Julian's Soda Reviews

Boylan Root Beer

2010-11-07T18:55:00.000-08:00

Background

Boylan Bottling Company is a soda bottling company that has been around since 1891, being one of the older bottling companies still in existence today. I bought this bottle locally at Busch's for $1.29, very widely available in general you can get it online from Amazon. They also have many flavors other than Root Beer that I will hopefully be reviewing sometime. They take a lot of pride in their soda, sporting slogans like this:

They seem to be very serious about all this indeed. More importantly, they trash on the more Faygo brand of sodas that have plastic bottling and lots of High Fructose Corn Syrup. I think I'm in for an interesting one this time around.

Review

The bottling is just so darned good. Look at the shape, it's so simple and elegant. A nice curve to the stem that just pleases the eye. The overall design is just so crisp and simple. A big circle with their name around it to just say "This is our root beer. We don't mess around with all that fluff, just drink it and love it." The cap is weirdly huge and wraps around quite a bit more than a normal cap but that's because it's resealable! How nice is that! There is a belief that to cut down on the calories and sugar intake of soda you should just have half of one, then the rest later on. I try to do this with Faygo since the sugar levels are so high and it's nice to see that it's a possibility even in a glass bottle. Speaking of the bottle, that thing is freaking thick.

2 quarters thick, that is.

They say that the thickness and dark color helps to preserve freshness because then no sunlight gets in. I know that for Beers that is a big deal, so why not for Root Beers?

As far as the ingredients go you can see from the top image that they sport real cane sugar. The full ingredients list is nice and short, which it should be for a soda and it does indeed deliver on the Cane Sugar.

Only 7 ingredients and one of them is Cane Sugar

When I first opened it up it made a lovely little "ssss" sound, not a pop at all due to the design of the cap. You can only really slowly release it, not blast it off all at once. The smell is just exactly like a Root Beer you have had many times before and it really reminded me strongly of being a kid and opening up a Barq's Root Beer which to me was clearly superior to A&W. I would even go a few days without Barq's so that I would forget what it tasted like then when I had it again it would be so damn good. I think that smell should give some memories to just about anyone who had a childhood with soda in it or Root Beer Floats.

First sip and it's smooooooth like you wouldn't believe. The carbonation is such an after thought, I love it. It's like the bubbles stick to the soda so well that you don't even barely feel them be in there but then you get all the nice side effects like good burps. On the topic, I seriously had one of the best burps from drinking this than I have had in months. It was a good, long burp that reminded me of the flavor and smell of the root beer and it wasn't one of those gross ones that gets forced out, it was just a release. So nice.

After getting to know the flavor a bit more I can say that it's just a pure root beer. Like if you put basically no sugar in a root beer this is more what you would get. The flavor is just very there, it's not masked by lots of sweetness, you just get to bask in the Root Beer flavor and enjoy it fully. The bottle continues to come into play here. It is so thick that the hole for drinking is small so you have to go slow, which is a very good thing. One thing that really confused me however was the distinct lack of froth.

You can see that it's basically just a small ring on the top, almost nothing. For a solid root beer like this I would have expected a solid inch of froth floating joyfully on the top of the liquid, but nope. I like froth in my Root Beer, quite a lot actually but for this I don't know. It was such a solid soda that having too much bubbles on the top may have taken away. I really wish it did at least have some though. Not a huge deal, just disappointing.

This soda really just makes me happy. It's such a no non-sense soda. It just has a nice, delightful Root Beer flavor and it just hands it to you. The Vanilla Cream Soda from the other day was a total party soda. Like you would have it in Solo cups but Boylan Root Beer is a really authentic soda. I want to point out the logo again. You can see that it's just 3 colors: yellow, white and black. That is totally what this soda is, it doesn't mess around with zany in-your-face logos and flavors. It just presents itself and lets you judge.

Overall, this is definitely the best Root Beer I have personally ever had. It's not overly sweet and it's extremely root beery. I just loved basically everything about it, I would drink this forever if I could. Spike from www.rootbeerreviews.com gave Boylan a B. You can check out his review on this page. I noticed that he said that it was the foamiest Root Beer he has ever had. I find that interesting since I found almost the complete opposite. I'll definitely check out some of his "A" sodas like the Henry Weinhard Root Beer sometime and see how much I agree with him.

A Unique Dr. Pepper Experience

2010-11-06T07:16:00.000-07:00

This will be a bit more writing intensive because I don't really have any cool pictures that would make sense so sorry about that. I had a very different experience with some Dr. Pepper last night.

