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I love soft drinks. If it's cold, non-alcoholic, and flavored - I want to try it (at least once). (After an unfortunate incident with a salty yogurt drink, I should also add "sweet" to that list.) Tina also shares my curiosity and likes to taste soft drinks (but taste is all she does - I love to drink the stuff - fruit juice, sparkling water, sodas, lemonade, and even Sunny Delight). We both have a special place in our hearts for cream soda, so we decided to do a taste test. In order to limit our selection - we focused on regular (no artificial sweeteners) cream sodas without high-fructose corn syrup.
(This is filed under Cooking Tests even though no cooking was involved... didn't know where else to put it.)
I should explain a little before I go on. In the United States, it's actually cheaper to make high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) than to buy cane or beet sugar. This is largely due to the massive corn lobby in the U.S. which has convinced the government to set import quotas and tariffs on sugar cane to make the environment more favorable to the corn producers. (America produces so much corn that it doesn't really know what to do with it - most recently there's been a big push for the corn to be converted ethanol for use as a fuel.) In any case, the corn goes through a fairly extensive process to form corn syrup, which is then treated with enzymes to convert glucose into fructose. The syrup is then further enriched to a higher concentration of fructose. Most beverages use HFCS that is about 55% fructose and 45% glucose as opposed to pure corn syrup which is close to 100% glucose. (HFCS can be as high as 90% fructose.) Because fructose is sweeter than sucrose (cane sugar) and glucose a bit less sweet than sucrose, this blend works out well for use as a cane sugar replacement - just replace the sugar with HFCS. Because sucrose breaks down during digestion into a glucose and fructose molecule, most people consider the two to be pretty much the same.
This isn't quite true - just because sucrose is composed of glucose and fructose doesn't mean it's the same as a 50-50 mix of glucose and fructose. First off (and most important to me) it tastes different. Whether it tastes better or worse is a matter of preference, but I think sugar tastes better than HFCS. It's currently unclear which is worse for you - HFCS detractors claim that HFCS can lead to and/or promote obesity while other research shows that HFCS has no detrimental effects when comapred to sugar. (The fact that the majority of the pro-HCFS research has been conducted with money from industry sources like the American Beverage Association and the Corn Refiners Association does not invalidate the results, but can lead to some eyebrow raising.)
In any case, for taste reasons (as well as reducing the number of sodas we had to buy), we limited our taste testing to only those products using cane sugar. We stocked up our fridge (these sodas don't usually come in singles - so we had four and six packs of them) with nine different varieties of cream sodas. Here's how we felt about them after multiple tastings.
We tried (from left to right): Natural Brew Hand Crafted Vanilla Creme Soda, AJ Stephans Pure Cane Sugar Boston Cream Soda, Virgil's Micro Brewed Cream Soda, Fitz's Premium Micro-Brewed Creme Soda, Dad's Classic Cream Soda, Journey Softbrew Java Island Vinalla Creme Soda Twisted Bean Vanilla Brew, Boylan Bottleworks Brand Creme, Boylan's Creme Soda (The Natural Kind), and R.W. Knudsen Vanilla Creme Spritzer.
(This is filed under Cooking Tests even though no cooking was involved... didn't know where else to put it.)
I should explain a little before I go on. In the United States, it's actually cheaper to make high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) than to buy cane or beet sugar. This is largely due to the massive corn lobby in the U.S. which has convinced the government to set import quotas and tariffs on sugar cane to make the environment more favorable to the corn producers. (America produces so much corn that it doesn't really know what to do with it - most recently there's been a big push for the corn to be converted ethanol for use as a fuel.) In any case, the corn goes through a fairly extensive process to form corn syrup, which is then treated with enzymes to convert glucose into fructose. The syrup is then further enriched to a higher concentration of fructose. Most beverages use HFCS that is about 55% fructose and 45% glucose as opposed to pure corn syrup which is close to 100% glucose. (HFCS can be as high as 90% fructose.) Because fructose is sweeter than sucrose (cane sugar) and glucose a bit less sweet than sucrose, this blend works out well for use as a cane sugar replacement - just replace the sugar with HFCS. Because sucrose breaks down during digestion into a glucose and fructose molecule, most people consider the two to be pretty much the same.
This isn't quite true - just because sucrose is composed of glucose and fructose doesn't mean it's the same as a 50-50 mix of glucose and fructose. First off (and most important to me) it tastes different. Whether it tastes better or worse is a matter of preference, but I think sugar tastes better than HFCS. It's currently unclear which is worse for you - HFCS detractors claim that HFCS can lead to and/or promote obesity while other research shows that HFCS has no detrimental effects when comapred to sugar. (The fact that the majority of the pro-HCFS research has been conducted with money from industry sources like the American Beverage Association and the Corn Refiners Association does not invalidate the results, but can lead to some eyebrow raising.)
In any case, for taste reasons (as well as reducing the number of sodas we had to buy), we limited our taste testing to only those products using cane sugar. We stocked up our fridge (these sodas don't usually come in singles - so we had four and six packs of them) with nine different varieties of cream sodas. Here's how we felt about them after multiple tastings.
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55% of the sucrose sold in this country actually comes from sugar beets. While sucrose from sugar beets and sucrose from cane are 99.95% similar, apparently that .05% is significant, as reported in this article from the San Francisco Chronicle:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/1999/03/31/FD91867.DTL
The article claims that sources sometimes produce cane and sometimes produce beet sugar (based on, surprise, economics). I wonder if the soft drink producers always use one or the other or if it depends on their suppliers -- or if it makes a difference in that application.
The sodas you reviewed sound yummy though! I love cream soda - it's underrated in the U.S.!
The name probably comes from the vanilla flavor. Ice cream and whipped cream are commonly flavored with vanilla, and I believe that's what people were reminded of when they tasted the vanilla flavored soda.
Yum!
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/chronicle/archive/2004/02/18/FDG...DTL
I did see some at the store once, but the price was horrible and had to pass.
Good job on the story!
They also keep their mugs in the freezer so you sometimes get a layer of frozen cream soda right on the inside of the mug. Yum.
~ Lyra
I miss the days of the Soda Jerk!
Henry Weinhard uses HFCS as it's main sweetener and so was disqualified from this tasting.
a cream soda with a rich vanilla / honey flavor.
I don't think it has HFCS in it.
Their root beer is spectacular also.
It's availiable at Menard's in the midwest.
http://www.sprecherbrewery.com/sodas.php
Avoid their Lo-Cal Root beer- they use ghastly bitter saccharine instead of splenda or nutrasweet in it.
I am a nutrition geek and get very happy to see you taking this seriously. Integrity is cool.
I don't know where you heard that Obama specifically endorsed ethanol only since I know he's promoted biodiesel as a fuel as well as other alternative fuels. (Tina and I both use biodiesel only in our vehicles so it is of particular interest to us.) Also, at the moment corn is the main source of U.S. ethanol production but it need not be so - there are a variety of other grains, plants, and even bacteria and algae that may be promising for the future of ethanol. With the current economic crisis, I suppose we'll have to wait a while to see if President-elect Obama will stand by his word and promote a multitude of new fuel sources (or if he's in the pockets of the corn lobby). I prefer to give him the benefit of the doubt at this point.