Final 3 Hard Sodas: Jack Daniel's Black Jack Cola, Best Damn Cherry Cola, and Not Your Father's Hard Root Beer

I recently finished my final 3 hard sodas from Total Wine:

Jack Daniel's Black Jack Cola, Best Damn Cherry Cola, and Not Your Father's Hard Root Beer.

Jack Daniel's Black Jack Cola: this was a nice mix of booze and soda for me. I like the flavor of hard liquor, but (almost every time) it's a bit much. This is a WAY toned-down version of Jack Daniel's that has a little carbonation and a cherry kick. This fella thinks thinks that's a great combo. Score: 8 out of 10.

Not Your Father's Hard Root Beer: I still don't like hard root beers. I just don't think that beer and root beer flavors go well together. It tastes like burnt root beer. I thought it was a bit better than Best Damn Hard Root Beer and that I'd give this like a 3 out of 10. Sure enough, I went back and looked at my review of Best Damn Root Beer, and I gave that a 2.5. So Not Your Father's is better, but I'm still FAR from being a fan of either. Score: 3 out of 10.

Best Damn Cherry Cola: this was the surprise of the group. I really REALLY didn't like Best Damn Root Beer when I tried that last year, and I expected this to yield similar results. But the slight beer-y flavor works much better with the cherry cola. It's a very "black cherry" cherry flavor that is really deep. And then the beer-y kick in the end isn't bad. If you like beer and cherry cola, then for sure give this a try! Score: 7 out of 10.


Sidenote: here's my review of my first 3 hard sodas from Total Wine.

Hard Sodas from Total Wine

My wife and I left our boys at Grandma's house after Christmas for a few days, so we got to run "adult" errands. We had to stop at Total Wine in Roseville so my wife could pick up some wine for a party, and I cruised the by-the-bottle hard cider section:

All sold as individual bottles. It's pretty sweet.

These are all hard sodas. There were more on the next shelf down as well.
There were very few of these here the last time I was here.

 In the end, I walked out with these 6 to try:

I heard a lot about "Not Your Father's Root Beer" in the past, so I'm excited to try it.  I didn't know that Sprecher made a hard root beer!  I tried (and did NOT care for) Best Damn Root Beer, so I'll see what I think of their cherry cola.  The "White Claw" is a hard sparkling water with black cherry.  And I have no preconceived opinion about the Jack Daniels Cola or the Seagram's Hard Lemon N' Lime.  I'll report back about these 6.

Here's a link to all of my posts tagged with "alcohol" so you can see my previous reviews of hard sodas and hard ciders.  And here's a post about my first trip to Total Wine to get some hard ciders with my little guy 2.5 years ago.

Hard Root Beer Float (Best Damn Root Beer)

Last month, I tried the new hard root beer "Best Damn Root Beer," and I really didn't care for it. But I promised that I'd try it as a root beer float because that could be better. And I was right. Barely.

NOT the best (as I noted in this post)

As a HARD root beer float.

I tried this with my soon-to-be brother-in-law Matt. Neither of us LOVE beer, so admittedly, we're maybe not the best reviewers of a root beer / beer hybrid. We didn't care for the root beer float that much. It was OK with bites of the ice cream, but neither of us drank the creamy hard root beer that was left once the ice cream was gone. It had a odd sharpness to it that was no good. I initially gave Best Damn Root Beer a 2.5 out of 10, and I'd have to give this root beer float at 3 out of 10. Still not good.

Score: 3 out of 10.

(Here's my initial review of Best Damn Root Beer if you missed it.)

Best Damn Root Beer

I've been seeing billboards like this around the Metro area for the last 2 months or so:

My wife and I were at the liquor store a few nights ago, and we saw a 6-pack, so we picked it up so I could try it.

If you're wondering, YES it's "hard" root beer. It's 5.5% alcohol.


Brand: Best Damn Root Beer.

Origin: St. Louis, MO.

Purchase Place: Marshall Liquors, St. Paul, MN.

Sweetener: Nothing? I'm unsure on this. (Beer is labeled much differently than soda, and everyone online is mentioning they can't find an ingredients list for this.)

Review: It smelled good. The first sip had GOOD (classic) root beer flavor on my tongue. But then the yeastiness of the beer took over, and it ended with not a great flavor. There was a nice amount of vanilla flavor (and on the can it mentions that it's "ale aged on vanilla beans"), but that didn't make up for much. It was an odd flavor combo of root beer and beer that I didn't care for at all. The beer added a strange "bite" to the root beer.

I'm not a big beer fan, so that may be why I was less interested in this. But even on Beer Advocate, it's not getting good reviews and is currently ranked "poor" at 68 out of 100. One reviewer said "it tasted like someone took a cheap light beer and squirted some of that artificial "rootbeer-barrel candy" flavoring into it."

My wife mentioned it could make a good root beer float, so I may have to try that with some of the remaining 5 cans. The Best Damn Root Beer website has some recipes on it, so we might have to give a few of those a try. I'll update if/when I do. But for the time being, this score is just based on the Best Damn Root Beer by itself.

Score: 2.5 out of 10.