Dr. RootBeer's Premium Brew

My friend Richard (whom i have mentioned several times) lived in North Carolina for a while for work and while there he visited a little community called Sneads Ferry where the Root Beer Hall of Foam was established and run by a man named Jerome Gundrum who calls himself Dr. RootBeer. This dude is pretty serious about root beers and ran a little memorabilia shop and restaurant with several types of root beers for sale and display. Jerome even made his own brew for sale under the name Dr. RootBeer's Premium Brew. Richard met the man and got me his root beer, as well as a laminated certificate of authenticity, and took a bunch of pictures. None of the pictures he took are in this post however, these are just random ones i found on the interwebs. The website that is listed on the side of the bottle is http://www.drrootbeer.com/. Sadly, this seems to be no longer working (though there is a picture of the homepage of the website at one point). A little research on google directed me to this news website, which says Jerome closed up shop after being diagnosed with cancer so he could focus on getting better. That's a real shame. He ran the shop for seven years and seemed to really love what he did. From reviews of the shop people always enjoyed visiting with him. Richard said he was a super nice dude and a real pleasure. Hopefully things go well for Dr. RootBeer and he can get back to running his Root Beer Hall of Foam soon.

View of the Exterior

Inside the Hall of Foam

Screenshot of the old website

The bottle is one of the stout 12 oz. bottles i like made of dark glass. The label is very animated, complete with a cartoon depiction of Dr. RootBeer in sea fisherman's slickers and garb, a fishing boat and some cartoon shrimp at the bottom. There is a lot going on and i gotta give him credit for the professional look. He really took this stuff seriously. Richard said he told Dr. RootBeer about my blog and he was super excited to hear about it. That was well over a year ago now and i now regret that it has taken me this long to getting around to reviewing his root beer.

Dr. RootBeer didn't do too bad making his brew. The carbonation was a little lacking for my tastes, but other than that i quite enjoyed it. It has kind of a base molasses/brown sugar taste to it and it reminds me of another root beer i have tried previously but can't quite pinpoint. It's not exactly a traditional root beer flavor, but it doesn't stray far and definitely fits the description better than a lot of other root beers i have tried in the past. I gotta say though, it has a bit of an aftertaste that i am not a huge fan of. Maybe a bit of an anise flavor. That's kind of a staple for a lot of root beers and a lot of people like it, but i am not particularly fond of it. Over all though, it's not a terrible concoction.

My official review is the Dr. RootBeer's Premium Brew gets 6 (six) IBCs. It's a decent shot made by a dude who loves root beer, and it's more of an homage than i can put together considering i've never crafted and mass produced my own root beer creation. So on a semi-ametuer scale, i think this stuff is pretty all right. With Dr. RootBeer not running his shop anymore, i don't know how easily accessed this stuff will be. It could be that this will go the way of many other root beers and disappear from the market entirely. So i would suggest you snatch some of this stuff up if you can find it because there may soon come a time where it won't be available at all. And Jerome, i am sure you don't read this crappy little blog of mine, but if you do just know that we are all pulling for you and wish you well. Get better man.