Black Bear Root Beer

I want to talk a bit about hummus, or as some call it, terrorist peanut butter. It’s a food product that I came to late in life due to my long-time personal bias against hippies. And i know hippies aren’t the source or origin of hummus as a food, but the current incantation of hippies in society today certainly gravitates toward hummus as a means of sustenance. There’s lots of hummus you can get out there in the world today. All different kinds and flavors and consistencies. Store bought, restaurant prepared, homemade… it turns out whatever your specific desire can be fulfilled without a whole lot of fuss or effort. But the one that really sold it for me, really turned the tides against my hippie-centric bias against this food, was the cilantro jalapeno hummus from Pita Jungle. 

For those not in the know, Pita Jungle is a chain of restaurants here in the greater Phoenix area which caters to those looking for a health-conscious meal, mostly delving into Mediterranean cuisine. It’s a local hotbed for hippies. There are several locations just around where I live and all of them are simply lousy with white dudes with dreadlocks, unshaven ladies, and body odor that could strip the paint off a car. I swore this place off for years and refused to go near them, but as it turns out my wife has a soft spot for hippies and enjoys the fruit platters from Pita Jungle very much. SOOOO… not-so-long story even less long, I went there one night with my wife and some friends and we end up getting a starter plate of pitas and cilantro jalapeno hummus. And that was it. I’m officially in love with this hummus. I’ve tried to find similar mixtures from stores, my wife has attempted to make some at home from a recipe she found online, and each time I’m left disappointed because no one can recreate the magic that Pita Jungle has captured in their preparation. It’s crazy how perfectly balanced it is and just seems to cut through all the nonsense that gets packed into other hummus recipes. Even the other hummus flavors at Pita Jungle can’t compare. I mean, many of them are fine, but this stuff is in a whole different league. 

What does this have to do with root beer? Nothing, as far as i can tell. But i figure i'd just get that admission off my chest. So switching gears entirely, lets talk about this root beer. I think i got a 6 pack of this either from my wife of from a friend of mine. Black Bear Root Beer is bottled by Sprecher Brewing Company in Glendale, WI. I reviewed the standard Sprecher Root Beer years ago as one of the first ones when i started this blog and remember being fond of it but i couldn't tell you anything about it right now off the top of my head. Going back to read my post about it didn't provide much insight either. But just know this root beer is another offering from the same brewery/distributer. It comes in a standard bottle with an image of a large full moon in the background with the silhouettes of a mama bear and two cubs walking in the foreground. There is a short paragraph on the website about a bear named Clara, dubbed "the Legend", that was spotted in 1931 drinking from a puddle of root beer in the Northern Wisconsin woods under a full moon. I don't know how a puddle of root beer came to be in a remote area of the Northern Wisconsin woods, but sometimes it's not for us to know and just to believe and accept. Like religion. Or dying of cancer. 

Let me just say this is a classically good tasting root beer. Like i said, i was fond of Sprecher Root Beer but ultimately deemed it a middle of the road root beer only worthy of 5 IBCs. There is a smooth, creamy sweet base with strong root beer notes that carries this flavor profile quite well. I like the bite of the aftertaste and the overall sweetness. It's just a solid root beer is all. I can't really think of anything else to say about it. So i won't.

My official review is that Black Bear Root Beer gets 7 (seven) IBCs. Like the cilantro hummus from Pita Jungle, this one came out of the gate strong to make it's mark. I really enjoyed this root beer, likely because i have been limiting my sugar intake for the past couple months so having any soda for me right now is a real treat. This stuff is worth picking up if you come across it. 

