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.