moment, then forget about it. You'll pick it up a few minutes later, thinking 'have I finished this? I can't recall.' And you never have. You've always got some left. With a good soda, that never happens.

Ultimately, I found Stewart's to be a solid, capable root beer, an excellent choice to pair with a meaty sub at a sandwich shop - vivacious enough to pay stick in your memory, subtle enough to not dominate the meal.

Grade: B, maybe a B+ in the right situation.