My boys and I stopped at Shanghai Wholesale on the edge of the Midway / Merriam Park neighborhood of St. Paul today, and I grabbed a bubble tea that I hadn't tried before:
Brand: Jans Boba Milk Tea Brown Sugar.
Origin: Taiwan.
Purchase Place: Shanghai Wholesale Market Place, St. Paul, MN.
Sweetener: Cane Sugar and Brown Sugar.
Review: The "brown sugar milk tea" flavor was quite good! It was milky and sweet with a nice tea flavor. If you handed this to me, you MIGHT be able to fool me that it was brewed locally (and fresh) at a boba tea store. But the "boba pearls" were small and a bit mealy. I've had worse boba in a pre-made can, but I've also had better. Higher rating for the flavor, and lower for the boba, but still overall enjoyable.
I grabbed this while shopping with my son at Aldi recently:
Brand: Inotea Brown Sugar Bubble Tea.
Origin: Newark, NJ.
Purchase Place: Aldi, St. Paul, MN.
Sweetener: Sugar and Brown Sugar.
Review: The tea was quite good! I shared a sip with my boys, and they both loved it. It was what I'd expect from a boba tea store when I order a "Milk Tea" or anything along those lines. (One store near us calls it a "Royal Tea Latte" even though it doesn't have any coffee flavor.) I had no complaints about the tea!
But the tapioca pearls were another story. They were kind of pasty and hard. They weren't "chewy" in a good way, but in a bad way. They almost wanted to disintegrate when bit down on, but only after a fair amount of force. I like tapioca pearls, but apparently they need to be fresh. The drink ("pre-pearls") would have earned about an 8.5, but I had to knock it down after having the pearls.
Note that it's 12.3 oz and a little taller than usual.
Brand: Rico Brown Sugar Bubble Milk Tea
Origin: Taiwan.
Purchase Place: Hy-Vee, Oakdale, MN.
Sweetener: Sugar and Brown Sugar.
Review: The first sip was VERY pleasant. This tasted JUST like a milk tea I've gotten from my local bubble tea place. I was quite happy and surprised. But as I kept drinking, I finally got to the "bubbles," and they were... odd. They were extra chewy and more jello-like than I was used to compared to "fresh" bubbles at my local tea place:
Extra "foggy" and chewy. Very odd.
I'm sure there's an issue being able to make and keep these bubbles or pearls in can for many months, and that ruined the experience a bit. The taste of the milk tea itself was super sweet and spot on, but then the bubbles knocked this down a few points.
Purchase Place: Blue Sun Soda, Spring Lake Park, MN.
Sweetener: Pure Cane Sugar and Caramelized Unrefined Cane Sugar.
Review: This wasn't bad, but it wasn't amazing (unfortunately). The sweetness was a little odd/sharp, and there was a bit too much wintergreen for me. It sure wasn't a BAD soda, but it wasn't a great root beer. So I guess I still have to wait to break my streak of not-great sodas. I have to rank this a bit below average.
I've been excited to try this, but it's been sitting in my fridge for 2 weeks. I finally opened it today:
Brand: Oak Creek Blonde Barrel Aged Root Beer.
Origin: Redding, California.
Purchase Place: "Minnesota's Largest Candy Store," Jordan, MN.
Sweetener: "25% brown sugar, 75% real sugar."
Review: This starts out tasting like a "blonde" root beer: it's a little weak at first. Almost like a cream soda (and I'm not just saying that based on the color). But it ends a bit more like a root beer with a fuller, more molasses flavor. It's very creamy, smooth, and totally unique. Has a bit of a funny taste when going down, but still a decent soda.
My son and I went camping in Duluth for 3 days this past week, so we had to stop at Fizzy Waters and get some soda. This was the first one we tried:
A larger 22 oz bottle, with my son by the campfire in the background.
My son enjoying a sip.
Brand: Rogue Soda Root Beer.
Origin: Newport, OR.
Purchase Place: Fizzy Waters, Duluth, MN.
Sweetener: Brown Sugar and Honey.
Review: The ingredients list showed "root beer flavor" and "sarsaparilla flavor," as well as brown sugar and 2 kinds of honey. I knew I was in for something different. It had a very deep flavor and was strong on the sarsaparilla. I could really taste the brown sugar. There was a little kick of honey, but it wasn't overpowering.
For Christmas, my wife got me a "Mr. Root Beer" kit so my son and I could make our own root beer. There are enough ingredients to make two 1-gallon batches, so we made our first batch about 2 weeks ago, and we still have 1.5 (out of 4) bottles still in the fridge. Here's the process shown through a bunch of photos:
The full kit (the size of a large shoebox). It says "naturally carbonated" because there's no carbonated water or weird
chemicals to add the carbonation/head. The carbonation is added naturally through the yeast.
