ug, this is the most disgusting thing i have ever smelled or tasted. i was hoping it would be at least reasonably tasty as i hear a lot of how great kombucha is for you. but if this is what it tastes like, i am astounded that anyone would consume this, for any reason at all. if you are unfamiliar with kombucha, it is basically a fermented tea with yeast and bacteria and enzymes and junk. i would say it tastes kind of like that sounds. a rotten, basically disgusting mess. wow, people really drink this? i just can’t believe how horrible this tastes. it is like someone threw up vinegar and seltzer and you decided to bottle that. i took two sips and that was one too many. perhaps even two too many. holy slugs and snails! we have a new low ladies and gentlemen!
Ingredients:organic kombucha tea* and sarsaparilla root along with an extract of the following organic herbs: licorice root, star anise, yellowdock root, burdock root, wild cherry bark, dandelion root, vanilla bean and wintergreen.
*kombucha is a culture fermented in a base of purified water, organic tea and organic cane sugar

Anthony’s Rating: 1
User’s Rating: 55
# of ratings:3
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ok, so it is leap day so i figured it was a good time to throw in a bonus review post. and also a Wednesday which is the day that reviews a new soda. Eric’s site is probably the 2nd oldest root beer reviewing site out there. he did take a long hiatus but he is back stronger than ever before (nope, he did not, i just thought he did!). coincidentally today’s post there is the first from him (i think) of a soda from a trade he and i did recently. this soda was a surprise throw in on that trade we did. he was very vague about just what he had sent me but said it was a new one to me. i was a bit skeptical since he may not know what i have queued up and all. when it arrived though i knew he was right.
this came in a Stewarts bottle, rebranded with Eric’s high quality labeling which uses recycled receipts apparently, very green! my label is from a purchase of postage! it has ‘Eric’s Seal of Disapproval’ along with the claims of ‘Limited Edition,’ ‘Caffeine Free!,’ ‘The Original,’ and ‘No Anthrax.’ the soda is pretty much the color of the Stewart’s Key Lime soda so i am a bit curious if he just sent me a bottle of that. i quite enjoy that flavor actually but i have not had it in years. yeah, it does taste like that. not so much root beer at all. thus as a root beer this is crappy but as a drink it is yummy. there is only so far you can push the flavor and still claim it is root beer and Eric has pushed it too far in my estimation! i think he just wants to expand the popular conception of “root beer” to include fruity drinks so that he has more stuff to review. limiting oneself to just gourmet root beers has become too stifling for him! he refuses to change site names or focus but if that focus is expanded by societal changes then oh well, guess he just HAS to review key lime sodas too… so the moral here is that key lime is the new root beer, at least according to Eric.
it is a conundrum though how to rate this. as i said above, i enjoy it, but it is not root beer, so i will put it right in the middle. it is tasty, sweet, without a trace of roots but plenty of limey tasting goodness.
update- after talking to Eric himself, it was revealed that this is indeed a bottle of Stewart’s Key Lime soda! wow, my taste buds amaze me sometimes! i had made a comment on his site about if someone took a bottle of lime soda and labelled it as root beer, how i would rate it highly if it was still a good soda. i suppose i should stick with that assertion but i am still on the fence so i will stick with my thoughts from when i wrote this up to start with.
Ingredients:carbonated water, sugar, totally legit root beer extract

Anthony’s Rating: 50
User’s Rating: 1
# of ratings:1
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Jon is probably the only person i know who has more root beers than me. we have made a couple of trades in the past but as time goes on, it gets harder for each of us to find more sodas that the other has not had. if something new comes out, often we both get it. but we worked out another trade here and that is a good thing. a very good thing! Nine new sodas for me! hoorah!

this one is tricky. it comes in a Sprecher bottle, is made by Sprecher, but sold by Cherry Republic. i supposed i should probably file it under “Cherry Republic” instead of “Sprecher” but i decided not to.
i was pretty excited for this. afterall, besides root beer and the like, cherry soda is probably my favorite soda. i have considered starting a sister site to review cherry sodas even. i think ginger brews would be interesting too actually but they don’t vary quite as much as root beers or cherry sodas. anyway… so cherry and root beer together? hhhmmm, that could work. but does it? before i answer that, i will digress.
the label has a drawing of a bear picking cherries from the roots of a cherry tree. that is kind of clever and cute. more so since their normal cherry soda has the same bear picking cherries from the top of a cherry tree. they also make a cherry cola but that does not seem to have a witty illustration on its label. alas. the rest of the label has a background to make it look like wood. fine, whatever.
ok, so the taste? eh, it is ok. not really root beer tasting which is a bit surprising, being made by Sprecher and all. although there are no ingredients that would indicate it should have any root beer taste anyway. the cherry taste is definitely there, but not overpowering. it is a sweet, dark cherry taste with a little tart edge to it. hefty, not light and refreshing or anything. as a drink it is just ok. as a root beer, it disappoints. there is a little something beyond the cherry taste, a hint of something more, which could be the root beer aspect. it isn’t bad, it just isn’t awesome which i think it could have been.
Ingredients:carbonated water, high fructose corn syrup, cherry juice concentrate, natural and artificial cherry flavor, citric acid, and sodium benzoate (preservative)

