Hipster Soda

[bloodyrosemccoy]

I have discovered the Hipster Soda Section of my grocery store!

It's great. Most of the sodas there are trying to look old-timey, and some of the ones with better soda cred were established in the 19th Century. A few of the new upstarts are trying to establish themselves as pioneering artisans, too. All of it is very silly.

So of course, I'm trying it all. Every week I'm gonna pick up a few bottles to get some ideas for my own potions-making. Here's what I've tried so far:

Boylan's Shirley Temple - Damn I love Shirley Temples. They taste like vacations to me. And this was a damn good one.

Fentimans Dandelion Burdock Soda - Dear Optimus CHRIST this was gross. I dunno if it was the "pear juice" they add to it or the dandelions themselves, but something gave a really unpleasantly cloying aftertaste, like nasty tonic medicine. I'm hoping the culprit is somewhere in those unlisted "natural flavors," or in the specific combinationof the ingredients, for two reasons: first, there's a recipe for dandelion soda in my book that is completely different from the ingredients listed here, and I'd rather not have it turn out to be just as nasty. And second, I want to try out their Rose Lemonade, and it looks like that has pear juice in it as well.

Fentimans* also wins for the most hipstery web design. I think they're trying for irony or meta or something. It's hard to decide if it's charming or if I want to punch them in the face.

DRY Soda's Lavender - In contrast to the older soda companies' attempts to make their brands look like something that a dude with a very large mustache and either a cowboy hat or a a top hat might feel at home drinking, DRY is a new soda company that's trying to be all postmodern and streamlined and sophisticated. The soda's, well, pretty darn lavendery. Not bad, though.

Sioux City Birch Beer - Figured I'd see what an actual birch beer tastes like, since the one I tried turned into Ent-draught.** It tasted, as has been described, like root beer with wintergreen flavoring. Unfortunately the bottle only says they use "artificial flavors," so I'll have to try a few other brands to get a good bead on it. Fortunately, hipster sodas LOVE making birch beer, so I have options.

Anyway. Call me a hipster, but I'm having fun with this. Can't wait to go back and pick up some more!


*No, there is no apostrophe. Apparently there is simply more than one Fentiman.

**I STILL have no idea if I liked that one. But out of all the batches of my homemade soda, my friend ("This is my new favorite hobby of yours!") declared it was the best. I may have to make it again, if for no other reason than to try to figure out my own feelings about it.

Comments

[dinogrrl.livejournal.com]

I wish I could drink those, I love Shirley Temples, haven't had one in like 15+ years :[.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

You could always get cherry syrup and ginger ale or 7UP, I suppose ...

[ellixis.livejournal.com]

Grenadine can be found in the drink-mixer area of most US groceries~ it is generally near the sodas.

[dinogrrl.livejournal.com]

Except I'm allergic to all of those :[.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Darn! That does make it more difficult!

[madripoor-rose.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I tried Dry's lavender soda and found it waaaay too astringant. I like Flathead Lake Monster Huckleberry, and Stewart's Key Lime when I'm in the mood for sodas-that-aren't Cokepepsi.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it was a bit astringent--good word!

I'm not a big fan of huckleberry flavoring, but I might try it. My favorite from Stewart's is their Peach, but nobody around here carries it. Tragic, no?

[redbird]

I didn't really like the lavender, but am fond of the Dry cucumber soda. Their vanilla isn't bad—less sweet than the typical cream soda, and sometimes that's a feature—and the blood orange didn't impress me.

I do wish that whoever was doing their package design hadn't decided that white-and-light-green was a reasonable color combination for labels, though it's less of a problem because of the brevity of the ingredient list.

Maybe Fentimans is trying to tell us that "Fentiman" is a verb, and there's a missing noun or pronoun: "[company] fentimans the dandelions," perhaps?

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm thinking I'll try the cucumber next. The lavender was okay, but I don't know if I'll buy any more of that flavor.

But their packaging is sleek and minimalist! No dark colors for them! Those aren't sophisticated! What, you're not SOPHISTICATED enough to read white-and-light-green?! ;)

[black-rider.livejournal.com]

Agree that Blood Orange is really underwhelming. It's pleasant for sure but nothing to write home about at all.

[kelkyag]

I would be surprised if the pear juice were the problem -- or at least, I've had straight-up pear juice (or nectar), and don't recall a medicinal aftertaste. I rather like the stuff.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm not really sure what it is. I'm gonna try a few of the others to see what I think--might be part of those mysterious "natural flavors." It is an investigation I must conduct!

[acrossthelake.livejournal.com]

Try Fentimans Curiosity Cola, it's stupidly delicious. I also like their rose lemonade okay but haven't tried many other flavors. Gotta try some real birch beer....

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

I was tempted to try that one next! I'll pick up that and the Rose Lemonade next time around.

Might make some dandelion wine tomorrow. You can try it out next time.

(Irony: I'm listening to the Water Snobs episode of The F Plus. You have created a monster here.)

