Welcome to FTW’s Beverage of the Week series. Previously, we’ve folded these in to our betting guides, whether that’s been for the NFL slate or a bizarrely successful run through the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament. 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.
This series has largely been steeped in alcohol. This has the benefit of keeping me from delirium tremens in the name of work but also excludes the non-drinkers of the world.
Fortunately, thanks to Olivia Rodrigo and Joseph Smith, an alternative blew up this over the past month that allowed me to expense $20 worth of Coffee-Mate flavored creamers. “Dirty sodas” have long been a staple across Utah, a state whose majority Mormon population is prohibited from hot caffeinated beverages like coffee or tea. Beginning in 2012, however, the Church of Latter Day Saints — Smith’s outfit — decreed caffeinated cold beverages were fine, leading to a slow soda boom in the region.
So outlets across the state have jumped into the craft soda game. Or, specifically, a game in which they craft their own sodas by adding syrups and cream to layer flavors into a pre-existing base (Coca-Cola, Sprite, etc). The whole adventure is kinda like decorating a prefabricated, modular home.
Anyway, chains have popped up throughout the Beehive State with rejected tech start-up names like Swig, Sodalicious and Fiiz and are thriving because, you know, no hot coffee.
Ms. Rodrigo posted about the beverage back in December and it recently went viral on TikTok. While it feels new, it’s been trending in some form since 2016. If you’re reading this from Utah or any other location with a heavy Mormon population, you’re probably feeling real hipster-y about the whole subject, having known about it before it was cool. Congrats on that; maybe send a few recipes my way? Because soon you will realize I have only a very basic grasp on proper dirty soda architecture.