Olde Rhode Island Molasses Root Beer

Olde Rhode Island Molasses Root Beer falls under the Real Soda umbrella of drink distribution, as do many of the other root beers i will be reviewing. Real Soda has been around since the mid 80's, but was originally formed and licensed in 1992. Although it's relatively new, it is quite a popular distributer mostly because it distributes "lesser known" brands. Olde Rhode Island is one of those brands. I was unable to find an exact date of when this particular root beer began being produced, but i would assume some time around the mid 80's to early 90's. That would fit in conveniently for this situation, wouldn't it? I think so too.

The actual story of how this root beer came to me was that my lovely wife was at the soda shop picking out some root beers for my little endeavor here, and the hippie at the register recommended this to her as his favorite. I've always followed the addage "never trust a hippie", so i don't know how pure his intentions were. But regardless, i am glad to review it along with every root beer i may encounter.

Just from appearances, ORI is pretty unappealing. This is primarily why my wife passed it up in the first place until the hippie's recommendation made her reconsider. As you can see from the photograph, the label is very bland and unexciting. Just a sort of plaque shaped background with rather ordinary font in front of it. Wouldn't you pass it by too? I thought so.

As far as the taste goes, it was an interesting experiment. I'm still working to perfect the perfect method of taste testing, and i think i have a pretty good pattern down so far (patent pending). I think it worked especially well for this review. Basically, the inital taste comes on very strong, and that's not a bad thing, because it's good. It hate to say it was "creamy", so instead i will say "it tasted like vanilla ice cream" because i think it better descibes it. Very sweet and strong. But almost immediately after that, i tasted absolutely nothing. It was like i just drank water. The aftertaste really left me hanging. I was actually pretty surprised how it loses it flavor so quickly and becomes bland just a moment after drinking it. Too bad, cuz it has a good flavor, but you really just have to drink the whole thing very fast to be able to appreciate it. It claims to be made with molasses, and i am not sure what to expect because of that but i wasn't really impressed.

My official review is that ORI only gets 4 (four) IBCs, and that's being generous. I really should give it a 3, but i'll give it credit for good flavor, what little there is. All in all, i say skip this one for something else unless you like drinking your entire root beer in one drink.