Commander Ron's Root Beer

Commander Ron’s Root Beer is made by Moonglade Brewery in Oceanside, CA. The brewery was started in 2017 by a guy named Jason who began experimenting with making craft sodas from the original English recipe for ginger beer (or so the website says). It looks like they only put out two flavors as of now, a ginger beer and a root beer, and if they ginger beer is anything like the root beer I’ll go ahead and skip it (more on that later). My wife and kids picked up a 4-pack of these tall cans as a Father’s Day gift for me. We “enjoyed” 3 of them and the last has been sitting in my fridge taking up space until I could find a time to review it. Seems to be a problem I am increasingly running into, but luckily my backlog isn’t getting out of control again. So let’s talk about this one and mark it off the list, shall we?

I think my wife just got these off Amazon, and if so they aren’t that cheap. For a 4 pack of tall 12 oz cans it ran her about $20 from what I am seeing currently. That’s steep for a root beer considering a 12 pack of regular cans in any grocery store runs… what, about $8-$10 now? I don’t actually know. I know I seem like a man of the people, but in reality I have no idea what my butler pays when he picks up my groceries. Anyway, I do like the label on these cans. There is a playful looking boat captain with a nautical shaped hat and the silhouette of a large sailing vessel on the horizon while the foreground is adorned with tropical trees and an eye catching font. It’s colorful, whimsical and fun, full of promise and the hope that what is sealed inside will be both interesting and refreshing. Sadly, it is neither.

Now, I don’t want to come out swinging at this one just yet. This guy Jason seems like a dude just trying to do his thing and make a decent product using natural ingredients. I don’t have an issue with that, but I’m simply not impressed with the taste of this stuff. For starters, it’s super watered down tasting and nearly completely devoid of any carbonation. Ingredients listed on the label are real vanilla, molasses and a hint of cinnamon, which gives this a very "spicy" overall flavor. It somewhat reminds me of the Christmasy flavored root beers, like Dad's. The can also says it is sweetened with pure cane sugar, but the best way I can describe the overall taste is “unpleasant”. I wouldn’t call this a “healthy” soda cuz I don’t think that’s the lane Commander Ron is trying to pilot in. But I would call it a “bad” soda because… well, it’s bad. I don’t like it. My wife doesn’t like it. My kids don’t like it. And as I’ve said numerous times before we all know my wife and children don’t have opinions that matter when it comes to this subject, but I figured it was still worth mentioning, if for nothing else than effect.

My official review is Commander Ron’s gets 4 (four) IBCs. This should be a 3 but the label is doing the heavy lifting to raise this up for me.  I really don’t see myself ever getting this again, and certainly not spending $20 for 4 cans. Free shipping be damned, this stuff simply isn’t worth the trouble. Sorry Jason, nothing personal, except that your root beer sucks, so take that as personally or non-personally as you’d like I guess. I am but a humble truth teller in the realm of root beers and I cannot in good conscience endorse this beverage. Kudos on the name and label though. Maybe re-tool this one and come back with something more palatable. 

Poppi Root Beer

North Korea. I’m fascinated with it. Dare I say, I love it. I’ve watched at least a half dozen documentaries about it, I read a book (humble brag), and I’ve listened to several interviews of people who underwent immense physical, financial and emotional hardship to escape what is dubbed “the Hermit Kingdom”. I’m not in any position of authority nor do I possess an intellectual high ground enough to instruct or inform anyone about else the specific goings-on of this extremely cloistered country, but man… it’s crazy to think of what is happening there and how no one really pays attention to it at all. The level of brain washing and control that government there has over it’s citizens is astounding. The way they treat their citizens and inflict suffering on millions of people who just so happened to be born in that spot of the Earth routinely violates international criminal law. Yet here in America, the chief target of all North Korea’s ire, we hardly care about them at all. For all the thought and energy they put into demonizing the USA you would think we would return the favor. For example, one interview I listened to said that in grade school, math text books routinely contain word problems such as, “if you have 18 American bastards in prison and you kill 6 of them, how many American bastards are left?” People talk about the horrors of World War II, the concentration camps of the Holocaust, the injustice our early nation inflicted on African slaves for well over 100 years, all as things that we are glad are in our rearview but with which we still grapple with the ramifications. Well all these things are still happening, right now, right this very moment in North Korea. And we don’t care. It’s wild. 

