Review: Canfield Diet Cherry Chocolate Fudge Soda

Okay, here we go again with another wicked short review:

Canfield's Diet Cherry Chocolate Fudge soda tastes exactly like a chocolate-covered cherry in soda-pop form. It's delicious. Seriously. And I don't think I can add anything else to that, so...The End.

Review: Polar Diet Cola

I enjoy soft drinks, but I don't enjoy the hundreds of empty calories in sugar-sweetened beverages. And because I also like the taste of cola, I'm always trying sugarless colas to find something I like.

Now, I want to be totally upfront with you all and say this right away: I hate Diet Coke. I know that it is probably the most popular diet cola on the market, and I accept that plenty of you out there have made it your diet soft drink of choice. But accepting that and understanding it are two very different things. To me, Diet Coke tastes thin, weak, and acidic - and nothing at all like a sugarless version of Coca-Cola.  I was so happy when Coke Zero came out, because it actually tastes like Coca-Cola. Coke Zero is what I think a "diet Coke" should be.

Anyway, because I won't drink sucky Diet Coke, my two favorite diet colas have been Polar Diet Cola and Coke Zero, in that order. Yes - I have always loved Polar Diet Colal, and even Zero could not knock it out of its first place standing. 

Imagine my horror, then, to find that apparently Polar has changed the formula for Polar Diet Cola!

In the past week, I've had twelve cans of Polar Diet Cola, and every single one of them has tasted like a copy of Diet Coke: thin, watery-weak, and acidic, with very little cola flavor. Hence this review.

If you are looking for a less-expensive alternative to Diet Coke, try a can of Polar Diet Cola. I think you'll be amazed by the flavor profile similarity.

If you hate Diet Coke and want something that tastes like cola...I think you might have to scratch Polar Diet Cola off your list. Too bad.

Review: Mug Cream Soda

Mug Root Beer is common around here, but until a recent trip to Maine, I had never seen Mug Cream Soda.  And after buying a couple of bottles to try out, I think I know why: It's not really that good.

There isn't much body to it, and little flavor other than a vaguely vanilla-like sugar sweetness with a light burnt-sugar finish. It's probably the blandest "cream soda" I've ever had. Totally not worth buying again.

Barq's - "It's Good."

I picked up a 24-pack of Diet Barq's root beer the other day, and the first thing I noticed was the slogan above the logo: "It's Good."

Now, it may have been a while ago, but the last time I had bought Barq's, the tagline was "Barq's Has Bite!" which was a reference both to it's snappier flavor compared with other commercial root beers and it's caffeine content (not many root beers are caffeinated.) Long-time drinkers of Barq's have noticed that the flavor hasn't been quite the same since Coca-Cola acquired the brand and started tweaking the recipe (some people have complained that the "bite" seems to be a thing of the past) so I got all set to write a sarcastic blog post about Barq's lazy marketing department not being able to think of anything more clever to put on the label but "It's Good."

I always try to do at least a little research about things I'm going to write about so I don't come across as being completely stupid, and when I started to dig into Barq's long history I found out that the company was founded as Barq Brothers Bottling Company in 1890, started selling Barq's in 1898, and their original slogan was simply, "Drink Barq's. It's Good." Well shut my mouth wide open. The best I could do with that info was make a lame joke about how they dropped half their original slogan because people nowadays have half the attention span they used to. 

Review: Jones Zilch Vanilla Bean Soda

Jones Zero Calorie Zilch sodas just started turning up in the stores around here. They've  been available for a couple of years now, but not many of my regular stores carry Jones to begin with, and the ones that do rarely have more than a couple of regular flavors, let alone Zilches.

But Lynnafred found some and brought a four-pack of Zilch Vanilla Bean soda home with her last week. She was excited because vanilla is one of her favorite flavors and she's always loved the high-quality Jones offerings. (Well, maybe not always. There was that vomitous Bacon flavor awhile ago.)  

Lynnafred really liked it. She said that the flavor was "subtle" and that there was minimal aftertaste from the Splenda.

I enjoyed it - I like vanilla, and there are few true vanilla sodas on the market - but not quite as much as she did. For me, the subtlety of the flavor bordered on bland and the artificial sweetener used (sucralose, also sold under the brand name Splenda) left a bit of a chemical aftertaste.

Would I buy it again? Probably. i'm going to be keeping an eye on the market for the other Jones Zilch varieties such as Pomegranate or Black Cherry.

Guarana Soda

I was at The Barn, a sort of job-lot grocery store in Greenfield, MA, when I found this: Guarana soda. It was at a truly bargain price: $1.00 per 12-pack (that's not a typo. It really was twelve cans for one dollar.) Imported from Brazil, the soda is flavored with guarana berries and sweetened with cane sugar. Lynnafred put a couple of 12-packs into our shopping cart. "First of all," she said, "Guarana is delicious. And second of all, they're loaded with caffeine. This soda is guaranteed to be excellent."

It is excellent, actually. I'm not sure how much caffeine is in the soda (the label doesn't say) but the flavor is very good. Sort of fruity with a hint of citrusy sharpness. Lynnafred says it tastes a lot like Monster energy drink, which makes sense because guarana is a big ingredient in Monster.

For me, though, the flavor is startlingly similar to one of my favorite defunct soft drinks, OK Soda, a one-time product of the Coca-Cola Company which was briefly test-marketed in 1993.

Guarana is good stuff, refreshing and a little fruity. We liked it well enough to run back up to The Barn again at the end of the week to buy five more 12-packs. Chances are, it's going to be hard for us to find in the future.