Month: June 2006

We find ourselves in a strange, backward land today (Korea). We were just recently talking about juices made from vegetables, but come on, aloe? Drinking aloe is surely at least halfway down the crazy hippie scale. Up here we have wheat grass and too much patchouli, and then down a little lower we have aloe juice and colon hydrotherapy, and down here is recycling your own urine.

So: am I scared? Not so much, because according to the label the ingredients go: water, then corn syrup, then aloe. And as any man of science (or God for that matter) will tell you, sugar > [oddball fruit or vegetable] = still potable. So we’re safe. But surprise of surprises, we’re not only safe, we’re also in a sleepy little hamlet I like to call Yumsville.

Yes it turns out aloe juice is delightful. Much lighter than I was expecting, and what’s more it’s clear–not at all semen-y, which is what I thought aloe looked like. (Possibly a negative for you.) It’s also very fruity and it doesn’t taste like vegetables at all. It’s kind of a cross between a purple grape and a lychee flavor. Actually it tastes bizarrely similar to purple Kool-Aid. Me neither.

But man if this had awesome health benefits I would drink it all the day. Sadly there’s no clear science about if aloe is an important part of one’s diet or not. Wikipedia says it may be a remedy for things like coughing and cancer. I definitely did not notice any real coughing or cancer since I drank this! Also aloe is said to have a strong laxative effect. Unfortunately, as you well know, my diet is already heavy on apricots and other dietary fibers, so it would be impossible for me to scientifically measure any improvements in that department. Still, every little bit helps, right? Oh stop, you know it does.

Excellent news for denizens of the Windy Apple: starting next week, K4T will have a bi-weekly column in Time Out Chicago. We’ll be reviewing all the latest beverages as they hit the market and blindly grope their way towards a target demographic.

If you don’t live within fetching distance of a Chicago-area newsie, fret not: the TOC reviews will also eventually appear here as well.

Our first review hits newsstands Wednesday.

Imagine a blueberry pie shaped like a pair of brass knuckles.

I took one sip of this and my brain immediately took me to a place where I was tied to a chair in a dingy back room, being worked over by some mafia bruiser. Except the mafia guy looked exactly like Blackie Lawless. Which, it’s too bad he and I had to be on opposing sides like that, because there are just so many questions I’d always wanted to ask him if we ever met, you know? Blackie fucking Lawless.

Anyways. Blackie was working me over, absolutely tearing into me, one blueberry punch to the gut after another. Just relentless. Blood and sweat and blueberry juice everywhere. A merciless god of glam metal and mafia-dom.

It’s a heavy drink, and it took me to a dark and dangerous place. Blueberry is just trouble, anywhere. There aren’t a lot of blueberry juices and sodas, you’ll notice. It just doesn’t fucking translate, man. It’s too thick and muscular of a flavor. It’s the Scott Caan’s neck of all flora. Some smoothie places will try to sell you on the blueberry-strawberry combo, or blueberry-raspberry. Pay no heed to that nonsense. The blueberry just pounces on any other flavor in there with a nasty tolchok to the gulliver. All you get is blueberry cement forcing its way down your throat. You’re coming up for air after each sip.

There’s some language on the Blue Machine bottle that it’s been carefully formulated to cheer you up if you’re feeling “blue”. This was not the case for me, and I’ve had heck of depression lately. Work stuff, mostly. But these blueberries were just sucking the life force right out of me, and meanwhile I’m in for 30 large to King Diamond, like I need any additional stress.

Yerba mate is a highly caffeinated tea that seems like the type of thing that would be popular in parts of South America or maybe Nepal. Guayaki is marketing it here as a tea-slash-energy drink. The ingredients don’t list any of the ADHD-causing additives normally associated with energy drinks, so that seems to be just a marketing angle, rather than a bold new paradigm shift.