This is a picture of the North Korean flag. I have a t-shirt with this flag on it. It’s a bit of a sick joke from my wife as she gave it to me for Christmas one year because she knows about my obsession. And as I opened it in front of my family and held it up, my dad, an 82-year-old veteran of the Vietnam War who lost his own father in WWII, exclaimed, “oh cool, Captain America.” I wear this shirt on the 4^th of July and no one says anything to me. They just think I fit right in with all the other people dressed in patriot garb. I have a job working in a close relationship with the Department of Defense for our government and I wear this shirt to work and I’ve never once been asked about it or even gotten a sideways look regarding it. And even if I shouted “I’m wearing a shirt of the flag of North Korea, the sworn enemy of our nation” I doubt anyone would even take notice. Or they might say “I thought Russia was our sworn enemy”, or something like that. We just don’t care North Korea and I can’t understand why. It’s so fascinating to me. 

Well here’s something else we don’t care about; Poppi Root Beer. Poppi Soda was started in Austin, TX by a husband and wife duo and has a line of about a baker’s dozen of different flavors (as of the time I am writing this). The flavors are mostly fruit or fruit medleys but they do have a classic cola as well as a root beer, which is the only reason I’ve picked one of these up. I’ve seen these things all over the place in basically any grocery store as they are aggressively expanding into the “healthy” soda market. Yes, this is another one of the healthy sodas out there, loaded with natural sweeteners, probiotics to promote good gut health, and are low calorie and low sugar. And as you’ve probably guessed by now, this is why I think these are bad. I’ve tried to soften my response to these “better for you” sodas, as the side of the can says, and genuinely wish this company well for trying something new and different. But nothing about the way this tastes makes me think it’s worth trying any of the other flavors also. 

I don’t recall where I got this soda but as can be seen in the picture above I got it in a 12 oz aluminum can. The label is fairly uninspiring compared to a lot of the other colorful cans for the fruity flavors they offer. It fits right in with the routine color pallet of most generic root beers out there. I will give them credit for trying to be environmentally conscious as I think you can only get these in aluminum cans that are 100% recyclable, so for reals kudos for that. The taste is quite uninspiring, which matches the aroma when you crack the can open. Some of the main ingredients the website wants you to be sure to know about are the agave inulin (key to the aforementioned prebiotics), apple cider vinegar (which you can totally taste), and stevia as a natural sweetener. But really, I don’t find much if any root beer flavor to this at all. Outside the hint of apple cider vinegar flavor, it’s just really watery, not really sweet, and… well I’m struggling to say anything else about it other than “no thanks”. As I’ve said with all the other “healthy”, or in this case “better for you” sodas out there, if you don’t want to drink soda because it’s unhealthy, then just don’t drink soda. 

My official review is that Poppi Root Beer gets 2 (two) IBCs. This one was doomed from the start. As far as I’m concerned, healthy sodas have no place in this world. Good for them trying to promote good gut health, I guess, and perhaps the fruity flavors are more inspiring and easier and fun to drink than this was. But as far as I am concerned I will just keep ignoring this when I see it in the grocery store the same way everyone in America keeps ignoring that insane country that is determined to annihilate us, North Korea. 

Golden Maple Root Beer

My marriage is failing. 

This isn't a cry for help or a sordid confession of any kind. It's a simple acknowledgment of the facts. My marriage is crumbling right in front of me and i can't stop it. I don't want to dissolve our marriage and not be able to live in a house with my kids everyday, but it's to the point where my wife and i just can't seem to coexist without conflict. And of course this isn't all of a sudden, this has been a long, long time coming. And I'm such a coward that i wrote this post almost 2 years ago and am just now publishing it. 

I'm not a perfect husband by any stretch, and while i've always been faithful to my wife she has illuminated my understanding of all my other many faults. Chief among them for her is my inability and/or unwillingness to give her the relationship she wants. I don't see her and i don't hear her. And that's fair. After a few years of counseling and a lot of deep soul searching I can honestly say I completely see where she is coming from. Despite my "best" efforts, i can't seem to provide my wife with what she wants most. All that being said, there are two sides to every story and you are only hearing mine. I am willing to just chalk it up to the fact that we are so so different in so many aspects of our personalities. A few years back i was shown an online assessment that breaks down everyone who takes it into 16 personality types. After answering the quiz and reading through my personality type i was stunned and how aptly it describes me, almost to a tee. And i feel like the itching feeling that i have had for a long time that the brain chemistry we both individually possess just isn't compatible with one another was confirmed when i had my wife do a few of these assessments as well. I know it not romantic and it's a bit fatalist, but to me it just makes the most sense. We are so completely on different spectrums of personality that for all the good we can and have done together there are twice as many pitfalls we both fall into.

