7 - Cicero Salted Caramel Root Beer
I recently came across Cicero Beverage Company’s Salted Caramel Root Beer. According to this review, Cicero is based out of Chicago, IL. When I tried going to Cicero’s website, however, I was blocked by my ISP as it is listed as a porn site, so they don’t seem to have their own web presence at the time of writing.
Branding
The company has gone with an old-fashioned branding scheme, using a city outline as its logo. The bottle is a pretty typical dark brown.
I found it to be attractive though and it has a nice appeal overall.
Taste and Ingredients
When you first open the bottle, you get a big whiff of caramel + root beer emanating out of the soda. The drink itself is very smooth and has a strong caramel flavor. I would call it somewhat complex because while you get the strong caramel syrupy flavor right off the bat, you also get some root beer kicking in, and a kind of weird taste as you swallow that lingers on the tongue.
I think the caramel is nice, but it also makes the root beer too sweet. It even reminds me a bit of some of the butterscotch root beers I have had in the past.
On the plus side, Cicero appears to use regular cane sugar and other mostly natural ingredients while also making it caffeine-free.
Note that once again, this is a pretty flat-tasting drink. When I mentioned smooth earlier, part of that smoothness comes from the lower carbonation and partially from the caramel.
The Wrap Up
This was a decent local root beer, but the initial taste may be a bit off-putting depending on your palate. I found that it grew on me, but pfobably not one of my current favorites.
Still, it’s worth a try and who knows? I might like it better the next time I come across it.