Empire - Real Cola

Brand: Empire (1930)
Size: 12 oz
Location: Bristol, RI
Sweetener: Sugar cane (46g)
Color: very dark brown
Aroma: light cola smell
Paired with: Trader Joe's Orange Chicken

Dr Fizz: It smelled and looked like a cola. I haven't really had colas besides the typical Coke, Pepsi or RC. While most specialty sodas are usually root beers or orange/grape/lime there don't usually seem to be colas. It must be pretty intimidating to go up against Coke and Pepsi. I had high hopes for this soda.

 Very Very Dark Cola

The cola smell was very mild, despite being such a dark color. The taste was fairly acidic, making the cola quite sour. It also had a fairly high fizz, higher than Coke. I couldn't detect any natural flavoring. There wasn't any creamyness to it and it wasn't very satisfying paired with the meal, which was also sour.

The wife says, "OOH it's thick, but not in a good way!"

Overall, I don't think it was very good. Nothing stood out as special. I still prefer Coke.

His Rating: 6/10
Her Rating: 3/10

Lil' Fizz's Rating: Orange Chicken is 10/10

AJ Stephans Birch Beer

AJ STEPHANS BIRCH BEER
Boston, 12 oz, 43g cane sugar
Aroma: See below
Color: Clear
Taste: ??
Eaten with: taquitos, taco soup RECIPE HERE

His reaction: I had no idea what birch beer was but assumed it would be somewhat like root beer. I was surprised when I poured out a clear liquid:

 Kinda like a New York Seltzer

It had a loud pop to it, like a seven-up would have. My immediate reaction to it before I started drinking was how great it smelled. It had a strong sarsaparilla type smell, with a sort of lickerish aroma. The flavor wasn't as surprising. It had a dry, sweet taste. It had a slightly vanilla taste and was vaguely like root beer. In all, it didn't really wow me as much as I had hoped.

Mrs. Fizz's reaction: She commented that it tasted like a clear root beer, which she liked. It reminded her of a vanilla cream soda. She said that the smell/taste was almost like liking a postage stamp or sealed envelope, but in a good way. Huh?

But in a good way

Dr Fizz: Overall, I was disappointed by the first selection. But boy did it smell good. I wish things like shampoo smelled like this
Rating: 6/10


Mrs. Fizz: This is probably the best clear drink I've ever had. Amen.
Rating: 8/10

Let's crack open this bottle

Hey guys,

Welcome to our new blog! I am Dr. Fizz and I am joined by my wife (Mrs. Fizz) as well as our dachshund (lil Fizz).

You may ask yourself, how did this pointless blog start?  Well, I have always loved root beer and have sometimes splurged to buy six packs of Boylan's or Thomas Kemper root beer. While I do love it, I have actually always preferred A&W for it's rich-creamy goodness. Over the past five years I haven't splurged for sodas anymore and became more interested in trying many different types of beer.

Last week, my wife and I (along with our family) went to a special grocery store in the Pasadena area (http://www.sodapopstop.com). While the back of the store contains a meat deli and the front contains a few shelves of candy, every single aisle is stocked floor to ceiling with drinks. Not bottled water or coca cola, but really obscure, foreign, and low budget drinks. There was literally an entire aisle of just root beers. There was also several aisles dedicated to alcohol, with a selection of beer that puts my Henry's grocery store to shame. While I have heard of some of the drink brands, some were probably basement created. Some even had paper labels that appeared hand glued on.

Us in the store (I didn't get the blue jolt)

We spent about an hour there and started filling our cart with drinks. Thankfully, the store provides the cartons the incoming drinks come in. I began in the root beer / sarsaparilla section and picked out about 20 drinks. I moved on to odd flavored sodas (such as vanilla / chocolate / etc), before transitioning to the wheat beer section and flavored stout section. Finally, I went to the foreign drink section and picked out a few more. In total, I picked up about 30 sodas and 8 beers, every one unique. 

One of the two crates we filled

With the addition of my wife's drinks, we got close to a hundred dollars worth of drinks. Yes, we went overboard. I immediately regretted it. I rarely ever drink something with dinner anymore and still have a fridge full of beer since the Superbowl. But there were several must try flavors that I was excited about (including a banana bread beer) so we were happy with our purchase.

I joked about documenting all the experiences I would have with our stash of drinks. My wife (Mrs. Fizz) got excited and totally got into the idea. After opening the first drink, it was pretty clear we were going to take this pretty seriously, so here is our blog. We will document our experience with each drink, recording the data we are interested in and trying to word our reactions. Please enjoy!

Lil Fizz guarding the fizz

Posted by, Dr Fizz

BTW we are totally not taking this seriously