I often think of an experience we had back in 2016. We had just moved back to Arizona from Florida and were living with my in-laws, who i can genuinely say are terrific people and so kind and generous. We lived with them for several months while we looked for houses to buy, and buy a house we eventually did. We signed all the papers and closed on the house and moved our things into it... and still lived at my in-laws for another month. We were paying mortgage and utilities on a house we didn't even live in. I continually badgered my wife (one of my flaws) about moving into our own house and her response was that she was just never ready. She had to organize and pack up all the things we had at her parents' house still and it was all just so overwhelming and the time was never right. So finally after a month of this i set a date and said we will be moving into our house on that day so whatever needed to be taken care of before then should get the attention it deserves. In my memory she agreed to this, but i don't know what she would say regarding that. 

The day of the move arrived. My wife and her sisters all went out shopping for the majority of the day (this was around the holidays) and i stayed home with the kids, which i was completely content with. When she finally came home it was late in the evening. The sky was dark outside and it was nearing bedtime for our two small kids. She was visibly upset, probably from knowing we were going to have a confrontation when she got home. I assume she spent the day venting to her sisters all her frustrations with me, but i have no evidence of that other than gut feeling. So she came home in no mood to even see or speak to me. But that was no excuse to me. I told her it was time to get our things and go to our new house, and that began a huge fight in front of all her family. It was all the same things. She wasn't ready, it was too much, too overwhelming, and she wasn't going to do it until things were sorted and packed up and all the conditions were perfect for her. So i just started grabbing clothes and throwing them into bags and boxes and that sent my wife off the edge. We started screaming and shouting at one another. I shouted, "i don't know why you don't want to go to our new house." Her response will always stay with me. She said, "no, i don't want to go with you." It was humiliating and discouraging and my wife was in tears. 

I remember standing outside on the sidewalk with my then 5-year-old son confused by all the commotion, my wife holding our infant daughter was surrounded by her mom, brothers and sisters standing several feet away from me while she was in tears and expelling everything she was feeling. I was too far away to make out the conversation, but i truly felt so isolated in that moment. I was the outsider in this situation and no one was on my side. But her father came and stood next to me in that moment. He didn't say anything, just stood by my side. My father-in-law is a great man. Indeed, he is the best man i have ever known, as i have often confessed to my wife. He's very devoutly religious, very patient, a teacher, a leader, and an even temper in the face of situations like this. So while i stood on the sidewalk, a dejected man watching my sobbing wife explain to her family what a terrible man and husband i was, i just turned to my father-in-law and said, "i am so sorry how all this went down." He smiled graciously and put his hand on my shoulder and simply uttered the word, "mortality". I instantly knew what he meant. As a devoutly religious man he was telling me that this uncomfortable occurrence and failure of mine as well as my wife's was but a small moment in the infinite expanse of eternity and his belief in our ever enduring spirits. I appreciated his kindness to me then in that moment and will never forget it. But i can say i have felt like a dejected failure over and over again as we have continued to stay together. So while i don't want to be the one to say this is over, as a through and through pessimist i can't help but feel like there is no recovering from this. As i see it, the pain of the fact that our marriage is doomed is only outweighed by the hopelessness of feeling that no matter what I do to stop it there is no way to prevent this. My wife and i are locked in a game of chicken wondering which of us is going to swerve.

So anyway... sorry to burden all of you with that. It is good incentive for me to try and get through these reviews though. I am working my way through these root beers sent to me by my friend and it seems that most of them come from the Great Lakes region. This one falls into that category. Golden Maple Root Beer is brewed by Lakefront Brewery in Milwaukee, WI. I've personally never been to Wisconsin, but i went to Plymouth, MI once for work in January, the dead of winter, and went from the hotel to work to the airport and didn't really spend any meaningful time there. And it's not like it's even that close to Milwaukee. But i did visit the Mall of America, our nation's largest mall. Does that count? Anyway, pictures online make Milwaukee look very scenic and thriving. As for Lakefront Brewery, it has been in operation since 1987 and sounds like a well respected, often visited brewery from the website claims. 