O-So Butterscotch Root Beer

Well, summer is here in Phoenix, AZ and it's time to get our summer bodies in shape. I have been trying to exercise regularly and cut out sugar in an attempt to slim down so i don't embarrass myself when i go to the public pool. I find my biggest problem is that i have a seriously concerning sweet tooth. I love sweets; candies, ice cream, pies, cookies, soda, etc. All of them have been a non-stop for me basically since the holidays. There wasn't an eggnog i would say no to during that time, and now i have to pay the price for my gluttony by depriving myself of all of it to satisfy my vain ambition to be "decent looking" with my shirt off. It's really all i can hope for at this point. So for the past 2 weeks i have cut sugar out of my diet, and i've been quite good about it. Aside from a sip or two of Pepsi when my wife cracks a can or a small taste of her dessert after a meal, i have cut it out of my diet, and it SUCKS. I still have a crazy craving for sugar, and even with my best efforts to exercise and run at least 3 times a week i am just now starting to see the results of my efforts. It's kinda like driving in a car. You can't be going 60 mph and throw it into reverse and all of a sudden be going backward. You have to slow the speed of your car until you come to a stop and then you can start to go backward. So i'm working this stuff through my system and getting ready to go in reverse and start shedding some lbs. (Every nutritionist out there is calling me an idiot right now, and you know what? They are right.) All of this is to say i've been doing good with my diet but i am breaking it for the sake of this blog. That's how committed i am to getting the truth out there about root beers. Will it be worth it? Probably not.

I thought for sure i did this one before because it's one i've heard about several times in several places, but it appears i am just now getting to reviewing O-So Butterscotch Root Beer, bottled by Orca Beverage Bottling Co. We've seen Orca before as they bottle several other root beers i have tried, like Bedford's and Americana. The label states that O-So has been in production since 1946. I don't know much else about the history as this was likely an old company that either went out of business or sold off the recipe near the end to Orca to continue bottling the root beer. I feel like Orca specializes in finding older, often no longer in production sodas to give them a new life. This seems to be the kinds of root beers bottled by Orca to my knowledge and memory. And as i stated, this one seems like i should have done it already but i didn't see it in my archives so i've either just mistakenly not reviewed this or i got this root beer a long time ago and it's just been sitting in my fridge (both are highly likely scenarios). Since we are already talking about the label i will just go ahead and say the design on this one was phoned in. They did minimal work on this and it shows. Its a yellow... i guess clover shaped blob(?) with white writing in it. No extra points there. The name O-So lends to the statement on the bottom of the label which states that this stuff is "O-So Delicious!"

Well... i don't know if i would call it delicious, but it's pretty good. My main gripe is the same i have with any of the other butterscotch root beers i have had in the past. Too much butterscotch, not enough root beer. This stuff tastes much more like a butter beer than a root beer. This is made with pure cane sugar, which is prominent in the sweetness, and has hints of vanilla and carmel throughout. But the main overwhelming flavor is that of butterscotch. Luckily for me, i enjoy butterscotch quite a lot so this is a bit of a treat for me considering i've been off sugar. I almost don't want to say it but rather like this. My instincts tell me it should have more of a root beer flavor but i think what they have going on is working for them. Perhaps just change the name to butter beer and i won't make such a fuss about it. 

My official review is O-So Butterscotch Root Beer gets 7 (seven) IBCs. This is rated much higher than i should but it's a good drink. Again, i wouldn't call this a root beer but i would say it lives up to the O-So moniker. That's really the only reason it gets a 7, because it tastes very good and scratches that sweetness itch i've been having for the past 2 weeks. Ultimately this was not worth breaking my sugar abstinence for, but to be fair my kids helped me drink it so that i wouldn't overdose. 

MoneyBag Root Beer

I know I harp on this a lot, but every time I go to Disney I am more and more convinced of how sinister that organization is. I’m currently in therapy, so before I level yet another criticism I have against this corporation, I want to start by saying something nice about Disney. When I go to Disneyland, or any of the Disney World parks really, I expect the park to be clean, to be safe, and to be reasonably in working order. And for the most part, Disney delivers. For the amount of garbage generated in these locations, you never see it piled up in back corners or low traffic areas. People are employed to make sure it looks nice. Disney Security is no joke. They don’t suffer idiots lightly and will remove anyone seeking to make problems for the rest of the park goers. When I go to drink water from the water fountain, I don’t worry if it's clean water or not, and as an added bonus I can count on it to be cold. I was once told that every night Disney employees go through the park and replant any dead flowers and touch up any painted surfaces that may need it because they want the park goers to have the best possible experience. Not sure if that last one is true or not, but it certainly fits the narrative that Disney is putting its best foot forward when it comes to giving you the optimal experience. The one catch; you’re gonna pay for it. The Disney Corporation has SO MUCH MONEY. An insane amount of money really. All they care about is money. Money money money. It’s the only motivation this company has. Nothing they do or create or promote is not in the service of getting you to give them more of your money. Why? So that it can be their money. As of this posting, the Disney Corporation has a market capitalization of $176.96 billion. What does market capitalization mean? I have no idea. But I know what $176.96 billion means. It means they have so much money that they simply leave it lying on the ground all over their parks. 

