Another day, another root beer! (Boylan Bottleworks)

I had a wonderful evening after winding down with a pizza and some quality time with my family and then some root beer and TV. Watching TV shows on disc adds not only the value of not having to even fast forward through commercials because they are not there, but you can also just watch episode after episode if it is an enthralling series. That does unfortunately have the ability to push you late into the evening like happened to me last night watching Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.

12oz bottle – brown glass with a twist top and a 2 color printed label and embossing

Purchased at BevMo for $1.49 

Ingredients: Carbonated water, cane sugar, natural and artificial flavors, caramel color, natural yucca extract, citric acid, sodium benzoate (preserves freshness).

Nutrition Facts: 170 calories, 35mg sodium, Total Carb. 42g, Sugars 42g.

Lot code on the bottle – 000059CT121, Sell by April 2012

First impressions: pouring gave a decent head. The flavor was good, had some sassafras to it but no vanilla. It drank nicely with a slight spiciness but left no aftertaste.

Boylan is bottled by Boylan Bottling Company in New Jersey. It is a family owned and operated business that started in 1891. Coming from a family business myself, I see the value that can bring to a bottle of root beer. They still use cane sugar and have not strayed from their formula for cost savings. Their bottle came not only with a lot code but a freshness date.

After having a bit of the root beer, it was time for the root beer float test. This mixed very well with the ice cream, providing a nice head that lasted long enough to finish the float. Once the ice cream was gone, the remaining root beer with whatever French vanilla ice cream that melted drank very smooth and did not have too strong of a vanilla flavor.

While early into the competition, we have a definite pecking order established. I felt that Boylan was superior to Dad's in every single aspect. While I am confidant there will be better root beers to come, Boylan was not a disappointment and if they are not in the top 50% then I am going to have a lot of good bottles of root beer coming... 

Flavor: 3 stars

Consistency: 3 stars

Ice Cream compatibility: 4 stars

Value: 3 star

Final score: 3.25 stars

Boylan Bottleworks Root Beer

Happy Father's Day - Dad’s Old Fashioned Root Beer

I let my girls know I was going to be taste testing root beer. Lauren, my younger daughter, loves root beer. When she was younger, she called it root deer and was so excited about it that she honestly couldn’t say it without jumping a little. She came into my home office and saw all the root beers up on the hutch behind my desk and almost fell back, exclaiming “Whoa! That’s a lot of root beer!!” Laci, the older girl, does not like root beer, but she wanted to help and told me that I should start with Dad’s since it was Father’s Day.

I have always wanted to include my girls in what I am doing, so here are the results of Laci’s Father’s Day choice.

Dad’s Old Fashioned Root Beer

12oz bottle – brown glass with a twist top and a label.

Purchased at BevMo in a 10 pack of "Great American Root Beers" for $12.99. Cost ~$1.30/bottle.

Ingredients: Carbonated water, cane sugar, caramel color, sodium benzoate (a preservative), citric acid, natural and artificial flavors.

Nutrition Facts: 160 calories, 65mg sodium, Total Carb. 40g, Sugars 40g. Caffeine Free.

Lot code on the bottle - 032411

First impressions: pouring yielded no head. The flavor didn’t impress me much and seemed to have a slight bitterness to it. I called in the resident root beer lover, my 5 year old daughter Lauren to give it a taste. She said she liked it. Apparently she is easier to please than her father. While I didn’t dislike it, I found Dad’s Old Fashioned Root Beer to be thoroughly uninspiring.

Looking at the cap, they state “See vintage sodas made at www.orcabeverage.com” and going there, I found that they make Moxie, which I had once. I will likely never have it again unless I am somehow lost in the Sahara Desert and come across a band of travelling Bedouins who only have Moxie to barter with. Then I might have some if there is no fresh camel piss. Seriously, Moxie was that bad. This has left me a little worried about a few other root beers I have in the competition as Orca also bottles Frostie, Bulldog and Americana along with a handful of other soda brands that just couldn’t stand up to Coke and Pepsi. Sure, that might be a tough road to hoe, but RC Cola fought the good fight for a long time so it can be done.

