I Wonder if There’s an Actual Hosmer Mountain Around Here?
Hosmer Mountain Soda, Manchester/Windham
Many visits over decades
My title question was answered by a Hosmer employee in the comments. Yes, there is. See below.
No disrespect to Manchester and Willimantic, but Hosmer Mountain Soda may be the best thing about those two towns. While both have a bunch of very good museums and some fun places to eat and drink, the fact that Hosmer Mountain is made in Willimantic and sold in outlet stores in both towns is the main reason I find myself there from time to time.
In fact, when I used to live in Manchester – I did two stints in the town after college – the only soda I ever drank was from Hosmer Mountain. Especially their orange dry flavor – perhaps my favorite soda in the world. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Let’s get the company’s history from Roadfood.com:
Since 1912, Hosmer Mountain has been bottling the finest sodas in a state that still boasts a handful of independent soda bottlers. Low carbonation and lip-smacking flavors attract fans from all over New England, but residents of Connecticut’s Quiet Corner have a special advantage: home delivery. Just like milkmen of yesteryear, Hosmer route men will pick up a case of empty bottles once a month and refill it with your choice of over thirty flavors of soda, seltzer, and spring water. For those who like to marvel at the selections, Hosmer’s main branch in Willimantic is a soda-only grocery store. (A second store is located at 15 Spencer Street in Manchester.) Grab a flatbed cart and an empty case, and fill it at your leisure.
The writer hits on the two key points that make Hosmer Soda great: low carbonation and not too sweet. Also, when I lived at The Mills in Manchester, we used to have them deliver the soda to us. I think we did it for the kitsch factor more than anything, as the Manchester shop was only a couple miles away, if that. Note: I’ve only been to the Manchester store, but they are pretty much the same. Continuing…
Hosmer’s premium Antique line features cane and brown sugars and includes their award-winning root beer, clear birch beer, and a dark crimson sarsaparilla. Fabulous fruit flavors count peach, orange, pineapple, strawberry cream, raspberry, grape, and the occasional Lime Rickey among its ranks, but the clincher comes with Hosmer’s taste-alikes. Cola-Blue and Cola-Red (their versions of Pepsi and Coke, respectively) are utterly phenomenal and, in our estimation, make their mega-label cousins lose their fizz. The delicious Orange Dry resembles Orangina, Lemon-Clear tastes like 7-Up, and they even carry an equivalent of Moxie, Maine’s bitter cola, called Buddie.
Again, the writer nails several highlights. Though I found some of their fruit flavors a bit too fruity, the Orange Dry – I’ll say it again – is ridiculously good. By the way, I just had the new Peach Fresca… Which is actually awesome too. And another thing: Moxie (and therefore, I’m sure, Buddie, is disgusting. If you’ve never had either, consider yourself lucky… But people in Maine love the stuff and I don’t know why. It’s hands down one of the worst regional favorite foods I can think of off the top of my head. Go on…
Hosmer always uses recyclable glass bottles, both in twelve- and twenty-four-ounce sizes. There is a certain gratification in purchasing locally made products, and at about thirty-five cents per bottle (per case), Hosmer makes it easy to think globally while drinking delicious soda. Hosmer sodas are also available in area restaurants and businesses.
For those Hosmer bottles returned, they re-use them 10-12 times. They have a whole thing about it on their website:
‘Going green’ is a new term for what Hosmer has done for over 100 years. We sterilize over 500,000 bottles every year. You might call them environmental bottles.
An “environmental bottle” is a bottle which, when used, places minimum stress on our earth. There are no ores to mine as in metal cans, and no oil to pump from the ground to form plastic bottles. Glass is produced from common sand. Better than recyclable, an environmental bottle can be sterilized and reused. With each use, energy is saved compared to remanufacturing systems. The air that we breathe remains cleaner, with fewer chemicals used and fewer combustibles generated. Environmental bottles also give you a better reward for returning them for deposit refunds. (We at Hosmer have been charging a deposit since before Connecticut made it a law!) By using environmental bottles you are saving our valuable and finite natural resources, conserving our earth’s energy reserves, and lessening the pressure on our landfills. Such conservation measures consider the world our children will inherit. You should feel good about using environmental bottles. We do!
The price has gone up in the 30 years I’ve been visiting the Manchester store, but the joint is still ramshackle. I just went the other day here in November 2025. Nothing has changed here but now I have a 14 year old at home who loves root Beer. I was driving by and saw this sign:
… and was drawn back in. (This funny thing is that on the Hosmer website in 2025 they list their rootbeer competitions – at the Great American Root Beer Showdown in Minnesota in 2004, Hosmer finished 4th. And then there’s “Anthony’s Root Beer Barrel Review” where the voting public, not Anthony, put Hosmer in 14th at an indeterminate time after an unknown number of votes.
I’m happy to report that shoppers can still mix-n-match to their heart’s content. I picked up all three “best root beer in the US (kinda sorta)” – birch beer and sarsparilla the other two – with a couple old faves: orange dry, lime rickey, ginger beer.
My 2009 case review:
Orange Dry (2 bottles): tart yet sweet; orangey and simply delicious.
Cream Soda: I hate cream soda, but Hoang deemed it “excellent.”
Lemon-Lime: Spritey, but again, less sweet and fizzy.
Orange: Eh. Good, but gimme the “dry” version (Bonus for old school “Pop Shoppe” bottle though.)
Jamaican Ginger Beer: Labeled “Dangerous” and “HOT,” it’s not for me, but Hoang loves it.
Black Cherry: Their best fruit flavor
Cola Red and Blue: Their Coke/Pepsi knock-offs, just as good.
Lemon-Up: Very subtle flavoring, I liked it.
Peach: Too sweet for me
Diet Cola: Hoang drank it, and she’s a Diet Coke fiend. That’s a ringing endorsement.
Grape: Almost perfect amount of tart/sweet ratio.
Lemon Clear: Lemony seltzer water. My kind of soda.
Strawberry: Clearly the worst of the case. Scary bright red coloring too.
Tangerine Sparkling Water: Refreshing. Like the Stop and Shop Zazz I buy.
Pale Dry Ginger Ale: Ah, now we’re talking. Perfect soda.
Grapefruit/Half&Half: I almost forgot how much I loved this one too.
Red Lightning: Hosmer’s “energy Drink” Red Bull knock-off. Not my thing.
Kolashampan: Say what? I asked the lady today when I returned the case about this and she said it was their most popular flavor in 1926. Some call it “burnt cola” and a precursor to cherry cola. It has a very unique flavor profile that I couldn’t quite sort out, but it’s pretty good.
If you’re ever near Manchester or Willimantic, you really should stop in and pick up some locally made soda, although you can find their more “regular” flavors all over the place now. In my experience, the people that work the soda shack are always willing and eager to talk history as well, which is always a bonus. (This may not always be true, as the gruff old guy who was a fixture seems to have move on.)
