Ladies and gents, as you might have guessed, this "Summer of Soda" has not gone quite as Kate and I had hoped. Though it started out peacefully enough, around July 1, it became a Summer of Writing and Revising Novels As Fast As Freaking Possible So As Not to Get Evicted Sometime Around Christmas.

That's the bad news; the good news is, we continued to drink sodas, and strange ones, too. I will upload reviews of them just as soon as I can.

Thanks for your patience; more entries coming soon.

Frostop Root Beer
1 liter
plastic bottle
C-B Beverages, Hopkins, MN
cold, no ice

Yet another soda that split the judges! Will this fractiousness ever end? Have the troubles that plague the world finally entered the Eden that is Summer of Soda?

Kate called Frostop--a brand we discovered while in the wilds of southwestern Michigan--a "totally ordinary root beer." The smell, according to Kate, "hits you like a slap as soon as you open the bottle." It tastes like a root beer sucker then, thanks to the corn syrup, the flavor vanishes like a thief in the night. "All promise," Kate sniffed, "and no delivery."

On the other hand, I liked Frostop. It was very sweet, but also very foamy (surfactants?), which made it fun to drink. It had a root-y, licorice aftertaste that was present, but not overpowering. To me, Frostop is completely acceptable; it isn't as good as a Sprecher's or Fitz's, much less a cane sugar microbrewed soda like Americana or Virgil's, but it is quite nice to drink.

Final verdict: Kate didn't like it. I think she felt used. The packaging kept me from expecting too much, and within those limited parameters, Frostop satisfied.

KP: 3 of 10
MG: 6.5 of 10

Stewart's Key Lime
12 fl. oz.
glass bottle
Stewart's Beverages, Rye Brook, NY
cold, no ice

A commenter--the indefatigable Dr. Wallass--has told us that actress Kirstie Alley drinks 16 bottles of Stewart Key Lime a day. The woman must have guts of iron! I hated hated HATED this soda. It smells and tastes like something you'd mix with water in a bucket and mop the floor with. I tasted it twice--which took devotion, folks--just to make sure it was awful, and yep, it was awful.

Kate, who I don't think has suffered head trauma but maybe so, started off by saying what a pretty limeade green it was. She called the flavor "refreshingly natural, but I can't taste Key Lime...Tastes like Rose's Lime Juice to me." (Rose's is, for those lucky enough to have avoided it, an undrinkable lime-substitute used in mixing gimlets and such.) Kate even called it "the perfect drink for a Martha Stewart-style color-coordinated luncheon." Perhaps if she were still in prison, dear. Or real limes had been eradicated by Sumatran Lime Blight. The only qualm my dear bride had was the slightness of the flavor: "It's like drinking flavored air."


Final verdict: Kate--explicably--liked it, while Mike considers it a corn-syrup substitute for Mr. Clean. Well, at least one of us would get along with Kirstie Alley.

KP: 5 of 10
MG: 0 of 10

Stewart's Grape
12 fl. oz.
glass bottle
Stewart's Beverages, Rye Brook, NY
cold, no ice

Some sodas were bound to expose the faults in Kate's and my marriage. These next few have.

I liked Stewart's Grape. Keeping in mind that what we're calling "grape" tastes nothing whatsoever like that thing that grows on vines, is made into wine, et cetera, Stewart's Grape soda is a classic grape soda--it's a nice reddish purple, has a powerful grape odor, and a sweetness that fade into tart by the end of the swallow. My love for sodas like this is plainly genetic; when I was tasting this my Mom said, "When I was a kid, cheese popcorn, grape soda and a scary movie was my idea of a great Friday night." Mine too, Mom. Still is, in fact.

Kate, however, is no sentimentalist. She called the smell of Stewart's Grape "weapons grade" and compared it to "a fruity tear gas." She also didn't like the stickiness of it--"my lips felt gummy after just a few sips." The usual complaints were offered about the use of corn syrup and how it makes the flavor ephemeral.

