Where Have All The Flavors Gone?
Yesterday's post reminded me of how few varieties of soda there is available these days. For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, soda is also known as Pop of Fizzy Water... But I digress...
If you go down the "soda" isle in your local grocery store you will generally only see a few flavors: cola, lemon-lime, root beer, orange, Pepper/Pibbs, dew, club and something that is red. The soda isle may seem long and full but this is only because these flavors are present along with their generic or no calorie substitutes.
If you are in a better store you may be able to find ginger ale or grape soda and some expensive custom brands. But what I miss is seeing are flavors such as black cherry, birch beer, cream, lemon, and sasparilla. When I was a kid just about every soda isle housed these varieties and most were available in several different brands.
A few years ago I missed birch beer so much I ordered a case of it from the east coast. Though shipping 24 12-ounce bottles was prohibitive it was a taste I wanted to have again. I still have six bottles left.
posted by The Guy Who Writes This at 4:00 AM
7 Comments:
As a kid in Iowa, I loved Tyler's grape flavor; strawberry, too. Tyler's was locally bottled in Clarinda back then. I got so nostalgic about it that I watched on Ebay until I found a Tyler's pop bottle and bought it. I'm pretty sure I was the only person who bid on it, so it didn't cost much. When I look at that bottle, I can almost taste Tyler's grape soda.
Birch beer? Never heard of such a thing. Now I'm all just sitting here trying to imagine what that tastes like. Sounds like chewing on pencils would taste about the same. I wonder if they make pine beer? Or maple beer? Oooh! Cedar beer! It would keep the bugs out of your teeth!
Hee hee hee....
Dang... now I'm gonna have to find me some...
Go to mini mart in Warrenton. They have a large selection of those kind of sodas in glass bottles. 2 bucks a bottle, but they are good.
I Love, love, LOVE birch beer. Can't find it in East Jesus, VA though. Have to go north for it.
Ah, yes, I remember when getting a cherry coke meant the soda jerk put a shot of cherry juice into a plain coke for you.
My father was from Pennsylvania Dutch country so I had my first birch beer a long time ago. Haven't had one for ages now. I do remember having one with lunch at the boardwalk in Cape May, NJ, to wash down a Taylor Pork Roll. Those were the days.
Hansen's(in the Natural Food section at Freddies) has a nice variety of flavors including Black Cherry which I can never pass up. Blue Sky and Izze are also available there. I can't stomach any of the Pepsi or Coke products anymore.
Donna, for me it was Schiemmers. I miss that stuff and can find no reference to that brand on the Internet.
Darev, It's like root beer, but it comes from cherry birch trees also known as Brown Birch. As I said it's like root beer with a hint of wintergreen.
Jeff, Cool! Thanks for the tip.
Trop, I grew up with it. You travel up that way every so often. It's worth it for you to make a beer run.
Rich, they were the days, but at least those things are still somewhere to be found.
JB, thanks for the tip. I usually avoid the natural food section, because natural products often are very unnatural and organic is a sliding scale, but I will get some there and taste test it against the mini mart variety.
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