As you know from dealing with me offline, I’m normally a pretty spazzy fellow, so in order to conduct a proper scientific study of yerba mate’s alleged energy drink prowess I purposefully made myself extra tired by staying up late watching Newsradio DVDs. I’ve got this whole thesis I’m working on which details the similarities between Matthew Brock and Buster Bluth. Watch the episode where Matthew drops the pen down his pants before he can hand it to James Caan: tell me those facial expressions and physical mannerisms aren’t complete Buster. Or watch the Halloween party episode and compare Matthew’s motorcycle enthusiast/gay biker situation to the Army uniform Gob puts together for Buster. I think the writers of Arrested Development spent a lot of time around WNYX, that’s all I’m saying. Anyways. I can just put this in a email.

So the next morning I was all set for the experiment. I cracked open the bottle and was greeted with the scent of tea and freshly-cut grass. The scent of health. Taste-wise, it was interesting. It’s clearly not like regular tea: the flavor had a harsh edge to it, but fortunately the mint and cane sugar tempered it nicely.

I wish I could end the review there. Knock off early, get a beer. Maybe watch some more Newsradio. (I’m also putting together a list of Lisa Miller’s top 10 cutest moments (#4: Her lunge across the conference table when Matthew warns Dave to keep his woman from mouthing off).) But I can’t do that, because this is where my experience with yerba mate took a turn for the worse. The horribly worse. This is the first drink I’ve ever had that actually scared me. Well, second, if you count Clamato. You should read the rest of this review like you’re Stone Phillips, if you weren’t already. Daniel Schorr also works.

One thing I should have remembered before I drank this is that I’ve had some weird reactions to non-standard stimulants in the past. Taurine and spirulina are some that come to mind. Right when I was halfway through my yerba, my head started feeling very light and dizzy. And then I felt tingly all over my arms and torso. And then my heart was beating double-time, and my carotid artery was threatening to do an Alien baby thing with my neck. Awsum, totally extreme!

It was just a teensy bit terrifying and I stopped drinking right away. But it was cleary too late, and I was all uncontrollably nervous and jittery and wondering if maybe I was going to have a heart attack, or maybe I already had, and this is what that was? And would I have to go home early, or to the hospital, or would I simply pass out at my desk? (Discovered by my coworkers, I groggily confess to having been felled by some tea.) And the jitteriness just would not go away. It was actually pretty un-fun, and I kept on feeling that way. And I kept feeling that way, and I kept feeling that way. All told it was three solid hours before I felt like things were about back to normal.

But I guess it works! So if I lack the moxie and constitution for large doses of caffeine, at least I’ve still got what it takes to conduct some serious science, which is its own sort of manliness. OK not really.

A while back you had this short-lived but steamy affair with some V8 product and I thought maybe it was the V.Fusion here. (No seriously somebody approved the name “V.Fusion.” That is not a typo.) You were basically jumping up and down and flapping your hands all excitedly, saying “omigod omigod omigod”? Remember?

Anyway I don’t know if it was this stuff or not (maybe it was Splash?) but I decided to pick up a bottle because it was time to get back to the juice. You know. No more soda. No more lies. The real deal. It keeps me sharp [snaps fingers], on the edge [snaps fingers], where I gotta be.

But believe you me I cracked open this stuff with extreme prejudice. V.Fusion [sic] is a fruit and vegetable combo plate, OK? Sure it makes the fruit the hero on the label, but they sneak in — and I am not even kidding — sweet potato, yellow tomatoes (?!), and squash.

Sometimes I try to sell myself on the whole drink-your-vegetables concept, and I pick up the regular V8 and think: You know, this is going to be fine. No, this is good, this is good. This is the start of a whole new me. This is definitely the best way to get tomato and watercress and 2000% of my daily sodium needs in liquid format. And then I take one sip and make a big show of gagging and choking and then scramble around dramatically for the worst vodka ever to mix it with.

