Beverage of the Week: Parlor's root beers taste like being a kid again

Welcome back to FTW’s Beverage of the Week series. Here, we mostly chronicle and review beers, but happily expand that scope to any beverage that pairs well with sports. Yes, even cookie dough whiskey.

Full sugar sodas have become a special treat for me akin to fancy scotch or a nice steak. They’re awesome, but since I’ve no longer got the metabolism of a teenager and there’s already a steady slice of my diet reserved for beer-related calories I typically just default to whatever artificially sweetened diet or “zero” options are at hand.

The one exception is root beer. I’m fortunate enough to live in Wisconsin, which has not only great beers but incredible sodas. Standing atop that landscape is Sprecher, whose founder needed to brew something for kids touring his facilities with their parents to sip on and stumbled into a soft drink empire. Sprecher makes some S-tier beverages — their Puma Kola and Orange Dream are rich and satisfying — but the company’s bread and butter is its fire brewed, honey sweetened root beer.

This put Parlor, a new craft soda brand backed by a handful of music business veterans, on my radar for this column. It also gave the startup a high bar to clear. Would their full sugar lineup of soft drinks be worth the 170 calorie toll per bottle? Could they bring birch beer back?

I’m game. Let’s dig in.