Gingerbread Soda

This bottle is another product of Orca Beverages. Anyone interested in finding some strange flavors of soda will be familiar with their name. This is second gingerbread flavored soda to be featured here. I sampled a different brand last year for Christmas. 

The aroma coming from this bottle is very creamy. It smells like fresh icing for a cinnamon roll, very pleasant and sweet. The taste itself has a tinge of cinnamon and ginger... which is what one should expect from a gingerbread flavor. However there is a heavy cream flavor. It's a very sugary sweet drink as well, almost syrup-like. While Buddy the Elf would probably love this, I find it almost too sweet. I can't image not being sick to my stomach unless I sipped it slowly over several hours... that kind of sweet. While an interesting novelty beverage, I'd love to see someone do this right with a good blend of ginger and cinnamon. But happy holidays and thanks for the effort.

Excel Orange Pineapple

Excel Bottling was featured in one of my earliest posts, back in 2010, when I discusses Ski. They've been bottling sodas since 1936, but also started making beer. I used to visit Excel once a month or so when I lived out in St. Louis. It made for a nice drive through the country to a small town, called Breese. I liked that they still operated on returnable bottles with the locals, although they've moved to throw-away bottles in order to distribute farther and keep costs down.

It has a light pineapple scent with light carbonation. They use cane sugar, which I usually prefer since it offers a rounder sweetness to the taste. Despite the neon glow it's a nice refreshing beverage. The flavors are not overpowering and it's not too sugary. Don't ignore bottles like these because the decals aren't as flashy because you could be missing out on a good drink. And if you're ever near Breese, I always recommend a stop in to see their operation.

Fungal Fruit

The second of Avery's "SODAsgusting" series to appear here, the first being "Dog Drool." This series of drinks made by Avery was inspired by kids, so the names should not surprise you. 

Fungal Fruit smells a bit like pink lemonade, but its actually a mixture of lime and passion fruit as the label would indicate. The flavor doesn't really do anything for me. There are more refreshing fruit flavored sodas and the sweetness is a little too much for me. I think finishing a bottle of this would make me ill.

Leninade

What was once hard to get, slowly spread around and now you can find Leninade at numerous places that stock large selections of sodas. This soda is another Real Soda creation. Real Soda isn't an old company but they carved out a niche for themselves recreating old soda brands that had previously been discontinued. In addition they have created many of their own labels, Leninade being one of them. While the title is an obvious play on words, they went a bit over board with pun-filled slogans on the bottle. It's as if they came up with so many ideas for slogans that they just decided to use them all, but maybe that's part of their appeal. Maybe someday their website won't still look as though it was created in 1993.

I enjoy the nice pink lemonade aroma it has. The carbonation is light, but it should be for a lemonade variant of any kind. The flavor is that of a pink lemonade with a hint of grapefruit, however the flavor is a bit weak. I was expecting something stronger when a bottle says, "Get hammered & sickled," but I guess it's just another pun. It's not a spectacular drink, but more of an "it'll do" that's covered with little chuckles.

Reading Draft Black Cherry

Reading Draft began in 1921, this was just after national prohibition on alcohol began in the United States. Reading lies in the southeast corner of Pennsylvania, a little more than an hour's drive from Philadelphia. The company produces several flavors, but they say they have the "Pennsylvania Dutch taste." I'm not exactly sure what that means or how it can taste Pennsylvania Dutch no matter what the flavor of the soda is. Supposedly they utilize a slower technique to carbonation. Aside from their soda production they also sell beer and wine making supplies, but do not make any themselves.

It smells deliciously deep. It is well carbonated, but doesn't tingle at the tongue. The cherry flavor is very well balanced. It's not overpowering. This is a good dessert soda, it has nice staying power on the tongue. I think what balances it so well is there is a touch of saltiness at the finish which keeps it balanced and as I've mentioned before, cane sugar has a more rounded flavor than high fructose corn sugar. Overall this is a nice drink.

