Levis is an old root beer. From back way in 1895. It was originally served at a marble soda fountain at a place called Levis, that served hot dogs and fish cakes and what not. After seeing the success of Hires’ brew, Levis made his root beer even better with a bold flavor, if the back of the bottle is to be believed. The hot dog stand is actually still there and has been continuously operating since its inception. It doesn’t say when the root beer started to be bottled, but currently the bottled version is owned and distributed by Amazing Beverages. The back of the bottle claims that it’s bottled with the same flavor used for almost 100 years, but they can’t be using exactly the same recipe because they only use part sugar and part sucralose. It still has enough sugar for me to consider it not a diet (25g) but it kind of is some strange hybrid type almost. I can’t imagine that does anything to improve the flavor. It does only have 100 calories per bottle which was probably the reason for the sugar dial down. To appeal to some strange health conscious subset of the population.
The Body is weak with a prominent sour and icky fake sugar taste. Why did they put sucralose in it instead of another 15g of sugar? The Bite is a bit harsh from carbonation and sour. The Head is medium-tall and lingers an average amount of time. It’s not super foamy but it’s okay. The Aftertaste is an icky sucralose flavor that coats my teeth and doesn’t go away.
This stuff is bad, and is what happens when somebody wants to reduce the calories in their root beer a little bit. I mean really, do you think anyone going for a bottle of soda is going to not get it because it has another 40 calories? Has there ever been anyone, in the history of the world, who thinks that the fake sweetener flavor is somehow better than real sugar? I will give them the fact that despite the fake sugar detraction, it does taste old-school-soda-fountiany. See how it rates against other root beers.
