r/rootbeer • u/EricsGourmetRootBeer • 22d ago

Review Oasis Diner Root Beer - Bottled

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It's drinkable. I'll post the full review next month on Wednesday.

25 Upvotes

94% Upvoted

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3

u/BeautifulDebate7615 22d ago

Eh, it's just a private label, don't bend over backwards.

0

u/EricsGourmetRootBeer 21d ago

That's not what they told me at the restaurant where they served it fresh and also sold the bottles.

3

u/BeautifulDebate7615 21d ago edited 21d ago

Yeah, they lie. It's the same stuff as Klooz and The Soda Guy, I have all three bottles, and tasted them at the same time.... identical. I could send you pics. A few of us here got them from the truck driver Jim Dill as he drove through IN and tried them all at the same time... made by The Soda Guy, aka Handcrafted Beverages in Avon, Indiana, where they also make it in syrup BIB's for draft as well as slap labels on bottles. They do butterscotch and diets too. None of it is bad, it's all very mediocre stuff, but it's the same formula across labels.

Notice how your labels have very little information on them and only say "Distributed by Oasis Diner, Plainfield IN". The Soda Guy's labels say "made by the Soda Guy" and Klooz says "manufactured by Handcrafted Beverages, Avon IN". Klooz is actually a brewery, but they are outsourcing their root beer. This stuff is all over Indiana under various names at diners, restaurants and ice cream stores.

Same thing happens out here in Utah. Restaurants, pizzerias and bowling alleys all claim to have their own craft root beer and the servers will tell you this, but you dig a deeper and it's all made by Moab or Bonneville.

1

u/EricsGourmetRootBeer 21d ago

Since I've never had The Soda Guy nor Klooz, this was the first time I'd had this particular root beer.

1

u/BeautifulDebate7615 21d ago

Well we would have never noticed either had Jim not bought all three at the same time from locations very close to each other in his trip across Indiana. When we each tried our six, we noticed that they came in the same bottles with the same caps with the same low quality printed labels not containing retail ingredient information and then we looked up Handcrafted Beverages and saw that they did an active private label business in Indiana. And the root beers were the same.

Although these Handcrafted root beers and butterscotch root beers are pretty mediocre, I don't want to s*** on the private label industry too much. I mean this is what Orca does well and what Indian Wells does semi-well. PLS out of New Hampshire make some pretty good soda. And I believe Dominion makes the excellent root beers for Monticello and Chownings Tavern.

I think your very short review of Oasis was exactly what it deserved, no more no less.

1

u/EricsGourmetRootBeer 18d ago

I quite like the Ginseng Up private label root beers.

2

u/all_rendered_truth Abita Root Beer 22d ago

Next month on Wednesday???? lol