The first thing that strikes me as i look at this clear 12 oz glass bottle is the fact that the root beer inside is colored more like a ginger ale than a root beer. Methinks they intentionally chose a clear glass bottle to showcase the fact that this root beer is different, or at least appears different. The name Golden Maple seems apt considering the golden color of the liquid contained in the bottle and the fact that they use real Wisconsin maple syrup to sweeten their root beer. Well, they technically use real cane sugar to sweeten it, and the website says the maple syrup is to "accent" the flavor of the root beer. I like the flashy label as well. Bold and colorful with a nice prominent maple leaf pasted on the front. Reminds me of my early 20s living in Ontario, Canada. The packaging is well done and looks professional. It gives off the overall impression that the folks running Lakefront Brewery know what they are doing. 

While i can say the drink is good, i would be remiss if i said it was a good root beer. This doesn't taste at all like root beer. It faintly tastes like pancakes (predictable i suppose). It is light and crisp, and the sweetness helps distract from the otherwise blandness of the overall experience. I guess i was just expecting a little more from this. It's less of a root beer and more of a novelty flavored drink found in craft soda and vintage candy stores, though many of those falsely purport themselves as root beers as well. The carbonation is a bit light and the base flavor is essentially just sugar. And the more i drink it the less i find that it is enjoyable. It's more palatable than Ward's from Mississippi. That just tastes like straight up processed syrup, pancakes not included. But that being said, Ward's isn't very stiff competition so the fact that Golden Maple wins out is a bit of a hollow victory. 

My official review is that Golden Maple Root Beer gets 5 (five) IBCs. I like the novelty of this one and the fact that they are trying to do what they do as well as they can, but the taste of this one just lands it in the middle of the road category. I don't think i would classify this as a root beer, but i will say it's better tasting than a lot of the other trash i have reviewed on this blog. I suppose it's worth trying if you're in the area. Just don't get your hopes too high. Sorry this one was such a downer. 

Hoover Dam Root Beer

 Well... we finally did it kids. We cleaned out the years-long backlog in my fridge. This may seem like it's down to the wire getting this done before the end of the year, but truth be told i could have finished this months ago. I've just been lazy. To recap, i declared that i would clean out my backlog of root beers in my fridge by the end of this year. I documented this in the Joby Joe's review in January. And this is the final one that has been taunting me every time i open the fridge doors. I picked this up at our local Rocket Fizz as it is one of the novelty root beers distributed and offered there. The Hoover Dam is an incredible feat of engineering that lies on the border between Nevada and Arizona. I've driven over and by it many times in my life and have even toured the areas they allow you to tour. The hydro-electric turbines turned by water flowing through the dam supply electricity to both Las Vegas and Phoenix as well as countless other small towns and areas both nearby and far away. 

But the main thing i think of when i think of the Hoover Dam is the game Fallout: New Vegas, which i played through at least 3 if not 4 times to get all the different endings. There is quite the epic showdown at the end of that game which takes place at the Hoover Dam. Sorry for the lightest of spoilers any of you that have this 13-year-old game on your list of "things to eventually complete". Kind of like a fridge full of root beers to review and post about on the internet that is received by essentially no one, or maybe that noose you started tying and swear will someday be the way you take your own life. At least one of those things is true for me. At least one. What a great open-world game this was though, set in a dystopian post-nuclear war future that's gritty and violent but still fun enough to come back to multiple times to see everything they packed into it. 

 

The form of currency in these games is bottle caps and the flagship soda is called Nuka-Cola, but in New Vegas they introduced another soda, a root beer variant called Sunset Sarsaparilla. This has nothing to do with anything other than i am mentioning it on this root beer review blog, so while the tie-in may be tenuous at best it is at least not meritless. Also there are lots of guns and copious amounts of violent combat pervasive in the game. And the Hoover Dam is central to all of it. So that's what i think of when i think of the Hoover Dam. Not the hundreds of actual men who died making it, but the hundreds of video game men i murdered while standing on it. Also, i've heard some of the actual men who died making it did so by falling into the wet cement while they were pouring it and are still encased and entombed within the dam walls. How cool is that? I mean, not cool that they died, but these guys are now legends, so much so that i don't know any of their names off the top of my head and i just make a passing comment about them and consider that as paying my respects. So to all those men who's bodies are permanently a part of the Hoover Dam in a physical and literal sense, just think... you're still remembered by me, but only after i first think about Fallout. 

