Christopher J. McGarvey wrote:I'm kind of curious about the Lakefront Golden Maple Root Beer.
Lakefront is unique, with a maple flavor true to its name. It's highly carbonated, and a golden yellow in color. It's tasty, but I hate drinking a serving out of plastic, and they no longer make it in bottles, so I have it about once a year when I find it on tap locally.
Sprecher is a polar opposite of Lakefront. It's somehow excellent in a way that includes a determined, purposeful near flatness. It's a dark brown color and sweeter than most sodas. It's still sold in attractively packaged 4 packs of brown bottles.
The Uzeda folks said Sprecher tastes like cough medicine, and I think about that almost every time I have it.
The other Sprecher sodas are excellent, too, especially the ginseng-ish Raven Red and the cream sodas. Well, I don't include the 'lo-cal' root beer in that statement. I choose to ignore that marketing move and tasteless mistake. They have a new cherry cola I haven't tried, yet.
You can read about their sodas here:
http://www.sprecherbrewery.com/soda.php
The other root beer of note in the WI area is at Pinocchio's Drive-In West. It's more like an old school A&W root beer on draft, with perhaps a little more of whatever is in Sprecher that makes Europeans confuse it with cough syrup. It's not something you get in bottles from the grocery or liquor store; if you want some for home like for a BBQ you get it in plastic gallon jugs from the source and finish it off within a day of opening to escape a flat taste.
~R