Oogave Esteban’s Rootbeer

alright, so i suppose a consequence of having reviews actually publish a year or so after i write them, especially in the fast paced root beer world is that occasionally a soda formula is changed or the soda is no longer made or whatever by the time it appears online. right after the original review was posted and tweeted, Oogave emailed me and told me they had changed their recipe and design and all and i should review the new one as the old version i had just posted a review of was no longer made. so they send some over and here i am reviewing it.
i must say it is indeed better. it is sweeter and not harsh at all now. i would even say it is a light beverage. plus there is a little bit of creaminess to it now. it is not insanely flavorful but that is ok and actually works well here. i would compare it to when you are used to something like Lipton instant iced tea powder mix and you make sun tea one day and realize what iced can taste like. i see too that they are now certified organic so that is also a good thing! it is also vegan and gluten free if that matter to you. of the more natural root beers, this is up there. and the agave sweetening kicks it up a little more. there are not a lot of root beers that lay into the “refreshing” category, not too heavy and syrupy but this is right there. much improved from the old recipe!

Anthony’s Rating: 83
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Tower Root Beer

so here is the fully sugared version of their drink! again i very much like the graphic design, well done. actually i think it works a little better on this color scheme than it did on the diet’s lighter version. i find interesting that the ingredients vary so much between the two though actually. where the diet had “natural artisan water” this one has “pure carbonated water.” there is less random stuff in this one too, no citric acid or phosphoric acid. good good. that stuff just makes me more scared of diet drinks anyway.
so on with the show, right? how is this stuff? was grandpappy’s recipe worth re-introducing to the 21st century? i’d say “yes.” it is quite good. not my ideal soda but solid nonetheless. it remind me of Kay Koola root beer actually although that may just be the somewhat similar color scheme clouding my mind. although now that i investigate a little, they are both bottled by Empire, although with different recipes. interesting indeed though. anyway, it has a rich, herbal taste that develops on your palette over time. it is definitely a soda that should be taken in slowly so that taste can be appreciated. if you guzzle it, you miss out on all of that. it starts with a slightly bitter, sharp taste than slowly fades into a sweeter, more herbal taste. creamy and rich this is not. but that might be an advantage in making a float with it. i may have to try that! so anyway, Boston, you have a solid, new/old soda, check it out.

Anthony’s Rating: 91
User’s Rating: 95
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Wild Bill’s Rocky Mountain Root Beer

the second offering from this company is very similar in style to the first. which is a fine and expected thing, company continuity in look and feel is good. just the color scheme of the flavor name changes slightly. here we have a maroon background and text and junk instead of the green stuff on the sarsaparilla bottle. good good.
you know what, this soda is actually very good. a touch watery and that keeps it from being in the upper echelon, but it is yummy in any case. it is sweet and slightly tart at once, hitting you with the herbal side of things. but not a hard hit with a big mallet used in circus strength testing, bell ringing con schemes, but instead a nerf hammer that my toddler daughter would wield against the forces of evil headed by the evil purple plastic star she seems to have decided was her enemy and cannot be in her bathtub with her. i want that side to come out a little bit more, which is why i said that ‘watery’ comment above. i feel i may be nitpicking, it is tasty and you should try it. i merely want it to be a touch more intense in the flavor department. the sweetness is quite high so if you don’t like a sweet drink, this is not for you. but me, i do like a sweet drink so it is A-OK in my book. and on my website. as you can see since you are on it right now. my website, not my book. the book is proverbial, theoretical if you will. there is no actual book.
as the company seems to be based very close to me, i will have to see if i can go there and get another case. especially since i told my wife it was ok to drink the last of the birch beer, thinking i had more of it when i in fact did not. no worries, i will get more.

Anthony’s Rating: 91
User’s Rating: 94
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Tower Diet Root Beer

I am going to try something different this time. i will review the diet version of the soda before the regular, full-on sugar one. why? i don’t know, i took it out of the fridge first, but it seemed like an interesting experiment.
so a reader wrote in to tell me about Tower. i had never heard of it, probably because they had shut down operations for 30 years, until just recently. it is a pretty good story actually which you can read all about on their website. the basic tale is they got started in 1914, making different sodas and tonics but soon concentrated on just root beer. they survived the Great Depression pretty well and continued until 1978 when they shut down. the grandson of the founder discovered the original recipe and started it all back up again around 2008. very good. they also created this diet version of their soda.
on the whole, i like the label design a lot, good color choices, old tyme fonts and images and the like. i guess i would have made some of the fonts a little bigger or bolder if it was me though.
i emailed the company to see if i could mail order some and they offered to just send it to me! very kind people over there at Tower! but of course that will not sway my reviewing at all.
you know what? for a diet soda this is not too bad. weird. maybe there is something to my experiment of trying it first. i doubt it though. perhaps because this is so fresh?
the flavor is nothing outstanding i suppose, pretty standard, expected rootbeer-ness with the aftertaste and kick of aspartame. sadly though i am also getting the weird stomach ache i get with aspartame too. oh well. it does taste like root beer though, which is more than i can say for a lot of the diet root beers out in the world. yet, in the grand scheme of sodas, it does not taste so good. that metal taste drags it down. perhaps i am tilting at windmills here but i want my diet soda to taste good as well as be non-caloric and not ruin my liver or kidneys or some other internal or external organ. i feel like that is not too much to ask. thus i must judge this compared to the full spectrum of sodas in my wheelhouse and there it does not stand out. among diets, sure, it is in the top few. especially ones that don’t cheat and actually have sugar and junk in them as well as artificial sweeteners.

