I have a review for you today of an interesting nature, a hard root beer!  Now why is it interesting you might ask?  Well, that would be because the inspiration for Abita's Bayou Bootlegger is none other than the French-American pirate and privateer, John Lafitte!

     A little history for you on John Lafitte, born in the late 1700's, John Lafitte was a privateer who would prey on Spanish commerce and sell the smuggled goods through a shop that he and his brother owned in New Orleans.  In addition to smuggling stolen goods and property, he was also known to be running a bit of a bootlegging operation.  John Lafitte and his brother took a small respite from their smuggling ways in during the War of 1812 in order to aid the US in the Battle of New Orleans, which lasted from 1814-1815.

     This did not last long, as John Lafitte and his crew returned to their pirating ways after the fighting was over and set up the commune of Comanche.  That lasted until 1820, when several of his lieutenants attacked US ships, bringing down official pressure on their operation and causing John Lafitte to leave the US coastline with his ship and a select crew.

     All of this inspired the fine folks at Abita brewing to create their Bayou Bootlegger Hard Root Beer.

     This hard root beer is not like some of the other ones out there that I have tried, at 5.9% alcohol, it is definitely an adult take on the root beer we grew up loving.  This is a beer that has been seasoned very well with the flavor of sassafras in order to convey the taste and sensation of drinking a refreshing root beer.  In addition to the sassafras, the people of Abita Brewing have also incorporated the flavors of vanilla and wintergreen into this drink.  Sassafras is the flavor that is most strongly associated with root beer because back in the old days, they used exactly that to make root beer and some other sodas so that flavor is still around today.  I really enjoyed the undertones of vanilla in this drink though, it added a creamy taste to it that helped to tone down both the sassafras and the alcohol to make this quite the tasty drink and one that I will likely keep stocked in my fridge over
the next several months as summer rolls in.

     One thing that I truly do like about this hard root beer is that they don't use any artificial sweeteners or corn syrup in the manufacturing of it.  They use good old fashioned Louisiana cane sugar.  Now my rejection of corn syrup and artificial sweeteners is not based on health reasons or the latest food fad, although the health reasons are kept in mind, it's because drinks made with real sugar just taste better to me overall.

     When it gets to be a bit hotter out there and the thought of ice cream starts buzzing around my head, I think I might make a root beer float with this and see how it comes out.  I have done it before with a different beer and it came out well enough but this might be a way to a simple root beer float of our childhood and bring it forward into our adult lives!  Only time will tell!

     Every so often, I try something that I hope is good but end up realizing that it's not so good.  That's the case with this week's food review of Pirate's Booty Mac and Cheese Mild Cheddar.

     From the picture on the box, it doesn't look that bad, so I figured I'd give it a shot.  I don't normally eat boxed macaroni and cheese, I prefer the homemade stuff but I'd give it a shot since their basic snack was so good (see prior review for more info about that).  So I made sure to follow the directions on the box, to ensure that the dish would come out as specified and possibly look like it does on the box, here's the resulting dish.

     Well, it did come out looking like a classic from-the-box macaroni and cheese dish, but that's also where the problems started with this dish.  The actual dish came out much milder in color to the image on the box, although it doesn't look so bad in the picture I took of it.  I thought that maybe the color doesn't show how much flavor is actually packed into this dish.  It did make about a bowlful of food, and there was also a 1/4 cup of milk and a tablespoon of butter in it as well, so there's a possibility for some richness of flavor here.

     Again, I was disappointed in my hopes, the flavor was so very mild that I actually went to the fridge and added some shredded colby jack cheese to it in order to give it a better cheese flavor.  Now let's think about that for a second, I had to add shredded cheese to mac & cheese in order to get a cheese flavor out of it.  That's not a good thing and I was not pleased with it.

     While I would not buy this version again, I have heard that other version of their mac and cheese are much better and have placed well among different tests so who knows.  I think I will try a different one next time, but I'm not trying their mild cheddar one again in the future.