A float is the simplest thing on the Shake Bar and the easiest to get wrong, because it has only two ingredients and nowhere to hide. The ice cream we have covered: real, hand-dipped, from a tub. The soda is the other half, and ours comes from a family bottler about twenty miles up the road.
Who Johnnie Ryan is
Johnnie Ryan is a small soda company in Niagara Falls, New York, that has been bottling since the 1930s and still does it in glass. What makes it worth the trip is what is in the bottle: pure cane sugar, not corn syrup, which is how nearly every American soda was made before the 1980s and how almost none of them are made now.
You can taste the difference. Cane-sugar soda is cleaner and less syrupy; it fizzes harder and finishes drier, so the sweetness does not sit on your tongue. In a glass on its own that is nice. In a float, it is the difference between a drink and a dessert soup.
How a float works
Soda is carbonated water holding a lot of dissolved gas under pressure. Ice cream is full of tiny air pockets and rough surfaces. Drop the scoop in and every one of those surfaces becomes a place for gas to escape, so the soda fizzes furiously around the ice cream and the foam climbs the glass. The cream in the ice cream stabilizes the bubbles, which is why float foam is thick and lasts, while plain soda foam disappears in seconds.
The lesson: soda first, ice cream second, and do not fill the glass. Leave room for the eruption.
Which soda, which ice cream
| Johnnie Ryan flavor | Goes with | Tastes like |
|---|---|---|
| Root beer | Vanilla | The one everybody means when they say "float" |
| Black cherry | Chocolate | A chocolate-covered cherry you can drink |
| Cream soda | Vanilla, or coffee | Vanilla on vanilla, or an iced-coffee dessert |
| Orange | Vanilla | A creamsicle in a glass, exactly |
Any soda works with any scoop on the board, and a float costs $2.95 over the shake price. Those four pairings are the ones we would put in front of a first-timer.
Soda first, ice cream second, and leave room for the eruption.
How to eat one
It comes with a long spoon and a straw, and you need both. Spoon for the foam and the ice cream while it is still ice cream. Straw for the soda underneath, which has been quietly turning into a cream soda the whole time. The last inch, when the ice cream has half melted into the soda, is the best inch. Do not leave it.
The exception
People ask for a loganberry float, and we understand why, but loganberry is not carbonated, so a float would just sit there. The move is a loganberry shake with a scoop of vanilla floated on top, which gives you the same purple-and-cream idea without the fizz. Ask at the counter; it is not on the menu, but everybody knows what it is.