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Boylan's Diet

Birch Beer

"No Sugar Here"

"Run Way"

Boylan Bottling Company, 280 Colfax Avenue Clifton, New Jersey  07013

1-800-289-7978

        I'm still unhappy with the 11.6 ounce bottle, that just seems like a subtle rip-off to me.  I guess that 3.4% extra profit is important to Boylan.  I do like their inscrutable phrases on the bottles, though: for the diet birch beer, is "Run Way."  Go figure.

Review

        Strong, pleasant vanilla nose.  Weird jumbled initial hit, with the diet taste and the birch and the vanilla all competing.  The effect is not successful, kind of like three different things happening at once, with the result less than the sum of the parts.  This sensation doesn't improve in later sips, although sometimes one taste -- a kind of chalky, fruity thing -- will triumph, then something else will.  Odd.  Tiny bubbles, unlike Boylan's famous large bubble root beer.  The aftertaste is unescapably "diet," unfortunately.  This is a weird brew!  Great burps, though. 

Luke's Numbers (12/5/04)

Ingredients:  carbonated water, pure birch oils, natural flavors, natural yucca extract, vanilla, vanillin, citric acid, sodium benzoate (preserves freshness), sucralose, acesulfame potassium.  Caffeine free.  11.6 oz. bottle, 0 calories, 35 mg sodium.

Acquired: Beverages and More, Colma, California.

Available:  Fairly widely.

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