Bundaberg – Root Beer Review
The wife of my girlfriend’s co-worker hails from Australia, and Bundaberg is his favorite soda from the big island. He was kind enough to offer a bottle for her/our private consumption. Apparently, Pepsi has started distributing it locally, but I have no official confirmation of this. Little did he know I swiped it and reviewed it. Hooray for freebies!
First thing, this has an awesome little pull tab on it, but, being the American I am, I’m not quite familiar with this method of opening a bottle, so my pull is slow and careful. It comes off without incident, and this foreign drink is subjected to the first test of any drink, the aroma test. It smells awesome and super sweet; there’s 44 g of the white stuff in this 12.7 oz bottle. The first taste I recognize is the spicy, dark sweet of molasses. I catch hints of ginger and vanilla, and the licorice shows up in the aftertaste. This is brewed using yeast, which often turns a soda fermenty and unpleasant to most people, but I can hardly tell with this, except for the malty-sweet taste and beer-like mouth-feel after I swallow. The carbonation is light and the sweetness is surprisingly mellow and doesn’t stick to your tongue too long.
It has a nice spice and an interesting tang to it, something many American root beers lack, besides originality. The cane sugar and molasses give it a perfect, rich sweetness that the darker sugar tones down. The flavor combination is perfect, leaving nothing to be desired of this Australian treat. That’s exactly what it should be considered, a treat, if you can find it. It currently isn’t distributed in the U.S. Their slogan on the bottle, Naturally Brewed to be Better, seems apt. I have nothing negative to say about this soda, despite the large amount of sugar in it. This may be the best root beer I’ve ever had.
You can get it shipped your way from The Soda Shop.
Score: 5 out of 5. Root beers rarely get better than this.
– WiseGuise
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