Seabold Ginger Beer: When in LA, you may stumble across a glass bottle of ginger beer with a hand-written expiration date less than a month away. It feels hefty, matching its $7.50 price tag, with a misty yellow hue. Its packaging instructs you to invert and gently mix, enabling the ginger sediments disperse throughout. The drink is balanced – not too sweet with a good dose of lemon juice and a decent level of spice that fades as quickly as it arrives. It's not quite as good as the absolute best ginger beer ... (read more) 4.5/5.0
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Bette Jane's Ginger beer: Created in San Francisco, this bottled soda had a good level of potent ginger spice but also has a slight diluted taste overall. Level of sweetness and fizz is appropriate. 3.0/5.0
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IKEA Dryck Julmust: IKEA describes it as a "Swedish festive drink" (though it seems slightly out of season to be selling in October). The drink has a dark cola color and does taste a little similar but with a more nuanced spiced flavor (the ingredients include malt, and I got a bit of clove and cinnamon). It's also far less sweet than Coke or Pepsi. If I could pick a cola-like beverage to drink during the holidays, this would be it. (In my haste to buy furniture for my new place, I forgot to photograph the ... (read more) 4.0/5.0
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Alta Palla Sparkling blood orange soda: Having never seen this California-based brand, I purchased this can from my local Andronico's. Unfortunately, while it's an organic product, it tastes strikingly similar to Sunkist and is unnecessarily sweet. The one good thing I can say about is that the amount of carbonation was spot on. 2.5/5.0
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Ferdinando's Focacceria Manhattan Special: I spent some time in NYC before leaving the East Coast, and during a lunch with some old friends, I was informed that the restaurant had a special soda called the Manhattan Special on tap. Given the amount of time I've spent in Manhattan over my entire lifetime (and my love of sodas), I was surprised to have never come across this drink before. The cola-colored carbonated beverage is a mix of espresso and sweetened soda water and has a deep coffee flavor. It's hard to imagine it pairing part... (read more) 3.0/5.0
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Moxie : Moxie: You either love it, or you hate it. I am in the love it camp, as I grew up drinking the Asian soda HeySong, which has a very similar flavor. For the uninitiated, I would describe it as a less sweet, slightly bitter (some may even describe it as medicinal) root beer, closer to sarsaparilla soda. It's flavored with genitian root extract, which gives it its unique flavor. Created in Lowell, Massachusetts, you can still find this soda in grocery stores in Massachusetts and specialty s... (read more) 4.0/5.0
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