Anthony’s Rating: 76
User’s Rating: 52
# of ratings:1
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i have pondered whether i should open up my reviews to include dandelion & burdocks also. i feel like they fit into the “sodas made from roots” niche that i am filling here. yet, they are more plant roots and not tree roots as root beers, birch beers and sarsaparillas are. i don’t want to expand to ginger beers (although i do love them, that is a whole other world). from my understanding, dandelion & burdocks are kind of like english root beers. i am not sure how many there really are out there so this may be the only one i ever drink.
Fentimans seems to make a line of fancy sodas and they have recently begun trying to expand into the US. i think i have seen some of the other flavors around, but never this one so i had to mailorder it. that is sort of annoying as it cost like $6 in the end. alas, the cost of doing business i suppose. so Fentimans makes this beverage by brewing and they mention that a lot on the label. a fine idea i suppose, but does it work out?
I am not sure what i expected when i drank this, but it is not what i got. recently i saw that another soda review site had reviewed this and raved about it so maybe my expectations were high. i can taste the pear juice a little bit, the ginger & anise not at all and i am assuming the dandelion and/or burdock stuff tastes like bubblegum as that is overwhelmingly what this tastes like. i like bubblegum i must admit but i am not loving this so much. it is interesting and a novelty but i would never buy it again. i can’t say i have had many other sodas like this. Girlan Pink Birch actually was similar but Fentimans is not as syrupy and pulls it off better. it is tastier than must diet drinks, which is not saying a lot really. oh well.
Ingredients:water, carbonated water, sugar, pear juice concentrate, glucose syrup, ginger, dandelion & burdock flavor, dandelion strong infusion, burdock strong infusion, aniseed flavor

Anthony’s Rating: 42
User’s Rating: 80
# of ratings:15
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I have a very fun wife. she fully supports my root beer love. often that involves getting one of the sodas on the left side of the fridge (the right side is the ‘for review’ only side), opening it up, taking a swig and shaking her head with her eyes closed, saying “bleh!” although she does indeed quite like some root beers and loves a good white birch, she doesn’t drink much soda but sometimes wants just a hit. it is very cute and fun. i am then given a cold, open bottle with a gulp missing. as i don’t really drink a lot of soda myself outside of for reviewing, it kind of gets me to drink more of it.
she also gets me super fun presents like this, root beer jelly! and one other recent present which i will write up soon too but will leave as surprise for now.