This root beer was purchased in a traditional 12 oz brown glass bottle. I like the label very much. It uses an old-timey sepia toned photo of the Hoover Dam as a backdrop with some delightfully sparkly gold font in handsome cursive to simply say "Hoover Dam Root Beer" with the very obvious but still fun tagline "dam good soda". You can see it coming from a mile away, but it still makes you smile when you see it. Cracking open the cap (and pocketing this precious currency for during the end-times) i was immediately met with the rich aroma of wintergreen, which anyone who reads these reviews will know i am a fan of the wintergreen flavor profile in a root beer. So that was a nice treat. However, like most of the root beers churned out by Rocket Fizz, the novelty of this root beer doesn't carry it in the long run. It is essentially displayed right on the label with the "dam good soda" joke. I can only assume this joke was the entire reason for naming this Hoover Dam Root Beer. Kind of a work backwards from the ending type thing. The wintergreen flavor, while good, is STRONG. Honestly, a bit too strong for my liking, and i generally have a decent liking for that kind of thing. It just overpowers everything else in the flavor profile. It basically tastes like drinking an Altoid. There is very little room left for a root beer flavor once you get past the wintergreen. And to add to that, it just overall tastes fairly watered down and leaves a bad taste in my mouth. It is sweetened with pure cane sugar but i can't seem to get any of that when i drink it. Just a very sharp and aggressive wintergreen taste. I would say this ultimately suffers from a classic case of "too much of a good thing". 

My official review is that Hoover Dam Root Beer gets 4 (four) IBCs. I don't hate this enough to trash it but it's simply not even good enough to be middle of the road. If the Hoover Dam historical monument and power station gets a rating of 8 and the game New Vegas is an easy 10, then this can't be anywhere above a 4. Because unlike both the game or the monument, i won't ever be revisiting this one. Better luck next time Rocket Fizz. 

Ramblin' Butterscotch Root Beer

I’ve been told on more than one occasion that I have an angry resting face. This means I naturally look angry when internally I am simply at my equilibrium; not happy, sad, angry, anxious, anything, etc.  I’m just in my default mode and not thinking about it. I would say “emotionless”, but that’s probably not accurate and is just what my wife calls me. I’ve been told it’s off-putting, meaning people don’t want to approach me. This I find works in my favor as I generally don’t care to engage with strangers, being an introvert by nature. But I never really grasped the full weight of this until I met a woman who bears the same affliction. In general, she looks like the weight of everything in the world has taken its toll on her for 30+ years, and most of the time it didn’t go the way she wanted. This woman is my niece’s mother-in-law, and when I met her was at the wedding of her son to my niece. I’m telling you I’ve never seen someone look more miserable, and it was at her son’s wedding no less. You would have thought she was completely against the union of her son and my niece but decided to keep it to herself, sitting and sulking while the couple read their vows. It was only during this moment I really understood what has been said to me for most of my adult life. “Is everything ok with you?” “You seem upset.” “You should smile more.” I never took any real offence to these comments, but they were annoying. I’m just being me. Why do I care if you think I’m upset or not? Well, now I understand that in social situations (like at a wedding) there is a general demeanor that is expected, and my unintentional broadcasting of faux personal distress or perceived lack of approval turns out to be a real downer for everyone else. So I’m trying to be more conscious of it, but old habits die hard and I find it’s too much effort to appear pleasant and happy all the time with little to no payoff. We’re all just doing the best we can out here.  

And speaking of doing the best we can, i am almost done with all the root beers i have had backlogged in my fridge for at least the last 5 years or so. I am closing in on the last few. This one is really just an extension of my last review, which was related to a review i wrote back in 2016. I'm taking of course about the Ramblin' Root Beer family with a line of flavors both common and uncommon to root beers. As discussed in my last post, it appears that Ramblin' has gone out of business but has licensed the right to brew and distribute their root beer flavors to Rocket Fizz, which is where i found this root beer. You can go back and look at my last review of Ramblin' Maple Root Beer or the original Ramblin' post if you so care to learn more about the company, or more-so, how i came to first find these root beers. It's not a thrilling read and holds little to no value to anything, so i wouldn't recommend it. But it's there if you want it. 