Back to the root beer – while I certainly wouldn’t go out and buy Dad’s for a nice drinking root beer, it did do well with three scoops of Dreyer’s Grand French Vanilla. It developed a nice head when mixed with the ice cream and the foam lasted nearly as long as the ice cream. 

Flavor: 2 stars

Consistency: 2 stars

Ice Cream compatibility: 3 stars

Value: 1 star

Final score: 2 stars

Introducing: The challengers

With one trip to BevMo and a quick run to Von's and Save Mart, I now have 34 different root beers to try. Due to Father's Day weekend, I am going to have to start my taste tests on Monday. I thought I would present the challengers here and give a list of what I have. If anybody knows of a brand I am missing and where I can get it, by all means let me know.

The challengers:

A&W

Abita

AJ Stephans

Americana

Barrell Brothers

Bedford's

Berghoff

Boylan

Bulldog

Bundaberg

Capt'n Eli's

Dad's

Dog N Suds

Dr. Brown's

Faygo

Fitz's

Frostie

Hank's

Henry Weinhard's

IBC

Mason's

Mug

Olde Rhode Island

Rat Bastard

River City

Route 66

Sea Dog

Sioux City

Sparky's

Teddy's

Thomas Kemper

Triple XXX

Virgils

Waialua

I prefer to have them all in glass bottles, but I cannot find Mug in bottles and I could only find A&W and Teddy's in plastic bottles. I still need Barq's but I am sure I will find it. I am already 1/4 the way across the second row of bottles above hutch behind my desk.

Goodbye colas. Hello, root beer!


For those who know me, I have lost a lot of weight in the last 7 months or so - 25 pounds roughly. I did it by cutting my calories from whatever I felt like eating to 1800. I was burning on average 2300 calories per day so a 500 calorie shortage per day was 3500 calories per week. One pound of fat is about 3500 calories so I was losing on average about one pound per week.

Much of this control came from cutting out soda and then counting up what I was eating. The sodas really added up largely because I had a lot of them. I suspect some caffeine addiction at play there. Well, the diet is over and I would like to have a carbonated drink from time to time but have elected to move to root beer since they don't have caffeine and won't bring that problem back into my life and waistline.

The big question now is, what is going to be my favorite brand of rootbeer? There is a lot more choice today than there was when I was a kid and a trip to BevMo with a gift card that has been in my possession for over a year and I am about to find out.

I picked up 30 different brands of root beer. That is not a typo - they had THIRTY different ones. I plan to have one a day and see which ones I prefer. I am guessing this will take more than a month because there are brands that I did not see there - Mug, A&W, IBC, Barqs all spring to mind, as well as Jack Black's Dead Red which they sell at BevMo but was out of stock.

So, this weekend, I will start the challenge. Tonight, I am going to run to Save Mart and Vons to get whatever brands I don't have right now, line up all the challengers, take a group photo and start my quest. I also need to get a little bit of Dreyer's Grand French Vanilla because you cannot have a fair taste test of root beer without having a root beer float as part of the analysis.

This evening I will also get together a list of all the brands I have so if there is something I am missing, by all means let me know.

Expanding my horizons?

I decided to finally sit down and make a blog. Maybe it is my ego saying that more people would like to hear what I have to say. Maybe it is a chance to let people DVR me so they don't have to have me bothering then while they try to find out who got voted off Dancing with the American Idols on Survivor Island. Maybe it is a desperate attempt to not let Mark Zuckerberg control my entire digital social existence.

Whatever the reason, I am going to let people get a glimpse into my mind and see what kind of crazy clockwork mechanisms are going on in there. Speaking of which, I am a fan of complicated watches and really love the newer designs like below where they show the actual movements inside. The inside of my head is probably like this watch - lots of gears spinning every which direction, some moving fast, some so slow you can't tell which way they are going, but everything always in motion at some level.