Goose Island

Product Type:Carbonated Soft Drink: Regular; Container: 12 fl oz (355 ml) glass
BevNET Review: While switching to cane sugar is certainly nice, there’s something about Goose Island’s newly revised root beer that left us scratching our heads. Inside the bottle, this naturally and artificially flavored product tastes decent, but isn’t overly memorable. It’s pretty much a middle-of-the-road flavor, with cane sugar not making up for the relatively flat root beer taste. On the outside, they’ve removed the signature Goose Island logo and replaced it with a new design. This seems like a huge mistake, having removed the product’s personality and replaced it with a boring design that seems more appropriate for a store brand or private label. In our opinion, this product has taken a huge step in the wrong direction, removing the brand and adding in cane sugar. We’d gladly drink the old formula with the old label — this one we’ll have to take a pass on. And we think consumers will, too.

Product Type:Carbonated Soft Drink: Regular; Container: 12 oz glass
BevNET Review: Goose Island’s Spicy Ginger flavor isn’t spicy enough to really warrant the name, but it’s still quite enjoyable. There’s a decent ginger flavor to the lightly carbonated mix, although it’s clearly from flavoring as opposed to actual ginger, while the use of cane sugar gives the product a clean and crisp finish. On the outside, the product is appealing, although one might expect real ginger inside of a bottle covered with images of ginger roots. Furthermore, we don’t like the lack of personality as compared to Goose Island’s beer brand. Overall, this is a good product, but we’re not convinced that the market needs another product like this, especially given the departure from the Goose Island logo.

Product Type:Carbonated Soft Drink: Regular; Container: 12 oz glass
BevNET Review: Goose Island’s Vanilla Cream is another flavor that’s just average. They’ve switched to cane sugar, which is nice from a flavor and marketability point of view, but the vanilla flavor isn’t as good as competing brands. More importantly, they’ve completely killed the look of the brand. In its new form, the product is totally devoid of any character, looking more like something that’s a store brand or beverage startup. In our opinion, this makeover is a huge mistake for the brand, one that’s lost that Chicago charm that made it have a place in the market.