Bundaberg Australian Root Beer

As you can probably tell from the post title, this little root beer comes from Australia. A friend of mine found it for me at Cost Plus World Market. Bundaberg is the city in which this brewery is located and operates in Australia. It was founded in 1960 and produces several flavors and types of soft drinks. If one was so inclined, they could take a tour of the Bundaberg Barrel and get a taste of their brewing experience. It's kind of a neat little structure. I doubt i'd take the time to go see it if i ever end up in Australia, but it might be worth snapping a quick picture or something.

The typical 12 oz. dark brown glass bottle has a fun yellow label on it with the root beer's name and a picture of Australia in the corner, reminding you where it's made. There is also a big kangaroo pictured in the center to reinforce that fact. The bottle i got wasn't all that interesting, but the one on the site looks pretty interesting to me. I would have liked to get one of these bottles cuz it looks like more fun. I'm sure you agree with me.

One thing that was different about this root beer is that it says right on the label that you need to invert the bottle before drinking. I believe it's because they use the yeast fermentation method of carbonation and it is in effort to stir up some of the settled ingredients before drinking it. Either way, inverted bottle or not, this stuff is bad. Not good at all. My darling wife believes it resembles the taste of cough medicine. It definitely has that yeast taste to it, and the company claims that it uses such authentic and natural ingredients in the old way of brewing and drinking root beer that it is "the way root beer used to taste". If that's the case, then no thanks. I wonder if they put a kangaroo on the label because that's what this stuff tastes like.

My official review is that Bundaberg gets 1 (one) IBC. I have seen other reviews that call it "the best root beer i didn't like", and recommending people need to try it at least once just to see what it's like. I disagree with this sentiment. I wouldn't recommend this to anyone. It's just plain bad. On top of it all too, it's expensive, most likely because it's imported. So save yourself the money and skip this one.