Soda Pop - 1421 Reviews

This is a light entry-level ginger beer. Hey, are you new to the world of spicy pop? Try this on for size. It's got a burn but is masked with that earthy, wet dirt ginger flavor that is more prominent in this than any other ginger related drink I've ever had. The flavor is good, though; bold and sweet. I was surprised to see that it wasn't a cane sugar drink as I thought that all Sioux City drinks were as such. That was wrong of me and I will be the first to admit it. The burn doesn't hit you until the drink hits the back of your little throat where it just stings you a bit, like a trick ginger ale.

One thing I will say is that this label design rules pretty hard. Nothing says America like an eagle and this one is coming right at your face. It reminds me of some awful band T-Shirt but on a bottle it's acceptable.

Looks (and preconceived notions) can be deceiving. Thus far, Simpson Spring has output mostly mediocre soda. So when I found this in my box to review I had a feeling it was going to be a very generic root beer. While this isn't the most complex ever, it's far from bland.

The smell threw me off because it didn't smell like run-of-the-mill root beer. It was a familiar smell, but I couldn't put my finger on it. As soon as I took my first sip, it hit me: birch beer. This starts off as a normal root beer, but has a really nice crisp birch beer aftertaste. It's a really good 1-2 combo with a really good bite. Much like the combination of root beer and sarsaparilla, I would have never thought of this pairing but it makes sense. I love it! Now I challenge a company to make a Root Beer-Sarsaparilla-Birch Beer. If there has to be a holy trinity, my vote goes to them!

I love the classic look of this bottle. It has the short and stout shape of a 12 oz bottle, instead of the traditional taller shape. Some may see this label and think it's old and boring, I think it's classic and really fits the taste of this soda. As the label suggests, this has a very rich vanilla flavor and I love it. It's a traditional cream soda taste that really makes my mouth happy.

I just got excited/confused on the last sip I took. I thought I was getting a taste of a campfire and it threw me off. But then I realized it was the smell of a grill outside that wafted through my window and into my nose. Now I'm disappointed and want to find a drink that has a campfire aftertaste.

This is a very average tasting grape soda, run-of-the-mill, if you will. Middle of the road, mediocre, vanilla, acceptable, standard, garden-variety, so-so, conventional, unexceptional, passable, second-rate, unobjectionable, common, decent, ordinary, satisfactory, or humdrum could also be used to describe this.

I think you get the point.

Avery. I once dated a girl that lived on Avery. She was nice. She was Italian, and for some reason, she felt like she had some link to the mob. I don't know if it was true, but it certainly never sat right with me. I just thought that she thought that since she was Italian, it was common knowledge. I hope someone comes to see me tomorrow to break my legs for saying that. I won't deny I said it, but I certainly will have a story to tell.

So this girl, Sarah, we didn't date that long, a few months. I was 16 or 17 at the time so I had no idea what a jerk I was going to turn into. Along came Christmas and I bought her a bracelet. Nothing big. I think I got it at a department store for like $20. It was nice, though, thoughtful, at least. I gave it to her and she broke up with me. Why? That's a fun one. She said that her dad got her mom the same bracelet and that she thinks that she meant too much to me so she broke up with me, right on her cousin's porch.

No I'm not regretting anything. I've done a lot of stuff since then and have had a handful of girlfriends, but what if I gave her this root beer?

"Hey, Sarah. I got you this root beer and wrapped it like you wouldn't know what it was. It's named after the street you live on so you can keep it like some cool souvenir if you want. If you don't want to keep it, I understand. Who wants a sticky old bottle? Plus, it's pretty good root beer. Just the right amount of sweetness and flavor to get you through even the hardest days."

Do you think if I gave her that over ten years ago that we'd be together? Probably not, I suck. Seriously. I can't believe I've been in long-term relationships at all. You know what I can believe? I can believe that this root beer is pretty good and I would choose it over a "regular" root beer any day. Barq's? Mug? Supermarket brand? Nope. Avery's? Yep. Just poppin' my "P"'s.

Wow. I can't believe I was able to find one of these. Although I appreciate the wacky word play, I do think that a majority of people would find it in poor taste. Also, no I'm not a Nazi or racist. It's more of something that I would chuckle at the idea of but never expect to see the real thing. In fact when I was DJing the other night three Neo-Nazis came in, and were quickly chased out with bats. Had I not been playing music at the time I would have been helping my friends throw the trash out.

Seriously though the idea is so ridiculous it's pretty funny. The German eagle chugging a bottle of soda = priceless. In German the label says "From the other side of the wall" and "All Clear." Not as funny as the text on the bottle of Leninade, but still amusing.

