anthony's root beer barrel » random junk

in memorium…

anthony — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 20:21:03 +0000

the online root beer reviewing world is a pretty small place. i found that when i was contacted for my ‘Modern Marvels’ appearance a couple years ago, the producer and i both ran through the list of who else was out there. i have never physically met any one of these people in the meat space, but i feel almost like i know them in a way. i have traded emails if not sodas with almost all of them, especially the ones who have been around a few years.
just now i found out that we lost one last year. Luke Cole was killed in a car accident abroad in June of 2009. i always liked his site and found it very humorous that we both loved root beer and gigantic roadside characters. he always had root beers on his site that i had never heard of and will probably never have. his press releases of the best root beers of the year each year around 2002-2005 did make me a bit flustered, who was this guy to have a press release about root beer?! what qualifies him to decide this junk?! after 2006 or so he did not seem to update his site although i checked in every couple months or so to see, hoping he would have found more new sodas for me to then acquire somehow.
it is a shame that i really knew nothing of all of the great things he did outside of the root beer world. he was a lawyer, working for environmental justice, founder of the Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment, and he seemed like an amazing person.
nope, i never knew you Luke, but i shall miss you.

one tweet root beer

anthony — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 23:33:39 +0000

i am not sure if anyone cares, but if you do, you can follow me on Twitter. i have been tweeting more about current root beer activities lately even. although it is almost meaningless, what i review today won’t be published until the end of october, 2010! but you can look back and remember fondly the day i actually reviewed it when it does finally appear. =)

save your ratings!

anthony — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 11:15:36 +0000

indeed, a new feature on the site is pretty much up now! you can now save your ratings and get a list of your sodas with your ratings! you need to register and log in of course. when you are on a review, you will see your previous rating (well, from this point forward) which you can change or else a notice that you have not rated that brew. also on the right sidebar should be a link to see all of your ratings, in alphabetical order. i have to clean that up and format it better.
so check it out and start your root beer list going!

thanks for the suggestion from Andy! if you have any ideas for improvement, let me know, it may happen.

policies and re-reviews

anthony — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 01:54:30 +0000

so i started this site over 13 years ago now. at the time there were a couple of other review sites out there, all of which have disappeared. at this point my site has been up longer than some reviewers have been alive probably.
in that time, many sodas have come and gone. some others have changed their recipe or just their sweetener or whatever. most have changed their labels. i also have become more wordy. i consider this a good thing, it entertains me more to write and probably you to read when more info is given in a more enjoyable manner. although this is strange as the early years of all of this i was actually writing a lot more other junk in general so one would think i would write more here too. but i digress…
through the years too my tastes have changed. i actually enjoy Virgil’s now! i still hate all of the vile Journey drinks though so don’t fret too much. nonetheless i let my original review stand, it was what i thought and felt at that moment of that time of my life. agree or disagree, it stands. now, when a company changes their recipe, that makes it a harder call… i will probably from here on out, do a full on new review, even for just a sweetener change, just to keep stuff more current. people will not care as much what the old recipe was like as they do about the current one.

i will probably also go back and add to my reviews when i encounter a drink again for which i was too short. not taking away what i wrote initially but adding to it. i definitely will not be mail ordering sodas all over again, that is way too costly, but if i get a bottle i may as well talk about it. if a company wants to send me a bottle, i would be happy to take another drink of it. so if you see a review expand, don’t be alarmed. if i do totally change my mind about something, i will add that as an update, to let you know.

wedding root beer!

anthony — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 00:39:39 +0000

so my wife and i had our big wedding ceremony / reception a couple weeks ago. of course me being me and my wife being the awesome, we had to have a custom root beer. or at least a custom labelled root beer. as the event was in Philadelphia, i wanted to get a Pennsylvania brew. Hank’s would have been fine, but the embossed bottles would make it a pain to relabel them. Olde Philadelphia is not actually that good. so i contacted the Appalachian Brewing Company to see if i could get a few cases of their brew, since it is amazing and also since it is from PA.
now, i expected them to maybe say they would ship it to me and i would have to pay crazy prices, or else that i could try to contact their distributor to find out where i could go buy some at a store closest to me. but no, they offered to meet me at a location of my choosing with however much i wanted to get! i figured it was fair to suggest someplace in the middle of our 2 locations so after a bit of back and forth about a good place to execute the transaction, we settled on a Cracker Barrel in PA. Plus it was my lucky week as they were just about to bottle more root beer so they could do a run without labels for me! and it would be superfresh too! hooray, this rocks!
a couple weeks before the wedding i drove out there, got some candy at Cracker Barrel and found their guy in the parking lot. he was amazingly kind and even threw in an extra case of soda and a keychain! if i drank actual beer i would have gotten a case of that too i think! craziness! plus they charged a crazy low price. woo hoo!
i went home, designed some labels, tried em out, decided the top labels are pretty much impossible to put on perfectly. which is unfortunate as i like that part. nonetheless we went with having just the bottom part which is still fun.
we put a bottle in all of the hotel welcome bags and had 7 or so cases at the bars for servin’ up cold. it was a big hit as i expected it to be, many people approached me about where i got it and how they could get more. it is a mighty fine soda and a great bunch of people brewing it.
so huge thanks to Appalachian Brewing Co. if you are ever in the area of any of their establishments, i recommend stopping in. although i have never been to one, if the rest of their employees are as great as Brian and who ever created their root beer then they must be excellent places.

