DNA Old Fashioned Root Beer

My friend Richard moved out to San Diego and visited the shop where Old Town Root Beer is sold. If you visit my post about Old Town you will get a little info about that operation as well as why the website listed on the bottle (www.oldtownrootbeer.com) isn't very reliable for info. To save those of you who don't care to read any of my other reviews some time (shame on you), it's kind of a soda/sandwich shop from what i gather. They have all kinds of bottled soda there and make a few varieties of their own, including at least 2 different root beers. This root beer, DNA Old Fashioned Root Beer, is one of them. Richard picked this one up for me along with a few others and brought it to me. What a nice guy. I think next time we go out to visit him, i will definitely need to stop by this shop and check it out. I have seen a similar set up of a small restaurant/soda shop in St. George, UT called Judd's Store. I just walked through it quickly and didn't order food or even get a soda, but i assume it's the same general idea as far as the set up goes.

This root beer came in a 12 oz. dark brown glass bottle. The label is kinda busy. Lots of text surrounding a small black-and-white portrait of two young scamps sitting on an old wooden wagon loaded with root beer bottles. Looks like something right out of the Little Rascals, or probably more-so like they are borrowing a page directly from the portfolio of Kim Anderson. They even threw in a little color in the photo on the root beer bottle labels (which from what i gather are bottles of Old Town Root Beer, not DNA). But i guess it works cuz my wife thinks it's a-dorable. The text surrounding the portrait says things like, "thank you for buying our root beer. it's going to pay for college." It's also written in font that looks like little kid hand writing, really driving the nail in on the cute factor that all these dumb girls keep falling for. Below the portrait it says, "It's what you're made of", which is an obvious play on the literal meaning of the acronym for deoxyribonucleic acid (settle down nerds, i still had to look up how to spell it). I was looking for something to link the name DNA to the names of the kids in the picture, as in "Dan n' Andy" or "Darius n' Alistar", but i had no such luck. Even without the evidence I still think that might be what they were going for, but unless someone has the inside scoop i guess we'll never know.

This root beer is kinda like the pretty girl who can't manage to keep a guy. She may be cute but she doesn't have much else going for her. I gotta say, this stuff is not very good. For starters, it's super watery. The faint flavor it has is dominantly honey based, and not even in a good way. The ingredients claim vanilla is used, but i don't taste it at all. It is also sweetened with cane sugar, but it's really not all that sweet. And to top it all off, the aftertaste it leaves is pretty repugnant. I know it sounds like i am completely trashing this stuff, but in defense of DNA there are definitely a lot worse root beers out there. This one just isn't very good.

My official review is that DNA Old Fashioned Root Beer gets 3 (three) IBCs. In very rare fashion i told my wife i was considering giving it a 3 and asked her what her input would be. She agreed with me, completely casting aside how cute she thinks the little boys in the label are. There is just nothing there to make me want to drink another one of these. So i gotta say if you make your way down to the shop in San Diego, try one of their other root beers instead of this one. And sorry boys... but you might have to consider taking out student loans.