Hailing from Chile, South America, mixed media artist Jorge Catoni brings his latest work, “Manipulations” to The Soda Gallery for our May Art Exhibition. Catoni’s visually stunning work utilizes both digital and analog (paint and various transfer printing methods) mediums. Please join us Saturday, May 17th @ 7pm for our opening reception.

We’ll also be featuring tequila aficionado Raul Santillan, Jr. as he samples some of the best tequilas the world has to offer (participants 21+ only.) All of our events are free and open to the public, and we close up shop when the last person goes home!

For more info regarding the art of Jorge Catoni, please visit www.myspace.com/jorgecatoni.

See you Saturday!

At The Soda Gallery we love to wax nostalgia. I mean, c’mon…we carry many different nostalgic soda brands you simply can’t find everywhere these days. Which brings us to an old, Texas classic, ‘Dublin’ Dr Pepper. The Dr Pepper Bottling Company of Dublin, TX is the oldest working bottling plant in the USA, and of course, they are also famous for bottling Dr Pepper using Imerial Pure Cane Sugar. We are fortunate to still have this bottling company around today. What makes them extra special is that the company still bottles their world-famous elixer in returnable bottles, giving their brand that added nostalgia factor.

Remember the good ol’ days where you had to drink your soda pop in-store and leave the bottle behind? Well, you’ll be able to re-live that experience at The Soda Gallery with our 10oz bottles of Dublin Dr Pepper. Hand-filled by the fine folks at the Dublin Dr Pepper Bottling Co., these 10oz gems are everything soda pop should be: cold, refreshing, sweet and delicious! They even have the good ‘ol ACL labeling, too, and crowned with the classic Dublin Dr Pepper ‘10-2-4′ bottle caps!

If you are wondering about the safety issues concerning returnable bottles, there is no need to be worried. The bottling company inspects bottles for chip and cracks, discarding unusable bottles, runs each bottle through a rigorous washing and sterilization process and inspects each bottle for product consistency after filling.

Since the Texas heat is upon us once again, now would be the perfect time to stop in and have a cold, refreshing Dublin Dr Pepper. And even though you can’t leave the store with our antique bottles, you can still take home a bottle, six pack, case or more of the non-returnable 8oz bottles of the same delicious Dr Pepper. The stuff in cans and plastic don’t compare, so why would you drink that stuff?!! Around these parts, Dr Pepper is just as precious as water!

If you don’t live near our area of Texas to enjoy a cold Dr Pepper in the store, you can order as much as you want from us online, and we’ll ship anywhere in the USA. Since we are centrally located, we have the best shipping rates around. Check us out at www.thesodagallery.com.

BTW…we are always looking for more 10z returnable Dr Pepper, Big Red, NuGrape and Frostie Root Beer bottles from any decade. As long as they are in good, usable condition, we’ll take ‘em off your hands. Email us for more info.

Happy Friday everyone! It’s hot outside in Big-D today, which means it’s a perfect time to come down to The Soda Gallery and pop open a cold one (or ten!) We have some new and returning favorites at TSG. Here are a just a few:

Zen Master Lemon-Lime and Strawberry Rhubarb sodas…green tea’s dirty little secret! Fresca from Mexico made with pure cane sugar (a grapefruit lover’s delight), Blue Island Kiwi Lemonade and Strawberry Lemonade made with organic lemon juice, and the 8oz Coca-Cola from Mexico made with pure cane sugar. These babies taste slightly sweeter than the 12oz versions. Perhaps it’s because it comes from a different bottler in Mexico? Who knows? Should it matter? Just drink one!

Returning favorites: Dad’s Root Beer, Vernor’s Ginger Ale, NuGrape, Stewart’s Key Lime (hard to keep on the shelves) and of course, our “Flavours of the Month” for May…

Moxie Cream Soda, Moxie Original Elixer, Moxie Cherry Cola and Moxie Orange Cream. Take one of each home today. You’ll be glad you did! And don’t forget, you can purchase these and all of your favorite sodas online and have them delivered right to your front door. We have the best shipping rates anywhere! Oh, and I forgot to mention…since we are a tiny company with under 10 employees, we don’t fall under the stupid rules of Proposition 65! Yay!!! (If you don’t know what Prop 65 is, look it up and you’ll understand why we can’t stand the retarded politics of the soda industry.) ACL label sodas for everyone!

The Soda Gallery is located at 408 N. Bishop Ave. Ste #101 / Dallas, TX 75208 / 214.946.7632. Find us on myspace, as well, at www.myspace.com/thesodagallery.

