A question for people who grew up in Southern California that'd save me some (non-online) research time:
Bireley's non-carbonated orange drink was a regional product manufactured here in the San Francisco Bay Area in the fifties and into the sixties. (Oddly, a licensee in Japan apparently sells a drink by that name even today.)
I know it was available in the Bay Area, the north part of the state and in the Central Valley as well. But I don't know about SoCal. Can anyone help me on that?
(Don't know if anything will come of it, but I'm sort of outlining a time-travel thing that sends a couple of 1980-90 kids back to the Mickey Mouse Club of 1956, and was looking for some period-appropriate non-cola soft drinks like Hires Root Beer and Nehi Grape Soda.)
Also, I can't remember if anyone out here was selling bottles of cream soda back then. (First I saw of it here in San Fran was in cans, sometime in the mid-sixties -- probably Shasta brand.)
Eric
Bireley's vs Barq's
Bireley's orange drink was available in some areas of Southern California back in the 60s and maybe the 70s but was never my favorite. I seem to remember it being more tart and a bit thinner than Orange Crush or Barq's Orange. They also had a lemon soda, a sour apple soda and a truly astonishing tasting grape. Hard to say if I liked their grape soda but it was different.
Barq's back before they were bought by Coca Cola made a superior orange soda that had actual bits of orange zest in it. Back in Arkansas, it was marketed as Orangina, I believe. They also made a truly great vanilla creme soda and the same spice beer stuff which is now about the only thing sold under the label around here. They used to advertise that it wasn't root beer but something different (it's caffeinated sarsaparilla). Nowadays it's just marketed as root beer and their other sodas, orange, vanilla creme, red creme, grape, and lime are nowhere to be found locally. From the internet, it looks like the creme sodas are available in the South and Midwest.
I think you can get Bireley's and maybe some of Barq's old versions at BevMo. I know they have Double Cola and Bubble Up. :)
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
While I grew up in Central CA,I spent a year in So Calif. ...
in 1959-1960 where I worked in the gym/rec hall at a private military school and one job was filling the bottle only soda machines.
Among the sodas were Bireley's Orange and grape, A&W cream soda & root beer, Bubble Up & 7-Up, Pepsi Cola & Coca Cola, Orange Crush, Dr Pepper, & Squirt.
Holly
It's nice to be important, but it's more important to be nice.
Holly
Cream Soda has been around for a long time.
I remember it in both Northern and Southern California in the 60's in the Dad's brand, and several others whose names I can't recall offhand.
Here's the wikipedia history:
The drink originated in the United Kingdom in the 19th century. A recipe for cream soda—written by E.M. Sheldon and published in Michigan Farmer in 1852—called for water, cream of tartar, Epsom salts, sugar, tartaric acid, egg, and milk, to be mixed together, then heated, and when cool mixed with water and a quarter teaspoonful of soda (sodium bicarbonate) to make an effervescent drink.[2]
Alexander C. Howell, of Vienna, New Jersey, was granted a patent for "cream soda-water" on June 27, 1865. Howell's cream soda-water was made with sodium bicarbonate, water, sugar, egg whites, wheat flour, and "any of the usual flavoring materials—such as oil of lemon, &c, extracts of vanilla, pine-apple, &c., to suit the taste"; before drinking, the cream soda water was mixed with water and an acid such as tartaric acid or citric acid.[3] In Canada, James William Black of Berwick, Nova Scotia was granted a U.S. patent on December 8, 1885, and a Canadian patent on July 5, 1886, for "ice-cream soda".[4][5] Black's ice-cream soda, which contained whipped egg whites, sugar, lime juice, lemons, citric acid, flavoring, and bicarbonate of soda,[6] was a concentrated syrup that could be reconstituted into an effervescent beverage by adding ordinary ice water.[5]
Here's a link to a connoisseur site:
http://www.drinkcreamsoda.com/
He might know more about the history of cream soda.
Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
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Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
I'm not sure but
odds are Galco's would likely carry it they have been doing pop since forever and you can get cucumber soda's even. I think they might carry it or they's know who does.
Bailey Summers