Olde Philadelphia Birch Beer

holy wow, this should have been an easy soda to get, yet it was not. i work reasonably close to Philadelphia. many of the grocery stores close to my job carry Olde Philadelphia products. except this one. so after a futile search i emailed the company and asked them where i could get it. usually when i do that they say to call the distributors and it is a big cycle as they rarely are helpful at all and don’t want to take the time to look up one product for one location for me. but this time the company told me where to find it, Giant Food Stores. so i looked at the three closest ones although i had tried them previously. none of them had it, they had other flavors but no birch. i emailed again and told them that, they seemed annoyed at the distributors or sales people or someone. so then i tried the 4th closest one and they did indeed have a whole lot of it. a six pack was acquired and chilled. i actually did have one already and served one or two to some guests at my house as it was cold and i knew i had more to review, so this is not the first time trying it as is the usual process for my reviews.
they have changed their design work and style a lot since i reviewed their root beer many years ago. i like the new style, it is pretty classic while still being modern. they mention being gluten free and premium reserve although i have no clue what makes something “premium reserve.” is that as opposed to normal reserve? or just premium? the world may never know. i do have a gripe with the ingredients list, the font is insane tiny, maybe 2 pt font. wow. even with glasses on it is very hard to read. maybe they could have made that label 1/2″ longer.
so this is a red birch, which is a rare thing, mostly you get the white or brown birches. i am all for any birch beer but i don’t like throwing in red #40 just for fun. alas. this is probably the largest head on a birch beer i have ever seen, wow! impressive. it could even be the largest and longest lasting head of any soda i have had so far. impressive. i don’t know if it is tied in but it also is quite a creamy birch beer. that smoothness pushes the wintergreen taste back in the flavor profile. that is a normal thing for a red birch i have found, less wintergreen, more smoothness. but this one takes it to a higher level. the creaminess is the dominant part of it by far.

Anthony’s Rating: 78
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Ingredients: filtered carbonated water, invert sugar, caramel color, sodium benzoate (preservative), natural and artificial flavor, gum acacia, yucca and quillaia extracts and red #40