Luke's Birthday
Root Beer Tasting
2003
A gorgeous sunny day ushered in the first summer root beer tasting at the Cole manse, held in conjunction with Luke's annual birthday barbeque. Almost 100 party-goers had a vast array of root beer possibilities, 21 in all, including some of Luke's favorites such as Gale's, Bulldog, and Sprecher. Twenty-seven people reviewed at least one brew, and some serious root beer enthusiasts -- Larry Lewis, Kelly Post and Daniel Anderson Goreham among them -- reviewed all 21. The full results are posted below. Most fun for Luke was seeing people who didn't like root beer... suddenly liking it. Murrey Nelson, the self described "girl who doesn't like root beer," only managed to taste 13 different varieties...
This root beer tasting differed from the Cole Family Christmas Root Beer Taste-offs (2001 and 2002) in two important respects: first, the tasting was not blind; everyone could see what beer they were drinking. Second, almost all the reviewers used a short form in which they only reviewed each root beer on a scale of 1 to 10, rather than the "long form" used by the Cole Family -- and by Luke in his individual root beer reviews -- which includes 8 different metrics to arrive at an overall average. That said, we had a much larger pool of reviewers for this event than any previous root beer taste-off, so the large sample size has benefits of its own.
Here are the results....
1. Goose Island,
7.25
2. Stewart’s, 7.16
3. Bulldog, 6.87
4. Sprecher, 6.83
5. Dominion, 6.68
6. Jumpin’ Johnny’s, 6.41
7. Virgil’s, 6.13
8. Millstream, 6.06
9. Coastal Fog, 5.87
10. Dog N Suds, 5.67
11. Hard Times Cafe, 5.65
12. Briar’s, 5.53
13. Joe Wold’s, 5.53
14. Boylan Bottleworks, 5.47
15. Myers Avenue Red, 5.40
16. Clover Classics, 5.32
17. Gale’s, 5.17
18. Journey, 5.00
19. Shenandoah, 5.00
20. Ol’ Bob Miller’s, 4.50
21. Rat Bastard, 4.30
These results are interesting for a couple of reasons. First, Luke's number one ranked root beer, Gale's, finished 17th of 21, well out of the competition. The top four beers in this tasting were all highly rated by Luke, however. Dominion, out of Virginia, placed 5th overall, while Hard Times, which is brewed and bottled by Dominion, and, I believe, from an identical recipe, placed 11th with a much lower score. (In Luke's own personal reviews of Hard Times and Dominion, he also found inexplicable differences in the two brews -- but came to the same overall score).
Luke's Root Beer Homepage + Luke's Root Beer Archive