Have any of you tried Kutztown and Pennsylvania Dutch Birch Beer? An Amish store about 40 miles from home carries these along with other products from Pennsylvania so I thought I would give them a try.It wasn't bad,both seemed to have a sorta Wintergreen flavor to them.Any other Birch beers that would be good to sample?

If your ever up in the Bloomsburg Area, swing down to Catawissa and the Catawissa Bottling Company or hit up one of the local supermarkets. They have 5 Birch Beer "flavors/colors", and 3 of them have slightly different flavors. I grew up on the stuff and would recommend the Blue (very popular in our area), nice flavor with a good, strong taste. The White is a bit nippy, with more of a snap, while the Brown is quite mellow. They also have a Red and Gold that fit in as similar flavors to the ones above.

If you've ever been to the Bloomsburg Fair and had the Golden Birch Beer, your drinking the Catawissa brand at several of the larger stands.

Pennsylvania Dutch is what I would call a mainstream birch beer - nothing particularly fancy or special about it. It's actually now owned by Honickman Canada Dry, who distributes it in most of their territory.

I'm a big fan of Boylan's birch beer, especially the red. Unfortunately, the distributor here went bankrupt (after they lost Red Bull), so it's hard to find outside of stores that get it through their own warehouse.

When the workplace soda tasting crew and I did Birch Beers last year, our results were (in order from best to worst):

BOYLAN'S RED
KUTZTOWN
WEIS RED
PA DUTCH
BOYLAN'S ORIGINAL
SIOUX CITY
SUPER CHILL
WEIS WHITE
GIANT MAIN STREET

Boylan's Red was vastly superior to any of the others. Kutztown was very good, as was the Weis Supermarket Red. The middle three (PA Dutch, Boylan's Original and Sioux City) were OK but definitely second tier. The bottom three weren't worth bothering with.

Originally Posted by treetoptom

Boylan's Red was vastly superior to any of the others.

While I have never tasted it myself, based on their marketing materials and the emphasis they put on their birch beer offerings, this is not surprising. Boylan's seems to take it very seriously!

That birch beer is the nastiest crap I have ever tasted in my life. Seriously.

In my general area birch beer isn't that readily available.Boylan's might be something I might try to find even though I didn't care for their regular cola.