As i've already stated regarding the label, i'm a fan. It's fun, professional, colorful and conveys a sense of adventure in a bottle. But the reality is that this root beer is anything but an adventure. It's a very, very, very watered-down butter beer. I don't mind the butterscotch flavor that is the keynote finish to this elixir. But i wouldn't call it the dominant flavor because the dominant flavor is nothing. This tastes like nothing. It barely tastes like real cane sugar, which it is sweetened with. It just tastes like nothing, or maybe just water. The carbonation is so slight that it's not really even there. The root beer flavor does not exist. And the only other flavors are unpleasant and artificial at best. Indeed, the butterscotch is the star here because it swoops in at the end to save you from the terrible things this has done to your palette. But don't give it too much credit. The butterscotch flavor, which is still the most pleasant part of this drink, is also so weak and thin that it's barely noticeable. You really only taste it after it has sat on your tongue for a bit. Overall it seems like a waste of a drink. 

My official review is that Ramblin' Butterscotch Root Beer gets 2 (two) IBCs. The other flavors of Ramblin' i tried both got a score of 4, so i didn't have high hopes for this one. But i wasn't expecting it to be as big of a letdown as it was. Man is this a disappointing drink. I'd advise you to stay clear of this one as it really has no merit to it, not even as a novelty. There are plenty of other butter beers or butterscotch flavored root beers out there that put on much more of a show than this garbage. 

Ramblin' Maple Root Beer

As I’ve stated several times in these posts, I grew up in a small town in northern Arizona. With a population of around 2000 people at the time, it’s the kind of town where everyone knows everyone. I went to school with the same small group of kids from kindergarten until I moved away my sophomore year of high school. I don’t keep any kind of regular contact with any of those people and only recently ran into one of my old childhood friends by random chance. But outside of that I haven’t talked to anyone from that town in probably 25 years. Even my last interaction with Brandon, my best friend growing up, was about 16 years ago right before I was getting married. But I still think about a friend of mine named Carl. He was the very definition of a nerdy kid. Big glasses, into video games, characteristically nebbish and weak, not super athletic or coordinated, and just rather awkward. My friend groups changed and shifted several times growing up but it was always the same churn of kids being in a small town, so all my friends either knew Carl or were also friends with Carl. He and I lived fairly close to one another and would hang out a lot, mostly to play video games or watch America’s Funniest Home Videos. His family took me along on a trip for Carl’s birthday to Phoenix one year to go to a water park. It was a classic childhood friendship. 

I think around 7^th or 8^th grade my friendship with Carl was put into a rather precarious situation. Carl’s dad’s name was Doug and he ran the local newspaper. As it turns out, Brandon’s dad’s name was also Doug. And wouldn’t you know it, Doug and Doug really didn’t like each other. I don’t know all the specifics of their beef or disagreements as it was mostly adult politics or whatever. I just know that tensions between these adults grew to the point where Brandon’s dad Doug (who used to go by the nickname “Pyro”) got into a fist fight with other Doug (Carl’s dad) right outside of the newspaper office in broad daylight and Pyro sprayed pepper spray in his face. After that, Brandon took a turn against Carl. He had also been friends with Carl growing up, but that was quickly cut off. I continued to be friends with Carl and unbeknownst to me Brandon wasn’t too keen about it. 

I played a lot of basketball as a kid (not particularly well) and Brandon and I signed up to go to a basketball camp in Prescott, AZ as we had done the summer before. This was probably the summer after 8^th grade. It was a week-long camp where we stayed at a local college in the dorms and played basketball for several hours a day all week long. I was casually mentioning it to Carl one day and somehow convinced this goofy, uncoordinated nerd to come to basketball camp with us even though he had little to no athletic skill. He went home and talked to his parents about it and signed up soon after. I told Brandon that Carl would be joining us at camp and sharing a dorm with us. That was over the line for him. He wrote me a note telling me that he didn’t like Carl (we were kids who were too afraid or incapable of telling each other our feelings in person). It stemmed from the fight between their dads. I don’t remember the specifics of the note but it boiled down to me making a choice; I could be friends with him or with Carl, but not both. I didn’t deliberate it that much. The choice was clearly Brandon. He was my best friend. 

