Fresh Ginger Ale - 5 Reviews

A lot happened in 1966. There were Vietnam protests, cigarettes had to start having warning labels, and the Moors Murderers were jailed in the UK forever influencing a young boy names Steven Patrick Morrissey. All of these interesting things happened that year, but that is not what Bruce Cost is celebrating with this soda. What all rant party hats and streamers are for is that they have created a soda that has only 66 calories, without the aid of artificial sweeteners or stevia/erythritol. This Brooklyn based company has come up with a mixture of cane sugar and monk fruit extract that gives the soda sweetness, without tasting gross and diet. Monk fruit has been used for centuries in Chinese medicine, and Bruce Cost thought to try it in their sodas.

I have to say the results are interesting. This tastes much better than most low calorie sodas, there is no doubt, it just has a very strange, distinct type of sweetness to it. Actually it tastes like someone was at a magical fountain machine that served Bruce Cost's regular ginger ale, and some other stuff and mixed some flavors, Laser Tag style. It really tastes like two different sodas, one normal and one weirdly diet, were combined and didn't really combine into something new. Unfortunately the delicious ginger soda was the weaker of the two in the grouping. If you're looking to cut back on the calories and love yourself some ginger soda, you're not going to find anything better on the market. It still feels like it could use some improvement though. Now, if you're looking for me I'll be wandering around Brooklyn, searching for that elusive fountain soda machine that I mentioned. I bet it only exists in my mind.

Bruce Cost never disappoints. They are a company that knows how ginger ale should be made. They don't bother with that pale dry nonsense. They start off with a solid base of real ginger, which gives the drink a slight burn, not too bad though as it is still a ginger ale and not a ginger beer. How often does one come across a ginger ale with real ginger in it? They all really should, but somewhere along the way "big-soda" phased it out and the smaller guys followed suit.

The addition of passion fruit juice to this soda does nothing but up the game. Bruce Cost doesn't play games. If they are going to use real ginger then they are also going to use real juice to flavor it. It's magic in a bottle. The final touch was to add some turmeric powder. Now I know that turmeric is as spice and I've witnessed it placed in many a spice rack. What I didn't know was that turmeric was actually ground up yellow ginger. You learn something new everyday. Since there is so much ginger in this drink I don't know if the turmeric just blended in with it, but I really couldn't taste it, or could?

I'm pretty sure that Bruce Cost is a television detective. No, I don't think he does sleuth work for or about television. That would be ridiculous, even for me. I simply meant that with a name like that he has to be a dark mysterious detective from some drama that aired in the late 80's or early 90's. He always gets his man in the end. The ladies fall for him every time, but like Short Round and Indy he simply has no time for love. He is a man with a clear view of his future and that is to solve crimes in 30-minute increments. That and to produce some of the finest ginger ale's this world has ever seen. What did you think he solely spent his life fighting crime? Everyone needs hobbies and his just happens to be crafting sodas. He's grown quite good at it as well.

While he was wrapping up the case of the Albuquerque Exsanguinater he dreamed up this little fella. The murderer always scouted out his victims at a fancy Chinese restaurant. It always smelled of jasmine tea in there and the smell haunted Cost. He knew he needed to fuse it with his beloved ginger ale. Sure he may have cut some corners on the case so he could get to his "soda lab" quickly, but he gets results and isn't that all that really matters when a killer is on the loose?

Mixing soda pop and teas is a tricky game that can easily turn to garbage. I'd say about 1/4 of the ones I've tried are actually decent. The rest, well they can rest on the trash heap for all I care. Cost went through an ridiculous amount of recipes before he hit pay dirt. He finally figured out the correct formula to make a jasmine ginger ale that comes through on every front. It has a distinct ginger taste, due to the tiny pieces of ginger that he realized just should not be filtered out. It also has a faint burn, but not nearly enough to consider it a ginger beer. Finally he had to get the proper flowery flavor without tasting too much like soap. Unlike in his cases he cut no corners with this soda. Everything it contains is a top notch ingredient and it shows in the flavor. My ladyfriend said it did taste like soap, but she only had a tiny sip. I could see where she was coming from at first, but after another sip that flavor was completely gone. The ginger had neutralized it. If you like a little kick of a treat at the end of your soda, make sure to drink the last sip that has the remaining remnants of ginger. It will give you a nice little parting gift of a burn, like the burn Bruce Cost feels in his heart when he knows their are crimes left unsolved and ginger ale left unbrewed.

If your grandma wasn't too busy playing nickel slots at the local casino, she would be home making this ginger ale. Bruce Cost knows how to make a high quality drink, complete with chunks of ginger that hit you just right. Reason I'm bringing your grandma into it is because of two reasons:
1. She has a serious gambling problem.
2. She cooks and bakes from the heart using "real" ingredients.

There are four ingredients in this drink, which proves that simplicity often wins the race. Tortoises win races and simplicity wins races. Every time you want to take a sip, you have to swish it around a little to get the ginger sediment a-moving. That makes this a bit of an interactive drink, which makes it fun. If you didn't care about swishing, you would be greeted with probably a pretty average, slightly bitey ginger all but then at the end you would be drinking the powdered equivalent of half a ginger root. If you're into that type of thing, you will love it, but it's not the way that your grandma, who has graduated to the quarter slots since I've started this review, or Bruce Cost intended.

Here at Thirsty Dudes we search far and wide, from bodega to grocery store looking for the perfect ginger drink. The general populace has been fooled into believing that main stream ginger ale's are in fact what ginger is all about, when in reality most of those sodas don't have even a smidgen of actual ginger in them.

When our journey first began we believed that the stronger the burn from the ginger, the better the soda. We found some that really knocked us on our butts and they were great. Now that we are a bit older and arguably wiser we've come to accept that a blend of flavor and burn is what we truly want from our ginger soda. A soda can burn so bad that you won't be able to taste anything for a while, and that might be fun, but really how often are you going to sip on a bottle of something like that.

Today Bruce Cost stepped up to the plate. He didn't point to the stands to signify he was going to knock us into next Tuesday. He just stood there, shrugged and said "If you like this that's cool. If not, that's cool too." Well Bruce we did more than like it. We loved it!

The bottle states that "Separation is natural" so I gently shook the bottle. As I did a cloud of sediment with little pieces of actual ginger lifted from the bottle and swirled around the amber tinted fluid contained within. That is always a good sign. Drinks that need to be shook due to settling are almost always superior to those that are consistent all the way through. Finally it was time to twist off the cap. As soon as I did a nice fruity ginger aroma greeted my nostrils. When I took a bigger whiff it kind of burned, which is another good sign. After a single sip, I knew it was love and that it was the real thing. I knew wedding bells were in my future. Hey I live in New York State. Same sex marriages are now legal. I can only assume that means that the next bill to pass will let me marry an inanimate object. (For the record I am so stoked and proud of NYS for passing the same sex marriage law. How it took people so long is beyond me.) It's slightly fruity and flowery, but ginger will always be the main player here. It's the only flavor I've ever known that can overpower pomegranate and believe me that fruit needed to be put in its place. Oh, the burn? It's there. It's not a crazy burn like the Goya Ginger Beer has, but it's decent enough that I can say that I have no complaints. This may in fact be the greatest ginger ale that I have ever consumed. Bruce Cost if you are an actual human and we ever meet be prepared for a hearty handshake and a big wet kiss on the lips.