So I was all ready to start my shenanigans when I tried the Peach Mango iteration of V.Fusion, but what ho it went down nice and smooth. And although I feel like I semi-detected a smidge of vegetable flavor (or maybe just texture) in there, I wouldn’t have if I hadn’t known the ingredients beforehand. It just tasted like your standard multi-fruit juice blend, nothing fancy but a refreshing enough orange-ish mango-esque flavor. EXCEPT! A full serving of vegetables totally snuck into my body, ninja-style! I like tricking my body this way. My body deserves it after all the shit it’s pulled over the years.

OK now. This is what I was thinking of when I drank this. What you always hope and dream coconut juice will taste like, rather than what it actually does taste like. Yet again, Man — donning the mighty toolbelt of science — has completed the work that nature/God/whatever was unwilling or unable to do.

Similar to the aforementioned disappointment, Aqua de Coco is the juice of green coconuts. But unlike said trainwreck of poor judgement and botched brewery, Mr Coco added more water (to make it less mucousy), and more sugar (to make it actually good). It’s the recipe for instant palatability, time-honored.

I don’t know where you fall on the chewy-bits-in-drinks issue, which I guess can be a fairly hot-button topic in some sectors. Wikipedia says it’s actually the reason they got heck of problems in the Middle East. Therefore be advised that Mr Coco comes supplied with fairly sizeable coconut chunks. For me it was like a little taste of the tropics, without having to deal with such things as sand in my crotch and communicable diseases that I assumed had been eradicated decades ago.

Overall it was pretty good, but I don’t see a lot of replay value. I mean how often does coconut juice come up on your wheel of moods? But maybe with a splash of pineapple in there? And a couple fingers of Hpnotiq? Some crushed ice, a little umbrella? A nice tropical sunset in the background? Some attentive and buxom local girls who are up to date on their vaccinations? Wait, what were we talking about.

I don’t think we’ve talked about Jones Soda. Have we? I don’t pay real close attention. Frankly I never really considered it a full-fledged beverage, but just some kind of hipster novelty that you find in used record stores along with Buck Rogers lunchboxes and Pee-Wee Herman dolls and whatever.

What I’m saying is they try too hard. The fine print on the bottle here talks about how they keep it real, with “no billion dollar ad campaigns” and “no hidden meanings.” They’re “the little guy” who’s “gotta make a living somehow.” Also: HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP. So much cred right now. And the label photos are submitted by consumers. Mine features what looks like a nice self-photo of three cute indie chicks out on the town, laden with eyeshadow and filled with the inner glow of insouciant youth. The kind of girls you and I look at and resent, and then hate ourselves for resenting. Right? Can you picture it?

I picked up the flavor that looked the least inside my comfort zone, and the most in yours: Blue Bubble Gum. I know how you get all hot-to-trot with the blue flavors but blue has never failed to let me down. So maybe this is like John Dean reviewing the Deep Throat autobio, but it’s a tough world we live in so w/e. Let’s take a sip of this Windex-colored concoction and see what exactly is what.
Wow. It tastes just like bubble gum, no joke. Like Bazooka, basically. Or Dubble Bubble. Your classic low-rent generic gum that loses its flavor before it’s even fully out of its wrapper. And it’s not that bad. Despite what you’d think. It’s subtle enough that you could chug it and not puke, which as you know is my personal yardstick for a tolerable beverage. I am very surprised.

I wonder if Jones’ novelty turkey- and gravy- and mashed potato–flavored beverages are as drinkable. I doubt it, but still, there’s a small part of me that wants to explore this. Will I ever drink this again? I hope not, but I can proudly shrug when someone points at it and is all “ew,” and I can proudly say: “Meh. I tried it. It’s not as bad as you’d think.” Finally I can take pride in something.

Oh stop it, don’t look at me like that. I patronize my local independent coffee shops PLENTY, I assure you. And besides Starbucks–on its own–has given me a lifetime’s worth of reasons to regret ever going there, so you can worry a little less about what I do with my time and worry a little more about whether you’re ever going to post another review YES I DID JUST GO THERE.

