Hanks Gourmet Root Beer

I didn't find Hank's root beer, it found me. Rather fans of Hank's found me. Well they strongly recommended it to me at least. Things like "it's the best root beer ever!" we're thrown around about the greatness of Hank's. This caused my 'woah bro' alarm to go off big time. Skeptical as I was, I had to see what the hype was all about.

As I poured Hank's into a frosted mug (the best and only true way to drink a root beer) I knew it would be good. It poured very smooth and had minimal foam. It smelled great and the flavor didn't disappoint. 

Hank's has a great flavor and is highlighted by the vanilla flavor. Unlike most root beer, the vanilla flavor persists and runs throughout the taste, as opposed to just an aftertaste or single note.  The carbonation in Hank's is very balanced and is key to its success. The best attribute about Hank's is its smoothness and great drinkabillity.

My only knock on Hank's may seem like a nit picky one but it exists nonetheless. To me Hank's is more of a cream soda root beer hybrid as opposed to a pure root beer.  Now this is offset by just how good it tastes but it does effect the score.

This is the part of the post where I stall/mourn before giving my rating for Hank's.  I feel like I have to say a few words about my boys, the Houston Texans.  This past weekend they fell to the Baltimore Ravens in the playoffs. They had a great yet injury riddled season and managed to succeed through the loss of 2 of their 5 best players.  This gives me hope that they will be back next year which is something I don't often have. So all in all I say, Good run boys, see you next year!

Anyways, back to your regularly scheduled root beer programming...
Hanks Cream Root Beer (my nickname for it) gets a 
............


8 cream sodas out of 10

Sparky's (Terrible) Root Beer

In the interest of full disclosure, this review may be artificially inflated. My Houston Texans just forced a fumble on the first play against the Colts and scored two plays later. I'm pumped. Some may call it juiced.

With all this in mind Sparky's is not good. I'm a root beer guy and still do not enjoy drinking it. Sparky's is what root beer flavored medicine would taste like. It's like drinking good root beer and eating Sourpatch Kids in the same mouthful. Folks, we are verging on DAD's territory here. I could not be in a more lenient mindset while drinking this. I'm watching my favorite team dominate, yet I can't get my mind off how bad this is.

Alright, I guess I should describe Sparky's (yuck). First off, the soda seems flat. I mean, I know its not, but it seems that way. Well played Sparky's, not sure how you pulled that one off... There is a honey and vanilla flavor but there is no sweetness to go with it, so I am not sure what to make of it. To cap it all off, there is a medicinal note. This isn't an artistic bitter note to counterbalance sweetness. It legitimately tastes like root beer cough syrup. Not cool Sparky's, not cool...

I guess its fitting that as I finish this atrocity, the Texans just lost a fumble. After this, I am looking forward to tasting Virgil's root beer.

Sparky's gets a disappointing

1   Texan's fumble out of  10


I guess I didn't inflate anything after all...

Dog n Suds

So lets get this journey going. First we have Dog n Suds root beer. I found this gem within the massive soft drink section of Nugget Market in Davis. This place is as good a grocery store as it gets for a root beer lover. The word plethora seems much to small to number the varieties of root beers. Oh and all the root beers are REFRIGERATED!! That's a big deal for me. Anyway you get it, the place is sweet yadda yadda. The only way I could pick a root beer to start with was to judge by its label. As you can see Dog n Suds was the obvious choice.

Aside from the fact that I have NO idea why the word suds is in the name, I like this label. Its cartoony, its whimsical. Its everything root beer stands for. But really though, I dig the label.

This root beer is also the perfect 'beginner' root beer. The taste was very simple but delicious. The first thing I noticed was the smoothness and perfect amount of carbonation. This is a great way to start off a drink. After the initial taste there is a light yet deep vanilla note which was very welcome. Then came the slight bite to break up the sweet and smooth. Overall I was satisfied with each and every sip of this simple yet delicious root beer.

Dog n Suds thrives on its simplicity, so if that is what you are looking for, go grab yourself a cold one. Since there was nothing overly fancy about this which can help or hurt it. In this case the simplicity raised yet limited Dog n Suds' score.

For the first reviewed root beer we have a..................................

7 random dogs with soap, out of 10

First things first

My name is John Bailey and the most important thing about me relating to this blog is that I LOVE Root Beer. It is the best soda. Period. End of story. But not end of blog, because there are literally hundreds of different root beers out there. Each with its own nuances and subtleties. My goal is to try and review all of them. This could be a heckuva process, but since it involves drinking root beer, I am so down!

 My root beer arch-enemy is DAD'S root beer. It is the only one I have ever disliked. And it was bad. Like really bad. Safeway (trademark?) brand root beer was 10 times better. And that is saying something... I am, however, willing to give DAD'S a second chance (not only because i last had it at a bad Chinese restaurant when I was 10), but don't be surprised if it gets a 1...

This leads me to my rating system. I will use a 1-10 scale with a 0 being DAD'S. For the sake of full disclosure I will be a tough grader because I would gladly drink a 3.  So its pretty simple 0 = DAD'S and 10 = Oh my gosh I am quitting all other root beers.  And since I feel like I am rambling, I'm going to watch some oh so appealing, Pistons-Cavs preseason basketball. (Yay??)