Merry Christmas! Located near the beach in Seaside Oregon is the Flashback Malt Shoppe. They have over 200 types of glass bottled sodas and serve all manner of frozen desserts. Their own line of sodas is a recent, yet welcome development as the world always needs more gourmet root beer. While Seaside isn’t too far a drive it’s actually bottled by Orca Beverages which is extremely close. However, I got this in a trade from anthony who lives in NJ. I it makes me happy to know that this root beer traveled across the country and back just to make it to my refrigerator. I like their brick wall background with the logo and the sparkleys. The whole use-a-different-font-for-every-line is kind of annoying, but a lot of people do that for some reason. I didn’t study marketing so there may be something I don’t know. As for what their official soda name is I’m not quite sure. I even went so far as to ask them on their Facebook page and they just said, “Thank you for your input” which was not exactly helpful so I went with what’s written above. They also have a birch beer which their website calls a “Birch Root Beer” but the label says otherwise, much to my chagrin. Maybe they’ll change the label some day so I can review that one too.
The Body is medium strength with delicious vanilla and honey accents. There’s a lot of spice in there as well. The Bite is strong from the spice and the carbonation, almost too much. The Head is deplorable, barely better than the two second Head. The Aftertaste is a light vanilla and honey that lasts an appropriate amount of time.
This is good but really needs a proper Head. I’m starting to wonder if this is more of a problem with Orca than the brands themselves, as most of the Orca brands have had terrible Heads. Especially when you consider the nearly identical Bulldog and Steelhead brews with the Bulldog, having a poor Head, bottled by Orca. Oh well. It still tastes really good so if you’re ever in Seaside you should get some. See how it rates against other root beers.
Fitz’s originally appeared in St. Louis in 1947 at a root beer stand. It shut down in the 1970’s like so many root beer stands but was resurrected in 1993 by Fitz’s Bottling Company. Not content to merely bring the root beer back, they wanted a vintage bottling line as well to ensure authenticity. Luckily they found one in some barn in Wisconsin because where else are you going to find a 1940’s vintage bottling line? I must say that’s pretty unique to them compared to a lot of the other resurrected brands. Their bottle is slightly different than your standard long neck as well, which I suppose is related to all of that authentic vintageness. The label is also the original from before so it’s as if the esteemed root beer never left. 
