Beer of the Month - December

The beer of the month for December is Bundaberg Brewed Drinks Root Beer {0.0% abv}. This is the perfect drink for December as for one, my sister got me this very bottle of fine root beer as a Christmas gift. She actually got me two from a local international food market, but the first one I happily imbibed during our family's dinner. The second reason is that my wife Beth is late and can't drink adult beverages for another seven months or so! I'm sure many of you have found yourselves or spouses in this predicament and rather than drinking a non-alcoholic brew that tastes like severely watered down domestic light beer, why not focus on enjoying some great flavor?

Bundaberg Brewed Drinks was a great candidate for BOTM as they take softdrink brewing as seriously as most microbreweries take their beer brewing. They're an Australian company based in Bundaberg (if you couldn't tell by the kangaroo on the label) that started life in 1960 making the best ginger beer in the area. Thankfully for us, after focusing on the local market for a few decades, they made their way to exporting their products around the globe in 1987. The drink range grew from just ginger beer to now having eight varieties (not including diet variants), including apple, peach and lemon-lime based soft drinks. More importantly though they make an authentic-recipe brew of root beer, which I had the pleasure of drinking a few days ago.

Bundaberg Root Beer is a classic sarsaparilla, vanilla and licorice root recipe that is everything you want in a root beer. It's got great flavor, it's sweet without being sugary, it has great carbonation and lastly it has a lovely bite that burns your nose if you drink a bit faster than you should. Getting into the nuances of flavor profile of this root beer versus a Barq's or A&W product isn't my aim here, but I can say that if you like root beer and happen to get your hands on one of Bundaberg's lovely 4-packs of 375ml palm-fillers, you'll thank me for it. 3 stars.