Rocky Mountain Root Beer

Hey... all you mothers out there... HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!! Congrats on bringing children into this world and contributing to the ever growing global population (now somewhere around 7.35 billion). Let's get it over 10 billion and blow this thing out, shall we? Anyway, it has been a while and i figured it was a decent time to review another root beer. I am going through all the root beers i picked up from the local Rocket Fizz here in Gilbert, AZ and this one fits into that category. Rocky Mountain Root Beer is brewed in Denver, CO along with a wide variety of other soda flavors. I did a bit more digging than i normally do to find out that the company was founded in 2007 and has only about 6 employees. The company touts the fact that they use all natural ingredients and brew their sodas in small batches to control the quality of the product. Other than that there is some info on the website for people looking to distribute the soda, but not much else in the way of company history or background. It seems they are trying to go the "healthy soda" route with their brewery, which usually is a disaster when it comes to taste. But they have clearly made enough of an impact to stick around for over 10 years now and expand past the borders of their home state.

The brown 12 oz glass bottle is adorned with a beautiful label picturing a majestic mountain ram against a mountain range background. Looking at the website i see that each flavor has it's own unique label picturing a different mountain creature native to the area. The artwork does not shy away from the intricate detail of the image shown. It's very unique and deserving of recognition. Well done, i'm impressed. Probably more than i should be really considering it's just a big dumb goat staring me in the face. But i'll give credit where credit is due.

Natural ingredients. That seems to be the hot new ticket every brewery is trying to capitalize on. Cane sugar, spring water, natural flavors, etc. In trying to be different, they end up all being the same. So what does that mean for the taste of Rocky Mountain Root Beer? Not much. I cracked the bottle opened and tried to get a nice whiff of the initial essence and struggled to find a discernible creamy aroma amid the seemingly vacant odor-scape (a word which i just made up but with which everyone is already deeply and thoroughly familiar with the concept). The taste is similarly vacant of discernible flavor. It's overwhelmingly watered down tasting, fairly (if not completely) flat, followed by an acrid aftertaste. There really isn't much to say about it other than it's barely there. Maybe a touch of anise? It's really hard to tell what's involved in the flavor, but the only real standout quality is that it's unsatisfying.

My official review is that Rocky Mountain Root Beer gets 3 (three) root beers. I'm just not at all swayed by this stuff. It doesn't scratch that root beer itch for me in the slightest. I don't hate it, which surprised me why i ended up with such a harsh rating, but when i weighed the whole picture this is where my heart landed. Either that or i'm just eager to get this one over with. I truly don't hate this one, but i would be hard pressed to reach for another one of these. So i'm gonna stick with my rating. Sorry Rocky Mountain, but you're just gonna have to try harder next time.