Barr's Originals Dandelion & Burdock

Barr's Originals is a lineup of old fashioned recipes from the A.G. Barr company. Although a large company today, it was started by Robert Barr in 1875. The company began in Falkirk, Scotland, a town a little north and halfway between Glasgow and Edinburgh. They soon grew to have a position in Glasgow as well. Barr's started selling Irn-Bru in 1901 and is still a Scotland original available in the UK. In 1959, the Glasgow and Falkirk divisions merged. In 2012 there were plans for the company to merge with Britvic, but those plans later fell through.

This is only the second dandelion and burdock soda I've found and the last one I had was long enough ago that I don't really recall the taste. For those who haven't read my previous post about this flavor... yes, dandelion as in the weed. Burdock is a type of thistle. Dandelion and burdock is one of the oldest flavors of soda so just getting to taste it should be considered a bit of a rite of passage. 

The smell is light and airy with a tiny bit of anise. The carbonation is moderate, but the flavor is like that of a chicory. The tongue has a different concentration of taste receptors in different areas, so I sometimes taste a soda by holding it in my mouth in different areas. With the front of my tongue I taste virtually nothing. The front of the tongue is strongly associated with sweetness. When I move the liquid to the the back of my mouth the areas associated with bitterness and sour come alive. The odd root-like taste of this makes the mouth water though. I personally don't care for the flavor, but I do recommend that fans of soda at least try it.

Fentimans Cherry Tree Cola

Fentimans has been featured on my blog many times as I work my way through their catalog. Read more about their history in one of my earliest posts here.

This bottle has a delicious ginger aroma when I pop the cap off. If I closed my eyes I would think I was in a Christmas shop. The flavor is less cherry than potpourri in a bottle. The flavor isn't amazing, but the scents sure are. The drink looks positively flat until it's tipped, but has just enough carbonation to make it alluring. Thankfully, they've balanced the ginger to keep it from overpowering the rest of the herbs and not to burn like a ginger beer. Again, I think the best think about it may be the smell. I'd like to get some more of this around the holidays. Definitely try a bottle of this for yourself if you can. 

Ginseng UP Cola

While this isn't the only soda infused with ginseng extract, they have been around a little while and have several flavors to choose from. Ginseng UP began in 1981, in Worcester, Massachusetts, and focuses on imbuing its products with the "healthful" benefits of ginseng and all natural ingredients, with little sugar.

While the bottle looks nice... I wish the cap was a crown top instead of a screw top since those don't make it into my collection. It has cinnamon-like notes to it's cola scent. It could use more carbonation but the taste of kola nut is a bit over powered by the flavor of tea. I'm not a tea drinker, but I've found that when cola is mixed with it, it's not terrible. In my opinion however, caffeine-free cola partly defeats the point of cola. It's a decent drink but nothing I'm going to go crazy about. 

1776 Beverage Co. Raspberry Birch Beer

1776 Beverage Co. is a product from the spice and sauce company Heartbreaking Dawns. The company hasn't been around very long and is run by married couple, the McLaughlin's. The couple shared sauces created with their locally grown ingredients with friends and family and later local events. Heartbreaking Dawns was founded in 2009 and is located in Midland Park, New Jersey. The 1776 Beverage Co. was an offshoot that came out of that company producing it's first sodas in 2011. 

The soda has a rich amber color with a mild birch beer scent. The smell of raspberry is lingering in the background, but you really have to search for it. However, the flavor is all about the raspberry. It is a mild raspberry though, not tart or as strong as biting into a fresh berry. Raspberry flavoring in sodas is pretty rare so it makes for a very interesting taste. Amazingly, this sugar cane sweetened soda is surprisingly low cal. The entire bottle is marked at just 130 calories. The taste isn't mind blowing, but simply because of the uniqueness of it, I recommend giving it a try if you find a bottle.

India Uva

India is a generic brand equivalent from Puerto Rico. While there is little on the company website regarding soda brewing and bottling, this particular bottle was manufactured by Compañía Cervecera de Puerto Rico, best known for it's beer and Malta India.

