Witch's Brew - 3 Reviews

Things I am not into include the newish style of music called Witch House of Witch Hop. It's basically slowed down hip-hop beats with “creepy” keyboards and vocals over them. It's similar to trip hop, which I am a fan of a handful of bands, but the vocals always make it sound like the tape is just playing at the wrong speed. A lot of it reminds me of music that would be in a David Lynch movie, but not as good. I have to say after reading my description, if I hadn't already heard it, I would instantly check it out. The Witch House band I hear about the most is Salem, which is where this drink is from, and more than likely where the style for their name from. Also like a lot of the music this soda is very smooth. It tastes like a nice smooth creamy root beer, except it's birch beer. Normally birch beer has a slight harshness to it, but that is not present at all in this bottle. It has a pretty standard birch beer flavor, but the smoothness is not normal with this flavor. I just wish the music was as good as the soda.

Everyone knows about the Salem Witch Trials. Women were put through horrible ordeals to see if they were witches or not. The sad thing was most of the time the only way they could tell if someone was a witch was if they survived the ordeal. Oops, over a hundred women were tried and executed via drowning, burning and getting crushed with stones. When a tragedy occurs in most towns, the townsfolk usually try to forget about it, and keep things quiet. Salem decided to take things the other way and they have turned the whole ordeal into a money making machine. There are tours, museums, and souvenirs galore. The Salem Wax Museum even sells a variety of their own sodas as well as this iced tea. I do find it a bit odd that the label has a stereotypical Halloween witch on it, instead of a normal looking townsperson like the people who were tried. That's a little insensitive, but of well. It's a decent lemon iced tea. It's pretty sweet, but in the good way. The lemon flavor also wasn't too over powering. I was shocked to see that it was sweetened with HFCS and not cane sugar, as it wasn't very thick. I enjoyed this a great deal and if I'm ever back in that area of Massachusetts I'll make sure to pick up some more.

First, let's get this right out of the way. Jay and I cannot drink this without thinking of this Homestar Runner cartoon.

Now, 'tis the reviewing hour. Much south of the eerie midnight that would be the appropriate time to drink pop from a company called "Witch's Brew" from Salem, Massachusetts. I feel like I should be listening to the band "Salem" and watching Bram Stoker's "Dracula" and doing something like sharpening stakes and/or doing something with garlic not related to making pasta. I wonder what Italian food vampires can eat. Do they touch that topic in the Twilight series? See, these are the questions that people have. They don't care if they can love. They care if they can use toothpicks which are really tiny wooden stakes.

In broad daylight, a time that vampires hate but witches probably don't mind, I am drinking this pop with my coworkers. Some like it. Some don't. Do you know what that means? That means that some people simply are riding along with Jay's bandwagon of not liking black cherry. Simply put, this pop is just another black cherry pop. It's not bad but it's nothing exceptional. I don't know if I've ever had an exceptional black cherry pop. I don't know if one exists. It would be nice if one did because I'm bored with this monotonous other stuff. You'd think witches could put something in there, like the ever popular "eye of newt" or perhaps something as simple as cinnamon to spice this up. Eh, witches have plenty of other things up their giant sleeves. Pop is probably pretty far down on their list, well below trying not to get burned at the stake and finding pointy hats.