Tuesday, September 22, 2015

Cool Mountain root beer

Background information: (from the website): "All Cool Mountain Flavors are made with Pure Cane sugar and 100% Caffeine Free. Lightly carbonated not overly sweet with a bold refreshing flavor since 1997. Our clear glass bottles are wrapped with custom pressure sensitive labels, capped off with a black and chrome twist off promotional bottle cap that seals in freshness. Our Master 24 pack carton is beautifully printed white tab lock box to display our companies trademark logo name and flavor with cut out handles. More than 50% of our package is made from recycled materials meeting all state, federal nutrition compliance and truth in labeling requirements."

Whew, their website is pretty boring. While most root beer sites like to tell an interesting history, this one just spouts out a couple facts, with the information all feeling very impersonal. Oddly enough, this lifeless content is juxtaposed with the image banner at the top showing exciting and adventurous people doing fun things like snowboarding, white water kayaking, rock climbing, motorcycling, and surfing. Perhaps they figure that people don't read anymore and will just see exciting pictures and assume that all the words must be exciting as well.


Product details: 12 fl. oz.  Bottled under the authority of Evolution Brands LLC, Des Plaines, IL 60016. 160 calories, 40g sugar.  Glass bottle with twist off top.  http://www.coolmountain.com/


Ingredients: Filtered water, pure cane sugar, natural and artificial flavors, caramel color, phosphoric acid, sodium benzoate and potassium sorbate as a presevative.


My thoughts: I wonder what other names they went through before settling on the name "Cool Mountain"? I imagine Chilly Molehill, Frigid Elevationally Exception Landmass, Awesome Alititudal Precipice or maybe Totally Excellent Peak? Well, either way, I can't help buy wonder, is this a root beer I would climb to the top of the highest bluffs to acquire? Read on to know the answer to this question that has haunted humanity from their earliest days.

My refrigerator maintains a constant 37°F, fulfilling the "cool" part of the beverage's name. As for the taste, there's a strong, but generic, root beer flavor. Unlike many other root beers, where I can taste a bunch of other individual spices, this one just has the one note: typical root beer. It's not bad or candy-like, but it's nothing special. Pretty much what I'd expect from a normal can of store-bought root beer, maybe slightly better. The aftertaste doesn't offer anything different, with the root beer taste just slowly fading off.

Sweetness is average, getting the job done while only leaving a moderate sugary coating behind. Nothing I can really complain about. Carbonation is where this root beer shines, with a nice strong tingle on my tongue that maintains it's strength all the way to the bottom of the bottle. Smoothness suffers a little here, partially due to the strong (but not overly so) carbonation. Combine this with the lack of creaminess, and this isn't a particularly smooth root beer.

At the end of the bottle, I concluded that I would not scale Mt. Everest to get a bottle of this root beer. To be fair, I wouldn't scale Mt. Everest for any sort of root beer, as I hate heights and detest the cold. I would, however, scale a small incline, perhaps even a moderate countryside hill, to drink this root beer. It's not exceptional, but it's right up there with the average root beer at the grocery store, and even those are worth a minuscule amount of exertion from time to time.


Rating: C+
flavor: C+
aftertaste: C
sweetness: A-
smoothness: B
carbonation: A

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