The soda itself was fairly mediocre. I don't know if it's just in my head but whenever I drink a pop that is normally a different color the flavor just seems weak to me. This just tastes like a weak natural soda. It had no bite to it whatsoever, but it did still have a cola flavor. Not the best, also not the worst. It's a decent tasting novelty.

All I can think of today is pizza. See, Jay, myself, and Thirsty Dudes editor Dan like (scratch that) love to make exotic pizzas. We roll our own dough. We buy all the ingredients. We bake it. Take a picture of it, eat it, and then lay down for a while because it's typically four inches thick. Pizza we've made include but are not limited to General Tzo, Buffalo Chicken, and Thanksgiving. Tonight I don't know what we should make, but after drinking this Pangleheimers ginger ale, I feel like it has to be accompanied by one wicked pizza.

This pop was excellent and just what I needed on such a drab Tuesday. It was just the right amount of sweet and just the right amount of hot to quench my cravings. Also, to those who don't know what "hot" ginger ale, it's spicy ginger ale, not temperature hot. If that were the case, in theory, everything could potentially be hot but would you want it? Seriously? I doubt it. So, anyhow, this funny named ginger ale was good. I would compare it to Blenheim ginger ale.

I wish they sold this by me, as "the team" had to travel to Canada to get it, but it might be worth the trip. The little, what I think is a, Pomeranian is also an adorable spokesperson, too.

I'm not a big fan of fermented drinks. I have never drunk beer, my tongue hates kombucha, and the few fermented soda's I've had so far haven't been so great. Despite this being fermented, I was actually excited to try it due to the flavor. Sadly, the orange taste is not very prominent. It has a strong ginger taste, but not a spicy ginger. As far as ginger drinks go, this is VERY mild. I suppose that would be good for someone liked the taste of ginger but not the spicy part of it. Not me though, up the spice! Once again I am reminded that fermented drinks and I don't go well together.

When I saw this in the cooler at New Seasons, I thought it was a gift from the soda gods. Two of my favorite sodas, root beer and ginger beer, combined!? But then I realized that it was a diet soda sweetened with stevia. My excitement died down, but I still had to try it. This might be a once in a lifetime opportunity.

It's a lot smoother that I was expecting. It's also very carbonated which surprised me. The root beer taste hits first, and it's a very light root beer. The ginger comes shortly after and sadly wasn't that intense. I was hoping this was going to be sweet with root beer, but with a spicy ginger aftertaste. Sadly this was not the case. As far as diet sodas go, this isn't that bad. I just wish the ginger taste was stronger and the root beer didn't taste watered down.

Welcome back to Canada Week here at Thirsty Dudes. For today's installment we will take a look at some Vintage Soda. There's something about soda in a can that is kind of a turn off. The expectations I had for this were lower than low. I expected a garbage generic soda that was made with cane sugar instead of HFCS. Our neighbors from the north have proved me wrong yet again.

On first sip it tasted like a pretty standard cola. It was better than I expected, but it didn't stand out much. When I went in for another taste there was something else there. I couldn't quite put my finger on it, but something special. Back to the trough I went and is that nutmeg I tasted? Upon inspection of the ingredients yes it was, along with it's friends cinnamon, ginger, and cloves. What's that straggling behind? Oh of course it's maple syrup. There's maple syrup in this pop! Canada you really do live in your stereotypes, and I love you for it. If it were legal for me to marry a country I would have you at the alter before you could pick out a proper dress.

I had expected to drink a couple sips of this, review it and dump the rest. It ended up being one of the best colas I've ever had. If it were in a glass bottle I'm positive it would have gotten a full five-bottle review. I just had to hold back because I know it could be just a tad better when served in the right medium.

For years there has been a secret tryst going on between Mr. Ginger Beer and Ms. Ginger Ale. It was a fiery romance to say the least. Even though they came from similar backgrounds the differences were just too much and it drove them apart. The last time the two tried to work it out they took a trip to Goose Island. They got a nice little bungalow on the beach and had one last spicy weekend romp. Unbeknown to them at the time a miracle occurred. A child was conceived, a child that, once born, brought the world together. It was neither a beer nor ale. It was simply a soda. It got its flavor from its mother's side and a little bit of fiery temper from his father. He was loved the world over and soon rose to the role of leader of the free world. If you turn on your television now you will see him giving a speech that will end all discrimination, unlike my cat who is a racist.

