Something interesting from comparing the bottles I have on my desk right at this moment:
| Soda | OZ | Calories | Sugar |
| Berries & Cream Dr. Pepper | 20 | 250 | 65g |
| Bundaberg Australian Ginger Beer | 12.7 | 170 | 40g |
| Snow | 12 | 112.5 | 25.5 |
| White Rock Organics | 12 | 120 | 30 |
Category Archives: Soda - Page 2
Sugar content
Posted by Cavorter
on April 28, 2006
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Also found this afternoon
Posted by Cavorter
on April 28, 2006
2 comments
Target’s Archer Farms line of food products now has a “premium” soda available, at least in the Twin Cities market. I saw 4 flavors today at a non-SuperTarget close to work: Sarsparilla, Ginger Beer, Strawberry Creme, and Diet Peach. I picked up a 4pack of all but the Diet and should have had a chance to taste all of them by the weekend. The ingredients do list sugar instead of HFCS, so I have some hope that it might be at least drinkable and if it’s done by the same people who make their “Italian Soda” line of beverages there’s a strong chance there will be at least one good flavor in there.
Found in the wild…
Posted by Cavorter
on April 28, 2006
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So while I was filling up the fuel tank for the first time on my new-to-me 2003 VW Golf GLS TDI, I ended up having to go into the store to pay for the gas. Looks like the modern convenience of the card reader hasn’t made it to the diesel pumps yet.
Anyway, while in the store I figured that I’d take a look for anything new and lo and behold they had bottles of Berries & Cream Dr Pepper.
So how is it? Well, it’s a lot like Dr Pepper. Seriously. The base flavor is very strongly the classic Dr Pepper flavor, it’s just that they’ve added a bit of something else in there. That something else comes off as a relatively light but additional sweetness and a fairly soft vanilla finish. The Vanilla Coke and Pepsi people could learn something from the vanilla flavor Cadbury Shweppes and Co are using in this. Certainly worth a try, but nothing astonishing and new as far as I’m concerned.
Unfortunately they did not have bottles of the new “100% Natural” 7-Up. That’s something that I’m actually looking forward to trying.
Passion Orange: Suprisingly good
Posted by Cavorter
on April 27, 2006
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I tried the White Rock Organics Passion Orange today at lunch and was really very pleasantly surprised. It’s not as sweet as the very good Red Peach, which in turn is not as sweet as the horrible Raspberry Creme. I do have to admit that the initial flavor was sort of odd, but the finish and subsequent sips showed it to be a very well put together flavor. Some nicely sour passion fruit notes with the barest orange/citrus is an unexpectedly combination and the lack of over-the-top sugar makes for a really excellent soda.
7UP changing forumla’s again
Posted by Cavorter
on April 26, 2006
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I’m actually really pretty excited that 7UP is changing their formula again. I thought the change in the mid-90′s to make it taste more like Sprite was a bad idea. Hopefully this will be a better change rather than a worse one.
Now if only they would switch back to sugar…
From the maker’s of Sioux City sodas: White Rock Organics
Posted by Cavorter
on April 26, 2006
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While doing some quick soda shopping before a couple of friends stopped by to play some boardgames, I ran into some new bottles at the local Kowalski’s that looked interesting. White Rock Organics soda comes in 3 flavors: Red Peach, Raspberry Creme, and Passion Orange. I got a 4 pack of all 3 flavors and have so far tasted very mixed results.
The Red Peach is actually incredibly good. It is more sweet and intensely flavored than I would normally like, but the carbonation is light enough and the cane sugar they are using is fairly decent quality so the flavor is at least very good. It also really tastes like very good fresh peaches.
The Raspberry Creme, on the other hand, tastes like cough syrup. And, as one of my friends last night pointed out, not even like good cough syrup. The flavor is fruity enough but the intense sweetness and the overwhelming sticky taste of bad vanilla-esque flavor is just horrible. None of us wanted to finish the bottle. I’m trying to figure out how to get rid of the other 3 bottles without offending someone I like, or just pouring them out. I’ll probably give a second bottle a taste to see if it was just a bad bottle, but it tasted exactly like any other really badly fruit flavored soda I’ve ever had. Heck, it’s easily in the same league as Shasta Strawberry, if you can believe that.
I still have yet to try the Passion Orange, though I’ll probably get to that tonight. At this point I’m wondering if I should be looking forward to it with dread or excitement.
Dr Pepper Berries & Cream
Posted by Cavorter
on April 12, 2006
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BevNET has their review of Dr Pepper Berries & Cream up. I’m looking for a bottle to try.
Snow still lying around at Byerly’s
Posted by Cavorter
on April 3, 2006
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For those who are local, that might be a bit of surprise given the total melt that has been going on for the last week, but in this case I’m referring to one of my favorite new sodas. It’s been around at Kowalski’s (though hard to find the couple of times that I tried) for a couple of months, but look around the drinks cooler in the deli section of your local Byerly’s (confirmed at the Roseville store, as the open bottle in front of me can attest) or possibly Lund’s and you’ll sure to hit pure clean Snow. Great stuff.
I actually first got to try a bottle when I went skiing at Welch Village with a friend in January. They happened to have it in the cafeteria, and I’ve been hooked ever since.
Yes, it’s peppermint flavored, but for those who grew up on flavored “sodas” that are sometimes better used as paint thinner, you will likely be very pleasantly surprised.
If only it didn’t cost $1.99 a bottle.
Programmable Soda Bottles – Gizmodo
Posted by Cavorter
on March 27, 2006
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Gizmodo has an interesting little tidbit about Programmable Soda Bottles. Really neat idea, but I bet the flavors are going to be horrible.
Honey as a topical antibacterial agent for treatment of infected wounds
Posted by Cavorter
on December 28, 2005
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On the drive in to work this morning I had been musing a bit about the relative success of the carbonation of the batch of African Skies versus the batch of root beer, and it occured to me that I had once heard that honey had some antiseptic properties. So I finally got a few minutes free at work and started to do some net research, and there it was: Honey as a topical antibacterial agent for treatment of infected wounds, among other references.
Of course the African Skies carbonated less/more slowly than the root beer once the temperature was in the right range! The honey was killing off some of the yeast. The question then becomes, do I increase the yeast or decrease the concentration of honey in a batch of soda that uses honey as a sweetener? Are there yeasts that are going to be better or worse for carbonating in solution with honey? Hopefully more answers will be relatively easy to get through research and experimentation. For example, I would imagine that the yeasts used to produce mead, (if, in fact, yeast is used, which I’m not sure about) would be much more resistant to the antiseptic effects of honey, but then there is the question about whether they would produce the correct carbonation or not.