The Rootbeer Chronicles, Pt. 2

So since our last trip to Mazzaro's, my parents have taken to buying me bottles of root beer to taste test. This time, my parents got me IBC Root Beer, Virgil's Microbrewed Root Beer, and Boylan Root Beer.

-IBC Root Beer Ingredients: High Fructose Corn Syrup, Caramel Coloring
-Virgil's Microbrewed Root Beer Ingredients: Licorice, Vanilla (Bourbon), Cinnamon, Molasses, Nutmeg
-Boylan Root Beer Ingredients: Pure cane sugar, Caramel Coloring, Yucca extract
-Verdict:Boylan's Root Beer was the best. It wasn't Bulldog quality (see The Rootbeer Chronicles), but it was decent. It had an odd taste that was still relatively delicious. The Virgil's Microbrewed Root Beer was alright, but the licorice flavor was very prominent, and I'm not a fan of licorice. However, all of the other spices made it rather enjoyable. The IBC shouldn't even be called root beer. It had no remote root beer flavors or ingridients. It was like drinking carbonated cough syrup. Not cool.

I think this Chronicle's main factor was flavoring ingredients. IBC contained none, ergo it had absolutely no taste. Virgil's was licorice, which gave it the very candy, bitter-sweet licorice taste and Boylan had yucca, which is a tropical root plant that can be very sweet.

For more info on the listed sodas, click links below:
Boylan Root Beer
Virgil's Microbrewed Root Beer
IBC Root Beer

Photography/Art

As I said before, I've been getting increasingly interested in photography, Photoshop, and computer animation. I recently went around taking pictures with my phone camera, which is better than my stupid digital camera. Below I've posted the artsy-edited-modified pictures I took. If you want to see more of the stuff I've edited click here.

Wow.

It's been quite some time since I last posted but here's the rapid-fire scoop on what I've been up to lately:

-I've decided I'm going to start collecting novel tees. Just anything I see that tickles my fancy. I'm so tired of all the logo and regular tees that I see people wear everyday. I want shirts that mean something or represent an organization. Or shirts that just look cool, but no more just plain "Volcom" or "Nike".


-I've declared that I'm moderately out of shape but I'm stuck in a niche. I'm too lazy to exercise regularly and I love my current diet (or lack thereof). I wish I had a gym membership to make use of. I guess I have no excuse; we have a treadmill, a pull up bar, dumbbells, and anyone can do push ups or sit ups. But when you think about it, the gym environment is just a much better place to exercise: there are no distractions there, no food to tempt you, and no homework to use as an excuse. I also started and online P.E. class as a graduation requirement that requires I do 6 hours of physical activity a month. Obviously I could fake it, but it makes me realize how out-of-shape I am.


-I'm very conflicted as to what I want to do about college/career/post-school. I've had it embedded in my mind that I'm going to do one of two things: 1. Go to an Ivy League college (Preferably one of the big three; Harvard, Yale, or Princeton), get into a top notch Med School, and become a neurosurgeon. However the setbacks there are enormous. I would have to go through AT LEAST 8 years of school, a residency, and a training. That would be almost 12 years of school, innumerable amount of loans, and I'd be up to my ears in work. 2. Start taking voice lessons and get into FSU College of Music for either Vocal Music Education or Vocal Performance. However, even kids who take voice lessons for years don't get in and there is FIERCE competition, which is quite discouraging. Unfortunately, my parents would only consider voice lessons if I'm positive this is what I want to do. Unfortunately I'm so darned indecisive.


-I've been expanding my musical tastes extensively: I've recently started listening to Phish, which is a heavily Grateful Dead-influenced psychedelic funk-rock jam band. I've been watching videos of guitar techniques and piano soloing ideas. I'm also very proud to announce that due to perseverance by me and a friend, we are having AP Music Theory as a class next year. It will increase my musical abilities tremendously, not to mention increase my chances of getting into FSU Music.

We'll see...

The Rootbeer Chronicles

Today my family and some family friends ventured to a little Italian market in St. Pet called Mazarro's. My family's been there several times before, and I must say they have the most delectable foods you ever did see. Every time we go there I order either the classic Italian panini or the meatball, though usually it's the latter, as melted mozzarella is my weakness. They also have the largest selection of non-mainstream soft drinks I have ever found. However, the signs in front of the sodas were very conflicting: they each said that their particular soda was the best. As a gullible skeptic, I feel the need to believe these signs, but compare to see which TRULY IS the best.

So I got the Bulldog root beer, the Sprecher root beer, and the Sioux City Sarsaparilla root beer (as seen above, respectively), all of which claimed to have been the superior root beer. I tasted each and analyzed their tastes based on sweetness, flavor, and texture. However, I completely forgot about this rubric and judged them sans criteria. For flavor analysis and links to the sodas' websites, see descriptions below:

Bulldog: Ingredients- Pure cane sugar, honey, vanilla. The taste was very sweet and smooth going down, not too bubbly.
Sprecher: Ingredients- High fructose corn syrup, honey, vanilla. This one wasn't sweet at all and way, way, way too bubbly. It was borderline bitter. Interestingly enough, the New York Times rates it the #1 Root Beer. I don't know what they taste.
Sioux City Sarsaparilla: Ingredients- Pure cane sugar, honey. It was a very interesting taste, very different from the others, but in a very good way. It was just sweet enough, though with a bit too much carbonation. Overall a decent soda.
Verdict: Bulldog Root Beer was the far superior root beer. It had the great vanilla taste that gives root beer that perfect taste. Coming in second was the Sioux City Sarsaparilla. It was very good, but the lack of vanilla was disappointing and could have let to its victory. Sprecher was alright if you want more root beer for your money, but not quality. I would rather drink Barq's, A&W, or Mug than Sprecher but at least you get 4 more ounces than regular sodas.
I think the key factor that made one soda better than another was cane sugar vs. HFC syrup. The real sugar simply has a taste that is incomparable.

For links to the soda websites, see below:
Bulldog Root Beer
Sprecher
Sioux City Sarsaparilla