Stop it you, two! You’re making me turn all shades of red. 
It’s not us, it’s the Moxie! 
I tried it chilled, and some of the sweetness is a bit more muted, but my overall impression isn’t any different.
I did some more research, and it has the same amount of sugar as Coca-Cola (37g per 12 oz serving), although it is lower than some root beers. The mock Moxie syrup recipes I’ve found in Google books from the early 1900s seem to be a combination of two or three basic ingredients: sarsparilla and gentian syrups, and then another recipe adds wintergreen syrup to this (I do think all three sounds about right to me. We know gentian is definite, because it’s listed as an ingredient.) So the description of it as root beer + gentian is right.
I steeped myself a gentian tea with the bark I had in my filing cabinet, and added that generously to the Moxie, and then it became more the drink I was expecting. I still needed to cut it a bit with sparkling water, because I like my drinks on the less sweet side. Of course, if anybody made a soft drink marketed to my general tastes, I’d probably be the only customer. 
Maybe my bitter taste receptors are dead or something, but I really don’t understand why this drink is so polarizing. It seems like if you like root beer, you’d probably like this.
That would be an interesting topic for a thread, namely, “Why are some foods so polarizing?”
The queen of them, of course, is the evil, nasty, herb-from-hell cilantro.
Don’t want to hijack here…
With cilantro, I believe we’ve had a few threads. Some component of it is genetic, and some is psychological. I taste the soapiness, but got over it after repeated exposures and now I eat it with abandon. It still has a soapiness to me, but my brain doesn’t parse it as “soap” anymore.
With Moxie, it could be a taste thing as well. I am not a supertaster, and supertasters do have an increased sensitivity towards bitter flavors, as I understand it, but all the descriptions of Moxie’s bitterness seem to be generally accepted, so I don’t think it’s just supertasters.
The other possibility is that Coke did buy Moxie a few years ago, and someone upthread (or maybe it was on another forum) said they swear Moxie tastes different now. Maybe Coke has dialed down the gentian syrup? I would need long-time Mainers who have a memory of the Moxie of their childhoods to current Moxie to chime in.
That must be some filing cabinet! I’m just imagining what goes in each drawer. I’ll bet you have an entire drawer just for all the paprikas.
Go have a Pearl’s Jam sandwich
Remember? How could you? We used to have an annual “Bacardi and Jolt” party. The T-shirts were Epic. The catch-phrase was Party till they shoot you down
Pulykamell, thanks for the taste test. I tried Moxie once, when I was in New Hampshire, back in the eighties. I had seen Mad Magazine’s unobtrusive ads for it, and it was in a store where it was sold, so why not try it?
It was … different, shall we say, from anything I had ever tasted. Not unpleasant, but not something I’d buy again. Still, I enjoyed your review of it, and thanks again for doing your taste test.
That sounds truly bizarre.
I tried some Cheerwine in NC because a friend said it was awesome. Meh, it was ok.
No, you silly goose. Paprikas go in the sock drawer! The reason I had gentian root (and black cohosh root) in my under-desk filing cabinet is that I’ve been playing around with it, making teas and flavoring bubbly water with it and, for some reason, my office is where it ended up making its home.
See, for me, it’s clearly a “root beer.” If you didn’t tell me what it was, I’d ID it as maybe some artisinal root beer or something. And, as I said, my wife who knows nothing about this drink immediately said root beer. And she’s no foodie (whereas I have been accused of being one.) So it’s not like a drink without a reference point. That said, I do wonder if it really has changed since Coca Cola bought it, and maybe now it’s not as aggressively unique as it was before.
I know Shasta still exists in some form or other (usually seen in 2 liter bottles at Dollar Tree) but does anybody remember the dozen or so flavors in 12 oz steel cans during the '70s? It was the cheapest can of soda you could buy back then and continued to be sold in steel cans long after most other sodas and beers went to aluminum. We always had several variety cases of the stuff in our camper when I was a kid. There was never enough cola and root beer flavor and way too much black cherry and cream soda.
Black cherry was my fave, I think.
Wikipedia lists the current lineup of 34:
- Apple
- Black Cherry
- Diet Black Cherry
- California Dreamin’ (orange creamsicle)
- Club Soda
- Cola
- Diet Cola
- Cherry Cola
- Creme Soda
- Diet Creme Soda
- Dr. Shasta (similar to Dr. Pepper)
- Diet Dr. Shasta
- Fiesta Punch * Ginger Ale
- Diet Ginger Ale
- Grape
- Diet Grape
- Kiwi Strawberry
- Mountain Rush (similar Mountain Dew)
- Orange
- Diet Orange
- Pineapple
- Raspberry Creme (raspberry-vanilla)
- Root Beer
- Diet Root Beer * Strawberry
- Diet Strawberry
- Tiki Punch
- Tonic Water
- Twist (lemon-lime)
- Diet Twist
- Very Cherry Twist
- Zazz (grapefruit)
- Diet Grapefruit
I was not aware of gentian syrup, and looking at the Wikipedia page for Gentiana, there’s some research for me to do. I like Aperol, but generally don’t bother buying a bottle for home, as it’s easy enough to get an Aperol spritz in the restaurants (when they are open). I’m sure I’ve seen Suze in the store, so I’ll pick up a bottle of that to try.
And if I have the opportunity to try Moxie, I will. Thanks for the unboxing video!
oddly their shasta lemon lime twist tastes more like ginger ale then their actual ginger ale does
I believe that Target carries a few of the varieties, such as cream soda, almost everywhere. You can sometimes get Cel-Ray in the kosher section of mainstream grocery stores in Atlanta, so I’m guessing that is similar elsewhere.
Dr, Brown’s is pretty easy to find here in South Texas. I just saw some yesterday in my local supermarket.
I worked at an ad agency, and one of our writers had written that line!
Back when he was younger, Jolt had a contest to come up with a slogan. Everyone else submitted cutesy “Wake Up And Smell The Fun!” kind of fluff. But our Li’l Timmy thought “Let’s just tell people what’s in it.”
…
Some areas of the country are really enamored of their red sodas.
I went to college with people (MI and OH) who would talk about “skipping class and getting a redpop”. I think one brand even named theirs “Redpop”. Oh, and they drank Red Cream Soda as well.
Any cherry-ish soda gets celebrity treatment in my friend’s area of the Carolinas.
Brilliant! Take that, Don Draper!
Around here, it’s Big Red with barbacoa (which BTW is NOT exactly “barbecue” as you know it). Our local grocery chain HEB will package Big Red, a couple of avocados, and a package of flour tortillas together as a promotion.
Wasn’t the slogan “all the sugar and twice the caffeine”?