Review - Swamp Pop Praline Cream Soda

Bottler: Swamp Pop, LLC

Calories per Ounce: 13.3

Caffeine: No

Aaron's Comments: Swamp Pop Praline Cream Soda has a strong cream taste overlaid with the nutty, almost butterscotch flavor of the pralines. The soda is incredibly sweet, and very nearly cloying, a sensation that becomes more and more powerful the more one drinks. The first few sips are fairly pleasant, but eventually the sweetness dominates so much that it becomes difficult to drink. It remains just barely tolerable as a result of the slight nutty taste, but one can still almost feel the sugar crystals hitting one's teeth as you drink it. Perhaps because of the sugar content, the soda is extremely foamy, producing a pronounced "head" when poured into a glass. Ice softens the sweetness slightly, letting the nutty flavor come through more. Adding ice cream to the soda works well, resulting in a mixture that tastes a little bit like consuming a liquefied pecan pie with an ice cream topping, albeit an even sweeter pecan pie than one normally encounters.

Review - Cicero Beverage Company Candied Bacon Cream Soda

Bottler: Cicero Beverage Company

Calories per Ounce: 19.3

Caffeine: No

Aaron's Comments: I have never had a bacon flavored soda, but I approached Cicero Beverage Company Candied Bacon Cream Soda with the theory that bacon makes everything better. The soda itself is interesting, with a definite bacon flavor, but one that is very faint and only becomes apparent as something of an aftertaste that follows on behind the strong vanilla cream flavor of the soda. Although the label says it is supposed to be candied bacon, the bacon flavor seems a little bit more like smoked bacon. Ice doesn't really change the flavor much other than to mute the cream flavor a bit, making the bacon aftertaste more pronounced, which I suppose is something of an improvement assuming you picked up the soda for bacon flavored carbonation. Adding ice cream almost entirely overwhelms the bacon flavor, resulting in what tastes mostly like a standard cream soda float. As usual with Cicero Beverage Company sodas, the light touch of the flavoring simply doesn't stand up well to the addition of any other flavors, and fades entirely into the background.

Review - Dang! That's Good Red Cream Soda

Bottler: Imperial Flavors Beverage Company

Calories per Ounce: 15

Caffeine: No

Aaron's Comments: The taste of Dang! That's Good Red Cream Soda is hard to describe. It has a very strong vanilla flavor, but it also has a kind of bubble gum flavored overtone to it. Adding ice mellows out the vanilla flavor and emphasizes the odd bubble gum like taste. I haven't had any kind of red cream soda before, so maybe this is what red cream soda is supposed to taste like, but to my palate it is odd. With ice cream, it creates a creamy vanilla-bubble gum flavored float that is decent enough, but not something I'd choose over most other options.

Review - Barq's Red Creme Soda

Bottler: Barq's, Inc., a Coca-Cola Company.

Calories per Ounce: 14

Caffeinated? No.

Aaron's Comments: Unlike most other red cream sodas, Barq's Red Creme emphasizes the vanilla flavor of the soda to such an extent that the bubble-gum-like flavor found in most other sodas of this type fades to the background. As I am not really that enthusiastic about drinking a soda that tastes like bubble-gum, this makes Barq's rendition of the soda a superior one in my estimation. This is not to say that there isn't a bubble-gum flavor lurking in the soda, just that this element is less prominent than it is in, for example, Big Red. Ice seems to bring out the bubble-gum flavor in the soda, which I consider to be a step backwards. Like most red cream sodas, Barq's Red Creme makes for an adequate, although not particularly notable ice cream float, with the vanilla of the ice cream reinforcing the vanilla of the soda resulting in a decent experience with only a modest bubble-gum after taste.

Review - Virgil's Cream Soda

Bottler: Reed's, Inc.

Calories per Ounce: 13.3

Caffeine: No

Aaron's Comments: I am generally not a huge fan of cream sodas. Because modern root beer is primarily flavored with vanilla, most cream sodas seem to me to be nothing more than weak root beer. Virgil's Cream Soda bucks this trend by making the vanilla flavor so strong that it is anything but weak and yet is different enough from root beer to be worth drinking. Served over ice, Virgil's Cream Soda suffers from the usual problem of having its flavor diluted, and as a result it suffers from the same problem that most cream sodas suffer from - it tastes like watered down root beer. When used in an ice cream float, the powerful vanilla flavor of Virgil's Cream Soda jumps forward and enhances the ice cream, making for an excellent experience. Of all the cream sodas I have ever had, this one makes the best ice cream float.

Review - Virgil's Black Cherry Cream Soda

Bottler: Reed's, Inc.

Calories per Ounce: 13.3

Caffeine: No

Aaron's Comments: I love cherry sodas, and I'm partial to vanilla flavoring in soda, so I approached Virgil's Black Cherry Cream with high hopes. These hopes were, for the most part, met. The soda has a very strong cherry flavor which is quite good although it dominates and completely overshadows the cream portion of the soda. Drinking this soda with ice doesn't substantially change the flavor, which somewhat surprised me, as most sodas have a muted flavor when one drinks them with ice. Serving the soda with ice didn't even help bring out the cream flavor, and the black cherry flavor was still completely dominant. The soda pairs well with ice cream, forming an ice cream soda that tastes very much like cherry vanilla ice cream, although the cherry flavor in this concoction is more prominent than in a typical blend of cherry vanilla ice cream.

Review - I.B.C. Cream Soda

Bottler: Dr. Pepper

Calories per Ounce: 15

Caffeine: No

Aaron's Comments: Odd as it may sound, cream soda is not one of my favorite sodas. I love root beer, and most modern root beers use vanilla as their dominant flavoring. So one would think that cream soda, which is explicitly just a vanilla flavored soda, would be right up my alley. And yet so many cream sodas have such a weak flavor that they just remind me that I'm not drinking root beer. And I.B.C.'s cream soda isn't really an exception. It is sweet enough, and you can definitely taste the vanilla flavor, but it seems to be lacking something. With ice added, the vanilla flavor feels slightly more full-bodied, but the soda still seems like weak root beer. When used to make an ice cream float, the vanilla ice cream seems like it should overwhelm the flavor of the soda, but the soda holds up adequately, resulting in an decent, albeit somewhat thin feeling, ice cream float.

Review - Stewart's Orange 'n Cream Soda

Bottler: Dr. Pepper

Calories per Ounce: 15.8

Caffeine: No

Aaron's Comments: If you somehow took a Dreamsicle and managed to transform it into a soda, it would taste like Stewart's Orange 'n Cream soda. For those of us that like Dreamsicles, this makes this orange and vanilla flavored soda an almost perfect drink. Served over ice, the vanilla flavor is muted and the orange flavor jumps forward. Oddly, when made into an ice cream float, the vanilla flavor fades away almost entirely, which surprised and somewhat disappointed me. Even so, this soda is fantastic straight, and that makes up for any other shortcomings.