Local Brand Showdown:
Squamscot Soda vs. Capt'n Eli's Soda
I originally started this as a review of a Squamscot Soda, a local brand that is starting to gain popularity and notice around our region here, until the idea was posed to me, to do a comparison between it, and another local brand soda starting to gain popularity and sales called Cap't Eli's, which I also intended to review, I actually intend to start doing a feature where I review local/regional brand things, which I think means i probably should make up a logo or something eh? Anyway I feel this should be fun, and if you have any local or regional brands of things you think i should give a review too, even if i gotta order it over the net, please leave me a suggestion, I really feel this could be a great thing. Anyway, lets get into this shall we?
During my trip over the weekend to Papa Joe's Humble Kitchen, I noticed that they sold a local brand of soda that I had been interested in giving a try, Squamscot Soda, made in Newfields New Hampshire, half way between Raymond and Portsmouth, and sold not only at their store and bottling plant, but at a growing number of groceries, mini-marts, markets and places to eat around the state, Squamscot calls itself an "old fashion soda" made in the old fashion way, with real cane sugar and real syrup and flavorings, nothing artificial, which I would assume is the closest to "all natural" one can get in the carbonated drink business. To give Squamscot a try I grabbed three of the flavors the diner hate, Root Beer, Creamy Orange and Lemon Lime, the two other flavors i left behind were cream soda and diet root beer, I figured the three I had would have given me a good enough example of what their flavors are like to have not needed the other two. So after driving home from my review where i picked them up, I put them in the fridge to chill over night for a proper coldness, as one does, then I got to drinking my three bottles.
Off the top, I can tell you, though the bottles were rather small, about the size sodas were in the 1960s near as I can tell, I am loving the whole glass bottle and the bottle cap retro feel, there is something about having to pop a bottlecap for those of us old enough to remember doing them all the time, that just takes you back, oh sure, maybe its not the same on a cold day as that loud SSSSS of popping open a modern can, but it does bring back memories, for me, of the ealy 1980s, and I guess for those older then me, it will take them back to when they would personally like to remember, either way, its a lovely touch, and really something I kind of wish the big companies would be serious about bringing back, even if just for the summers, mostly because I'd love to see modern kids trying to find an app to open a bottlecap, but that might be just me showing my age abit more then I care to do.
The first flavor I tried was Creamy Orange, which i guess is a mixture of cream soda and orange soda, I've never been a cream soda person, but orange, i do love me a good orange on a hot day in summer, and surprisingly, this was pretty good, I was abit worried with its "old fashion" way of being made, it might just taste like orange juice with carbonation, but thankfully, that wasn't the case, it had a nice cream flow to it, and a nice orange tang that was just the right mixture, I was rather surprised, but also kind of sad how quickly the small bottle had been finished, thats always a good sign for a product, next I tried the root beer, now I don't know about other places, but here in the New England region, we are serious about our root beer, we're picky as hell about what we drink and we're incredibly loyal, as we are with most things we like, i'd actually venture the only thing we're more hardcore about is ginger ale, sadly i couldn't find any ginger ale for this battle, oh well, next time right? The root beer is a strong and heavy bite to it, just the way i like my root beer, its pretty much a must honestly, that you have a lasting taste from your root beer, its gotta stick with you, and this did, it actually kind of reminds me of Birch Beer, which is also a favorite and has a similar kick in the head to it. Finally, I tried their Lemon Lime, I was expecting sort of an old timey tasting mountain dew or sprite, but surprisingly it was more like Mellow Yellow, something we don't have around here anymore, and is kind of missed, seriously it was great, it wasn't to sweet, it wasn't to over the top, it was a nice happy medium, honestly i was very impressed with it, and infact I was overly impressed with Squamscot over all, I wasn't expecting them to be as good as they were, it really was a surprise, a great surprise really.
I was first suggested to try Capt'n Eli's Soda when it was found at my local grocery, and the idea of putting both this and my recently purchased Squamscot was pitched to me, I was slightly worried about it honestly, sure I know that much like with the local beer renaissance sweeping New Hampshire and surrounding areas, there seems to be one involving soda as well, and though thats great for people that enjoy local product, that doesn't always been every single company is worthy of more then a try, and honestly a company thats website seems more interested in selling their comic book, action figures, and even a pokemon style collector card game related to its namesake, as well as not really having an easy to figure out website, things like that worry me, when a company seems more about the merch then product, that sort of stuff worries me, it makes me wonder that maybe they aren't fully focused and spreading themselves too thin around the markets they wanna get their share of, too many fingers in to many pies ruins everything you know what i mean?
Capt'n Eli's is made in Portland Maine and is apparently very popular up in the vacation state, but thats not always saying something Down Easters (for those outside of new england thats what maine people are called), are always blindly loyal to local product, so its not always best to get info on something made or from there, up there, the flavors we were able to find were Cream Soda, Black Cherry Pop, and Orange Pop. Now the native new englander in me can chuckle at someone this far north using the term "pop", which is more of a term from the southern states, but Maine is abit backwards, so you can let that sort of thing slide,
The cream soda was, well as one would expect for cream soda, not to strong, not to soft, somewhere in the middle with that almost root beer, but not really root beer flavor, it was ok, but to be fair, i'm not really a big fan of the flavor in general, so maybe thats just a pass. Surprisingly, the black cherry, was both very strong and very flavorful, i actually had the taste of it with me for awhile after drinking it, but not in a bad way, if that makes sense, i wasn't expecting much, but I was happy to find out this one had raised the bar pretty high up, but to be fair again, cream soda doesn't really leave the bar all that high to begin with, their orange soda though, that was abit surprising, orange soda is supposed to be both highly fizzy and strong orange, almost like biting into an actual orange, just with out getting the juice all over yourself or all that work cutting open the damn orange, this orange was just as strong as Squamscot's and actually smelled like an orange, which is always a great scent to go with it, honestly it was my favorite of the three.
So overall, they are pretty good companies, i would buy them both again, maybe different flavors in afew cases, but they were both pretty quality product, though if i had to pick a winner out of the two, i would go with Squamscot, i find they have more of a down home local feel, and they also have a larger selection of flavors, somewhere around 30 or so vs. 7 or 8 from Capt'n Eli, and they focus totally on their product, its not "oh hey also, we have soda, but why you're here, buy our comic book, action figures and pokemon style card game!" or something weird. Plus, I'm always a sucker for a company that makes their own version of Mellow Yellow. But thats just me, I'm just a guy that lives in New Hampshire, where we think Moxie is a legit drink that doesn't taste like battery acid and poop mixed... well some think that anyway.
So if you're abit curious and you wanna do a test for yourself, pick up afew bottles of each if you can find them and give them your own taste test, and like i said before, if you got a local or regional thing you think i should give a try and review, drop me a line, i'd love to hear and give it a go.
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Chris
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