First I’d like to discuss the use of the “Roadhouse” image for this brew.  What kind of picture are they trying to paint?  The term “Roadhouse” is meant to evoke a dusty, hard-bitten mining town in one of the Dakotas, a town hit hard when the economy deep-sixed, a town where a man could find a new start, could put the horrible past behind him, the terrible things he done seen.  He’s *seen* things, man.  And all he needs now is a tall mug of Roadhouse Tea, a hot meal, and he’ll be on his way.  The cool, smooth taste of some of that ol’ Jeremiah Weed is just what he needs now to wash the taste of failure out of his mouth…

What Roadhouse Tea is *not* meant to evoke is me, middle-aged nerd, sipping Tea while watching a documentary on wine-tasting, occasionally putting the Tea down on a T.V. tray to eat another Cadbury Egg left over from Easter.  Icing my sore left heel injury, obtained from stepping off a curb.  And there’s a lace doily on the TV tray, by the way.

It’s not bad, exactly, but odd — the taste is pretty close to a bottle of iced tea you’d get out of a vending machine, allowed to go flat, with twice the sugar.  MAN is it sweet.  I’m not helping things by scarfing down Easter candy at the same time, but still.  By the end I was slightly drunk and on a sugar high.  By 4 am that night I had defcon-level heartburn.  Which I cured with a couple antacids, which because I have a sensitive stomach, are kept in a bottle that sits on my nightstand.  On a lace doily.

I still prefer my beer in a bottle, but I guess I won’t turn my nose up at canned beer if it is from Caldera.