Carl still came to basketball camp with us and was completely unaware that I was suddenly no longer his friend. Not being Carl’s friend anymore is one thing, but the lengths to which i/we took to torturing him is unforgivable. We made his life a living hell that whole week. Looking back I am ashamed of how I acted. He walked into this camp thinking he would be spending a week with a good friend of his and instead got ridiculed, mocked, physically assaulted, tormented, and eventually shunned. About halfway through the week he started waking up early and leaving the dorm room before we woke up and wouldn’t come back until late night after we were asleep. I only saw him during basketball drills when I wouldn’t acknowledge him and sometimes in the cafeteria where he would eat alone. He existed like a ghost to avoid any kind of interaction with us. I’m disgusted when I think back to what I put him through that week. And when the camp was over and we came home I didn’t stop there. I continued to torment him as a show of loyalty to Brandon.  

Carl lived right across the street from the high school where his mother taught English. Her classroom faced their house and one day she got a full view of me taking a bike out of their yard that probably belonged to his sister and then ghost riding it into the curb and leaving it in the middle of the street. Brandon was with me and I was showing off for him. We walked to my house and just shy of reaching my properly we were stopped by Carl’s mom. She drove up behind us and stopped in the middle of the street, got out of the minivan that she left running and came up to me to chew me out. She was furious, and being a parent now I don’t blame her in the least. She let me know I was reprehensible in her eyes. She told me she watched me with the bike and that I was to never ever come near their house again. She sealed the whole deal by giving me a big shove. Yes, she laid her hands on me and pushed me as hard as she could, causing me to stumble backward a few steps. She didn’t say a word to Brandon and we both stood silent and motionless through all of the probably 30 second interaction. Then she drove away. 

When I got home she had called my mom and told her all about the bike incident and my actions at basketball camp. And that’s kind of where it ended. I never really got in trouble for it and I never really talked to Carl again. But I’m regularly haunted by this still. I consider this the greatest failure of my life. I forsook my friend at the drop of a hat because my other friend told me to, but even Brandon and I drifted apart not long after this. It was one of the first times the weakness of my character was revealed to me. Carl didn’t deserve the way I treated him and I will always be sorry for it. I don’t expect him to ever see this or know about this confession, and I’m not asking for his forgiveness because I truthfully don’t feel like I deserve it. I would just say that I hope he is well and I am forever sorry for what I did. 

Well... with that somber confession out of the way, let's talk about this new root beer. Ramblin' Maple Root Beer is another flavor offered by the Ramblin' line of soft drinks which are produced by Monarch Beverages and bottled by Rocket Fizz, which is where i found this. I originally was introduced to Ramblin' Root Beer (classic flavor) back in 2016 on a visit to Winchester Farmstand outside of Hemet, CA. You can go back and read that if you care. This looks like the case where Rocket Fizz acquired the rights to reproduce this root beer because the previously sited website on my post now leads to a dead end. Indeed, even the website www.drinkramblin.com that is listed on the label leads no where. So i imagine these guys just aren't in the game anymore. Fair enough, but in my opinion i am glad Rocket Fizz stepped in and is still putting this stuff out because it's good to have a variety of root beers for both historical and posterity sake.

I like the label on these Ramblin' drinks. They are lively and have lots of color. This one has a real autumn feel to it, including the maple leaves that grace the bottom of the label. You'd think a root beer like this comes from Canada but it Monarch Beverages is situated in Atlanta, GA and even the label claims this is a product of the USA. The label also boasts of real sugar and natural flavors. Regarding the taste, i think it's no surprise that this carries a strong maple syrup flavor. And that's really all it tastes like. It's like a very thin syrup that you drink. Almost no carbonation to it and nothing else to really stimulate the pallet. Just maple syrup. It's not as heavy or assaulting as Ward's, which also has a strong syrup taste to it, but i'm not in the practice of drinking straight syrup so this just isn't really my cup of tea (even though it's a root beer). 

My official review is that Ramblin' Maple Root Beer gets 4 (four) IBCs. Like Ward's and the classic Ramblin' before this, a score of 4 is the order of the day. These aren't "bad" root beers, but they certainly aren't good. Not even good enough for a middle of the road score. I poured some in cups for my kids to try and neither of them even finished it. They both had a single sip and said no thanks. So that's pretty damning if children don't even like your product considering that's like the core demographic. So like i said, while i'm glad this stuff is still around, some things may best be left in the past. 