so root beer jelly… at first i was a little taken aback i will admit. what do you do with root beer jelly? on toast seems a little weird. just on bread might be good. peanut butter? a pb & rbj? hhhmmm, yeah i can see that. fluff actually came to mind as a very yummy option, but i’d have to get some vegan fluff somewhere and that is not always so easy. but hopefully i can do that and try that option. by itself this is actually good. better than i expected. it is very sweet and has a traditional, expected root beer flavor, in a good way. i expected the subtle flavor of a gummy root beer bottle but this is very much root beer flavored. i am not sure what they used to achieve that, root beer extract or perhaps some root beer reduction or something but it worked out pretty well.
with peanut butter it works too. i tried creamy since chunky seemed wrong somehow. root beer should not have a crunchy aspect. well, maybe if it is a candy or something… but yeah, it works, the flavors play off each other well. would i want to drink a peanut root beer soda? hhhmm, i doubt it. peanut drinks seem a little scary. it might be good though.
there seem to be several root beer jellies out there so i will have to see if i can get a brand name or something attached to this one. i don’t see it available on etsy right now so perhaps it is an occasional thing for this vendor.
i will try to get some fluf and report back. for now, i will think about other uses.
thanks wifey!
Anthony’s Rating: 81
User’s Rating: 0
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oh wait, one more. the odd one of the bunch! honestly i am kind of scared of this. when i saw it on the website, i was excited, it is different, interesting. i love blueberries, i love birch beer, why not?! then i thought, i love ice cream and ketchup and THAT combo just did not work out so well. i also failed to notice the color of this drink until just now when i took it out of the fridge. as it is in a dark brown bottle, everything looks pretty dark brown in it. but no, it is bright bright blue, much like the tuxedo i wore to my senior prom, which sadly i have no link to show you. in way i like that but i also am scared for my tongue and my innards being stained after this. not that anyone will see my innards anytime soon i don’t think. but who knows? it is like your mom telling you to always put on clean underwear in case you get in an accident. always keep your innards unstained in case you get gutted for some reason.
after tasting this a few times i actually am not sure how i feel about it. it definitely reminds me of something but i am quite hesitant to tell you what it is as i have found that people either love the stuff or hate it and may have bad associations with this product. i know my amazing wife hates it so it would bias her to tell her that this tastes like what i am thinking of. oh well, whatever, it is my function to tell you these things. personally i love the taste of Pepto Bismol which is what i have been alluding to for the past several sentences here. so yeah, a less creamy, less thick, carbonated version of pepto. now if that appeals to you, go get some of this. if not, you can give it a shot anyway. for those of you who do not know what the taste is, i will go into more detail. it is, i suppose, what i would imagine blueberry birch beer to be like, take the minty wintergreen of birch beer, add in a fruity taste that is more of a blue raspberry than a blueberry taste to me and you about have this down. it is alright. more of a very occasional drink than something i will crave often or much at all. i find it difficult to believe that there is no artificial color in this… i am guessing they put the same ingredient list on all of their sodas and just skipped that element on those that have it. perhaps the “natural and/or artificial flavors” are really bright blue? yeah, must be.
Ingredients:triple filtered carbonated water, pure cane sugar, natural and/or artificial flavors, caramel color, citric acid, sodium benzoate (preserves freshness)

Anthony’s Rating: 66
User’s Rating: 85
# of ratings:4
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my friend Rob Base got some of these for me several years ago for my birthday or some such holiday. i tried em at the time and was amused by them but did not think to review them. then i just never saw them in stores myself when i did decide i should do so, they are a form of a root beer beverage after all. finally i was ordering some soda from popsoda.com for my dad and dad-in-law and noticed they sold them so i threw in a box for myself. in the intervening decade or so, they had redesigned the packaging, as is to be expected in that time. i think before it was not even in a box.
the concept is kinda of interesting. it is a tablet, you get eight in a box, which, must like Alka Seltzer, when plop plopped in water causes it to fizz fizz. strangely though it does not fizz nearly as much as Alka Seltzer or Airborne even. once it is all dissolved, there is no carbonation remaining. by the time i had entered all of the ingredients (did you check that crazy list out?! scary!!) it had fully dissolved and just sat there in my carefully measured 6 oz of water.
it tastes like a watery, ok diet root beer. i wish they had made this fully sugared but i suppose sugar takes up more room than weird sweet non caloric chemicals so that may not have worked in a dissolving tablet. sugar also is harder to dissolve in cold water. so it tastes funny, gives you that aftertaste. i shall use less water next time, maybe that will resolve the watery issue. it should. it does vaguely taste like root beer and is not awful besides the artificial sweetener thing happening.
i suppose if you are backpacking or going to jail or doing something else where you absolutely have to have something that tastes sort of like root beer but you have very limited space or need to smuggle it in or whatever, this may be for you. or it may entertain small children who don’t care too much how stuff taste as long as it is presented in an entertaining fashion or environment (ie Chucky Cheese).
Ingredients:citric acid, sorbitol, sodium bicarbonate, natural and artificial flavors, potassium bicarbonate, sodium carbonate, sodium benzoate, polythylene glycol, acesulfame potassium, sucralose, FD&C yellow #5 lake, FD&C yello #6 lake, FD&C red #40 lake, FD&C Blue #1 lake, docusate sodium