Final verdict: Kate's correct to call Stewart's Grape "a thousand purple jelly beans boiled into every teaspoon." And that's just the way I liked it.

KP: 4 of 10
MG: 7 of 10

Sprecher's Cream
16 fl. oz.
glass bottle
Sprecher's Brewery, Milwaukee, WI
cold, no ice

This soda smells delicious--like honey. And the first taste is equally great; it's not overpoweringly sweet, and very, very smooth. (As you might be noticing, I like my sodas chuggable. Just in case I'm overcome with a desire to chug, you understand.) What's interesting about Sprecher's Cream is that it tastes mostly like honey, but with a touch of vanilla. This is the opposite of most other cream sodas, which, if vanilla was poisonous, they'd be plutonium.

Final verdict: I'll give Kate the last word. "If I get hit on the head," she said,"and become someone who enjoys cream soda, you will have to bring me this." As you wish, my Queen.

KP: 10 of 10
MG: 10 of 10

Sprecher's Root Beer
16 fl. oz.
glass bottle
Sprecher's Brewery, Milwaukee, WI
cold, no ice

One thing you have to give Sprecher's: they give you a LOT of soda for the money. They come in 16 oz bottles, whereas most sodas are only twelve. That wouldn't be a good thing if the soda inside were crappy, but thankfully it's not.

I've been a fan of Sprecher's root beer for a long time; as I've said at other times during our Summer of Soda, it's my benchmark. Tasting it again, I'm happy to say it's as good as I remember. It's exceptionally smooth, has a predominantly vanilla flavor with tinges of honey, and it has a pleasing color and head. Kate calls it "excellent," but gives it a one point deduction for the use of high fructose corn syrup. I concur.

Final verdict: An excellent root beer, about as good as we can imagine--without the unique mojo of cane sugar, that is...

KP: 9 of 10
MG: 9 of 10

Sprecher's Orange Dream
16 fl. oz.
glass bottle
Sprecher's Brewery, Milwaukee, WI
cold, no ice

Sprecher's does a great root beer, and a great cream soda, but they fall down with their Orange Dream. Not much to say about this one. It's orangey, we'll give it that. And it's more drinkable than the other orange cream sodas we've tasted. But Kate found the flavor to be too emphemeral, and I didn't like the aftertaste--it seemed to "pile up" on my tongue, and not in a pleasant way. I liked the lunatic cow on the label.

Final verdict: Meh. Not awful--uncannily like baby aspirin, actually. We'd drink it again, but just barely.

KP: 5 of 10
MG: 6 of 10

Gale's Root Beer "Oh Rootie!"
12 fl. oz.
glass bottle
Dynamic Duo, Inc., Riverwoods, IL
lukewarm, no ice

First, the good news: this cinnamon/ginger/vanilla root beer created by a Chicago-area chef is, in Kate's words, "crazy good." Now, the bad news: it's only available around Chi-town, and even there it's hard to find. We found it at an Italian deli in the basement of the John Hancock building, right off Michigan Avenue, and boy were we glad we did!

It's truly an original take on root beer, powerfully cinnamon-y where most others let vanilla or licorice flavors dominate. It had a pretty good head on it, even luke warm (we were walking around with the bottle), and a nice rich brown color. Our only quibble was this: if you're going to micro-brew a root beer, why in God's name skimp and use high fructose corn syrup instead of cane sugar? The flavor evaporated too quickly.

Final verdict: Kate says, "Everything Frostop promised but wasn't"; I, less vindictive, confine myself to "An excellent, natural-tasting root beer." If Chef Gale had used real sugar instead of the fake stuff, it would be perfect.

KP: 9 of 10
MG: 9 of 10

Stewart's Cream
12 fl. oz.
glass bottle
Stewart's Beverages, Rye Brook, NY
cold, no ice

Nobody said the Summer of Soda would be easy. There will be casualties. All must come under the Judgment of the Tongue, the terrible, swift tongue.

