kingrat

• Health Valley Ginger Ale - This was in the cooler in the organic section at Larry's. It's labeled "Ginger Ale" in a plain style and you have to look at the fine print in order to find out that it's distributed by Health Valley. This one was a nice middle ground between a strong ginger brew that I like and the tame mass marker stuff. I had only a few sips of it. Maria was drinking a glass of my Reed's and she hated it because it was too strong and not sweet enough. But she liked this. Drinkable in my review, but not something for which I'd go out of my way.
• Trader Joe's Organic Ginger Beer - evillinn wanted me to try this and bought me a bottle when I dilly-ed about picking one up. It comes in a 33 oz bottle. Not quite a forty! I wonder if 33.8 oz works out to be something round in metric. This is a pretty good ginger brew. It's not very sweet, and has a medium strong lingering taste of ginger. There is no sugar aftertaste, but the ginger continues to tingle the back of my throat after each swig. Tasty.

had a few of the ginger ales. the quick review:

• Boylan's Ginger Ale - light with decent ginger flavor. Not much bite to it. nice summer ale.
• Red Rock Golden Ginger Ale - the bottle says "Just The Right Bite." Strong bite! I couldn't finish it, and I like my ginger brew to have a strong bite. If you like a strong ginger bite, this is the one for you. There isn't much subtlety to this brew.
• Orca Beverage's Americana Honey Lime Ginger Ale - this one is very similar to the Boylan's in flavor, although it has a bit more ginger. Not much more bite to it though.

Will try the other two and review them tomorrow.

• Reed's Ginger Brew is the best ginger ale around.
• Brands such as Thomas Kemper have so much sugar that one cannot taste ginger.
• Lowest on the list are the mass market brands, such as Canada Dry, Vernor's and Schweppes (all owned or distributed by Cadbury-Schweppes).
• Blue Sky Soda makes a decent ginger ale, although it is still too sweet for my taste. It also has a little bit of an aftertaste that I do not like. The mass-market brands do not have the after-taste because they have no taste to start with.
• I've also tried Shasta in years past, but it was so long ago I no longer remember the taste. I imagine it would be very similar to the mass-marker brands, as I recall Shasta being a store brand. I now think I am mistaken about the store brand status, but that's what I recall.

Now, I am off to the grocery to get some pasta sauce and some Reed's.