These photos show coins, “wishes” really, littered around the Disney parks that they don’t even want or need. They won’t ever collect this money because THEY DON’T EVEN WANT THIS MONEY. Ride Small World, or Big Thunder Mountain, or even the ferry from the Magic Kingdom parking lot to the park entrance. There is a staggering amount of money all around you just lying on the ground, in the water, on buildings, in small crevices, everywhere. And I know it’s just coins, but that all adds up. I go through my wife’s car from time to time to harvest all the coins she accumulates and routinely come up with around $100 every 6 months or so. Now imagine all the money Disney accumulates every day that it doesn’t even care to collect. This isn’t even on the books. It’s just there, YOUR money, to remind you how rich they are. Perhaps instead of raising ticket prices year after year they could just go pick up all these forgotten wishes. But they would never do that. They would just collect those coins and still raise ticket prices next year. 

That being said, this root beer is the answer to the age-old question, “what root beer do rich people drink?” The answer is right in front of your nose, my friend. Of course, it’s MoneyBag Root Beer, brought to you by none other than Gene Simmons, the legendary face of the 1970’s glam rock band KISS. Now, first and foremost I have to make it clear… I couldn’t care less about the band KISS. I’m a 90’s kid and had little-to-no exposure to this music growing up. By the time I had developed my taste in music and could actually find any value in the catalog of this band, I simply did not. I heard enough to formulate my decision fairly early. On top of that, all I know of Gene Simmons is that he is a self-obsessed ego maniac and a promotional whore. He really thinks he’s the cat’s pajamas, even while looking like if Satan’s henchman was actually an old, angry casino mob boss’s grandma (and that’s without all his performance makeup on). And in an attempt to both stay relevant and also bilk working class people out of their hard earned money (Disney’s ears are burning), Mr. Simmons has created a line of sodas, what I can only imagine is his idea of a lucrative revenue stream since all his fans are now in recovery. 

Alright, i've already rambled on for far too long, so let me just make this brief. The bottle is a clear glass 12 oz with a slight champagne bottle shape, not that it's anything special. I doubt that was intentional but perhaps Grandma Gene thought it would appeal to his clientele and add to the overall theme of "look how wealthy I am". The label is a sticker with just 2 or 3 colors, all in the brown/tan/beige variety. It's not a bad design, featuring a large sack of money under the name of the root beer. But it's instantly ruined by the fact that this narcissist has to put his signature on the label (and the bottle cap) so you won't forget he's taking your money and in return giving you the bare minimum of what a root beer should be. That's right, the big reveal; this stuff isn't very good. [insert lack of surprise here] To be fair (again, my therapy kicking in here) it has a decent creamy vanilla flavor and nice carbonation with a sweet cane sugar finish. Now, niceties dispensed, the flavor it does carry is very small and thin. It mostly tastes like watered down root beer. They are letting the cane sugar do most of the heavy lifting with the sweetness, but in reality this stuff is just mediocre. I struggle to find the root beer flavor shine through and when it does it's quite enjoyable. But ultimately i'm left drinking basically just sugar flavored water. Still, it's more of a root beer than many others i have tried and it doesn't leave a gross taste in my mouth. 

Also, my wife says it tastes like medicine. Just thought i'd throw that in there if anyone was curious.

My official review is that MoneyBag Root beer gets 5 (five) IBCs. I feel like i'm being generous here, way more generous than i really need to be with this stuff. Still, for what it is (an obvious cash grab by a money-hungry, hanger-on has-been who really doesn't need it) they could have done way way worse with it. And so for the middle of the road effort put into making this thing i will award a middle of the road rating. I doubt i will get this again, but it's not the worst thing you can do with your money. 

That would be giving it to Disney. 

