Cool Mountain Root Beer

This little root beer sat quietly on the Pop Shop shelf almost hidden among the other root beers. I was scouring the rest of the root beers i have yet to try and stumbled upon this little bottle. Cool Mountain has only been around since 1997 and makes several different flavors of soda. The name of it took me off guard at first and made me think of the 2003 movie Cold Mountain, which has quite an eclectic cast if i might say so myself. They are situated in Des Plaines, IL. In this respect, they kind of remind me of Jones, but don't offer the crazy, out-on-a-limb kinds of flavors that Jones does. I think Cool Mountain also participates in giving back to the community, or at least promoting education, because along with the company's website, there is this website listed on the bottle. Good for you Cool Mountain. My hat is off.

The clear glass 12 oz. bottle has a clear, rather colorless sticker label with a nice mountain range pictured below the root beer's name. Makes me think of the majestic Rocky Mountains. You know, because Des Plains, IL is typically known by the presence of the majestic Rocky Mountains close to the vicinity. So right there, they lost the credibility they earned from donating to/promoting education for Native Americans. And we already know how i feel about sodas in clear bottles. I am skeptical at best about them.

I was at a BBQ recently (see the post about Mason's Root Beer) and one of the people there picked up a bottle of this root beer and said, "this one is one of the ones i really liked." I had not tried it at that point, but i knew he was a Weinhard's fan and that i couldn't trust his judgement. Well what do you know... i'm a genius. This stuff isn't good. It's not bad, but it's not even "alright". It's just kind of... blah. Really watery and little carbonation, the only thing i could really taste outside of the faint root beer flavor is the cane sugar. It loses flavor so fast that i was disinterested with it after just a few drinks.

My official review is that Cool Mountain gets 3 (three) IBCs. I really don't have much to say about this one except that it is very forgettable. It's not necessarily bad tasting, but it holds no appeal for me. You can give it a try if you'd like, but i would recommend saving the money and just drinking sugar water instead to achieve the same effect.