Dry Malali Watermelon

I can't say I've ever had a watermelon flavored soda in my life. The sodas from Dry seem to be in a perpetual re-branding since the labels seem to change so often. You can see my first post on Dry Juniper soda here, and my second on Dry Blood Orange here. 

Their watermelon smells exactly like cutting into a ripe watermelon. This bottle has ample carbonation. Like the other flavors of Dry, their flavor profiles are light. Its almost remiss to call it a soda as its closer to a seltzer water. However, there's a touch of aftertaste to this which reminds me of tonic water. Tonic water is a bit bitter due to quinine. It isn't a bad soda, but true to the original intent of Dry it seems better suited as mixer or use as a cooking ingredient.

Havana Banana

Havana Banana is one of the flavors from a lineup of dictator/political foe themed sodas created by Rocket Fizz. Rocket Fizz is a niche candy and soda shop with franchise locations around the country. They have a range of current, vintage and off the wall sodas. 

This soda has a pungent banana extract scent. The smell immediately reminded me of the banana in the Runts fruit flavored hard candies. It has a very strong flavor too. It's almost like banana chips and artificial banana flavor together. There's very little carbonation. But, let's face it, this isn't made for taste. This is a member of a special line up created for novelty purposes.

Mountain Dew Green Label

Mountain Dew has experimented with a wide range of flavors over the years, some to an extent that it boggles me how you can call it Mountain Dew if it has nothing in common since so many people associate Mountain Dew with a specific flavor profile. Green Label has been used in two different methods by Mountain Dew. In 2007 the "green label" products were a line of limited edition aluminum bottles with artwork by many artists in the motif of the "eXtreme" sports crowd they were courting in their promotions and sponsorships in those days. In 2017 however, it isn't clear if their new Green Label drink has anything to do with that marketing or if it is an off shoot of it, since Green Apple Kiwi doesn't strike me as being in the same line up as some of their "extreme" flavors like "voltage", "code red", "live wire" and "supernova". One curiosity of Mountain Dew's market spread is that of both the action sports crowd as well as video gamers who are by and large inert.

For more on the history of Mountain Dew in general, see my earlier post here. I was expecting a satisfying "pffffsshhhhh" release of carbonation when I opened the can and got none at all, making me wonder if this was even carbonated. In tasting it, I can confirm it has carbonation. It is much more apple flavored than kiwi. It's a tart apple like that of the peel of a ripe granny smith apple. The kiwi is tasted in its aftertaste. The flavor combination is not something I'm wild about and reminds me more of some of the energy drinks on the market, which is probably fitting given Mountain Dew's target market. 

Rocky Mountain Soda Company Pike's Peak Prickly Pear

Rocky Mountain Soda Company was opened in 2009 by Chris Koons, Rory Donovan, and Drew Fulton to make unique sodas/mixers for their distillery. They also now own Oogave sodas. Rocky Mountain Soda Co. makes small batch non-GMO, gluten free, kosher, and vegan sodas. 

Prickly Pear is made with beet sugar and it had a really nice fruit aroma that is mostly pear but with a hint of citrus. The carbonation is thin. The fruit flavor of the drink is short lived. It tastes very pear-like but the flavor disappears quickly. I like eating pears and drinking squeezed pear nectar but this soda is so light I was hoping for more. I feel like it's closer to sugar water. I think this particular offering from them would be better as a drink mixer than as a straight soda.

Fanta Grape

I've reviewed several flavors of Fanta. You can read more about the history of Fanta on the first Fanta post here. 

The smell of grape Fanta always makes me think of the smell of Dimetapp cough syrup. It's lightly carbonated and very sugary. I don't drink a lot of grape sodas but they usually make me think of childhood or the filling of a grape jelly filled doughnut.

Bawls Ginger

This is the second flavor of Bawls to be featured on the blog. Follow the link here for the previous review on their root beer. Bawls is popular among gamers and programmers for its high levels of caffeine, one of the reasons I've only ever found it at computer equipment stores. 

While it has the typical aroma of a ginger ale, the taste is a bit unique. It has a touch more ginger spiciness than ginger ale, but much less than a ginger beer. What makes it interesting is a botanical punch of after taste that sort of drifts up the back of your mouth into you sinuses that makes you think you're smelling it rather than drinking it. It's not unpleasant but not exactly the flavor of ginger ale I grew up with. If you let it drift over the taste buds at the side of your tongue it presents and almost bubblegum-like flavor. It does pack plenty of carbonation which gives it a great tingle and aids in that botanical scent I mentioned before.

Polly's Pop Cream Soda

Polly's Pop from Independence, Missouri is back on shelves but isn't a new name. Started in 1923 by Louis and Dorthea Compton, they sold 10 flavors. Louis was reportedly a friend of Harry Truman, an Independence native. Louis Compton ran the company until he retired in 1948 and his in-laws, Vernon and Vic Givan, continued on until the company shuttered in 1967.