So, I've been at theater for the past week for "tech week". For those that do not know, in a theater the week before the play is called "tech week", that is the time when everyone in the whole theater, actors and technical crew stay until 9 PM everyday after school. That's the reason I haven't posted but you know, no excuses, no regrets. Anyways so we always get fed right after school but that's it. Right around 8 last night Jason and I were on the sound board and we got pretty hungry. We both asked Eitan to go out and grab some McDonald's for us. We both ordered a Big Mac, Fries and a Dr. Pepper.

I was having my meal and then I sipped the Dr. Pepper but it wasn't quite right. To explain why it was "off" and tasted different from canned Dr. Pepper you need to understand how a soda machine works. When you are dispensing the soda into a cup you can see a stream of clear liquid and a stream of colored liquid. The clear is basically just bubbly water and the colored is just syrup. So as you can imagine, too much syrup and you get a very sweet soda, too much water and you get a watery soda. Most people have probably experienced the latter because places that are really cheap will actually turn down how much syrup is dispensed since the syrup is much much more expensive that the carbonated water.

This soda that I had from McDonald's was basically a normal Dr. Pepper but with way too much syrup. Even Jason noticed it and pointed it out. What the most noticeable change was is not the flavor but the feeling in the mouth. When I had finished a sip my mouth would have some saliva and when I swallowed that it actually tasted like Dr. Pepper. Not something like watered down Dr. Pepper but exactly Dr. Pepper. This was due to the large amount of High Fructose Corn Syrup in the soda. The High Fructose Corn Syrup basically sticks the the roof of your mouth. On a bottle of Boylan Root Beer they said that the reason they use sugar instead of High Fructose Corn Syrup is that is leaves a sticky feeling in the mouth. I definitely felt that but I actually really liked it.

I ended up liking the Dr. Pepper quite a bit and it made me wonder if a fast food restaurant could get well known for having sweeter, better tasting sodas than the other ones ad thus sell more. Make it almost a destination "come taste the super Coke!" It would be interesting, there is already about a 10,000% profit on soda sold in Fast Food places so upping the syrup would not hurt you too much and it could really increase sales if you advertise and market it right.

Thanks for reading, a review on Boylan Root Beer coming soon.

Henry Weinhard's Vanilla Cream

2010-10-22T20:40:00.000-07:00

Background

I bought a six pack of this locally for only $4.69, a fair price for a glass bottled soda. Very easily available online as well, for example from

here.This is a soda that markets itself as being old fashioned and hand crafted and having the recipe passed down for generations on a scroll that was kept in a vault where the only person who knows the code is the man who tames and owl to caw the morse code and blah blah blah. Basically, it's just a pretty standard soda but they chose to give it a sort of rustic boxing and such. I chose to have this particular soda with a side of 2 slices of bacon pizza from Cottage Inn, what a lovely meal!

Here's one of their little blurbs as read on the bottle. Like I said, "We proudly present", all that jargon. Except there's one major catch!

Yep. High Fructose Corn Syrup.

Now, I wouldn't really have all that much of an issue with HFCS(as it will hereby be referred to) but all over the bottle it touts all this stuff about "natural ingredients" and "hand-crafted". Yeah, hand-crafted with freaking HFCS! So right off the bat I hate the marketing. They are just totally lying about who they are, but let's not let this cloud our judgement and jump right into it!

Review

First off, the bottling really is pretty well done. I know that it's misleading but the art and coloring is really just pretty good overall. It's a twist off, yay! It popped open with a nice little "bop" sound and I took a whiff. Oh man, I'm salivating this stuff smells gorgeous! It's so sweet but yet it still has an interesting flavor, something I don't think I've had very often. I admittedly haven't had very much cream sodas so I was really pretty excited for this one.

On my first sip I immediately just think "wow, this flavor is amazing!" It was definitely not like anything I had had before. It was in the ball park of a regular Faygo cream soda but it definitely had more to it. It had that underlying vanilla flavor carrying it along. I expected it to be as mouth-puckeringly sweet at faygo sodas due to the HFCS but I was pleasantly surprised to find that it was very, very sweet but not overwhelming. The carbonation is so so, I think I would have liked more because I like to feel the bubbles but they are there and they don't make you burpy so whatever.

