Well... it's a new year and i didn't accomplish my goal. I got close, but i still have around 7 or so root beers in my fridge i need to drink to clean out my backlog. But i'm making progress and that's what ultimately counts. Luckily i have some pretty good Vegas odds in my favor if i go ahead and say right now that i will clean out my fridge by the end of the year. So i'm gonna go ahead and do that. I will clean out my backlog from my fridge by the end of this year. And if i don't... well, then there's always next year i suppose. The ones i have left are the ones i have kind of grouped together. I have 2 that are made by the same brewery in different flavors, 3 that are music themed (including 2 KISS themed root beers if you can believe that), and a then a couple stragglers, which this one is. Joby Joe's Root Beer Float is a flavor distributed by
Rocket Fizz. It appears to be a one-off and specifically appears to be somewhat of a memorial for the handsome young man pictured on the label. The label is very bright and colorful with a photograph of a young guy standing in front of a tent in the woods holding a fishing rod and a lantern. The label entreats you to "enjoy the outdoors" in what looks like Coca-Cola font. And then the part that tips off that this is a memorial is "in memory of Joe" printed at an angle following along the fishing rod he is holding. At the bottom of the label it says that a portion of the proceeds from this sale goes to a homeless organization. So that's nice. Rocket Fizz is great for picking up these little one-off producers who don't have lines of sodas in various flavors. The downside is you don't get much info about the root beer itself, like who makes it, how long it's been in production, or what happened to this poor guy who they are celebrating with this soda. Kind of a weird way to memorialize someone, but i'm not openly against the idea. Maybe that's what i want for myself when i pass, but the one stipulation i have is that every bottle of delicious root beer has to have a little bit of my ashes in it as well. That way i really will always be with whoever drinks it (or at least until they pee).
Well, i've already talked a lot about the label, so lets just jump into the taste. I know i say this a lot about basically every root beer i review but the overwhelming taste i get from this is simply "sweet". It's almost sharply sweet, but that's really just the first piercing taste, followed by a muted root beer flavor. It's a little obscured by the amount of carbonation, which isn't a bad thing. The aftertaste is a little unpleasant, almost reminiscent of a diet soda even though this is sweetened with cane sugar. I don't get a real strong root beer vibe from this. It's very subtle and the sweetness really takes over from the start. But i don't think it's bad tasting, just doesn't quite hit that strong root beer flavor that i'm looking for. Most of the ingredients are typical of what you would find in similar root beers and nothing really makes this one stand out, but i am also not repulsed by this one. It's just very mid. And this calls itself a root beer float but i don't get much of the creaminess that would make it more of a float flavor. So it's just a very average, run of the mill, nothing special, middle of the road root beer.
My official review is that Joby Joe's Root Beer Float gets 5 (five) IBC's. It's good, but not great. I like the taste though it could use a stronger root beer base. And it seems like the money goes to a good cause. But i wouldn't reach for this one again next time i'm in Rocket Fizz because there are so many other better options out there. Maybe give it a shot if you're interested.