When I was a young man, my family used to go to my grandma and grandpa's house all the time. Sometimes for dinner, but more commonly for no reason other than to just see them. They didn't live that far away, maybe 10 - 15 minutes, so we were there quite frequently. They worked very hard on their back garden and it showed. They had beautiful flowers and an array of vegetables that would make your local supermarket produce-man smile. One thing they grew was rhubarb. I remember being younger eating it all the time. We would get a little dish and put sugar in it and go out to the back garden, grab some stalks of it, and just dip and munch away. The inherit taste of rhubarb is sweet but very bitter. The sugar calmed it down. Think of it as a quasi-healthy Lik-M-Aid.

I really wanted to do this review with my grandma but for the life of me, every time I went to visit I forgot to drink my bottle of it. So last night when I decided that it was finally time to start watching Twin Peaks, I would give it a try. It was very good, too. Very refreshing and very true to just plain ol' rhubarb. I loved this stuff and it was just the right amount of sweet and bitter that it brought me back twenty years with every sip.

I'll see if I can remember to bring the other bottle I think I have downstairs to my grandma and made an edit to this review.

When I found this my heart skipped a beat. I'm a sucker for fall spice flavored beverages. I really expected it to taste like a sibling of the Reeds Spiced Apple Brew. Between my love of that and the stellar performance Maine Root has put forward so far. I thought this was a shoe in for a 4 or 5 bottle review. Not so much.

There are some spices in the mix, but you can't make out the individual flavors. It's just a jumble. It also tastes like cheap generic store bought pumpkin flavored snacks. I wanted it to be super rich, and for it to taste like a chilly autumn night where I am walking home and some crazy homeless man jumps out from behind a car and hits me in a face with a homemade pumpkin pie (he stole it from a window sill a la Yogi Bear). I lost this game.

Children gather 'round the campfire and I shall tell you a story from the before-time. As you know before the apocalypse came people lived in houses and there were things called cities. Gas may have been $4 a gallon (Oh yes we had a thing called money that we exchanged for goods and services. Thievery and bartering weren't very prevalent.), but at least there were gangs of marauders terrorizing the countryside searching for the last drops of gasoline to fill their motorcycles of doom.....of doom!

Anyways, in the great north there was a city called Toronto. That city contained a very special and magical place. At the intersection of the roads Queen and Spadina resided a man wiser than most. He ran a little hot dog cart. It wasn't like the other street meat venders though. He had a vision. A vision of a world filled with condiments. He slowly built up an empire of toppings that overflowed from his cart. Before long he had a sign boasting "Over 50 Toppings." It was because of that sign that he was dubbed "50 Toppings Guy." He even had secret toppings behind his cart for those in the know.

From the years 2000 until 2007 he reined Toronto with a tender hand, dispensing hot dogs and veggie dogs alike to everyone who graced his presence. In 2007 a change was on the rise. This marks the beginning of the great hot dog cart war. Prices were slashed to kill out the competition. The number of condiments dropped, because there wasn't enough money in the till to keep them stocked. It wasn't long before 50 Toppings Guy couldn't hold on any longer. In his muppet-esque voice he agreed to sell the stand to the enemy. Many claim this to be the sign that the end of the world was coming soon. Soon the once mighty stand at that intersection became nothing more than a clone of the other stands around the city.

Many folks kept returning to the spot to buy their hot dogs in homage to the once great owner. It was like visiting a gravesite, where you left flowers. Only instead of leaving flowers they left onions and corn relish scattered across the pavement. There was another casualty in that great war. You see 50 Toppings Guy always stocked the much sought after orange soda C-Plus. When he was overthrown the empty can remained in the display that showed what sodas were available. Unfortunately for the mourners when it was ordered they were always handed a can of Orange Crush. There is nothing wrong with Orange Crush. It's pretty much the standard for "normal" orange sodas. It has that flavor that is said to be orange, but when you think about it, it bears no resemblance to the actually fruit. It's more like the flavor of the color. The problem is that it's a let down when you are expecting a superior soda.

Children the night has grown old and the fire is burning low. Let us retire to our lean-tos and sleep lightly in fear of hearing the motorbikes on the horizon. Before we go let us sing our prayer to 50 Toppings Guy.

Hot dog land.
Hot dog land.
You better put that hot dog in my hand.
We're putting pickles on the dogs.
Even though we just put relish on.
Eat all you can in the hot dog land.

Often times I just want a simple bottle of pop. Nothing fancy. No herbal juice or exotic brewed tea or drink with chunks of shark in it, although if I could find some, I would drink it. That's where this bottle of Bubble Up comes in. It's been a while since I've had a regular lemon lime pop and as far as lemon lime pops go, this is smack dab in the middle. It was nothing special and I don't really know what you could do to improve it. It's right on par with the likes of Sprite, 7Up, and Sierra Mist. Same ingredients, same flavor, and this isn't a sweetener debate because it was so parallel that it doesn't matter.

