After tasting Fentimans Curiousity Cola last week, I had to try out more of what they had to offer. I’ve always enjoyed a nice dry ginger ale, but I’ve recently gained a great deal of appreciation for ginger beers. A spicy ginger beer with a dryness that burns the back of your throat taking your breath away is just a great experience. Fentimans Ginger Beer delivers this experience in spades. This soft beverage follows the Fentimans tradition of botanical brewing. This compares really well with other ginger beers I’ve had. The throat burn really gets you the first couple of times. But after a few more swallows you can adjust. I don’t find this burn to be a bad thing at all its the measure of a good ginger beer. This soft drink is Fentimans most popular flavor and I can see why. Its said to be made by fermenting top quality Chinese ginger roots. As with the Curiousity cola, the level of quality is apparent in the Ginger Beer. 5 out of 5 bottles, an awesome Ginger Beer for anyone who is a fan of the flavor.
Next up is something totally new to me. At our local Big Lots my wife found a selection of Flathead Lake Monster Gourmet Sodas. A “hand crafted” soda from Montana. She’s knows I’m not really a fan of fruity sodas, but these flavors were different from the norm that she picked them up. Right off the bat the strong colors of these sodas had me a little wary. The green of the Granny Apple soda isn’t done justice by that photo I have above. This was a really green soda, it almost looked like a sour apple Now and Later candy had been melted down and poured into a bottle. I was really surprised when I found out how light and pleasant the taste of the Granny Apple was. It had a mild apple flavor that was faintly sour. It was really refreshing and completely counter to what I’d feared. A nice change of pace from some of the heavy handed flavoring thrown at us by some of the larger soda companies.
As successful as I found the Granny Apple flavor I was disappointed by the Black Raspberry. To me it didn’t really taste like raspberries at all. It tasted almost like a weak grape soda instead. It didn’t taste bad, but it wasn’t that great either. Its rather unfortunate because I wanted to know what raspberry would taste like. I don’t think it tastes like a mediocre grape soda. Maybe I was thrown off by the color which was similar to grape. But closing my eyes and just smelling the soda still gave me a grape aroma.
I haven’t been able to find out too much about the Flathead Lake Monster brand of sodas online. There doesn’t appear to be an official company presence for the products. Since we found it at Big Lots there’s a chance that is a product that didn’t take off. If you happen across this Granny Apple I’d pick it up for sure 3 out of 5 bottles, Black Raspberry wasn’t disgusting, it was just a little disappointing 2 out of 5 bottles.
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It can be found in many places in Montana, four different flavors that I’ve had. Just bought 3 for 1.50, so not a bad price. Town Pumps and other convenience stores have them here.
Flathead Lake Monster pop is our favorite off diet treat. I wish they’d come up with a diet version (especially of the granny apple). You might want to try the Huckleberry one, it’s almost as good as the granny apple.