Saturday, March 10, 2012

So Duh! Rockin' Root Beer

Ok, i feel a little bad that i have been hammering out generic brands lately, and as it turns out i actually have quite a stockpile of root beers to review right now. Therefore, i hope to increase my posting rate over the next couple months and clear some of these out and get to some root beers that are more unique. So breaking from the recent routine, here is a root beer i picked up at BevMo! here in Tempe, AZ. (Just a little inside scoop, my wife pronounces it "beev-moh", where as i prefer to pronounce it correctly and just as it is spelled as any sane person would logically conclude.) So Duh! is made by a brewing company called Hermitage Brewery in San Jose, CA. Hermitage brews beers and sodas on contract for a pub/brewery called Tied House which has been around since 1987. In my limited research i was unable to determine when Hermitage began, but i will go ahead and say it's probably safe to assume it was the same year. The website goes into detail about the process of brewing and bottling, the contests and accolades won, and lots of other info i didn't really care to get into, but you get the idea.
This root beer comes in a traditional 12 oz. dark glass bottle. The label is quite colorful and eye catching. It pictures a dumb looking blond girl with a puzzled look on her face, obviously to play in with the name. Here is a bit of the caption written on the side of the label out of view in the picture. "Duh" means many things to many people... to us, So Duh! means - "Isn't it painfully obvious this is a delicious craft soda made in small batches with quality ingredients & pure cane sugar." [frankly, i think  that was technically a question, so it should be ended with a question mark(?) and not a period (.)]So if anyone asks, "is that soda good?", we hope you'll say DUH! So anyway, there is that cute little anecdote from the people at Hermitage. Overall, i like the label. It's unique and fun.

But as far as taste is concerned, i am not as impressed. The ingredients listed include honey and vanilla, but all i can really taste is a molasses taste that i don't much care for. It also lacked carbonation, but that may just be because it's been sitting in my fridge for about a year now. It reminded me of another root beer that i can't quite pinpoint right now, but it doesn't really matter cuz it wasn't good either. This also leaves a bad taste in my mouth (literally, not metaphorically). Therefore, i deem it not that great.

My official review is that So Duh gets 3 (three) IBCs. Not that much of a fan. I honestly don't hate it and was considering giving it a 4, but the fact that it leaves such a bad taste in your mouth made me give it a 3. Not a fan.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I concur, my pregnant wife took one smell of this, and wouldn't even bring it to her lips. I kept coming back and taking sips from the bottle, hoping that the longer I drank it, the better it would get. Nope, still sucked. I wound up giving it to my 2yr old to drink. He loves testing root beer with me, but all he cares about is that it is sweet. In that case, my 2yr old would rate this highly.