Saranac Diet Root Beer

I opened this yesterday (a HOT afternoon):

With veggies from our garden in the background.

Brand: Saranac Diet Root Beer.

Origin: Utica, NY.

Purchase Place: Blue Sun Soda, Spring Lake Park, MN.

Sweetener: High Fructose Corn Syrup.

Review: The initial flavor that hit my lips was strong on the vanilla and very tasty. But then it turned into a steaming pile of crap. I think this was the first "diet" soda that I've had that still uses high fructose corn syrup: this had 35 calories, and one would assume that that means it's just using a lot less HFCS. And it tastes like that. It's not sweet at all. It's thin, weak, and chemically. I was severely disappointed.

Score: 2 out of 10.
 

Saranac Root Beer

After a long weekend, I cracked into this tonight:

Brand: Saranac Root Beer.

Origin: Utica, NY.

Purchase Place: Blue Sun Soda, Spring Lake Park, MN.

Sweetener: High Fructose Corn Syrup.

Review: This tasted pretty "classic," which is a good thing. Quite smooth with no bite. There was a fair amount of a caramel aftertaste which I wasn't a huge fan of, but it was still quite good. I'll rank it a bit above average.

Score: 7 out of 10.

Saranac Black Cherry Creme

Lent is over, so I hit my non-root beer stash from Ace the other day. I started with this:

Brand: Saranac Black Cherry Creme.

Origin: Utica, NY.

Purchase Place: Frattallone's Ace Hardware, St. Paul, MN.

Sweetener: High Fructose Corn Syrup.

Review: This tasted a little more artificial than I had hoped, and it was a bit sharper than I wanted. It's a "cream" soda, and I want that to be smooth. The black cherry flavor was pretty good, but it just wasn't all put together perfectly. I liked their Shirley Tempe soda better.

Score: 5 out of 10.

New Stash of Sodas!

Easter is this weekend, which means Lent will be over, which means I will be able to drink soda again! In celebration for this glorious day, I headed to Frattallone's Ace Hardware on Grand Ave in St. Paul earlier today to stock up on soda. But I encountered some bad news! They had NO root beer left on their shelves!!

Lots of empty spots where root beer once was.
(And technically, there's 1 diet root beer left on the 2nd shelf next to the blue stuff.)

This marks the first time a "stock up" of soda didn't include a root beer. Depressing. Here's what I brought home:

From left-to-right:

- Jones Cream Soda
- AJ Stephans Raspberry Lime Rickey
- Cicero Beverage Co. Chicago Style Cherry
- Faygo Redpop
- Saranac Black Cherry Cream
- AJ Stephans Black Cherry
- Jones Soda Zero Calorie Black Cherry
- NuGrape Grape
- Double Cola
- Cicero Beverage Co. Chicago Style Orange Cream

Check back early next week as I start to go nuts on this stash.

Saranac Shirley Temple

I didn't have high hopes for this. I was ready for this to taste "artificial."

Brand: Saranac Shirley Temple.

Origin: Utica, NY.

Purchase Place: Frattallone's Ace Hardware, St. Paul, MN.

Sweetener: High Fructose Corn Syrup.

Review: It surprised me from the first sip - it was quite good! It nailed the "Shirley Temple" flavor as far as I'm concerned. It was very sweet without being too sugary or syrupy.

Score: 8.5 out of 10