I take a sip of water to refresh and then I taste again and I just feel the exact same way, what an amazing flavor. But it's not a deep flavor. For example, I have had sodas made with nothing but ginger and other spices and those sodas are like an ocean. You can take as many sips as you want but you'll never get to experience the whole thing because there are so many levels to the flavors. This is just sort of a "party soda" because it has a consistent but really good flavor. I can taste it over and over and it's always the same but it's always good. If anything I would recommend this as a soda for kids because of this quality. It would be a great gift as well because it comes in such an attractive little 6-pack with such nice labeling and bottling so it looks classy but it just tastes so good, nobody will complain. Oh yeah , did I mention the froth?

Beauty.

Seriously, just look at that. It's a solid centimeter of froth just from me drinking normally. That is just so pretty! I've never seen froth like that on anything but a root beer.

Overall thoughts:

This is a great soda being marketed totally incorrectly. The glass bottling and old, stern man on the front doesn't fit it's tasty and playful qualities. This would be so much better suited to come in a plastic bottle with a friendly, bright logo shouting out "Hey! Buy me and have a great time!" Right now the only way I would get this is if I knew that it really was just another fun candy like soda(like you do now!) or as a gift to someone. I really liked the soda itself, marketing basically just failed on this one.

Ingredients: Carbonated Water, High Fructose Corn Syrup, Pure Vanilla Bean Extract, Citric Acid, Sodium Benzoate (Preserves Freshness), Botanical Extracts, Caramel Color, Honey, Natural Flavors.

Sidral Mundet Apple Soda

2010-10-17T16:50:00.000-07:00

Well this is my first review so it might be a bit spongy. Bear with me, criticisms welcome.

Background

Sidral Mundet is an imported soda from Mexico. It is available quite widely in states. I purchased my 2 bottles locally, I believe from a "World Market" store for 89 cents a bottle. Obtaining it online is also not too difficult, you could try here. It has a pretty big following online because of it's somewhat exotic nature. Definitely a large draw to hipsters. I definitely went into this one with a fair bit of skepticism.

Review

Well my first thought was "how the hell and I supposed to get the top of". At first I was twisting and twisting, I actually ended up hurting my hand a little bit but then it turned out it was a pop off. Damning all old fashioned purists, I proceeded to go upstairs and scour for a bottle opener. I actually didn't find one oddly enough, seems like it should be something in every kitchen. I found out my can opener had a handy little thing that let me open it up. It made a nice little pop and I brought it back downstairs.

I gave it a whiff and it had a definite appley smell but it was very subtle. I started to like it right there, I go like a subtle soda. The coloring is quite attractive as well, looks like a deep apple juice but not quite as dark as a cider. Of course, natural sugar in this one. High Fructose Corn Syrup is not something you'll usually find in a glass bottle of soda. Speaking of bottling, this is one of the most attractive bottles I've ever seen. It's just a simple glass bottle with no real paint on it and a label. Simple, classic and wonderful.

I decided to drink it chilled straight from the bottle, no ice. The first taste was an overwhelming "meh". I tasted the apples and I liked it, don't get me wrong but it was like the whole taste was an aftertaste. I actually found myself not taking sips and thinking I was basically just downing it because once the liquid is off the tongue, the flavor almost disappears. It is also absolutely nothing like sparkling apple juice. It is much less powerful than any apple juice I've had or any sparkling apple juice. I would recommend it for a drink with dinner, not as a soda that you have on it's own as a treat.

The carbonation was really really good, not overwhelming not underpowering. Fine bubbles that tickle the mouth and you feel them but they aren't overbearing. This is definitely the one very strong suit of this soda. This let you take multiple sips or take huge mouthfuls without encountering major issues. Taking multiple sips like that where I guess it's more on the side of "chugging" is way, way more satisfying than sipping. Definitely the way I recommend to drink this soda.

There is a slight lip to the top of the bottle that makes it hug nicely to the contours of my lips. This makes the soda wash nicely over my tongue. Really not a huge deal but it's the small things that make you realize when you're having a soda with some thought put into it.

The reason that this doesn't hit as hard could be due to the "natural sugar" versus the Corn Syrup. It really doesn't punch you in the face at all, it just sort of lightly taps you with a nice, sincere apple flavor. I sometimes really like the natural sugar but for this particular soda, I would have liked more sweetness.

Overall it's a pretty decent soda but it's just so, so middle of the road. It's not too flavorful, not too carbonated not too sweet not too anything. It's just sorta there as a side thought. For this reason I don't recommend it as a treat, I would recommend it with a meal to be used to wash down something else. I think it would go very well with any fruit dish or perhaps even with some meat.