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.