Fentiman's Shandy

Fentiman's is a company that makes soda way over in Britain. They've been around over 100 years and mostly make old fashioned types of soda, like this full-bodied shandy. 

I had never heard about shandy before buying this, but I asked my grandfather and he knew all about it. Usually it's equal parts beer and carbonated lemonade or ginger ale. Fentiman's variation is 70% lager, and 30% lemonade. Or the other way around. Whatever the percentage, it's only .5% alcohol. It reminds me a little of my friend's recipe that he calls the beertini, which is just cheap beer topped with energy drink (I did a little research and there's some other drinks called beertinis, but none of them seem as cool and probably cost a lot more). 

Back to the shandy. I thought this was pretty great. It had a light beer flavor, but also strong lemon. It gave it the taste of sparkling lemonade, while creating a very smooth, creamy texture as well. Pretty good stuff. 

UPDATE MADNESS!!!

I was in LA a couple weeks ago and got to pay a visit to Galco's Soda Pop Stop. As far as I'm aware, this is the biggest soda shop out there. Now I've got a bunch of new sodas and I went ahead and took some pictures of the ones I've tried so far. I don't know if I'm going to just post them all at once or stagger it out a bit. 

Virgil's Cream Soda

Since it's been awhile without an update, I thought I'd come back with something big. I was at a grocery store in LA and saw a keg of Virgil's Cream Soda for sale. I'm pretty excited about this, but I'll be saving it for a special occasion when I get back home. I have had Virgil's, though not for awhile. It is good stuff. It's made with cane sugar, which is always a plus, and a bunch of real spices and whatnot, rather than just flavored syrup. This Virgil character looks a little familiar to me, too. By the way, while I'm here in LA I'll be hitting up Galco's which is supposed to have the best selection of sodas pretty much anywhere. Well, I hope you all enjoy this. In other beverages news, does anybody know where I can get a hold of some Helmar's Big League Brew?

P.S. I still can't get over how handsome this Virgil guy looks.

Thums Up!

Here we have two examples of Thums Up. The first is an older bottle with the original logo, while the second bottle shows the revamped logo that was introduced after Coca-Cola bought Thums Up. It's from India and is a cola, although it tastes a lot different from Coke and Pepsi. When I was in India, all the ads seemed to be targeted specifically at men. The logo was even changed from "Happy days are here again" to "Taste the thunder." It's usually not too hard to find this soda, all one has to do is go to an Indian grocery. It used to be at Moxie's, but I haven't seen it there in a long time. By the way, if you're ever in the Vancouver, WA area, you should check out Moxie's on Main Street. They've got hundreds of sodas, mostly all in glass bottles. Thums Up probably has a slot in my top ten favorite sodas. 

Another thing I'd like to point out is how in India bottles are washed and reused, which is why these bottles were so worn when I bought them. That older bottle is probably over 10 years old, but was full of brand new cola when I bought it a year ago. According to my friend, Devin, reusing bottles works in countries where the cost of labor is less than the cost of materials, which is why it hasn't caught on in the U.S. and probably won't any time soon. Really, though, it makes a lot of sense to reuse bottles. 

RC

I was at Moxie's today and finally found RC in a glass bottle. I'm a big fan of RC and it's taken me years to find a place that carried it in glass bottles, so this was pretty exciting. So exciting, that I thought I'd share it with the world and create this web log of sodas I find. If anyone has some good suggestions for sodas to try and where to get them, I'd like to know. 

Now, a little about RC. Royal Crown is the cola of choice at McMenamins restaurants here in the Northwest, which is probably my favorite thing about the chain. It's a great cola. Back in the day they used to print cans with baseball players' pictures on them and they were collectible. I don't have any of those, though. The guy at Moxie's said it was hard to get these bottles and they had to be trucked up from Texas. Texas!