189-fun

Product: Boylan Bottling Company--Creme Soda
Origin: New York, NY

First looks

Nick:
The bottle says SINCE 1891 like 50,000 times, so I hope they've managed to get the recipe right since then. I'm cautiously optimistic on this; the ingredients are water, sugar and vanilla flavoring, which seems fairly safe. It smells pretty strongly of vanilla, and this time there's no agave or stevia or whatever to mess things up. Eeeeeeeee!

Katie:
Maybe my nose is stuffed because I can't smell anything. The soda has a nice golden color so maybe that will translate into a nice taste too. I hope this won't be medicinal or too sweet. There's a very fine line between good cream soda and bad cream soda.

Post-sip thoughts

Nick:
Whoops, I forgot "caramel color" is also an ingredient, so don't trust the shade. As for the taste... it's good, but it's not my favorite. I find that cream soda (excuse me, CREME) tends to fall into two camps, either very vanilla-y or more sweet, and this one is firmly in the vanilla camp. There's nothing wrong with that camp; it's a fine camp with sturdy walls and a lot of vanilla flavor, but it's not the one I prefer. I'm more of a Jones Soda fan where it tastes like someone set off a sugar explosion in your mouth. By the way, we still have one bottle of that if you want to split it later.

Katie:
I'm beginning to think I don't actually like cream soda and that worries me. Am I dreaming of the El Dorado of cream soda? The flavor I like doesn't actually exist? Root better is far harder to mess up, it seems. I thought cream soda was a simple, slightly sweet, slightly vanilla beverage that I could happily enjoy no matter what the brand.  I'm finding over the course of these reviews that much of the cream soda out there is not the droid I'm looking for. Am I being picky? You can be honest.
Also, I may take you up on that offer to split the last Jones.

PS from Nick: I don't think there's anything wrong with being picky. Find what you like and get you some. Katie sipped some more of this and yelled "EUGH," then "Why did I drink more of that," so I think she was being a little nice in her review.