Mt. Angel Root Beer

Well, this officially exhausts my root beer reserves. I don't have anymore bottles in my fridge to try, so the hunt begins again. Maybe not for a while though. I am technically homeless for the time being, so perhaps when we re-establish ourselves in the greater Phoenix area i will look at ordering some more root beers. Mt. Angel Root Beer is brewed by Mt. Angel Brewing Company in Mt. Angel, OR. According to the website, they won the silver medal in the 2012 National Open Root Beer Competition. The gold no doubt went to IBC. Trust me on this one, you don't need to look it up. The company was founded by two brothers who love brewing old fashioned sodas. They have 4 flavors they currently brew in their modest set up; root beer, marionberry (whatever that is), hazelnut, and orange cream. This seems like a sideline/passion project for these two brothers, but it might be their main source of income. I doubt it though. The website is a bit amateur and doesn't contain a ton of info.

I was able to procure this root beer in a 12 oz dark glass bottle from one of my regular websites that i visit for finding single bottles for sale. However, i probably bought this as few as 3 and as many as 5 years ago, because the website says that this root beer is available in 22 oz glass bottles and in several sizes of kegs only, but that 12 oz bottles are no longer available. Don't know how accurate that is but i'll let you do the legwork on that if you care to find out. The label is very simple. It's white and green and has a logo of the Mt. Angel Brewing Company which looks like a family crest completely with a banner with a declaration in Latin. It says "Venite et Gaudete", which according to Google translate means "Vineyards and Rejoice". So... yeah. There you have it i guess.

I like this soda. I'm sad i sat on it for so long. It's sweetened with pure cane sugar and has a subtle wintergreen flavor, which i am a big fan of (or for you grammar geeks out there, of which i am a big fan). In fact, the entire flavor of the root beer is very subtle. It's almost like it comes on weak when you drink it as fades in with the aftertaste. Kinda weird, but good. Not amazing, but for what it's worth my wife approved of it too. From the way the website tells it, this stuff is some award winning refreshment best accompanied by some vanilla ice cream for root beer floats. Might be worth looking into, but also expensive cuz they tend to favor selling this stuff by the keg rather than small volumes. Decent stuff though.

My official review is Mt. Angel Root Beer gets 6 (six) IBCs. I don't give half ratings, but i would be willing give this an unofficial rating of 6.5 because i appreciate the effort these guys put in. Not quite at the level of a 7, but it's good. Mt. Angel sounds like a beautiful area too. Maybe if i ever get up to Oregon i will check it out.