As you may or may not know, I am a Dr Pepper fanatic. As is a large chunk of the south. If you're somebody who thinks sodas should be "sweet" then Dr Pepper is not for you. Dr Pepper is sweet/tangy/acidic/sharp. It's it's own flavor; it doesn't taste like anything. If you've never tried Dr Pepper, I seriously recommend that you do. You'll either like it, or you wont.

So, anyway, regular Dr Pepper is made like just about any other flavor soda; a secret combination of artificial and natural flavors (23 of them, to be exact) is mixed, added to carbonated water, and swirled in with High Fructose Corn Syrup to give it it's sweet edge (it's not super sweet like Pepsi, but it's not not sweet.) To really get what I mean, you'll have to sample a can.

Many people claim that all sodas made from High Fructose Corn Syrup "taste different" than sugar sodas. If you're lucky to live near a Mexican store, sometimes you can find Coca-cola inside made with real sugar. But for the most part, all consumer beverages are made with High Fructose Corn Syrup. It's cheap, but apparently it's not as good.

Just about every Dr Pepper bottler has switched over to HFCS... except for the bottler in Dublin, Texas (and one in Temple, and maybe one or two more). They're the only bottlers authorized to make a different formulation of Dr Pepper: "Imperial Sugar Dr Pepper", or "Dublin Dr Pepper" (depending on if you get it from the Waco or Dublin plants).

At Wal Mart, I was able to get a hold of a six-pack of Temple Texas "Imperial Sugar Dr Pepper". (I thought it was Dublin Dr Pepper, but found out later that Dublin makes the Bottled Sugar Dr Pepper, whereas Temple makes the canned product of the same formula. They work with each other to market the product.)

So, I bought a six pack of Dublin Dr Pepper and a 12 pack of regular HFCS Dr Pepper (the 12 pack of HFCS cost $3, the 6 pack of Dublin cost $3.50, to give you an idea of both the difference in costs of Sugar/HFCS and the economics of scale Cheesy).

THE REVIEW:

The flavor. I'm not going to bother describing the HFCS Dr Pepper again; you've read my description and you can try one yourself.

Dublin Dr Pepper is COMPLETELY DIFFERENT than HFCS Dr Pepper. The base flavors are the same. Dr Pepper is sweet/tangy/acidic/sharp, just like regular Dr Pepper. However, the use of Sugar as sweetener has a completely different effect.

First off, Dublin Dr Pepper is thinner than HFCS Dr Pepper. It feels like a thinner beverage, at least to me, as I drink it (I have a can before me now, and I take a sip between each paragraph). It's not as "bulky" as HFCS Dr Pepper. It seems to be about the same color as regular Dr Pepper, however. And both cans are 12 Fluid Ounces.

The Ingredient label for both cans is the same, except for the difference in sweetener. It reads: "Carbonated Water, {Imperial Pure Cane Sugar|High Fructose Corn Syrup}, Caramel Color, Phosphoric Acid, Natural and Artificial Flavors, Sodium Benzoate (Preservative), Caffiene". A pretty simple mix. Both cans also weigh in at 150 calories.

But the sweetness! It's completely different! And the aftertaste is different as well. First off, the aftertaste of HFCS Dr Pepper is a bit acidic and sharp, and pretty clean. There's no lingering sweetness. Dublin Dr Pepper is completely different: there's a sweet aftertaste that lasts for quite a few seconds afterward. The drink's sweetness flavor is different as well. HFCS Dr Pepper has a strong sweet taste, a very clean sweet (not as clean a sweet as artificial sweeteners, like Splenda have). Dublin Dr Pepper has a very noticeable "sugar" flavor to the mix, with almost a hint of real caramel to it. You know that "flavor" you experience when you throw fancy to the wind, ignore the strange looks you get from friends and family, and break down and rip open a sugar packet at a restaurant and toss the sugar into your mouth? There is a very specific "sugar hint" that a plain "sweetener" can't match. And Dublin Dr Pepper has that hint.

A strange difference also just occurred to me: whereas I tend to drink regular Dr Pepper wholesale (I chug through cans), taking big gulps at a time, I instead have a tendency to sip Dublin Dr Pepper. There's also a distinct hint of "satisfaction" that ends each can. I'm actually content to drink one (or two if I have a real heavy "sweet tooth" that day) in a sitting, when I've been known to kill two two liters of regular Dr Pepper.

So HFCS is cheaper AND less satisfying than sugared colas? Is that why they switched? Let's say yes. I now understand when an older friend of mine told me that back in the 50's they used to drink a can a day and it was a special treat. Regular Dr Pepper is not a treat. It's an interestingly flavored carrier of calories and caffiene into the gut. Dublin Dr Pepper, however, is a special treat, and like many things made with real sugar, it gets less rewarding the more you drink; in other words, can one of the day is EPIC WIN, can two is AWESOME, can three is WIN, and pretty quickly you're less interested in sugar and more interested in something like a bottle of water. In other words, a treat.

Interested? You can buy a case of Dublin Dr. Pepper here:

Dublin Dr Pepper

A case is 24 cans, $10 a case, or about 41 cents a can. Packing and Shipping costs an extra $5, so that case will run you ~63 cents a can. You can order two cases for $20 + $5 s&h, coming to about 52 cents a can, or about the price you would pay at the vending machine. The flavor is perfect (if you're a Dr Pepper fan), and worth a bit of a splurge to try at least once. I will be switching over to ordering Dublin Dr Pepper from the Internet instead of buying soda from the local WalMart; not only is the flavor better, but I'm less likely to drink a whole 12 pack in a day, which when you're trying to lose weight is a great thing. Heck, this can of Dr Pepper has lasted me 30 minutes now, I still have about a fifth of a can left, and it makes for a great dessert! When you're doing the "Hacker Diet" (what I'm going to do), where you just count calories, you can afford one or two 150 calorie cans a day as a treat. You can't afford 10 HFCS cans in that time period.

While I'm completely against putting corn ethanol into gasoline (it's bad for the environment, cost more than MTE (which it replaces), and takes corn away from other industries), I like the idea that falling corn supplies might raise the price of HFCS so that sugar looks like a viable choice for beverage flavorings. I'd love to try Sugar Coca Cola, Sugar Pepsi, Sugar Ginger Ale, etc. And an actually satisfying Coca Cola? That would be AWESOME!