Stay tuned for more soda-licious news every Friday from TSG, right here. Same ‘bat’ time, same ‘bat’ channel…

Yes, you read correctly. We have some new sodas in stock for you to try. Look below to see for yourself!

Stewart’s Orange Cream, Sunkist Float, A&W Float, Stewart’s Cream,

16oz Yoo-Hoo, Sunkist Orange, Diet Dr Pepper, RC Cola, 7-Up and 16oz Double Fudge Yoo-Hoo (dang tasty!)

Thankfully, some of these buggers are still available in 12oz glass bottles. However, many of the Cadbury-Schweppes’ owned beverages (like Dr Pepper, 7-Up, Sunkist and RC) are produced with twist-off caps. As rumor has it though, Cadbury-Schweppes may be going back to crimp top caps for their 12oz glass bottles. Let’s hope! We’ll let you know when we find out something. And speaking of RC Cola, you can also find a tasty Moon Pie to go with it, too, for those who remember the good ‘ol days or RCs and Moon Pies. I have to admit, that’s a good combo to tie you over until dinner time!

Stop by and try these new flavors.

or, email jonathon@thesodagallery.com for more info.

There are still some bottlers around the country who refill the returnable deposit bottles, and to keep the nostalgic feel of our soda shop, we will soon be offering  Dr Pepper in 10oz bottles (only to be consumed in store like the good ol’ days.)

If you have any of the 10oz Big Red, Dr Pepper (any logo variations), NuGrape or Frostie Root Beer, we’d love to take them off your hands for use in our store. Snoop around in your grandparent’s barn or garage, hit up antique or resale shops, or recycling plants. You just never know what goodies you’ll find. :)  And if it’s not too much to ask, help spread the word!

Thanks a ton. ~TSG

It’s getting warmer outside, and that means it’s a perfect excuse to stop by The Soda Gallery to try our new flavors of soda! New to our shelves…

Welch’s Grape soda made with sugar

Filbert’s Pineapple soda

Carver’s Ginger Ale

Celsius Cola and Ginger Ale (for the health-conscious soda consumer)

A&W and Sunkist Floats made with sugar (brand new to the soda market!) and many more!

Also, be on the lookout over the next few weeks as we’ll be adding an additional 100 flavors of soda pop, as well as nostalgic and hard-to-find candies. TSG is making some ’sweet’ changes to our already fascinating shop, so come out to see us when you are in the neighborhood. Also, you can find all of these tasty new sodas, and many others, on our new web store. We’ll ship anywhere in the USA, so stop making excuses on why you can’t have that hard-to-find soda shipped to your front door! www.thesodagallery.com

Don’t forget to visit us on myspace, too! www.myspace.com/thesodagallery

The Soda Gallery’s latest much-anticipated exhibit, “50/50″, is (so far) our best  and most entertaining art show to date! We want to take the time and say ‘thanks’ to all who came out to the gallery last night and help make our “50/50″ opening a HUGE hit!!! The weather was great, the art was/is great, and we were able to make many new (and old) art collectors and artists very happy in the process.

The main purpose of “50/50″ was to take fifty artists, have them create one work each, and make them available for purchase for only $50.00 a piece. There was so much buzz about the show since October that we definitely had our fifty artist, had well over fifty works of art, and sold a ton of work at such a fantastic, affordable price.  We also wanted to get the point across that original art doesn’t have to cost a fortune to own, and that starting your own art collection is much easier than one would think. We also wanted to showcase all of the great art being created around the country. Our patrons obviously heard us loud and clear!

If you missed out on the opening last night, be sure to check out our myspace page within the next day or two for opening night photos. www.myspace.com/thesodagallery. You’ll find them under the ‘pics’ section of our profile.

Thanks again to all of the participating artists and those who came out to our great opening. We hope those who see this show enjoy it as much as we do! Show runs through April 13, 2008.

~TSG

After many months of planning, The Soda Gallery is happy to finally announce the opening of our most-anticipated show of the year, “50/50″.

Ps…and don’t forget to visit our new website store, where you can purchase all of our delicious glass-bottled sodas and have them delivered right to your door. Since we are centrally located in the USA, we have the best shipping rates of any online soda retailer!

Earlier this evening we had several execs from Pepsi Co. come into our shop and marvel at all the great glass bottled sodas we carry, including Pepsi from Mexico made with sugar. They were a great bunch to meet and talk with, and one exec filled us in on some interesting info about a new Pepsi product: Pepsi Retro.