Joby Joe's Root Beer Float

Well... it's a new year and i didn't accomplish my goal. I got close, but i still have around 7 or so root beers in my fridge i need to drink to clean out my backlog. But i'm making progress and that's what ultimately counts. Luckily i have some pretty good Vegas odds in my favor if i go ahead and say right now that i will clean out my fridge by the end of the year. So i'm gonna go ahead and do that. I will clean out my backlog from my fridge by the end of this year. And if i don't... well, then there's always next year i suppose. The ones i have left are the ones i have kind of grouped together. I have 2 that are made by the same brewery in different flavors, 3 that are music themed (including 2 KISS themed root beers if you can believe that), and a then a couple stragglers, which this one is. Joby Joe's Root Beer Float is a flavor distributed by Rocket Fizz. It appears to be a one-off and specifically appears to be somewhat of a memorial for the handsome young man pictured on the label. The label is very bright and colorful with a photograph of a young guy standing in front of a tent in the woods holding a fishing rod and a lantern. The label entreats you to "enjoy the outdoors" in what looks like Coca-Cola font. And then the part that tips off that this is a memorial is "in memory of Joe" printed at an angle following along the fishing rod he is holding. At the bottom of the label it says that a portion of the proceeds from this sale goes to a homeless organization. So that's nice. Rocket Fizz is great for picking up these little one-off producers who don't have lines of sodas in various flavors. The downside is you don't get much info about the root beer itself, like who makes it, how long it's been in production, or what happened to this poor guy who they are celebrating with this soda. Kind of a weird way to memorialize someone, but i'm not openly against the idea. Maybe that's what i want for myself when i pass, but the one stipulation i have is that every bottle of delicious root beer has to have a little bit of my ashes in it as well. That way i really will always be with whoever drinks it (or at least until they pee). 

Well, i've already talked a lot about the label, so lets just jump into the taste. I know i say this a lot about basically every root beer i review but the overwhelming taste i get from this is simply "sweet". It's almost sharply sweet, but that's really just the first piercing taste, followed by a muted root beer flavor. It's a little obscured by the amount of carbonation, which isn't a bad thing. The aftertaste is a little unpleasant, almost reminiscent of a diet soda even though this is sweetened with cane sugar. I don't get a real strong root beer vibe from this. It's very subtle and the sweetness really takes over from the start. But i don't think it's bad tasting, just doesn't quite hit that strong root beer flavor that i'm looking for. Most of the ingredients are typical of what you would find in similar root beers and nothing really makes this one stand out, but i am also not repulsed by this one. It's just very mid. And this calls itself a root beer float but i don't get much of the creaminess that would make it more of a float flavor. So it's just a very average, run of the mill, nothing special, middle of the road root beer. 

My official review is that Joby Joe's Root Beer Float gets 5 (five) IBC's. It's good, but not great. I like the taste though it could use a stronger root beer base. And it seems like the money goes to a good cause. But i wouldn't reach for this one again next time i'm in Rocket Fizz because there are so many other better options out there. Maybe give it a shot if you're interested. 

Reading Draft Root Beer

I have a confession to make. Call it a Christmas confession if you will. I have been stealing oranges from my neighbor’s tree for the past 3 Christmases since we moved into our new house. I say “neighbor”, but it’s technically a house that is one street over from us. I’m just gonna be right up front here for a second; I acknowledge this is a moral wrong that I am doing but I have concocted a flimsy justification for why I am allowed to steal these oranges. When we were looking to buy a house a few years ago we looked at this very house with the orange tree and were going to submit an offer. However, this was during the time right before the pandemic when all houses for sale were getting 30+ offers, most if not all of which were above the asking price. When it came time for us to submit an offer the sellers simply said they had too many offers already and didn’t want to consider another one. So we never really got a chance to try and buy that house. We had offers for other homes rejected in the past, but this one felt a little unfair cuz they wouldn’t even hear us out. And to be frank that house was good, but not great. There were plenty of things I didn’t love about it and I truthfully feel like the house we ended up in is a better fit for us. 