KISS Army Root Beer

I don’t think I’m very good with money. To be completely honest, I do fine. I have a good job making a fairly compensated income and I’m the sole breadwinner in the family. We live a comfortable life. We have a nice home that we are fixing up ourselves and all our necessities are covered. And on top of all this I have very little debt, a decent retirement account and some money in the bank for emergencies, so I’m by no means in dire straits. In fact, while I would likely fall squarely into the middle of the middle class nationally, I’m considered one of the richest people in the world in global terms (as are many of you, my dear readers). But I constantly feel like I just “get by” rather than thrive. We have used cars that are paid off and falling apart. We eat out one to two times a week and take family vacations a couple times a year. Truthfully, it’s all I really deserve. But any of my attempts to “get ahead” rather then “get by” are thwarted by events out of my control as well as my own poor money managing decisions. Let’s go back to our home that we are fixing up. Buying a fixer upper has out of necessity made me into a DIY guy. It doesn’t hurt that I have a bit of knack for it as well as a natural interest in fixing things and working with my hands. So when our washing machine started to go out, I dove into YouTube videos to diagnose and understand the issue in an attempt to be frugal and thrifty and to make do with what I already have, the main goal being to avoid spending $600-$800 on a new washer when this one was perfectly adequate at cleaning our clothes and shouldn’t be too hard to figure out for a guy like me. Cut to more than a month of weekends spent removing suspect parts and replacing them with new parts only to find out that the suspect part likely wasn’t the issue at all and ordering other new parts to replace other suspect parts. A few rounds of that and a lot of frustration and swearing led me to finally call in the experts and get a tech out to the house to officially diagnose the problem, which is what I should have done in the first place. This is the downside of DIY. Unless you really know, you don’t know, and in this case, I didn’t know. Now I’ve put around $700 of new parts and service calls into this 10 year old washing machine when I should have just gone out and got a new one. My latest replacement part was just delivered, the part the technician guaranteed will fix the issue. Well I installed it and guess what… it didn’t fix the issue. But when he came back out to look at it again he told me to try replacing the same things i already replaced. So do I keep dumping money into this garbage fire or just bite the bullet and sell this on craigslist and get a new one? Either way, I feel like a failure. 

Speaking of failures, this is another novelty branded "joke" offering from Rocket Fizz, this time capitalizing on the fandom of the 1970's glam rock band KISS, aptly named KISS Army Root Beer. I already mentioned this in previous posts but i am not a fan of the band KISS. I know they have a following, though i think their fans are likely dying off in droves by this point and i doubt they are on-boarding new recruits. I just don't get it. Some of the music is "fun" i guess, but i was too young to enlist in the KISS Army. Not to mention, with my religious upbringing i was told this band was evil because their name is an acronym for Knights In Satan's Service, though from my limited exposure to their music i can find no indication of Satanic symbolism or suggestive themes. I don't think my parents needed to worry though. Their music itself was enough of a deterrent for me to find interest in other things entirely. Not to mention the iconic face of the band, Gene Simmons, is a legendary whore in the sense that he will shill anything with KISS attached to it. Truly the Garfield of the rock world (shots fired, Jim Davis).  

My original plan was to review this next to the previous root beer i just reviewed, Jimi's Hey Joe Root Beer, because i had a sneaking suspicion that they are the same root beer. But when i went down to my local Rocket Fizz i was unable to find either of these root beers in stock, and it's been a few days since i tried the Jimi's. To be fair, i no longer think these are the same based on the distinct "Christmas" aftertaste i get from this root beer (think Dad's Root Beer). Nothing on the ingredients list indicates this has anything distinctly different from most basic root beers. It seems to be perfectly synthetic in flavor. And the pure cane sugar lends a sweet finish to the overall taste. I must say, it's better than i thought it would be and definitely better than the Jimi Hendrix root beer. You've surprised me on this one Rocket Fizz. Well done on not recycling the same fluid in different labeled bottles. Still, it's a derivative root beer flavor for sure, much like the music of KISS (shots fired, again. It's a regular shooting gallery around here).

My official review is that KISS Army Root Beer gets 6 (six) IBCs. I'm feeling generous for some reason with this one. It exceeded my expectations, so i bumped the score up to 2 more than Jimi's root beer. This in no way reflects how i feel about the music of each of these individuals/groups. If that were the case these scores would be flipped and pushed toward the limits in opposite directions. It's a shame the root beers don't reflect how Jimi is truly a rock legend and a god and KISS will be forgotten about entirely in the next decade or two. Sorry to any of you KISS fans out there. But not really. And you're too old to still be wearing that makeup, you freaks.