[black-rider.livejournal.com]

Fentimans are almost universally delicious, except for the dandelion and burdock, which is, as you discovered, awful. I think it's a combination of the licorice-ish aftertaste of the burdock, and the slightly over-sweet of trying to make up for the bitterness of the dandelion.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

I think it's the aftertaste. I made a pretty good triple-root soda with licorice, burdock, and sassafras at one point, but this is not it. It's giving me hope that it's the blend that is the problem, though.

[ellixis.livejournal.com]

I used to love birch beer, but I have little recollection of what it tasted like, other than sweet and kind of greeny.

Your problem with your own birch beer is what my friends and I call a "fruit chip," after our own encounter with that experience. "Do I like this? I don't actually know. Maybe? Let's try another one and see if we can find out. Do I like this?" ... repeat process. The whole bag of fruit chips got eaten without any of us ever figuring out whether we liked them. "It's a fruit chip" has since been shorthand for "I'm not sure if I like it but I'm going to try again in an attempt to figure it out."

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

I am so glad I'm not the only one who has had this experience! Just keep drinking/eating and eventually it will resolve itself!

[ellixis.livejournal.com]

Likewise, a "fig newton" is the experience in which you take a bite, go "ugh, why did I think I wanted this," then a few moments later decide "actually I want more" and keep going, so dubbed because everyone I know has this reaction to fig newtons. It is a mystery.

Your icon is perfect for this reply, by the way.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

I remember a metaquotes ages ago describing the thought process of circus peanuts as "Ugh, that was awful. I'd better have another to get the taste out of my mouth."

It's surprising how useful this icon can be. ;)

[pixel39.livejournal.com]

Fentinmans is a venerable English brand, sold, well, pretty much everywhere (in England). We consume a goodly amount on any given trip. And yes, the dandelion-burdock is odd. The Brits also drink elderflower-gooseberry soda. Which is also odd. The rose lemonade, btw is DELICIOUS.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Yeah, their weirdo Youtube vid suggested that they were pretty well-established. (I guess they got a product placement on Downton Abbey recently?) I am not deterred by one unpleasant flavor; I'm gonna try the rose lemonade and the Curiosity Cola next.

My book has a recipe for elderflower soda of some sort. I haven't paid much attention to it yet ...

[black-rider.livejournal.com]

...I have never had an elderflower soda that isn't horrendously sweet, so if you manage it, I want to know all about it. It's a flavor I kinda like, but not with the tooth-aching sweet.

[tikiera.livejournal.com]

Boylen's makes a red birch beer that is pretty standard in taste for red birch beer.

Kutztown Birch Beer is pretty standard for a cola-coloured birch beer.

I have not found a clear birch beer that tastes like clear birch beer since I moved out of PA.

(Clear birch beer is supposed to be the most birchy, red the most creamy and more vanilla or other ingredients to smooth it out, and cola coloured is just generic birch beer, or at least, that's what it was like growing up.)

If you want old-fashioned, interesting, or just sugar based sodas, Bevmo and Total Wine actually tend to have soda sections with individual bottles of various kinds of the above soda. I am still to scared to try the bacon soda.

[black-rider.livejournal.com]

...bacon soda is disgusting. Now you know. It smells mostly of artificial smoke flavoring, and is disgustingly sweet. The actual flavor is somewhere between faux-pork and sugar, sort of like a liquid version of lard-based cupcake frosting.

Most of the Jones' holiday novelty sodas, like turkey and gravy, etc. are also pretty disgusting, but the bacon soda takes the prize for one of the most awful things I've ever put in my mouth, and I've willingly eaten dog food, so, there you go.

(Oh, but the random sodas that have a kick of jalapeño, the ones that are like, raspberry flavored with jalapeño, and usually have some goth-teenager-appealing name and label, are surprisingly not horrible. If you like spicy, at least. I'm not sure I'd go out of my way to get one, but they're entirely drinkable.)

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

I haven't tried to make a ginger beer with a chili pepper in it yet, but I've had them before and they're pretty good.

One year in college my buddies and I did a taste test of the Jones Thanksgiving flavors. The other flavors were unpleasant (except for cranberry), but the winner for Worst Thing Ever was the Brussels sprouts flavor. It even SMELLED so awful that we had to put the cap back on the bottle, tightly, to avoid gagging.

[black-rider.livejournal.com]

Make ginger beer and send me a case. I'll trade you all sorts of... I dunno. Whatever I can get here that you can't find there.

[gwalla.livejournal.com]

Did you try the cucumber soda? It's the only one of those Dry sodas I've found that tastes like anything going down (the rest seem to be primarily burp-flavorings).

I didn't think Fentiman's dandelion burdock was bad, but it didn't knock me out. The only birch beer I've had basically just tasted like sugar water.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Haven't tried cucumber yet, but I hear good things about it.

The birch beers I've tried tasted extremely wintergreen. The stuff I made was not at all like that, though--as previously mentioned, that was the Ent-draught.I think I'm goinna have to try the recipe again. I THINK I liked it better, but I'm still not sure.