Today I went to the Downtown Bodega here in Gainesville looking for an interesting independent soda. The one that caught my eye was a salted caramel root beer. The second I took the bottle in my hand I was filled with a very mild dread of what was probably to come.

So, here’s the thing. I LOVE caramel. I mean, I really really really love caramel, especially salted caramel. I was first introduced to this treat in New Hope Pennsylvania when I had my first ever salted caramel ice cream. I knew at that moment that THIS was what God would taste like if I licked him (or her). And knowing what God would taste like proved that God exists… or something like that. From that day forward I have hardly gone a day without dark chocolate filled with salted caramel.

There I stood, that promising root beer in hand, a healthy mix of mouth watering anticipation and the mild dread I reported earlier. What was I dreading? I was dreading butterscotch.

Fucking butterscotch!

Now, butterscotch has it’s place, but it’s place is NOT in anything labelled as “caramel.”

I popped the top, took my first sip, and sure enough… my exciting new root beer was simply flooded with syrupy cheap chincy butterscotch flavoring. Those sons of bitches! Don’t they know that we know the damn difference between caramel and butterscotch? Do they really think they can pass off butterscotch flavoring as caramel and that us caramel addicts won’t know the difference? Well… WE DO! We most certainly do.

An open note to ALL purveyors of sweets: We know the difference between butterscotch and caramel!