In the course of my quest for the perfect cream soda, I come across a number of other beverages that catch my eye, and they duly end up in my refrigerator for closer examination. Occasionally a gem is thus inadvertently discovered, such as Faygo’s Rock & Rye, or a well-brewed birch beer.

Though many of these little side-trips don’t turn out to be particularly interesting, they’re at least drinkable. Besides the horrible diet sodas of the 1970s, I really hadn’t met a soda I didn’t like. All that changed recently when I raised a bottle of Reed’s Raspberry Ginger Brew to my lips. I’d purchased some of this all-natural stuff expecting something special (after all, at just over dollar a bottle, it damned well better be good stuff).

Containing a whopping 20% raspberry juice, I expected to tickle my tastebuds with the tart essence of Rubus idaeus. Instead I was staggered by a wallop of ginger so concentrated it was as if a huge wad of gari had been stuffed into my mouth. It was undrinkable, and without question the worst soda I have ever tasted.

Unfortunately, I still have three bottles of the stuff left in my pantry, ominous, dark, and silent, like a trio of tapered cylinders full of Zyklon B. If you really, really like the taste of carbonated ginger, have run out of paint remover in the middle of a furniture refinishing project, or are simply foolhardy, let me know, and I’ll be glad to give them to you. I’d get rid of them myself, but it would violate several local environmental bylaws were I to pour it into the sewers.