It smells of Dimetap cough syrup. It's also rather flat, but that may owe more to its age since plastic bottles are permeable to gasses. Other than that it's an typical grape drink, with nothing remarkable about it. You could probably mix soda water with one of those cheap grape drinks in the little grenade like packaging kids have in the summer and get something similar.

Idris Fiery Ginger Beer

While the name Idris still appears on the label, Idris is only a subsidiary these days. In 1873, in a part of London called Camden Town, Thomas Howell Williams began bottling mineral and carbonated water. The tale goes that Thomas was so enamored with the Idris mountains of Wales that he changed his name. They added flavored drinks to their line in 1880. Idris was producing a ginger beer as early as 1922 as well as ginger ale and a drink by the name of Koolime. Today, Idris falls under the Britvic company, one of England's largest beverage producers. Britvic acquired Idris in 1987. Like many other beverage company's Britvic grew substantially during the 1980's through the 2000's by simply buying out several other company's. 

My regular readers know that I'm no fan of ginger beer, which is why I usually put off trying new ones. I haven't ever seen this in a bottle, but a can will do for this experiment. The aroma is more like a liniment lotion or topical antibiotic than a food or beverage. The flavor isn't hot, spicy or "fiery" at all in my own opinion. If you wait long enough between sips, it does bring a warming sensation to the tongue. But it tastes more like a medicine. I don't find this pleasing at all. It is neither tasteful or quenching. You might as well drink a glass of chilled Bactine. 

Spring Grove Soda Pop Lemon Sour

Spring Grove is a small town of a little more than 1300 people in the far Southeast corner of Minnesota near the Iowa and Wisconsin borders. As with many sodas this story begins with a pharmacist who came up with their own concoction to start bottling. You can read more of my early blogs about how the soda industry evolved heavily out of the pharmacy industry intended as health elixirs. The pharmacist in this case was G.G. Ristey.

While the recipes are said to have remained largely untouched over time a quick scan of the label shows both can sugar as well as high fructose corn syrup. High fructose corn syrup was not introduced until the late 1950's and wasn't widely used in foods and drinks in the U.S. until the mid 1970's. There is also artificial flavor and coloring added. So the recipe you're getting isn't an old fashioned, traditional brew. However I still appreciate small production, local products. Traditionally the distribution of Spring Grove Soda has been an area about 100 miles from the town of Spring Grove. In recent years though, they've gained distributors able to sell their sodas in many states. The next time I'm in the area I will try to find some of their other flavors.

Opening the bottle releases a fresh scent of icy lemon. It is immediately reminds me of Ski, a soda I've featured here before. The carbonation isn't heavy, though visible through the glass. The liquid itself has a pucker inducing tartness to it. The tartness isn't a thirst quencher... but 30 seconds after washing through your mouth it begins to water. It's a nice change of pace and is like drinking an Italian lemon ice dessert. While I generally refrain from mentioning alcohol on this site I feel this would be a good mixer. I've mixed some vodka for a taste and it does work well as a mixer. The tartness rounds off with the vodka added. Either way you wish to try it, it's a nice little soda I could find myself drinking during the summer months.

Manzanita Sol Apple

While visiting my brother in Phoenix, I came upon this soda at a gas station. This is an example of why I always look through all of the refrigerators when I stop at gas stations when I travel. Manzanita Sol is an apple flavored soda bottled by Pepsi. I'm sure it began in a board room since I can't really find any sort of history on this beverage. And while that means it doesn't have the soul of some of the old family brewed sodas... it still tastes good. 

The bottle carries a very crisp apple aroma and has a rich amber color. The carbonation is extremely light, though I don't think it subtracts anything from this particular drink. It tastes very much like an apple cider you'd expect to find in the Mid-West during any given autumn but without the small amount of apple pulp left behind. It's flavor is refreshing and that light touch of carbonation gives a snap to the tongue. It literally makes my mouth water. I give this a high recommendation. It would go well as both a non-meal accompanying thirst quencher as well as a nice dessert drink.

