Adroit Theory & Three Notch’d Bloody Roots
I’m not a fan the Bloody Mary in general, but when I saw this collaboration between Adroit Theory and Three Notch’d using ingredients in that early morning mixed drink, I figured what the hell — I’m up for a challenge. Bloody Roots is an imperial brown ale that has habanero, horseradish, crushed tomato, celery salt and honey within its deep, dark brown depths. And at 8% ABV, it’s probably on par with your standard Bloody Mary, though I’m not sure I’d be up for this on too early in the morning.
With the habanero and horseradish combination, Bloody Roots certainly packs a bit of a throat grabbing bite of heat. The spiciness sort of throws you for a loop at first, but much like Ballast Point’s Indra Kunindra, it grows on you after a while — something I didn’t really want to wholly admit at first. Other than the heat and a rich malt base, I didn’t really pick up any other ingredient. I think the celery salt and honey appeared late in each swallow after the beer had had an opportunity to warm in the glass some. Even then, Bloody Roots was mostly just malt and spiciness.
I had my reservations after the first sip of this big beer. The description and ingredient list on the side of the label definitely gave me pause, but in the end, it’s not a half bad beer. I don’t believe that I would purchase it again, but in a one-off, I’ll try anything once sort of way, it’s pretty decent. Or at the very least, not as bad as i was expecting.