Hundreds of kids and adults alike probably love Bubble Up. Until my girlfriend got me a bottle, I had never heard of it, so I would assume that it's a Southern delicacy. Well, the South, enjoy your standard, regular copycat of a drink. I've got something with shark in it to dream about.

Barq's is a fairly controversial root beer. I feel the populace either hates it or adores it. I will admit that in a former life as a caffeine junky I was a fiend for the stuff. At the time I thought, "Root beer with caffeine? I believe there is a god!" Yep, the often-mentioned bite in Barq's is caffeine.

It's been a long time since I've had a Barq's and I didn't know if I would ever say hello to this old friend again. When I went out to eat this evening I got a combo meal thing that was cheaper than if I got the items I wanted separately. It also included a drink. There wasn't much to choose from the in the old cooler, so I went for a Barqs. I don't mean to sound like a snob, but I've become accustomed to a fairly high standard of root beer. When I took a sip of this, it had a familiar root beer taste, but it missed the mark of what I remembered it being like. You can tell it has more spices than your run of the mill root beer, but it almost has a cola-esque undertone. Did I mention that it's really syrupy?

I will admit that it's better than I expected it to be, but it's nothing close to great. I think it's happened I think I've finally become a "grown-ass man," and I can leave the syrupy candy sodas in my past.

Grapes rule: plain and simple. They're easy to eat, they're super delicious, and it's such a common fruit. I normally don't like grape juice because it's too rich and heavy. I never thought grape juice represented grapes very well because they are a very light and hydrating fruit.

I love this soda because it tastes like you're eating grapes. Most grape soda's I've had before are heavy and too sweet. This is the most refreshing grape soda I've ever had. Thank you Gamer soda for renewing my interest in grape sodas!

I'm not sure if he introduced me to it, but I've always associated root beer with my dad. Whenever we would go to the store, root beer would always be his go-to soda. While he never ventured outside of the realm of A & W/Dad's/etc..., those early trips to the store made me want to try new root beers as I was pushed off into the world of soda alone.

Hosmer Mountain must be a wonderful place (if it is a real mountain). I imagine it to be a beautiful snow capped mountain much like the one in Immortal's music video for Blashyrkh. On that mountain, you can find bottles of delicious soda, much like this one. The best thing about this wonderful mountain inhabited by a black metal band is that the soda is endless, and always cold.

This root beer is good and simple. If I were reviewing this soda on eBay, it would be like this: "A++++ soda! Very delicious! Fast shipping! Would drink again!"

If someone were to ask me how many different soda's I have tried over my entire life, I don't think I could come up with even a good estimate. Obviously I could count how many I have reviewed here as a start, but those have only been the past year or so of my 29 years of soda drinking.

Among those many, many sodas, I have tried many different fruit flavored sodas: orange, pineapple, strawberry, grape, apple, raspberry, and many more. Up until now, I have never had (or even seen) a banana soda. When a friend mailed me this bottle, I was really excited to try it and waited for the right time to try it.

Upon opening the bottle, it gave off a very strong banana smell. It was a very familiar smell, but I couldn't put my finger on it. After the first sip it hit me: Runts! This tastes EXACTLY like banana Runts. They were always my least favorite part of the fruit mixture candy, but only because they were the hardest to bite into. Sip after sip, this soda still taste like banana Runts. I heard this company makes a bunch of other fruit flavors. Now I'm very excited to find them and hope they are as good as this.

It's apparently Canada day here at Thirsty Dudes. No, no, not the holiday. That's not until the first of July. That would be a long time to "rock your body" as Robin Sparkles may say. I've just reviewed two beverages from the wonderful country of Canada and they were both over the top great.

I first encountered this on tour in Ottawa last year. I got it in a co-op where I also picked up the best samosas I have ever tasted. They were spinach and tofu. I still think about them to this day. This drink perfectly accompanied them. It did not perfectly accompany the burrito I had tonight, but that was because it was fairly spicy and this didn't help cool my mouth down. I don't care. My mouth can deal with the heat. I'm not five years old. What? Do you think I am? I can assure you if I were I would be the fattest five year old ever having drank so many drinks in the past six months. My parents would also be brought up on child abuse charges for the same reasons.

Back to the drink; chai and ginger are two of the best flavors ever. That being said, I would never have imagined mixing the two together. For that fact I am a moron. It's spice heaven in my mouth. It's a mostly chai taste with a great undertone of ginger. There are also orange, lemon and lime juices mixed in to give it a slight fruit kick.

It's very rare that I give a drink a five. It really has to knock my socks off to get that sought after rating. This has gone beyond any expectation I could ever have. I can't press you hard enough to give this a try if you're ever up in Canada and it's in your general vicinity.