Jarritos Mexican Cola

As the first Jarritos soda to appear on this blog, you may already be a little familiar with it since you can find it in many U.S. supermarkets among the Mexican foods. The name Jarritos, means "little jugs" and was so named because the water, flavored with fruit, popular in colonial times was served in clay jugs. Jarritos was founded by Don Francisco Hill, a chemist by trade, in 1950, in Mexico City. 

Strangely, the first flavor they came out with was a coffee flavored soda. Yes, there are other coffee sodas out there, but this seems like an odd choice for the first product of a new company. So Don Francisco created a process of extracting juice from the Tamarind. For those not acquainted with it, the Tamarind is a tree native to Africa that spread to other countries with similar climates because the ugly pods it produces as fruit were used in cuisine and medicine. Again, not my first choice for a new beverage but Jarritos, armed with its new extraction process started bottling a tamarind flavored soda. They were smart to subsequently also release a list of several more traditional fruit flavored sodas as well. In 1988 Jarritos began exporting to the U.S. Today they produce around eleven flavors.

Other than being a product of Mexico, I don't know that there is any real difference between this "Mexican Cola" than any other cola. It smells very refreshing though. Interestingly it's cola flavored but it has a sweetness to it like that of candy. It reminds me of those little candies shaped like soda bottles with cola flavoring. It's sweet and nice, a nice break from many of the colas I'm accustomed to. Although I can imagine drinking too much of it might get sickeningly sweet. I would definitely classify this as a dessert drink, ideal for a light treat after a cookout.

Inca Kola

Jose Robinson Lindley, an Englishman who immigrated to Peru, began a bottling company in Lima, Peru in 1911. Although they already bottled several flavors of soda, in 1935, Jose created Inca Kola. The primary ingredient is lemon verbena, a perennial shrub, who's leaves smell of lemon. The company grew steadily and within a decade Inca Kola became a defacto national beverage. Through the 1970's it was the country's most popular soda by market share. In the mid-90's a resurgence occurred due to several fast food chains dropping Coca-Cola for Inca Kola. But due to poor finances the company fell into debt and entered into a merger with Coca-Cola. The result was Coca-Cola owning the brand everywhere outside of Peru, but also owning a part of it within Peru.

Despite its name and color, it smells just like Big Red. This particular bottle must be a bit old as it seems totally flat. It also actually tastes quite a lot like Big Red. It's got that bubble-gum-cream flavor but there is the faintest hint of lemon in the finish. I seriously doubt with the modern, corporate ownership it still includes the herbs used to flavor the original. I was told that some need time to take to the flavor of this, but growing up around people who drank Big Red this doesn't seem strange at all to me. However I was never that big of a fan. If you do like Big Red, then you will like this.

Tropical Banana

Today's drink is Tropical. This drink is from Honduras, where's it's a popular drink, and comes in two flavors: banana and grape. I haven't been able to uncover much on it's history, though it is produced by Cervecería Hondureña, which is primarily a beer brewery.

The bottles look nice with the soft curves of the twisted glass, even the lip of the bottle is softly curved. The banana scent is very strong. I could smell it immediately when the cap came off and smells very sweet like banana flavored candy. Banana flavored sodas may be popular with some, but it's no reason they aren't big time like grape and orange. To me banana soda just tastes weird, maybe because you're mind doesn't expect such a flavor from a liquid. Not much to say here really because it's not something I would drink regularly. A few swigs is interesting though. It's just to strange and strong for my particular taste.

Jones Soda Green Apple

Another flavor in a line from Jones Soda. My initial post on their Strawberry-Lime details their history if you're interested. 

I'll continue to keep tasting the Jones lineup both because I'm curious about some of their flavors and because they are little hit or miss. I have found both good and bad from these guys, but their gimmicky packaging never really did much for me. This green beverage smells like a Granny Smith apple. It does have a crisp apple taste, albeit with a strong acidic bite. Despite the off-putting color it sort of grows on you. It's an interesting try in the small world of apple flavored sodas.You might want to give this one a comparison for yourself. 

