Sans Natural Diet Root Beer

so i saw the review of this soda on the Thirsty Dudes site, having never heard of the company at all before. i proceeded to leave a comment to that effect and bing, bang, boom, a day or so later i get an email from the company asking if i wanted to review it also! crazy how this internet deal works sometimes! i accepted, excited to perhaps get a diet soda that was naturally sweetened and thus might taste good. but also apprehensive as i have never likes things with stevia so far.
soon after that a six pack comes in the mail. cool. i pop a couple in the fridge and await the coldness to take hold.
and here i am, popping the top on the can. i kind of like the style here but i think it comes across as a very generic soda from 1972, with the fonts and overwhelmingly white background. i don’t think i would take it for a semi-premium beverage if i saw it on a shelf myself.
i wondered if this would be brown or clear before i read the ingredients and saw the caramel color. so yeah, brown soda.
ok, trying it…. wow, this is horrible. i read Thirsty Dudes review of this and had high expectations but even with low to mid expectations, it is just not good. the diet taste is all i can taste, there is no trace of root beer there at all. if blindfolding, i would have no clue what flavor this was supposed to be. it is harsh and bitter and angry at my taste buds for something they did a long time ago i think. maybe those grape jelly and lettuce sandwiches they enjoyed in the 80s finally caught up to them. i keep on sipping it to see if i am just missing the yum. or the ok-ness. but i did not. i think this is a little better than the Zevia but just barely. i really do want to like stevia sweetened stuff, but so far i don’t. a natural, no calorie sweetener would be amazing. i even stopped buying Stoneyfield 0 fat yogurt since they added stevia, they wrecked it. not that being natural makes something automatically safe and healthy and all but artificial sweeteners kind of scare me.