Pepsi Retro is a new product to compete with Coke Zero as a better tasting, healthier alternative to its arch nemesis. Pepsi Retro also boasts being made with natural ingredients, such as sugar (yea!), kola nut extract (double yea!) and citric acid, as opposed to that horrible HFCS (high fructose corn syrup), caramel coloring and phosphoric acid, like most soft drinks. The packaging is also a step up from the bland, ‘modern’ style packaging you find with typical Pepsi products in Mexico, showing off a classic logo and embossed glass bottle, in addition to plastic bottles and cans.

The idea behind Pepsi Retro, as we were told, is that Pepsi’s market share, over time, had dwindled substantially in the highly competitive beverage market in Latin America. After some investigation by Pepsi big-wigs, they discovered people had complained the taste of modern Pepsi was different than the older stuff they remembered. Somewhere down the line, Pepsi had altered their own recipe to the point where customers started noticing a difference, and slowly stopped buying the product. So, to appease older drinkers, and probably to entice new customers with it’s ‘retro’ packaging (as seems to be a current marketing trend) Pepsi Retro promises the same great taste and formula once popular with older Pepsi drinkers. However, don’t get too excited state side. Pepsi Retro is only being marketed in Mexico right now, and may never reach national distribution in the USA. If that’s the case, it would be a shame. Pepsi, including their major competitors, could learn a thing or two by listening to their regular customers. Give the people what they want! We want our cane sugar, kola nut extract and citric acid based sodas! Give us glass bottles with crimp top caps! Give us a reason to enjoy drinking soda once more!

We are supposed to receive a few samples of the new Pepsi Retro sodas, and when/if that happens, we’ll let you know our opinions. In the meantime, you can at least get the sugar-based Pepsi from us. Frankly, it still tastes great and better than the American Pepsi products. Don’t get canned…Go glass!

(Excerpt taken from the Savannah Morning News; Savannah, GA.)

Making soda is almost as easy as drinking it

Here are some tips:

HOW MUCH TIME

From mixing to bottling, a 4-gallon batch of soda takes approximately 90 minutes to make, said Peter Quails, manager of Beer Essentials, a Lakewood, Wash., store that sells soda-making supplies.

EQUIPMENT

A food-grade bucket for mixing, preferably larger than your batch size. Quails recommends a 6-gallon bucket for a 4-gallon batch. You’ll also need a thermometer, sanitized bottles, a bottlebrush, and bottle caps and capper. Reusable glass bottles are eco-friendly and authentic, but plastic may be a safer bet for first-time soda-makers. Overly carbonated bottles can explode.

Choose thick glass bottles.

STARTS WITH WATER

“We recommend that you use filtered water from the tap or store-bought drinking water,” Quails said. “The reason is that public water has chlorine in it and that may add an adverse flavor to your soda.”

FLAVORS

Many flavors of commercial soda extracts are available at home-brew supply stores and from online vendors, including: cola, root beer, sarsaparilla, ginger ale, birch beer, passion fruit, orange and grape.

SWEETEN UP

Artisan soda makers are sweet on pure cane sugar, but many use honey or a combination of sugar and honey. If you’re trying to cut calories by mixing artificial sweetener with sugar, use enough sugar to carbonate the soda - about a 1-to-1 ratio - as sugar is necessary to feed the yeast, which fuels carbonation.

COOL IT

After heating sugar and water to make syrup, Don Spencer, brewer at Silverdale’s Silver City Restaurant and Brewery, recommends cooling the syrup to room temperature. “If you try to throw ginger extract into something that hot, all the very important essential aromas evaporate off.

“If you can smell ginger, that’s not good because that means all that good stuff is going into the air and not staying in the soda.”

YEAST

Ale and champagne yeast are most often used to carbonate soda, but bread yeast works if you’re not up for a trip to the home-brew supply store.

Nutritional yeast won’t work because its yeast cells are not active. Lager yeast can over-carbonate soda.

ALCOHOL

While soda is a soft drink, yeast fermentation does create alcohol, though negligible. “There’s hardly any alcohol,” said Spencer, the brewer. “There’s just enough for the carbonation to get going.”

SODA SOURCES

One supplier for do-it-yourself brewing is The Beer Essentials (www.thebeeressentials.com) in Lakewood, Wash., which offers soda-making supplies and extracts.

This gives us an idea…