Only by tasting a lot of sodas does one really figure out what one prefers. But slurping from the Siphon of Knowledge is a mixed blessing--you learn what's good, but you also learn what's crap. And sometimes, you find old favorites definitely lacking. Exhibit A: Stewart's Cream.

I'm a fan of Stewart's; I love their Orange Cream and Black Cherry sodas (at least I did before I started this odyssey). I've even had their Cream soda before without undue disgust. So I was surprised at how lame that beverage struck me today. It's very pale, so sweet my teeth throbbed, and the vanilla smell has a weird chemically sharpness. It tastes completely fake. This wouldn't bother me if it tasted incredibly good, but it doesn't, so what's the point?

Final verdict: When there is Virgil's cream soda in the world, why in God's name would you ever drink this?

KP: spared, thankfully
MG: 2.5 of 10

Henry Weinhard's Orange Cream
12 fl. oz.
glass bottle
cold, no ice

First of all: can we all agree that the "Olde Familye Traditione/Since 1492/Original Recipe" marketing gambit is tired and annoying? Same goes for the cute founding/discovery story, too. (I'm looking at you, Vernor's.) Henry Weinhard's Orange Cream (HWOC) is just dripping with this conceit, and it gets in the way of what is a very respectable orange soda. We value that plenty at Summer of Soda. But it isn't a piece of the True Cross, for God's sake.

I think we would all agree that the ur-Orange Cream food, the Platonic Ideal of orange-creaminss, is the Dreamsicle. HWOC does well in this regard; it smells like one. It even invokes a Dreamsicle on the neck band. Unfortunately, the taste is a little weak. It's got a nice color, though, and a foamy head, which is a nice plus. I just which it didn't taste like it was trying to hide.

Final verdict: No brewer back in Germany was making this crap back in the Renaissance, but it's a decent orange cream soda. Would I drink it again? Sure. Would I pay for it again? Only possibly.

KP: AWOL, possibly hanging out with Old World brewmeisters
MG: 5 of 10

Frostie Blue Cream
12 fl. oz.
glass bottle
Leading Edge Brands, Temple, TX
cold, no ice

The selling point of this soda can be summed up in two words: it's blue. Really blue. As blue as the eyes of the perfect Aryan youth. It's the kind of color that, were you to pause before drinking it (in, say, the midst of a summer-long soda-tasting experience), you might have real misgivings. Just what manner of crap is one ingesting when one dances with a Frostie Blue Cream?

Best not to think about it, and if you can exercise that kind of discipline you'll find that Frostie Blue Cream soda isn't that horrible. Kate said, "This tastes like what dead four-year-olds think Windex will taste like." In other words, very sweet, sort of like cotton candy. It's a respectable--passable--cream/vanilla soda, which is good, because the taste definitely persists during the aftertaste.

Final verdict: Better than Windex, but not worth dying for either.

KP: 2 of 10
MG: 4 of 10

A.J. Stephans' Black Cherry
12 fl. oz.
glass bottle
A.J. Stephans, Boston, MA
cold, no ice

Kate called this "nearly perfect." So why just a "9" from our Sultry Siren of Sodapop? "I don't know how it could be better, but I'm assuming that someone, somewhere could beat it, so I'm holding the top spot open."

I'll tell you how it could be better: fewer bubbles. I was a bit put off by the carbonation, which seemed excessive, but Kate's right: the flavor of this soda is just delicious. Almost delicious enough to make up for the twerpy "tonic" thing. Bostonians can cut that out already, and take "cleansers" along with them. That may have been okay when it was just you and millions and millions of indians, but now that there's a whole country to the left of you, it's time to get over yourselves.

Still, good job on the soda.

Final verdict: Bostonians can be a pain in the ass, but they make a darned good black cherry soda.