Local lawyer, Ken McClain and his wife Cindy, resurrected the brand in August of 2016 in Independence. Since at least one report I read stated Mr. McClain used several chefs to create the flavors, 6 of which were for sale when they began, its probably safe to say the recipes aren't original and its more of a nostalgic label. In any case, they reportedly purchased their bottling equipment from Fitz's. Fitz's bottling company, another story, was based out of St. Louis. But some time around the late 1990's to 2000 they had another location in Kansas City's Union Station, which later closed. I remember visiting Fitz's in Union Station at that time to watch the bottling through the windows. 

There isn't a lot of carbonation but the scent is very strong from this soda. They use cane sugar in the current incarnation of Polly's. The flavor is like that of a rich vanilla ice cream so I definitely give them points for this recipe, but I don't have any way to compare to the original recipe. It's smooth and will make a great dessert beverage after a meal or at the end of a warm summer day.

Mountain Dew Dew.S.A

Mountain Dew has several flavor offerings these days. This is a new release I discovered which combines their red, white and blue flavors called Code Red, White Out and Voltage into a single flavor. For more on the history of Mountain Dew, take a look here.

It has a berry scent to it. The color is a brighter purple with a back light than the picture here suggests. There's a sharp mixed-berry flavor when it hits your tongue but the flavor dissipates over the back of the tongue. I think the mixed-berry taste is dominated by raspberry, which makes for an unusual distraction from main stream soda flavors.

7 Up

In 1920, Charles L. Grigg left Vess to create his own soda company, Howdy, which is also based in St. Louis. Howdy's original offering was Howdy Orange Drink, later Howdy Orange Soda. It took a reported 11 years to complete his formulation for a lemon-lime flavored soda that was originally called Lithiated Lemon-Lime. Lithiated referred to the chemical lithium citrate, a pharmacological mood altering drug. Before you jump out of your skin at that thought remember that many early sodas were first developed as health tonics by pharmacists and there were others using lithiated citrate at the time as well. Lithiated citrate was removed from the recipe in 1948.

The name was later changed to 7 Up Lithiated Soda and then changed again to just 7 Up. The name 7 Up was arose along with early advertising, which called it "7 natural flavors blended into a drink with a real wallop." 7 Up eventually became the star of the Howdy Corporation so the entire company became the Seven-Up Company.

In a strange act of diversification, Westinghouse purchased the company in 1969 and then sold it to Philip Morris, the tobacco company, in 1978. Hicks & Haas bought 7 Up in 1986 which later led to merging with Dr Pepper and then with Schweppes.

Although the recipe is different from the original, they currently use high-fructose corn syrup, which somewhat contradicts their claims of being 100% natural depending on your stance of what "natural" means. Among their advertising successes are the "Fresh Up, the "Un-cola" and Spot. I think if most people were asked what the "Un-cola" they'd say it was 7 Up. That tagline actually came out in the 60's but must have become popular again during the cola wars providing people with an easy alternative. For people in my age group, I think we can all remember Spot advertising in the early 90's. Spot as a cartoon character took on the role of company mascot in advertising and appeared on merchandise, there was even a Nintendo NES video game featuring Spot.

In terms of taste, I'm not sure I need to describe to most people what 7 Up tastes like. It's got a pleasant lemon-lime scent and middling carbonation. In terms of carbonation levels in the two most popular lemon-lime sodas I will still give Sprite the edge. I personally feel 7 Up has a more lime-like aftertaste. Overall, it isn't a soda I drink that often but can still enjoy. Although I generally pair lighter flavored sodas with light meals... I can also say that this can pair well with something like barbeque sauced dishes because of the palate cleansing aspect it can have.

Swamp Pop Noble Cane Cola

I like finding small producers like this and learning about their story. In Lafayette, Lousiana, around 2012, John Petersen, already the owner of a retail store, and his cousin, Collin Cormier, owner of a food truck named "Viva la Waffle" decided to start creating sugar cane cola. Lousiana has long history of sugar cane farming and with the sales of colas at Collin's food truck they jumped into the game. The name of the soda is a bit of a play on words taken from a musical sub-genre in the region called Swamp Pop dating back to the 1950's in the Acadiana region. The genre is a mixture of rhythm and blues, country and french music styles. When Swamp Pop was born they experimented in making their own flavor profiles but later turned to commercial flavor chemists. Their line includes flavors of a kind of regional nature such as praline cream and a strawberry soda named after the town of Ponchatoula's annual strawberry festival. 

Starting with the bottle, I'd have to say I really enjoy the aesthetic of their labels. The familiar scent of kola nut and maybe cinnamon. It feels slightly viscous when tasting it and almost creamy thick. Some of that no doubt stems from the smoothness you find from using sugar cane. The flavor is quite unique for a cola. I expected something cheap tasting with just a pretty label, but this is surprisingly good. I give this a strong recommendation and look forwarded to finding their other flavors.