Anthony’s Rating: 59
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Foodtown Old Fashioned Birch Beer

this was a pleasant surprise. well maybe i should not say that until i taste it, but i mean the finding of it was a pleasant surprise. i was trying to track down a bottle of the Old Fashioned Root Beer to complete a trade with someone and came upon this one, which i had not seen before. actually they had pretty much every flavor except root beer. alas. i will have to keep looking. although by the time this post publishes, in 6+ months from when i am writing it, i will hopefully have found some more anyway. digression complete, resume loosely tied together ramble.
i still do not know if this is actually a different product than their canned and plastic bottled soda, but for the sake of padding my number of reviews, i will assume it is. i do love the old style labels. i feel like i recall when that logo and style was the norm in use by Foodtown stores but i could just be making that up in my head, as i do with many things in life. i think it replaces the actual things that happened so at least i have some memories in there.
in general i like clear or white birch beers a lot. the usual wintergreen taste is an interesting and highly enjoyable thing. but this one is just not up to snuff. it is alright but mostly just tastes like slightly flavored, slightly carbonated sugar water. i don’t get a real sense of much flavor. a hint of the wintergreen i speak of is there but not too much of it. it is quite sweet though which is fine, not too much. the carbonation is pretty low but i feel like the bubbles are a smaller variety as they seem more sharp but i have no idea if smaller bubbles would cause a sharp mouth feel, it just makes sense to me.
so i am kind of disappointed in this in the end. it is ok but not so worth seeking out. there are lots of better birch beers in the Foodtown territory and Foodtown may even stock them, so not too much point in getting this one.

Anthony’s Rating: 62
User’s Rating: 0
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bigger photos

so i have had a few requests for me to put up bigger photos of the bottles and cans. i did implement it but i have to go back and find the original images in order to make them good quality for older and even current reviews.
so right now, reviews that will publish next May and after are all set! =) you will be able to click the small image and get the big one.
i will see what kind of time i get to do this image creation so it may take some time. i also am not sure i even have a lot of the original photos anymore. a lot of the first couple years were actual, physical photographs and i doubt i will go scan those even if i knew where they were. it is time consuming to crop and adjust each bottle. i also have to watermark the images so all of those rotten root beer bottle image thieves will be thwarted as they should be! we shall see.
any other desired features, let me know.

Wild Bill’s Six Shooter Sarsaparilla

now this company i have been hearing about for years. they mainly go to fairs and festivals and events in the general area of me and have a big stagecoach sort of deal with a bunch of sodas dispensed out of barrel looking things. you can buy a stainless steel mug from them and keep getting refills all day or whatever. seems like a very fun thing to me. i would occasionally remember to check their website to see the schedule and mostly i had just missed an even within 10 or 20 miles of me and i would be annoyed a little. especially since there were no upcoming events nearby. but then one day i checked and they had started to bottle their sodas! whoa, nice! as i wanted a sort of strange assortment of flavors i emailed to ask if i could just pick what i wanted and they were nice enough to agree! more hooray! this is the first of the four offerings from them that fall within my self defined wheelhouse. i like the labels, sort of like an old west style announcement or whatever with rough edges and actual holes where the fake bullet holes are. a very nice touch.
honestly i am a bit disappointed in this drink. the flavor is tasty eventually though, which is kind of wacky to me. it starts off with a sharp, somewhat bitter taste which slowly fades into a more rich and sweet flavor that is enjoyable. i don’t know, i just expected something really tasty. it is pretty good though. as it warms up it actually tastes better, perhaps the cold was what was making it so sharp and harsh. the sweetness level is good, relatively high. it has a bit more of an herbal taste than the stereotypical root beer, which is good. it falls in the stereotypical sarsaparilla realm and there is not much wrong with that. i am less disappointed now, but it does not blow me away exactly.

Anthony’s Rating: 81
User’s Rating: 75
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