WASHINGTON — If you’re bored with the same old vending machine sodas, there’s a store in the area where you can take your tongue on a soda pop safari.
The North Market Pop Shop in Frederick, Maryland sells more than 225 different kinds of soda, most of them sweetened with cane sugar and packaged in glass bottles.
“The craft soda scene in general is expanding, and it’s like a scavenger hunt all the time,” says owner Michelle Schaffer, who often travels to Pennsylvania to pick up sodas from distributors.
Related Gallery
Running the shop is quite a change from her former life.
“I am a biochemist by training, so I used to work in the lab. And while that was a lot of fun and very intense, not a lot of people smiled and were very happy most of the time. I am a happy person, and really wanted to make more people happy.”
The Pop Shop’s inventory includes sodas that have been around for 100 years or more, as well as more recent creations.
“I do a lot of talking about sodas as if they are fine wines, but we don’t like to be too pretentious about it,” Schaffer says.
One of the classics she carries is Moxie, a soda created in the late 1800s with a name that has become a word for strength.
“It was actually first formulated by a doctor who used it as what they call a brain softener,” Schaffer says.
Hers is the only shop in Maryland where you can find Moxie in glass bottles.
I taste-tested Moxie, and found it to be like a cola with a medicinal taste that lingers in your mouth, a taste Schaffer says some people — especially people from Maine — just love.
Another soda I sampled, Blueberry Birch Beer from Reading Draft Company, had a toothpaste-like smell but a great taste and fun blue color.
Other sodas I tasted and would recommend: Blenheim Ginger Ale; Cock ‘n Bull Ginger Beer; Grape Nehi; Real Soda Company’s Chocolate Covered Maple Smoked Bacon Soda; and Reed’s Flying Cauldron Butterscotch Beer.
Schaffer also sells Surge, a soda made between 1992 and 2001 that was re-released just last year.
At the Pop Shop you can buy a single soda, mix and match to create your own six pack and special order large numbers for weddings and other events.
And soda pop isn’t the only thing on the menu.
Schaffer says the shop has the best ice cream in Frederick.
Trickling Springs Creamery makes it, and the folks behind the counter are happy to mix you up a milkshake or soda float.
Also served here are all-beef hot dogs with toppings, so you can make it a meal.
One thing Schaffer doesn’t do is serve her sodas with ice.
“You don’t put ice in a craft soda because it dilutes the flavor,” she says.
