Reed's Spiced Apple Brew

Let's go straight to the ending, Tarantino style:  the aftertaste of this is apple pie.

Think about that.  Now let's go back to the beginning.

A couple weeks ago we had a pretty disappointing apple soda.  In fact all around apple sodas are hit or miss.  We thought that Jones' had a pretty decent apple soda, one of the better "higher tier" apple sodas, if not the best.  Aside from that we're both fans of Manzanita Sol, which is "lower tier" I guess you'd say.  

I had been hoping for a Virgil's Apple, or Apple Cider, and while that is still a pipe (or bottle) dream, we do have a product here from Reed's, who makes Virgil's products, called Spiced Apple Brew.

First of all the label has a little story of the days before soft-drinks when non-alcoholic beverages were made at home.  It then goes on to suggest that they brew and age their beverages at the same level of quality, with the same level of quality ingredients.  I completely believe it because this is delicious.

When you taste this, without knowing anything in it, your immediate reaction would be "spiced apple pie."  It's liquid apple pie.  You taste the apple, you taste the cinnamon, and it has a ginger spice to it.  Also part of the ingredients is lemon, and when you know it's there you can get a hint of it but that's all, nothing too distracting.  

Everything we've reviewed up until now has been "fun."  Even some of the best drinks we've reviewed have been "fun," while still being high quality.  Virgil's Bavarian Nutmeg Root Beer was a finely crafted beverage for a soda, but it's still a root beer.  It still has that familiarity that goes with a pizza or a cookout.  Spiced Apple Brew takes it to a new level.  This is a drink you really appreciate.  There was obviously a lot of work put into this and you can taste it.  One of the folks at Reed's compared it to a fine wine where you savor it and appreciate all the flavors, and that's a perfect way of putting it.  Again, not to say that some of the other beverages we rated highly didn't have a lot of work put into it them, because we know there was, and they were delicious.  This is just taking it in a direction no one has yet, and it really legitimizes the soda industry as something serious.

Did I mention its aftertaste is apple pie?

-Mike E.

Verdict:  Buy stock in the company!

(Note:  This beverage was provided to us by Reed's)

Comments

[David]

Wouldn't you expect a "higher Tier" apple soda be made with apple juice? The one you mentioned does not list apple as an ingredient. What gives it the apple flavor?

Before modern carbonation processes were developed, a little over 100 years ago, all bubbly stuff became bubbly as a by product of fermentation. So old fashion homemade apple soda was called hard cider, it had various levels alcohol in it and was not sweet. It was a common drink, young and old drank it because it was safer than drinking the water. It was made with much more interesting apples than what are commercially grown today.

When apples are juice they begin oxidizing and fermenting almost immediately. Pasteurization kills microbes and live yeasts, then typically there are several filtrations that strip the juice of most everything but the sugars. Most commercially available apple juice is pretty bland stuff and after it has been processed it is stripped of any character it started with and is just a sweetener. it is the norm that it is concentrated. It's hard to make a good apple soda from apples, it's way cheaper and easier to use food like substances and chemical flavorings. One can hide less expensive juice behind other flavors, ginger or spices of example.

The closer your food is to a whole living thing the more variation it will have moment to moment, day to day, portion to portion. That to me is interesting. It is an indication that a significant short cut has been taken if you see the words concentrated or an unspecified flavoring on the label.

Thanks for your time, David