But man… that orange tree in the front yard produces some seriously incredible oranges. They are large, sweet, seedless, juicy oranges that would convince anyone they are worth stealing. They are incredible. And the people who ended up buying the house don’t seem to do anything with them and they just go to waste. So in the dead of night I will creep over to the house the next street over and fill a bag with oranges and bring them home for my kids to eat, which they do with exuberant enthusiasm. They freakin love these oranges. But the cat is out of the bag in that they know I am stealing these oranges and that presents a moral conundrum. I don’t want them to talk to their friends and our neighbors telling them I am stealing oranges, so I should stop doing it. BUUUUUT... they are also complicit and love love love eating them and demand I steal more when we run out, so I have to keep doing it. It has become a Christmas tradition at this point. So I’m trying to do what all governments, countless religions and cults, and even well-meaning parents have done for centuries… I am creating a narrative (with some similar motifs) to explain how these oranges show up in our house during the winter in hopes it gets repeated enough to wash out the real story and becomes the truth. I call it, “The Legend of the White Whisper.” The name White Whisper actually comes from someone I knew in my early 20s essentially doing door-to-door sales who drove a white Chevy Cavalier. He called it the White Whisper because it was white, quiet, non-descript, unflashy, and capable of sneaking into neighborhoods without alarming anyone into not answering their doors when he came knocking. The White Whisper is an entity, like Santa Claus, that brings delicious, juicy ripe oranges to your home during the Christmas season as long as you believe (and live near at least one fruit-bearing orange tree). No one knows what the White Whisper looks like (certainly not a middle aged man in a hoodie), but just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not real.  If you anger the White Whisper then you will not receive a bounty of delicious White Whisper Oranges (that’s what my kids call them). Oh, and also, you have to say “White Whisper” in a whisper when you say it out loud. If you don’t that angers him. Her? I guess we haven’t nailed down gender pronouns for the WW just yet. Regardless though, I am in the early stages now of establishing what will become a prominent world religion soon. I’m sure you’ll see the headlines once I have officially founded the Church of the White Whisper, get granted tax exempt status, and declare that all my followers wives are now my wives. It’s gonna be great.

Alright, orange-based sex cults aside, let's talk about Reading Draft Root Beer. Reading Soda Works Bottling Co. is in Reading, PA and has been in operation since 1921 with a line of sodas in flavors common among smaller distributors. The variety of flavors is quite impressive honestly. It's just a shame the root beer flavor is no good (spoiler). It comes in a traditional 12 oz brown glass bottle and has a well made and unique label featuring an old steam powered locomotive. This seems to be the "mascot", if you will, for Reading Works Soda Co. I am not sure if Reading, PA is known for it's trains but that would make sense. The website boasts of using pure cane sugar and all natural ingredients for the retro taste you're looking for. To me, retro means old, and that's the best way i could describe the taste of this stuff. It tastes old. It doesn't taste like root beer at all. My son said it tastes too sweet to him, but what gets me is the unpleasant aftertaste it leaves in your mouth. It's reminiscent of the now defunct Journey John Barleycorn line of root beers that left a distinct impression on me, and i mean that in a bad way. I don't like this stuff, like not at all. In fact, i may go as far as to say i hate it. Drinking it was in no way pleasurable. Still, i drank the whole bottle, so it's not so bad as to make me pour it down the drain like i have with some other root beers over the years. But it's a safe bet i will never be drinking this one again, at least not for leisure or without being paid or under duress or something like that. 

My official review is that Reading Draft Root Beer gets 3 (three) IBCs. This was not a pleasure to drink. This was me doing my job as a root beer reviewer. You gotta take the bad with the good, and this was the bad. I gave them some credit for being so well established and having a large selection of flavors. Perhaps some of the other ones are tolerable or even enjoyable, but the root beer felt like a slog finish. It's a shame White Whisper season is over because that would have been a great way to get this taste out of my mouth. 