KP: 9 of 10
MG: 8.5 of 10

Pennsylvania Punch
12 fl. oz.
glass bottle
Natrona Bottling Co., Natrona, PA
lukewarm, no ice

From the sadists who brought you Red Ribbon Root Beer comes Pennsylvania Punch, almost an apology of a beverage. Where Red Ribbon was a licoricey punch in the soft palate, PA Punch is a completely unassuming, toddler-friendly, non-carbonated grape drink...Non-carbonated? I could swear something's prickling my tongue. Perhaps there's a micro-poltergeist in every bottle. "Pennsylvania Punch--it's Ecto-riffic!"

I didn't mind it, being no stranger to super-sweet grape sodas, but Kate actively disliked PA Punch. "I may never enter the state of Pennsylvania again, as a protest." (I won't remind her it's on the way to Manhattan.)

Final verdict: A super-sweet drink, with a bit softer taste than your usual grape soda. But nothing special, even if there ARE ghosts in it.

KP: 3 of 10
MG: 4 of 10

Drizzle Banana
12 fl. oz.
glass bottle
Moxie Harvest Corp., Brooklyn, NY
cold, no ice

This one practically leaped into our shopping cart. Banana-flavored soda? What's next? Avocado? Drizzle looks like pee and smells like banana Laffy Taffy, but I'm only partially dreading it, because my good friend pure cane sugar is part of the mix. I'm expecting this to be swill, but could this actually be good?

(drinks)

Sorry, no. It tastes only very faintly of banana--the dominant flavor in my mouth is straight-up carbonation, like a seltzer. The aftertaste isn't bad, a bit sweet, but actually more like tapioca. The aftertaste builds in your mouth, with every swallow leaving a layer of taste; unfortunately what's left is kinda icky.

Final verdict: Points for ambition--anybody can make a cola or root beer, a banana soda is daring greatly. Too bad it wavers between "meh" and "I need to wash my mouth out."

KP: banana-phobic
MG: 3 of 10

Henry Weinhard's Root Beer
12 fl. oz.
glass bottle
cold, no ice

Henry W. makes up for his substandard Orange soda with this quite nice root beer. It's very, very smooth and foamy. My dad tried a swig and found it too sweet, but Kate and I both agreed that it was delicious. (I think my dad also prefers the Stones to the Beatles, which tells you something.) Weinhard's Root Beer tastes almost buttery. I taste sassafras and I approve.

Kate subtracts one point for the use of corn syrup, and another point for the lack of nuance in the flavor. She's right, it is a little thin-tasting--but had we not tasted some very assertive root beers lately (Virgil's, Americana) and unique ones, too (Gale's), Henry Weinhard's would tough to beat.

Final verdict: On its own merits, a really good root beer. The best? No. The most distinctive? Certainly not. But very good.

KP: 8 of 10
MG: 8 of 10

Virgil's Black Cherry Cream Soda
12 fl. oz.
glass bottle
REED'S, LLC, Los Angeles, CA
cold, no ice

I just want to say that the outset that Kate and I are not in the pay of Virgil (whoever he is). His sodas are just really, really tasty.

To me, Virgil's Black Cherry Cream soda smells like Baskin-Robbins Cherry vanilla ice cream; to Kate, it smells like Dr. Pepper. But the real attraction here is, of course, the taste, which is mostly cherry, some vanilla. The cherry taste makes this a little less complicated tasting than the straight Cream (which I think I prefer). But it's a nice cherry taste, not a harsh one. Bad cherry soda reminds me of Sucrets. This is a million miles away from that. Kate said, "I've never drank anything like this, but I'm still enjoying it." I enjoyed it, too.

Final verdict: An excellent beverage, and proof that "cherry" doesn't need to mean "synthetic, mouth-staining, and most likely cancer-causing." Will they bring out a mini-keg? Two inquiring minds want to know.

KP: 8 of 10
MG: 8 of 10