Beer O'Clock: Kid Stuff

Now that my beer reviews have moved from their own blog back to The Brown Knowser, I thought that I would start things with a twist.

First: today's review is a guest post^*.

Second: it's not a beer review. That is, it's not an alcoholic beer (and I don't mean one of those lame, 0.5% "de-alcoholized" brews).

We're talking root beer.

A couple of weeks ago, I organized a photo walk along the Ottawa River Parkway, where we all ended up at Mill Street Brew Pub and then turned the event into a tweetup. It was a fun event and, as always, the crew at Mill Street treated us like royalty.

My eldest daughter, Sarah, took part in the photo walk and stayed for the tweetup: it was her first time at both events. Being under the drinking age, and not liking beer anyway (don't worry, folks, I'll have her straightened out by the time she hits 19), she opted for something else that the brew pub produces: root beer.

She enjoyed it so much that she asked me if she could write a review for my blog. How could I say "no" to that?

The following is Sarah's review.

Root Beer (0% ABV)
Mill Street Brewery
Toronto, ON
Beer O'Clock rating: 5

Colour: Dark brown almost black (root beer colour)

Smell: sweet a bit like fennel

Taste:  fennel (licorice ) sweet

Sound: Bubbly... reminds me a bit of Rice Krispies cereal

So.... If it's really all that interesting, and if you MUST know, I was on a photo walk with my dad and his twitter friends (he calls them his peeps or twits...whichever comes first) and we were walking from Remic Rapids to Mill Street. I was wondering what I would drink when I got there since I was thirsty and I have a bit of a one-track mind when I'm sorta bored and very impatient.

Anyways, we finally arrived at Mill Street and we got a table. Dad and his friends went on about how they were the first there and all. I'm not very familiar with the whole photo walk thing so of course I had no clue what they were talking about. I almost literally had a big question mark floating in the air just above my head. I sat down and briefly skimmed the menu and I stumbled upon the root beer. I was quite excited since it was homemade. We ordered, then the adults started talking about strange adult stuff like how long the line was at Starbucks, or how a work colleague was crabby that day. I'll never understand adults... Yet again, some adults probably think that they'll never understand small children.

You know, when I think of a typical root beer, I think of A&W or that bulldog brand... Barq's is it called? Anyways, I thought for a moment that the root beer would be like that but it wasn't which was good. It tasted more like licorice than well... the cheaper root beer.

Overall, it was very good. Extremely refreshing. I highly recommend trying it!

***

After Sarah wrote her review, I contacted the folks who make Mill Street's root beer, Bridgid and Andrew, to get more facts. Here' what they had to say:

• We've been making the root beer for about 7 years, and we make it exclusively for Mill Street.
• On average we make about 6000L of root beer a year.
• The root beer is made onsite at the Toronto Brewpub location, in the same brewery that we make all the seasonal and specialty beers.
• It is not available in bottles, unfortunately! It is exclusively available on draft at the Mill Street brew pubs.
• No plans to make any other sodas at this time. Just keep on rocking the root beer!

* Want to write a guest post for The Brown Knowser? Contact me at roland_axam@yahoo.ca or via Twitter (@RossBrownfoot).