The 5 instructions. There were "official" instructions on a pamphlet inside, but it was basically this easy.
Step 3 is the most work.
The opened kit.
The contents: four 32 oz bottles, labels, instructions, a funnel, and a bag with ingredients and caps.
The caps with the "pressure valves" installed.
Using the "no-rinse cleaner" to clean out our milk jug. (Sorry, my son doesn't wear pants too often…)
Cleaning our utensils. The instructions warned that any contamination will add a funky taste to our root beer.
Adding ingredients (this was the maltodextrin). After this, we added a LOT of sugar.
It was dark and oily. It took a lot of stirring to dissolve all the sugar and brown sugar.
The wine yeast measured out and sprinkled on top.
1 gallon of mixed root beer (totally flat - now the yeast needs to do its work).
My son and the root beer.
Helping me bottle the root beer.
Ready to sit in the back corner of our dining room for 1-3 days as it ferments and becomes carbonated. The timing of
this is the most critical: too short and you have tasty flat root beer, and too long and you have carbonated crap.
My son licking up any reside in the bowl. It's SUPER sweet because (my understand of this is that) a lot
of the sugar will be consumed by the yeast to make the carbonation.
The directions said to find a dark place with a consistent temp between 68-75. Our house is
cooler than that in the winter, but this location was consistently 67-68 degrees.
By the next morning (12 hours after bottling), the caps were showing signs of pressure. The "pressure valves"
are simply small dense foam disks with a little slit cut in the middle where too much pressure can escape.
The directions said to refrigerate after the bottles become hard from the carbonation, and that it could take 1-3 days. The bottles were definitely "firmer" after 12 hours, and one of the bottles seemed quite hard after 26 hours. So I put that bottle in the fridge. (I was worried about the part in the instructions that talked about having either flat but tasty root beer if you refrigerate too soon, or carbonated crappy root beer if you wait too long and refrigerate too late.) Here's video of my son and I cracking into that first bottle the next afternoon after it spent 18 hours in the fridge:
So yeah, as you could see, it was hardly carbonated. I had already put another bottle in the fridge, but I still had 2 out, and I decided I'd leave those out for the full 3 days. When we tried the first bottle, it tasted a bit like sweet, liquid root beer barrels (remember those candies?). It was too sweet, but I think the yeast just needed to do it's job longer. It seemed to change a bit as it spent more time in the fridge - it developed a "deeper" flavor even after it was opened as I kept drinking it on the 2nd and 3rd days. I think it was still fermenting a bit. It actually got better.
When I opened the 2nd bottle, it had more carbonation (still not a lot). I was actually able to get a photo of a FEW tiny bubbles still on top of this glass after I poured:
A LITTLE more carbonation in this one!
It got MORE carbonated as it sat in the fridge. The yeast was still doing some work. Again, this got better as it spent a few days once it was opened in the fridge. The 3rd bottle has been the best so far, with a deep flavor and adequate carbonation. I think I just needed to let them all sit a bit longer (in the dining room AND in the fridge).
Well, I guess it's time for a review. This is tricky, because each bottle has tasted a little different (but that's part of the fun). Here's what I think:
Brand: Mr. Root Beer Kit.
Origin: Boxed in Tucson, AZ, and brewed in my kitchen/dining room in St. Paul, MN.
Purchase Place: Amazon.com.
Sweetener: Sugar, Brown Sugar, and Maltodextrin.
Review: Because this is carbonated through a yeast process, the result is slightly alcoholic (around 1%). That gives this "brewed" root beer a very unique flavor that root beer "sodas" don't have. The flavor is rich and deep. Even the later bottles that I let carbonate/ferment for longer still had a little of the "root beer barrel candy" sweetness that I mentioned above, but it wasn't TOO sweet. And it was cut by a deep, vanilla root beer flavor at the end. The first bottle I had I'd probably give a 4 or a 5 because it was just too sugary. But the rest that I let sit longer were better. Still, not even close to the best root beer I've ever had, but still totally worth it because it's a fun DIY project.
Score: 6.5 out of 10.
p.s. I'd like to experiment with my final batch of root beer by adding different flavors to each bottle. I'll make sure to give an update if/when I try that.
Purchase Place: Frattallones Ace Hardware, St. Paul, MN.
Sweetener: Sugar and Brown Sugar.
Review: It says "Sarsaparilla." It says "Root Beer." Well which is it? It definitely was a Root Beer. It had a good vanilla flavor and was verging on creamy, but it was just a bit too weak and watered down. The flavor was good… there just needed to be MORE of it. Or it needed to hit a little harder. This was OK.
