Fiz - 5 Reviews

Sometimes Fiz hits the mark and sometimes it doesn't. If this soda were thrown at a dart board it would have stuck in someone around the outer edge, not gaining you any points. Hey, at least it didn't put holes in the wall though.

This is simply boring. The orange flavor takes a back seat to a generic sugar soda flavor. If the percentage of orange flavoring was increased maybe this would have been decent. As it is I would more than likely politely decline if someone offered me a bottle. Yes, even if it were being served with hot dogs.

What exactly does the year 1922 have to do with ginger ale? A quick google search came up with nothing but a couple of ads that came out that year. Wikipedia tells me that ginger ale existed in a marketable form for decades before that. Perhaps, since this is a sugary beverage, they chose 1922 to celebrate the first successful insulin treatment of diabetes. Okay I dug deeper and it turns out that 1922 was the year that College Club Beverages (the company that makes Fiz) opened its soda streams. That makes more sense. Since I couldn't find any info, I'm guessing that ginger ale was one of, if not the first flavor they produced.

This is a nice little soda. It's sweet, but not in the “this is 99% sugar water and 1% flavor” way. It tastes like a fairly standard modern ginger ale. You don't actually taste the earthiness of the root, or the spice, but there is no mistaking that it's ginger ale.

Mike and I have been big supporters of College Club Soda. They are a small soda company that is located in Rochester, NY, which is about an hour away from us. They have been very kind to us in the past, including let us run the machines and bottle some pop ourselves. Surprise we didn't kill ourselves or blow up the factory. When they “upped” their game with Fiz and started using cane sugar, excitement was abound on our end. The birch beer and root beer were great, and I had the highest hopes for the cola. I thought I had nothing to fear, until I cracked this bottle open and I was face to face with what is possibly the weakest cola I have ever tasted. It just tasted like a good cola was watered down. I thought that perhaps the batch was off, but a friend confirmed that they had tried it before and that's just how it is. It's disappointing, but hopefully they will tinker with their recipe and all will be well in Western NY's soda world.

Roc City (Rochester) makes this and it's good stuff. Cane sugar and a decent root beer. I don't mean "decent" as in it just passes satisfactory, it's good. I drank the whole thing. No sharzies and I share everything. This was all mine and I drank the whole thing. No. I do not want a medal for drinking a whole bottle of pop like everyone else. I'm just illustrating the point that it was so good that I didn't give any to the drain.

It did taste like root beer and did not linger too long. It was a pretty good model of what a root beer should taste like. I bet those Roc City tough guys are pretty proud of themselves for making a very fine root beer.

When you go into a small local beverage store and see a soda called “Buffalo Birch Beer,” and you are me, the first thing you think is “How the hell is there a new soda company in Buffalo and I didn't know about it? I'm a consummate professional and I should really be up on these things!” a quick label then informs you that it's actually from Rochester, NY (a little over an hour away) and that it's made by College Club, a company you are very familiar with. That is twice that I was duped today. I was also told that Boss Hogg from Dukes of Hazzard was from Buffalo as well, which broke my brain. I then found out that he's actually from Olean which is even further than Rochester. I guess the lesson here is that Buffalo is great and everyone wants to pretend that they are a part of it in some way.

I have nothing bad to say about College Club. They make delicious soda that is ridiculously cheap. Their normal line comes in reusable glass bottles and cost about 35 cents each. You just can't beat it for a family gathering, especially with their selection. It appears that Fiz is their venture into cane sugar sweetened sodas that come in normal glass bottles. This does taste similar to their other birch beer. It's dark and rich, the cane sugar makes this way better though. It's obviously less syrupy and the wintergreen really seems to shine a lot more. This is great. I wish it really were from Buffalo, but Rochester isn't that far, and I'm glad to see that things are going well for College Club. They have always treated Thirsty Dudes well and it's nice to see them expanding.