Sprecher, perhaps the first name in Wisconsin soda (and an awesome line of beers) brings you a "Lo-cal" root beer made "in a gas fired kettle" and using Wisconsin honey and local botanicals with just 5 grams of teh carbs, vs. the full brunt of your typical soda. So I'm bringing it with a quick review from the balconies of MKE's Pubic Market. This Root Beer is outstanding by every measure, especially since they are using saccharin they way it should be used-- SO YOU CAN NOT TELL IT'S SACCHARIN BY THE OFF FLAVORS artificial sweeteners artlessly impart at even VERY LOW LEVELS! CAN YOU HEAR ME BIG COMMERCIAL SODA MAKERS?
Who am I kidding, of course they can't hear anything over the sound of 20,000 fork lifts loading and unloading their diet sodas.
Did I mention that I'm highly impressed by the use of sweetener combined with that dab of Wisconsin honey the label celebrates. However they do it, it completely masks those 70;s diet flavors we've come to expect... does anyone want another Fresca?
Grapefruit Soda... think of all the potential in those two words. What adult doesn't love the thought of grapefruit, or its juice? I know I love it, and use it regularly in juice combos. And yet, what we've been trained to drink in the commercial soda environment is Fresca. F-ing Fresca? Fresca it is, unless you've been and spent some time in Jamaican restaurants in the US, or have gone to Jamaica to find Ting, which just makes Fresca taste like sweetened toilet water. I can't really sugar coat it, or sweeten it as one would sweeten toilet water with the latest artificial sweetener from the nation's beverage labs.
And what conversation about artificial sweeteners should miss the history of Nutrisweet, during the Reagan years. From the magic google machine, one can easily find the following historical review of Nutrisweet's perverse past:
"In 1985 Monsanto purchased G.D. Searle, the chemical company that held the patent to aspartame, the active ingredient in NutraSweet. Monsanto was apparently untroubled by aspartame's clouded past, including a 1980 FDA Board of Inquiry, comprised of three independent scientists, which confirmed that it "might induce brain tumors."
- The FDA had actually banned aspartame based on this finding, only to have Searle Chairman Donald Rumsfeld (who went on to become the Secretary of Defense during the oil wars) vow to "call in his markers," to get it approved." You'll find the rest of Arthur Hayes Hull, Jr. story, who was appointed head of the Reagan FDA, appointed an extra scientist which made the vote against possible brain tumors deadlocked, and personally broke a deadlocked vote himself in favor of Nutrisweet, before resigning in the wake of the controversy to head up New York Medical College. And h has never spoken about Nutrisweet since.
- You'll find more detail here:
- http://rense.com/general33/legal.htm
- G.D. Searle has an interesting pedigree for anyone interested in pedigree. It's founder, William Searle was a Harvard graduate and military guy, who served in the officer in the Army Chemical Corps in the early 1950s, when the same division tested LSD on groups of human subjects in concert with the CIA.
- Nevertheless, for every foul thing I can think to say about Coca Cola's Fresca product, which was the subject of health risks well before Rumsfeld and Arthur Hayes Hull's put up job for G.D. Searle- Montsanto, can be easily redeemed by Pepsi's naturally sweet soda, Ting, which offers hope for Grapefruit fans everywhere. Unfortunately for some reason, it may be easier to buy Jamaican pot in Amsterdam than it is to get Jamaican Ting in the USA.
But why would anyone complain about soda flavors when there are so many opportunities to make your own soda out there? Exactly.
Here are a few good places to get supplies to make your own soda with the flavors you like most:
- http://www.bev-art.com/about
- http://www.midwestsupplies.com/searchspring/result/?cat=&q=soda
- http://home-brewing.northernbrewer.com/search?asug=&view=grid&w=soda
- http://www.partycreations.net/catalog.html
Nevertheless, back to the point of these pointless adventures in beverage arts, here's the bare boned Sprecher website, which is kind of an understatement given the quality of their products, but hey, we're in Wisconsin here, not the hype and psychological operations of an East coast beverage company, blowing it's own horn via 10,000 media outlets, with phoney taste tests, and the power of "ZERO" calorie and "Sugar FREE" marketing gimmicks:
http://www.sprecherbrewery.com/
Next up in these less sweetened Root Beer wars, Steven's Point's "The Point" Diet Root Beer:
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