Tuesday, July 5, 2016

Soda Series Round 3

This round dived into some more unique flavors than before. Find out which soda I envision drinking in Santorini and which one was so awful I actually poured it out below. 


Sprecher Orange Dream

I've never been a huge fan of orange Creamsicles. The combination of citrus and cream never held the same appeal as say strawberries and cream. I fully expected this soda to be overwhelmingly sweet and artificial tasting, but was actually quite pleasantly surprised by its relatively subtle approach. Considering the loud neon orange color, this was pleasantly drinkable and refreshing. 

With such a deft hand at such a seemingly difficult soda, I'd gladly jump on any Sprecher sodas in the future. I'll be on the lookout for its Puma Kola, among others. They actually are a beer brewery but they have an odd product line including a root beer mustard that might be worth searching out.


Zuberfizz Durango Soda Company Chocolate Cream Soda

Zuberfizz is actually a new company, bottling sodas since 2002. Trying to jump on the microbrewing trend in beer, Zuberfizz focuses on small batch gourmet sodas. They might've actually discontinued the chocolate cream soda, or renamed it their Coco Fizz, but it was absolutely awful. It tasted like a carbonated liquefied Tootsie roll. That's all I need to say about this one.


Frostop Root Beer

Frostop has been producing root beer out of Ohio since 1926. Upon opening the bottle, the first thing I noticed was a remarkable foamy head. It was refreshing and had bright sweet notes at the top. Overall it had little complexity but made a solid root beer. 


Silk Road Cucumber

Given the labeling and flavors such as cucumber, pear and pomegranate, I suspected that Silk Road was aiming for the adult soda drinking market, similar to Boylan's Mash line or GuS. While this cucumber soda was still plenty sweet, it also had a pronounced mint taste that made me immediately think Greek salad. After a few more sips, it tastes too herbal, like a full meal for me. 


Americana Huckleberry

The light purple soda has the color of pale grape but the flavor of a tart berry. It is like an adult version of grape soda (besides sparkling wine, clearly). I advocate it as an alternative when you don't want the heavy sweetness of most grape sodas. 


NuGrape

 NuGrape is a vintage 1906 formula, which may explain why it is possibly the most generic grape soda I have ever had. It is a prototypical grape soda and not at all remarkable.



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