Red Foil Root Beer
Watching television in the 1970s and 1980s meant being inundated with commercials for soft drinks, toys, and breakfast cereals, among many other things. Some of you probably have the same jingles embedded in your minds as I do. It was the late 1970s when my family went to a nearby A&W Root Beer stand, where they served the food on a tray with hooks that latched over your car window. Thus began my love for root beer.
Decades later, I can still recall the pleasant smell of the food and the taste of my first root beer. While I rarely drink soft drinks anymore, I like to have the occasional root beer, especially on New Year’s Eve. Cincinnati is home to The Root Beer Stand, originally an old A&W. They make their own root beer, serve coneys and more, and have a large collection of ball caps hanging from the ceiling. Root beer fans in Cincinnati are also lucky enough to have Jungle Jim’s International Market, where they stock an entire wall of various root beers and other specialty sodas from all over the galaxy.
At the top of my list is Point Premium Root Beer from the Stevens Point Brewery up in Wisconsin. I’ve had well over 100 different kinds of root beer, which brings me to the point of this post. While traveling (an occupational hazard of being a musician on the road) through New Mexico, I stopped somewhere along the way, probably for a snack and/or a drink, and a label with striking artwork jumped out at me from among the other products. “Red Foil Root Beer, that’s a new one!” I thought to myself. I checked the ingredients to make sure there was no caffeine, noted that it used honey, and made my purchase. Much to my surprise, it turned out to be one of the best root beers I have ever tasted. Unfortunately, it would be the first and last time I experienced Red Foil Root Beer. As it turns out, Red Foil Root Beer was made by Brad Krauss at Abbey Brewing Company, which is located at the Our Lady of Guadalupe Trappist Abbey in the Chama River Wilderness Area near Abiquiú, New Mexico. Say that ten times fast!
During that same excursion through New Mexico, I experienced the “real night sky” for the first time in my life. It was fairly cold that night, and the stars in the sky seemed extraordinarily bright. Living in Cincinnati does not provide an exceptional view of the night sky unless you visit the Cincinnati Observatory, so I decided to pull over and take it all in. It took a bit to find a place to pull off the road, but once I did, it was well worth the effort. No traffic, no noise except the wind, just peace. I climbed onto the hood of my old car and stared for quite some time, humbled by the shocking number of stars I could see for the first time in my life. It was an overwhelming and moving experience. So this, dear reader, is a simple tribute to a long-gone root beer and to that beautiful night sky that provided me with an entirely new perspective on my place in the universe.
Ingredients
- Filtered carbonated water
- Honey
- Citric acid
- Natural flavors
- Natural caramel color
Product Description
“Red Foil changes everything about passionate root beers. Healthy, healing, and well-heeled, ours is an earthier, drier, more aromatic creation made of clean, complex flavors and the choicest all-natural ingredients.”
Availability Status: No longer in production
Nutrition Information
- Serving Size: 12 fluid ounces
- Calories: 124
- Total Fat: 0g (0% DV)
- Sodium: 2mg (0% DV)
- Total Carbohydrates: 34g (11% DV)
- Dietary Fiber: 1g (4% DV)
- Sugars: 34g
- Protein: 0g (0% DV)
- Percent Daily Values (DV) are based on a 2,000 calorie diet
Taglines
“Goodness & Sensation In A Bottle” & “All Natural, Honey Enriched”