Anyways, presented herewith, reasons why I regret going to Starbucks (this time):

1) They have never handed me a drink that wasn’t sticky, and this was no exception. Oh my God. Dogg you know sticky for me is Very Bad. You know about my problems. I mean I always have hand sanitizer at the ready, but sticky is different from regular dirty, you know? Harder to get off. It usually have to go through my Cleanliness Ritual twice to get back to normal.

2) The straw they gave me had far too slim a diameter for a drink this icy. People, it’s 2006: frozen drinks require a thicker straw. Soon we will all be walking around with our genitals in our necks.

3) The blackberry is kind of a joke, just a little sugar syrup they put on top there. What’s with giving it top billing?

4) Also why does Starbucks automatically put whipped cream on everything. I know I should have realized, but it didn’t even occur to me to say “No whipped cream.” Who in their right mind thinks whipped cream tastes good with green tea? I know, people who go to Starbucks, shut up. It made no sense, and the flavors completely contradicted each other. And it’s already a cream-based drink. Adding whipped cream takes what is already the antithesis of a refreshing summer drink and paints “666” across its forehead.

The only good thing I can say is that the matcha flavor was fairly strong, which is a huge improvement over last year’s Green Tea Frappuccino, which for some reason was cut with melon flavoring. Melon. The most good-for-nothing fruit since pears.

Anyways I gave up on this early, sick of trying to get the drink to cooperate with the straw. Plus man was it heavy. I knew that once I got outside in the weather I’d feel as though I just ate a whole jar of mayonnaise. And when I got home, that’s exactly what I did.

Thums-Up Cola is marketed in India as a manly drink, (i.e. right up my alley) and they got off on the good foot with me before I even had one taste. Here’s what I liked about the bottle:

• Bottle cap was NOT a twist-off, so it required extreme manliness and/or bottle opener to pry off;
• The bottles themselves were all scratched up and chafed, like they fell off a cargo boat in the middle of the Atlantic and judo-chopped every fish they encountered on their long swim to my local grocer’s refrigerator.

As for the taste, well, even a hunk of man such as myself cannot resist the charms of a refreshing soda. I felt like Thums-Up is overall very similar to Coke, starting off with a very strong cola bite. But it has a finish that’s heavy on the caramel, which made me want to fell every tree in a forest, leaving it denuded and fearful of its life. And also in there were some slightly nutty and gingery notes, such as might put a manly gent in the mood for some impregnation. Wait that doesn’t sound right.

But would I even notice the differences from Coke in a blind taste test? Well of course. But would an ordinary human? Man I have no idea. Why even ask me that. Like I interact with ordinary humans.

I could see myself drinking this while I was on the run from the law, or maybe as a pause for refreshment during an all-night orgy of gross sexual perversion. Whatever it is us real men do to fill up the hours each day.

In conclusion I would just like to note that Thums-Up Cola gets minus one half star on account of high fructose corn syrup, and I will KEEP ON minusing half stars until the beverage industry gets the message! I am serious.

Finally.

Do you even want me to finish this review? As soon as you saw the words “with sac” you were running for your car, tongue a-waggle, wallet in hand. Admit it.

It’s not like you think though.

This is a Korean drink comprised basically of just orange juice with extra sugar. The “sac” refers to the orange pulp sacks with are heavily-laden herein. This is a drink that involves having a lot of little soft things floating around in your mouth, and you are trying to chase them down and chew them. It’s what we in the biz call a “novelty beverage.” Sadly the novelty wears off long before you’re done picking sac from your teeth.

Also it caused my tongue to have that electric acid buzz going for a good 30 minutes after I’d finish the drink. Frankly that’s a hassle I don’t need. I have enough trouble finding things to do with my tongue, like I need to be taken completely out of the game like that? Forget it.

So although I’m not a person who will usually turn down an offer of lots of sac, lots of pulp is a completely separate thing. Pass.