Henry Weinhard's Orange Cream

Here's a brand with an interesting and extensive history. While I don't generally discuss alcoholic beverages there is a complicated intertwining of beer and soda brewing because so much of the equipment and processes cross-over as well as the period in US history, called prohibition, which forced much of this cross-over. 

Henry Weinhard was a German man who immigrated to the US in 1856 and opened a hotel/bar in Portland, Oregon. By 1862, he had built his own brewery to produce his own suds. He eventually also purchased additional hotel/bars and business was well enough that Henry offered to pipe beer through a public fountain in the city of Portland. The city politely declined worried about rowdy horses drinking from it, though I think they should have been more worried about the city's residents. Without a fountain to plumb beer through, Henry gave his employees free beer. There are stories of Henry declining large buy outs of his brewery and saving banks from collapse as well, but you can read those stories of hero worship somewhere else. 

Henry died in 1904 and his family took over the company. It was during prohibition, 1920-1933, that the brewery started making sodas. This was common among many beer breweries during the era because they already had the equipment, bottles and distribution needed to do so. Although it was a strong family run company, and later after a merger with a local competitor, a regional one... the brewery was sold to Pabst in 1979. Pabst, in turn, sold to Stroh's in 1996. In 1999, Stroh's handed the brewery over to Miller, and so the building was shuttered and moved the operation to their plant in Tumwater, Washington. The production of the sodas continues out of Ft. Worth, Texas.

The orange cream soda itself smells wonderful, like an orange cream ice pop. My first taste of this was good, as good as the smell made it seem. It really does taste good when it first hits your tongue. My issue with it would be the finish, that is as it passes the tongue when you swallow, it looses the creaminess and ends up with more of an artificial taste you'd expect from a lab. So it's an alright soda, but I think it's label over reaches what you want from something called gourmet.

Route 66 Lime Soda

Today's selection comes from Route 66 Sodas. I've previously mentioned them when tasting their root beer on this entry. This time I'll be drinking their lime soda.

I can smell the tartness from this nuclear green bottle. The color no doubt owes itself to the yellow #5 coloring, the same used in Mountain Dew. It's got a lime flavor that is light. Based on the unnatural color I was expecting a heavy handed dose of lime. However, at the finish there is a slight taste more like disinfectant. It's still not all that bad and tastes a bit like a lime ice cream. It's an okay soda, but not something I would tell someone to jump at if they saw it.

Canada Dry Cranberry Ginger Ale

Oddly I just realized I hadn't yet made a post about Canada Dry's ginger ale. Canada Dry is one of the better ginger ale makers in my opinion. I was really excited when I found this in the grocery store again this season. I discovered it last year when they must have been trying to get rid of some stock left over from the holidays and I only found a single bottle. The label wasn't clear if it was seasonal or not but sadly that turned out to be the case. When I saw mass quantities in stock just before Thanksgiving I bought up a bunch of the stuff. 

Canada Dry, like many other soda brands, began with a pharmacist who made soda water. This time the pharmacist was John McLaughlin, in Toronto, Canada in 1890. It took him some time, but in 1904 he began selling Canada Dry Pale Dry Ginger Ale. The drink became a hit in the states after he shipped to New York City in 1919, leading to a production plant there as well. The drink's popularity spread rapidly, sparked in part by prohibition laws in the U.S., which led to its use as a mixer to help cover the taste of poorly made hooch. Like many other soda makers, the company went through a series of sales and consolidations. Today it is part of the Dr Pepper Snapple Group based in Texas. 

The aroma of this particular flavor is just heavenly. The cranberry flavoring is just right, not overpowering like some mixed berry drinks. You can still taste the ginger out of it and the carbonation plays in the mouth perfectly. I cannot say enough about how much I love this seasonal soda and wish I could find it year round, though that may take something out of the anticipation of getting it. I highly recommend buying some if you have the chance. It's also ideal for holiday parties and currently only seen in 2-liter bottles.