Welcome to Brews Of Root Extraction Online. This post reviews the root beer from Henry Weinhard’s, a brand chiefly known for its beers. The story goes that during Prohibition, the Blitz-Weinhard brewery in Portland, OR, switched its operation to bottling root beer to keep its doors open. Today, the same company (now located in Fort Worth, TX) makes that same root beer available. A 6-pack of 12 oz bottles was purchased as a gift for me at a local chain grocery store (I was not told the price).
I use five criteria I score from 1-5 to evaluate brews.
A. Sweetness: 5. It’s pretty sweet, but there are some heavy flavors to balance out, so the sweetness is appropriate. Henry Weinhard’s uses cane sugar, which maintains a natural, earthy flavor.
B. Lightbody spices: 5. There are some really complex spices, and I can’t figure out what their elements are exactly. Something that could be clove, something that could be allspice, something that could be cardamom, and probably some small amount of wintergreen. It provides a robust and interesting bite.
C. Heavybody spices: 3. I can taste some vanilla, but there’s something else I can’t put my finger on, that doesn’t quite belong in root beer if you ask me (barley malt? Blitz-Weinhard is a beer brewery after all)…something that isn’t super flavorful but adds tons of body. I don’t know, but I can’t help but think this brew could benefit greatly from a caramel or anise flavor.
D. Uniqueness: 4. It’s obviously root beer, but the complexity of the front-end flavors makes it different from most.
E. Mouthfeel: 5. They counteract the heavy body and malty sweetness with a lively, foamy carbonation that adds to the zing of the spices, and keeps the brew from being too syrupy.
Total score 22/25. Despite the kind of strange malty, heavy flavor I highly recommend this one for “root beer snobs”.
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