Serenity Sodas Root Beer & Vanilla Bean

I’m not a fashionable guy. I’ve known this for decades at this point. I have had my brief dalliances of wearing clothes that one might consider fashionable but I am typically a jeans and t-shirt kinda guy. My wife is very interested in clothes and fashion, but she has a style all her own. It’s a lot less typical than what I would consider most mainstream choices for women to wear. And I don’t dislike the way my wife dresses, but I’m often left scratching my head seeing what she puts together. It’s not that it looks bad, I just would never have looked at what she had on and considered that she is on the cutting edge of fashion. But she gets compliments all the time on her clothing choices so I just chalk it up to me having zero taste when it comes to clothes. Well that all went out the window when my wife told me recently that she would dress like a “bag lady” if she could pull it off. So what she is saying is that she wants to look homeless. I get that she is ultimately going for comfort, but I would hope that could be achieved without culturally appropriating the homeless look. Would she take it the whole 9 yards and start rubbing dirt all over herself? I don’t know, but I don’t really care to go down that road. I can just imagine showing up to a work picnic or something like that and saying, “Honey, this is my manager Patrick. Patrick, this is my bag lady wife. What’s that? Oh no, she doesn’t work.” For the record, my wife can choose to dress however she deems fits the occasion. But man… I really hope she doesn’t go full bag lady on me. This falls along the same lines of when she told me she wants a pet goat. I was trying to humor her and entertain the idea, but mostly I was highlighting the obvious challenges of owning a pet goat (i.e. smell, attitude, poop, etc.) when she said, “but he could sit here on the couch with me while I watch TV.” To which I responded, “wait, you want a house goat?!” That’s a hard pass from me dawg. If it’s a choice between bag lady and house goat… I guess bring on the bag lady.

OK, well let's get to this root beer. Serenity Sodas is bottled by Blue Sun Bottling in Spring Lake Park, MN. The website boasts that their shop is the largest craft soda and candy shop in all of Minnesota. I would believe that from the home of the Mall of America, but i get the feeling it's probably just as unimpressive. Pictures show that it shares many themes with the way Rocket Fizz is laid out and what kinds of candy and sodas are offered. It's the same as a place in Ocala, FL my wife and i just visited recently right on the square called Grandpa Joe's. Most of these shops follow the same type of business plan but Blue Sun still claims it has thousands of soda flavorss to choose from and the largest offering in the entire world. I get the sense of awe i am supposed to feel and i do acknowledge it is impressive, but again... i feel like I've seen it before and i'm not gonna go out of my way to pay a visit. 

The label has a cosmic affectation to it that is pleasing. There is what i am assuming is a Japanese symbol behind the name of the soda likely owing to the Asian idea of the concept of the notion of the state of serenity, which from my limited understanding is the ability to be in a sense of calm and well being even in turbulent situations. The font of Serenity Sodas makes me think of the 2005 movie by the same name, which was done as a follow up to the cult classic TV series Firefly that ended after just one season. It was a novel idea to have what is essentially a western set in space and it found quite a rabid fanbase, but for whatever reason the network did not renew the series for a second season. The fans demanded more of the story and the movie Serenity is what came out of it. I gotta think the two are related based on the name and font of the root beer compared to the movie poster and the space theme/background on the label, but that could just be a wild assumption on my part. 

But of course, what really happens when i think of "serenity" is that my mind immediately jumps to this. 

I like the flavor of this one. It's quite sweet from the cane sugar and it has a nice vanilla undertone and finish to it. I am a little underwhelmed by the actual root beer flavor of it because it's quite thin. But i would say its a good drink overall. It doesn't classify itself as a cream soda but that's certainly what it tastes like to me. That's not necessarily a bad thing, i just don't want to have to open myself up to reviewing a bunch of cream sodas now. But who knows, when i get to the end of all the root beers out there maybe i will need to start checking out cream sodas and sarsaparillas. For now though, we are gonna stick to root beers, and if this one calls itself a root beer then it's a pretty good root beer at that. 

My official review is that Serenity Sodas Root Beer & Vanilla Bean gets 6 (six) IBCs. I liked this one overall and would lean more toward a 7 (or even and 8) if it had more of a strong, traditional root beer flavor to it. Regardless, this thing is a winner for sure. Like the TV series and the subsequent movie to which i made mention above, this probably won't find a wide audience. However, i bet the audience it attracts will be just as appreciative as the sci-fi fans who demanded more of something they loved that was taken away from them, all while keeping a calm head. If that's not serenity i don't know what is. 

