Big Ben's - 6 Reviews

...and this ladies and gentlemen will conclude our tour of historic London. You've seen the Jack the Ripper locations, Parliament, Buckingham Palace and some cathedrals. For our final destination I give you Big Ben. This "clock tower" is one of the most recognizable structures in all of England. What most people don't know is that the framework of the building is entirely made up of bottles of soda. Many people try to call my bluff at this point in the tour and point out that soda bottles could never be structurally sound. My retort is that this was built in a time when companies sold soda in reusable bottles. Have you ever seen those things? They are really strong. Many different types of pop bottles were used for different parts of the building. The actual area around the clock is completely constructed from ginger beer bottles. You can tell by the green tint to them. Something about a ginger beer that is sweet and flavorful, with just a slight kick to it, resulted in the perfect bottles for that area. The flavor of the specific ginger beer that used to be housed in those bottles taunted the drinker. It really tasted like it should have a very strong burn to it, but in the end it just had a very strong flavor.

Bottles of the same recipe can be purchased in the gift shop for a modest fee of 15 quid. Yes I understand that is a ridiculous price and you could probably purchase the same soda in eastern Pennsylvania for $1.50, but what you're purchasing here is a piece of history and who wants to leave London without a bottle of culture?

A lot of people don't like grapefruit flavored things. I personally love it. Big Ben's kept people other than myself in mind when they created this soda. Adding lemon to grapefruit is something I never considered, but it's a nice match up. The flavor comes on grapefruit and leaves on a lemon note. They don't blend together into one new flavor, but the two in a row are interesting.

Remember when you were 9 and you used to play hockey in the driveway with all your friends? Man, that was awesome. You know what was better? When your friend's mom brought out freezie-pops and you took a break and ate a couple of them. Everyone wanted red and pink, some people wanted purple and orange, some were indifferent to blue and no one wanted green. Why? It was because they used to make you cough. Why? I don't know. Additives? I don't know.

This tastes like it, without the coughing, but with the feeling of "I guess if this is the only one left I'll have it." It smells like cleaning solution and tastes like some sort of dental numbing medicine as if the dentist would give this to you to numb your mouth when you were getting your teeth pulled out or cavities from drinking too much pop. See you soon, Doc.

Root beer comes in two different varieties; good root beer and great root beer. Even the "worst" root beer is still acceptable. Since we've been doing this site, we've come across some really surprising and different varieties like some made with vanilla, cinnamon, clove, and licorice. What does it all mean? Drinking Mugg or Barq's just isn't the same as it used to be.

Although the Big Ben's birch beer was surprisingly good, this root beer is...less than. It's not bad, as I mentioned above, it's just a bit too standard and safe.

This took me by surprise. I thought a few things before I drank it. The first of which, who has ever seen, let alone heard of, clear birch beer? Not I, and I'd like to think I'm some sort of professional. Two was that it was a company I had never heard of and the pop was in a plastic bottle.

I. Was. Wrong. This was strong. Like mouth numbingly strong. It was like every sip was a burst of birch flavoring. I liked it. Re-buy liked. It was kind of like if you ate a mouthful of black licorice to the point where you tasted licorice for a while afterward. It was stagnant, but in a good, powerful way.

If you have the opportunity, try it. It only takes two sips to get used to and then you're hooked.

*After this review we realized that all of the Big Ben birch beers were the same flavor, just different colors. So I changed the picture. Red, white and blue. It's like our country was founded on this soda.

Sarsaparilla: the drink of cowboys (or so I choose to believe). It makes me want to put some spurs on. Can you imagine that? Seriously imagine if every time I drank I sarsaparilla I put on cowboy boots, spurs, chaps, a 10-gallon hat, and some cap guns in some holsters. I would be all ready to work the old west show at the local amusement park.
For those of you who don't know sarsaparilla is a close relative to root beer and birch beer. It just has different herbs used in its creation. I for one am a big fan. It tastes like a more woodsy root beer.
This version of it is a sugary mixture that has a similar flavor, but it's not the same as those that are brewed. It's still great though. It's not the inoffensive candy version of the classic beverage. My only real complain is I wish it had a harsher carbonation, but that's just me being picky.