free root beer float!

anthony — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 13:31:59 +0000

yes, today (6/19/2009) only, A&W Restaurants are giving out free small root beer floats from 2 pm to 8 pm in honor of their 90th anniversary. so find your closest location and get one. then put on a hat and get another one. then try the fake moustache trick or maybe the blonde wig you have been hiding behind the cheese doodles and Bigg Mixx cereal.

dvd with me

anthony — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 18:32:58 +0000

oh wow, i keep on forgetting!! so a while back i was filmed for an episode of the History Channel’s Modern Marvels show about soft drinks. they had little idea when it would air or anything so i kept waiting for it to be on, telling my friends and family whenever i heard an approximate air date. first it was fall 2008, then early 2009, then maybe spring 2009. but apparently it aired already. in January or so. no one seems sure just when that happened. weird indeed. so i have yet to see it as they also have no idea when it will be re-aired. but you can buy a dvd of it here if you so desire.
i will have a copy eventually but i am tempted to buy it myself just so i can see it at last. if anyone out there has seen it, let me know, i am curious how it came out and how the 2 hours or so of footage got editted down. maybe i get 2 minutes or something, who knows… not me, that is what i am saying.
i will try to put some screen caps up when i do get it.
i also owe you guys a recording of that radio show i did too! ug, so much to do, so little time, so much time i waste.

Weeping Radish Root Beer

anthony — Tue, 05 May 2009 13:20:40 +0000

Type:	Root Beer	Comes In:	1 pint glass bottle
Available:	NC, online	Obtained in:	mailorder from company
Head:	Small	Sweetener:	sugar
Caffeine:	No
Website:	http://www.weepingradish.com/

i had wanted to get some of this for quite a while, one day i was clicking on my own links and wanted list and so on and noticed that they offered mail order. i immediately placed that order! even if it turned out to cost around $3 a bottle. oh well. their bottle is actually a 1 Pint, 0.9 Fl Oz size. which i would think would translate to some exact size as that seems silly to me. but perhaps it is more common in the beer world where Weeping Radish are more present. i am too lazy to add a new size catagory to my database so i will just list it as 1 pint. hope that is ok with you all. if not, oh well, tough cheeses.
now this here is a 100% natural soda so i have to keep it refrigerated as there are no preservatives. i don’t think any of the other all natural sodas can make that claim. or would want to as it very much would limit their distribution i would imagine. it also fills up my root beer fridge with this giant bottles. alas.
wow, this is a really good soda! perhaps since it is from root beer extract it is exactly what a root beer should taste like, to me. i think i would like it to be a little bit sweeter but it is still very solid and one of the best i have ever had. there is a very strong licorice taste here so if that is not up your alley, steer clear. that gives it a hearty kick and sets your mouth a-buzzin’. i am not sure how i feel about the fact that they use extract. i suppose it depends where that comes from. if they make it themselves then i am very much for it. but if they buy some commercial product which anyone can get, then i am somewhat opposed as i could just do that myself. i will go with the assumption that they make it and treat that ingredient as the mysterious “natural flavors” which appears on pretty much all sodas now in existence.
this would make an interesting float i would say. the sharp taste would work well with the creamy sweet ice cream. i may have to try that soon.

Ingredients:

root beer extract, pure sugar % 100% pure h2o

Anthony’s Rating: 97
User’s Rating: 68
# of ratings:4
Log in to save your ratings and personal root beer list!

plan thwarted..

anthony — Mon, 04 May 2009 16:30:49 +0000

so the 400th review is the next one to post. i had big plans to finally, at long last get some 1919 Root Beer that everyone and their redheaded half step sister’s aunt’s cousin keeps writing in to tell me about. but i just never ordered it. and now the time when it should have posted is passed and the normally scheduled reviews will post. which is fine i suppose but i missed an update there. nonetheless, one of my favorite new sodas will have its review appear tomorrow. perhaps it is even better than 1919? i don’t know, i still have not had the stuff. i will order it eventually though. maybe in time to be review number 500! although finding 100 more sodas could be a huge challenge. we shall see. at least i know i will. you on the other hand may never visit here again. i hope you do. ok, please do.
and recycle your empties.

update frequency

anthony — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 13:20:43 +0000

so being as there are a limited amount of sodas out there in the world for me to review, i know i will run out one day. also since i just had a daughter, i am trying to plan ahead and get reviews done and schedules when i can. thus i am trying to be more regular in my update frequency. i had it at one every 10 days but that seemed a little too often and i would run out too soon so i made it every 2 weeks. but then i got about 20 new sodas. so i am currently splitting the difference and making it every 12 days. now, this still puts the end of the reviews of just what i have on hand sometime around the end of 2009. and i imagine i will get a few new sodas in the next year or so. but who knows how many? it is also strange that stuff i just got won’t see the light of the internet tubes for so long. i am not quite sure what i should do about this, go back to more frequent updates and potentially run out sooner? leave it as is and hedge my bets? i suppose that is more in line with my personality in general. i save easter candy often until the next easter so that i will have it and be ready. i imagine i have chocolate from last christmas in my candy jar right now. i could just post em as i write em, which is pretty much what i used to do, sometimes there would be a couple in a day, sometimes nothing for a couple few months. i know i would like a website to update with regularity which is why i switched to scheduling them.
i am not sure what anyone can tell me here though. i think i am just afraid that there will come a time in the not too distant future where i have nothing new to review for months on end.