Fiz Roc City Root Beer

I heard recently about a writing exercise in the book Bird by Bird which instructs you to describe a school lunch. The one that immediately sprang to mind for me was in middle school. I was probably in 6^th or 7^th grade at the time. Like most schools, our school lunch options were rather lack luster and I often brought a lunch from home as my parents rarely gave me money for school lunch. But the most popular school meal for us at that time was easily pizza day. The cafeteria would make homemade pizza on big rectangular cookie sheets and cut and serve square slices to all the kids who bought lunch that day. If you were lucky you got an edge piece, and a corner piece was like winning the lottery. To my memory the pizza was mediocre at best, but all the kids who ate it acted like it was the best pizza they had ever tasted, exacerbated by the fact that our small town had really only two pizza restaurants so there wasn’t much to compare it to. This particular lunch day I had neither a lunch I brought from home nor money to buy school lunch. I simply went to lunch with my peers with no thought of how or what I would eat. I don’t know if I thought someone would take care of me but I definitely had the feeling I should be eating some pizza with my classmates even though I had no way of procuring anything. I sat next to my friend named Jake and did the thing which I still have a tendency to do, which is to determine something I think is funny to me and proceed to annoy everyone around me incessantly until consequences intervene to put an end to my shenanigans. I don’t recall exactly what I was doing to Jake, but for sure it was annoying and I got what was coming to me. I was pestering Jake, probably about getting him to share some of his pizza, and it got to the point where I was the only one thinking we were all having fun and laughing and Jake had had enough. The actual inciting incident escapes me, but after one too many annoyances Jake palmed his pizza square and shoved it directly into my face. He mashed it back and forth a bit and then got up and left the table. I started laughing, probably initially out of shock and then out of embarrassment, but he wasn’t laughing and no one else around me was laughing. I then quickly shifted to subtly and then uncontrollably crying. People around me took notice and some kids speculated it was because the pizza was hot and burning my face. I didn’t correct them, but I can say it was more so that I was completely embarrassed by my friend for my stupid antics. It was humiliating and I learned a valuable lesson that day; stop being so damn annoying all the time. Sadly, this is a lesson I have learned many more times after this. Just usually without having pizza shoved in my face. So there. That’s my lunch story. Was it worth it? Probably not. 

This is one of those root beers i could have sworn i have already reviewed. I see this one around during my root beer escapades and research efforts. Most notably the last time i likely saw this was at our local Rocket Fizz shop, which is probably where i found this one. Fiz Roc City Root Beer is bottled by College Club Beverages in Rochester, NY. I found Facebook and Instagram pages for College Club Beverages, both of which put in the bare minimum effort to even say the same of the venture. I don't use any social media whatsoever and generally eschew all forms of it so i didn't really delve into either of these internet searches, mostly out of defiance, but also largely because i can't pretend to care about all the bottlers out there. The one bit of info i did glean from my very sparing research is that College Club Beverages is family owned and operated and has been in business since 1922.They have a variety of flavors, though i couldn't list any of them or point you to any websites where you could browse or buy any of them. But like i said, i see this one all the time when i am looking and i would have bet you anything i had already reviewed it. But like so many others i probably just bought it and buried in the back of my fridge and didn't give it another thought. 

This comes in a fairly standard 12 oz. clear glass bottle. The label is super duper simple and minimal. I think the background color of the label may change based on what flavor soda you are purchasing/consuming, but otherwise there is basically nothing to it. And i'm just gonna cut to the chase cuz i don't have much else to say about this... it's bad. It doesn't taste like root beer. It doesn't taste like anything. It's very thin and watery with a hint of cane sugar. It tastes like brown. It tastes like chemicals. It tastes like sadness. It tastes like failure. It's not good. Not even a little bit. The only redeeming quality is that it doesn't taste so offensive as to make me want to vomit or to commit violence against my fellow man. And that's really all that can be said about this. To quote Sean Hannity, it's a travesty. 

My official review is that Fiz Roc City Root Beer gets 2 (two) IBCs. It has been a long time since i've had a root beer this terrible. I can only imagine the rest of their flavors follow suit. Something tells me the recipe has changed over time because there is no way a company stays in business since 1922 peddling garbage like this. If you come across this one, DO NOT BOTHER. It is an utter failure and a disappointment to all other root beers.