Root beer: Real Brew

Vancouver, BC

My first impressions of this root beer were “well, it’s not awful”. I guess that isn’t a good place to start from.

The overall flavour is a tad on the sweet side. It mentions that they add real vanilla on the bottle, and I would definitely agree, you can certainly taste that. I was also worried since it made a point of mentioning anise on the bottle that it would be a bit heavy on that flavour, which I’m not a huge fan of. Fortunately, while there is a hint of it, I could barely taste it. The worst part of this brew was the fact that it has an unpleasant lingering aftertaste. I’m sitting here typing, not enjoying it and thinking I should get up and find something to cleanse the palette. The carbonation is good, and it has a nice dark colour. But those things don’t make up for a poor flavour.

I bought this particular bottle at a place called Choices Market in Yaletown (Vancouver), which is at the corner of Davie St. and Richard Street. It is one of the few places where you can get root beer not of the highly commercialized variety here in Canada. This bottle cost $1.49 and I would probably only drink it again if it were free.

Written by Colin Bate