Adventures in the North Country: Today- What is Birch Beer?

Although I have often visited NY, I've never lived north of the Mason-Dixon line until this summer. Therefore, I have little opportunity to engage in the small duties of life in the north: the pumping of gas, the dry cleaning of clothes, the shopping for groceries. The tiny quirks that would be commonplace to the average New Yorker are foreign to me, and make me laugh or behave awkwardly and probably causethe middle aged lady standing next to me believe that while I seem safe now, in a few years they will plop me in a padded room where i will laugh and be awkward to a host of imaginary woodland creatures. But I am not here to convince the middle aged ladies of upperclass new york that i am sane. As I would be failing.

Where was i? O yeah, so I'm examining the seltzer and I come across Birch Beer. And so I just had to buy some and perform a very unscientific and prolly ripped-off-of-other-blogs investigation of it.

Subject: Genus Birch Beer Species Polar Diet
Location: Soft Drinks/ Water/Other Unnatural Beverages Aisle of Super Stop n' Shop
Odd Characteristics:

• Unknown to the reviewer, but popular enough to be
  
• a) half-unstocked,
  
• b) have multiple producers (generic, Polar etc.) and
  
• c) provided in both a full calorie and diet variety (the current test will be of the diet variety, but the aspertame sweetening shall be taken into account when evaluating taste) (aspertame: the sweetner of the 90s)
  
• Has Log (presumably birch) on label (complete with leaves)
  
• Is clear (unlike its similarly arborealy-derived cousin, Root beer)

Smell (upon first uncorking) *

• Similar to root beer, with a strong aftersmell of aspertame
• Or perhaps sassafras **
• Rather like the reviewer's favorite root beer lip gloss in 8th grade: definitely not the real thing, but the only thing like it you could get away with smearing on your lips in the desparate attempt to be cool and hang out with the right bitches. Actually, strike all that after "but" as it does not relate to the birch beer, but instead a misspent mid-youth.
  

Taste

• First sip: Like low-grade diet root beer: slightly sweet in a cloying way, with a passing resemblance to actual root beer (or birch beer in this case) like the way tom cruise's love for katie holmes bears a passing resemblance to real affection and desire.
  
• possible reasons: it is diet, and aspertame is a piss-poor sugar substitute.
  
• Second sip: Actually, more resemblance than TomKat. Don't want to be unfair to the birch beer.
  
• Fifth sip: More pleasing than first or second sip. Two hypotheses as to why:
  
• The carbonation may be inversely proportional to the pleasantness of the flavor. like with diet coke, which tastes like fizzy crap if the reviewer doesn't let it breathe a little.
  
• The reviewer has grown accustomed to the taste, like coffee, cigarettes and arsenic, which the reviewer hears can be quite pleasant after sustained ingestion. Like the reviewer's love affair with the aforementioned diet coke, which the reviewer called "malted battery acid" when she precociously sipped it at age 10.
  

Overall Rating: Ok. Not to be sought out specifcally and purchased again (unless the reviewer wishes to try another brand or undertake the Root/Sassafras/Birch test), but will do in a thirst clinch.

Recommendation to Polar (makers of diet birch beer):

• Log ≠ tasty soft drink in reviewer's mind. Try not having a picture: do you see Coke having any pictures on their cans besides a jolly fat man at christmas? Which, now that the reviewer thinks about it, makes the review go "eww"
• The reviewer is of the opinion that no one cares how long your soda has been on the market. And the reviewer highly doubts that Polar was producing "Diet Birch Beer" with aspertame in 1882.
  
• Don't cheap out- use Splenda.
  

*I would say unscrewing as that is technically accurate, but that word has connotations that would cause the average reader to giggle like a school child watching billy madison
**(reviewer considers buying sassafras and root beer, but is lazy and already in pajamas, so delivers the blow of laziness to the body of truth. as it is a blow of laziness, the body of truth just says "ow, quit it" without sustaining actual injury)


right now, i feel like i'm living in the best of all possible worlds if said possible worlds all did not have airconditioning. It's been a good day.