Not Your Father's Root Beer (4.5%)
Not Your Father's (NYF)

 

 

Black appearance with a small head that fully diminishes quickly. Smells and tastes exactly like root beer, average body moderate sweetness, a syrupy feel and a lasting finish. Kind of good, but I couldn’t imagine drinking more than 1 or 2 in one sitting.

 

 

355 mL bottle from a six-pack purchased at The Beer Store. Not sure if this 4.5% version is a 'new variant' that is only being exported to Canada at the moment... but the fact that I needed to add it to the database would seem to suggest so.

Pours a dark brown colour with deep red highlights, briefly producing a half-cm of fizzy, light beige-coloured head that vanishes in a matter of seconds. No lace, cap or collar remain - it certainly looks like root beer, and the aroma is spot-on the mark, too. I'm getting mild vanilla, cream soda and caramel syrup, with an herbal root note akin to sarsaparilla, completing the illusion that this is some sort of soft drink. Sweet on the nose, but not cloying.

The flavour follows after the aroma - pretty sweet, without being annoyingly so. Caramel syrup, molasses, vanilla cream soda and root beer flavours permeate the taste buds throughout the sip. Herbal suggestions of mint, anise and sarsaparilla barely come through on the back end, with the root beer flavours fading into a sweet aftertaste that resolves itself quickly. Light in body, with moderate carbonation levels and a slick, tongue-coating mouthfeel reminiscent of an actual soft drink/root beer. Extremely easy to drink, since there's no sign of the alcohol, and the saccharine aspects of the flavour are kept within reasonable check.

Final Grade: 3.74, a decent B grade. This light (4.5%) variant of Not Your Father's Root Beer is pretty darn tasty, but if it didn't have "two-row barley" and "hops" explicitly listed in the ingredients, I don't think I'd be able to call this one a real beer in the technical sense. Since they are both included, it's technically correct (the best kind of correct) to call this a beer. Sessionable in the figurative sense, though literally speaking I doubt I'd be interested in drinking this all night - it's more like an after-dinner treat, not something I'd want as a staple. If you enjoy root beer, this is well worth a try.