Anthony’s Rating: 35
User’s Rating: 5
# of ratings:1
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alright, so this has been in the freezer for quite a while now, awaiting review. actually the freezer has a few frozen root beer treats in it. i don’t really feel like these things deserve the usual wait of actual soda reviews so i will just post them up at random times i think.
the basic concept here is that they are ice pops flavored like soda, there are 4 flavors i believe. granted, i used to make these a ton when i was a kid with our ice pop molds. so they were not quite the same. that was fun though, i should bust those things out again, i think i got some new ones at Ikea a couple years ago! this is decent, it tastes like A&W, frozen. i guess a little more sweet if anything. if you don’t know what A&W tastes like, well shame on you. go get some and come back, i will wait. ok, so while those people are gone, i will go on anyway. yeah, i did not actually feel like waiting. it does not stack up to drinking a real soda of course, but it will do in a pinch. if that pinch involves planning ahead enough to have these in the freezer for a day or so and not have any soda in the fridge. which is a weird pinch to be in.
the fact that the flavor is less than 2% of the actual content is somewhat weird to me, but i suppose it does not take much to flavor something. i guess i would hope it would take less than 2% corn syrup to sweeten it too, but no such luck. perhaps it is only 3% corn syrup so they could not put that into the final section.
Ingredients:WATER, HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP, CONTAINS LESS THAN 2% OF THE FOLLOWING: NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL FLAVORS, CITRIC ACID, CARAMEL COLOR, SODIUM BENZOATE AND POTASSIUM SORBATE (PRESERVATIVES).

Anthony’s Rating: 35
User’s Rating: 39
# of ratings:4
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i don’t really know if this qualifies as a sub-genre of root beer, but as i am the determiner of such things on this site, i will declare that it does! i suspect then that i should get some more of Foxon Park’s ‘Iron Brew’ to review also. although i forget if the taste of that one could even be stretched to be included. after tasting this one i am even less apt to put it up, but whatever, it is my site so include it i will, it is no more different than Birchola i think.
as a kid, i used to combine all sorts of stuff together to eat or drink. i loved grape jelly, lettuce and american cheese sandwiches. dunking cucumbers in orange juice was a delight. now this right here tastes to me like something i would have made. take 5 parts orange soda, add one part red cream soda, one part ginger ale and one part root beer and i think you’d get something very similar. it is quite fruity and sweet and tasty. other reviews i have checked out seem to say it tastes like fruity Dr Pepper but i don’t taste that at all here.
i rather like this, a slightly creamy, semi-herbal orange soda. interesting. now i see why the Cubans love it. or at least the can claims as much. “since 1917″ and all of that. but it is not a root beer really or all that related so in comparison it does suffer some.
for some reason i feel like this would be very tasty with some popcorn. i have no idea why really, although it may be since i used to throw popcorn kernels into my orange soda as a wee lad or something.
Ingredients:carbonated water, fructose, carmel color, citric acid, natural and artificial flavors

Anthony’s Rating: 75
User’s Rating: 77
# of ratings:14
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i have been hearing about this drink since it came out a year or so ago. people wrote in about it at first, something new! i have seen it in stores but did not bother buying it until now. the biggest reason i finally got it was because i found out Barq’s Floatz had been discontinued without me ever having tried it. i figured this too may not be long for this earth so i may as well get on it as soon as i can. i have low expectations here though. mainly because as much as i believe a root beer float drink is an interesting idea, it has never worked well in reality as far as i have found. and this does not either.
first off, they are wise to use the full bottle label, it disguises the vile color of the drink. although it is what one would expect, a cloudy dark beige color, it is still not appealing in any way.
second, i find it kind of suspect that on the website they say the shelf life is 6 months yet there is no way to know the age of your bottle unless you call the local bottler to interpret the bottling codes printed on the bottom. there is also no mention of this pretty sort shelf life on the product itself. granted, it IS a sort of dairy product so even 6 months seems a long time to have anything with milk in it to remain good, which then makes me suspicious of the chemicals in here that allow that to happen.
on the whole this taste alright, at least at first, after about 10 seconds it becomes sort of vile. but at first it is decent, kind of like if you poured some cream in your flat root beer, very creamy, very rich, but also strange. it taste vaguely like root beer, a very sweet version but the flavor is there. i feel like i would enjoy root beer flavored milk but maybe not since it might taste like this. but at least i would get more protein and calcium (1g and 4% respectively) that way. and there is an insane amount of sugar in here! about 50% more than normal root beers.
i will say that this is the best of the 3 or 4 other root beer float sodas i have had, which is saying very little i guess since they were awful.
Ingredients:filtered carbonated water, sugar, skim milk and 2% or less of each of the following: cream, pectin, natural & artificial flavors, phosphoric acid, carmel color, propylene glycol alginate, acacia gum, nitrous oxide (creates foam)

Anthony’s Rating: 31
User’s Rating: 24
# of ratings:38
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