The Knowledge for Thirst

I guess I have it my head that ginger ale is a pretty wussy beverage. I mean who opts for ginger ale. When there are other choices about. The only time I hear people requesting ginger ale is when they’re about to hurl dramatically and hope to fend off the inevitable with a little Canada Dry and some Saltines.

But when I had Gonzalo do some research on the topic (and by the way he does have feelings, OK, and I’m the one who has to be up till 2AM listening to him boo-hoo-hoo about your little comments about how he “no longer has the figure” to “pull off” that crotchless unitard you make him prance around in) he came up with something called Red Hot Ginger Ale. And that’s when my brain, made dull and sluggish by years of HFCS, realized something: Oh yeah, ginger. Ginger is spicy. Ginger destroys. Remember those nasty ginger Altoids I sent you? This is not a flavor for wusses. Maybe ginger ale’s been dumbed down over the years but it’s got a rich history of basically not fucking around.

So that led me to ginger beer, which I figured would be even more hardcore. I opted for Barritts which makes a big deal about being an authentic Bermuda kind of drink, enjoyed for generations by authentic British imperialists, and I gotta say: I’m sold. All it took was a single sip to transport me to a humid Caribbean island, wearing a white suit and discussing “the darkie situation.”

It doesn’t have the expected spice kick, but that’s fine with me — it’s sweet and smooth and that’s more my scene, anyway. But it’s still got a pretty potent taste, and in fact I couldn’t really enjoy it with my lunch because it overpowered the other flavors. Barritts is meant to be savored all by its lonesome, on a veranda, while languidly fanning oneself. Or, in my case, guzzled down quick and then smashed against a chainlink fence, the bottle now ready to cut up any bitches who need to get cut.

NOTE: Whoever affixes the Barritts labels does not seem to care about accuracy, straightness, smoothness, or really any sort of attention to detail.

So in my last review I tagged the product in question as both water and juice and although I am perfectly comfortable with the duality of existence, I feel like this has come up a few times recently so I want to discuss it with you, fella to fella.

Do you or anyone else know if there is a legal definition of juice, such as FDA-mandated or something? I’m Googling and Wikipedia-ing like crazy but to not much avail.

Personally, I feel like water + fruit flavor + sugar = juice. Well actually if you want to get serious, I think water + sugar = juice. And the sugar in question could be sucrose or fructose or any kind of artificial sweetener, whether its aspartame, sucralose or neotame. So that means Vitamin Water, Propel Fitness Water, Aquafina Flavor Splash, and anything else of that ilk all qualifies as juice, to me. I mean, they taste more like juice than water, don’t they? (Spoiler: yes.)

So at this point you’re no doubt completely rolling your eyes and yelling Who cares/Why does it even matter/I rue the day I ever let you post here. Well I guess it probably doesn’t matter, and I’ll drink whatever either way. But I don’t like stupid marketing ploys and as a general rule I like to actually know what I’m buying, and I’m sort of hopeful that there’s someone else wondering the same things. I mean just because the bottle says water in the title does not make it all filled with nature’s goodness. Am I right or am I right. What say ye.

When we relaunched K4T a friend of mine emailed to say I had to try Vitamin Water, it’s like her favorite OMG. So the other day at the supermarket I saw them and there’s like 90 flavors, so I just picked this one. Then I emailed her the next day and said I got the orange one, anything I need to know before I try it, aren’t you glad I took your suggestion, etc. And she said Ew gross that kind sucks, and actually most of them are pretty bad except for X and X. Hey thanks for the tip, friend!

McDonald’s-brand Orange Drink, circa 1982, but with a more retarded title. Like I give a shit that it has calcium in it; what am I, your mom?

OK you’ve been all bragging about how every time you go to the store you’re mesmerized by all the exciting new options, overwhelmed by the magical rainbow cornucopia of blah blah at that point I stop listening. But at my store you get 2-liter torpedoes of generic pineapple soda and then the monolithic Wall of Snapple. The only new beverages that appear on a regular basis are energy drinks, and energy drinks make me feel all tense and unwashed like I’m trapped in Sid & Nancy.

But I found nothing else interesting this week so I picked up the smallest energy drink I could: Upshot. And in fact its smallness is the gimmick: “More Power. Less Liquid.” It comes in a little airplane-booze-sized bottle and is meant to be knocked back in a single manly shot. It’s basically saying: Do not drink this for the flavor unless you heart disappointment. Drink it for the RUSH.

I opted for mocha flavor since I had such a good experience with the Bolthouse Mocha last week. OK let’s get to it, Kylie. It smells like a White Russian. I am hopeful! And it kind of tastes like a White Russian, too! Except I guess the jagged little aftertaste is not vodka but PhytoXan™ (a proprietary blend of plant-based methylxanthines, theobromine, theophyline, guarana seed extract, etc.). I feel good, broseph. I can see into the souls of my co-workers. I am understanding the interconnectedness of all things. My pores are opening. I am casting aside the ancient, crumbling mores that have been imposed upon me and embracing a new worldview based on hugs. I love you, man. I love your pretty little face.

Bleh, the flavor is worsening. I should’ve just chugged it as instructed. I feel like one leg is shorter than the other. I feel like a yucky caterpillar crawled into my mouth while I was asleep in a dank basement and it defecated shortly before passing on from this world to the next.

Allow me a brief trip down sense-memory lane: I’m told that at one point when I was very young my dad worked loading trucks at the Pequot Soda company in Connecticut. The upshot was that we always had a lot of soda on hand, and I guess this was back before the idea of recycling caught fire, as there were always cases and cases of empty glass bottles in our garage. My brother and I used to go down there and check the bottles to see if any still had some soda remnants in them that we could scavenge. Ah, misspent high-class youth. But the thing I remember about those bottles is that they all had this really excellent (to young me) scent of flat, lost-its-carbonation cola. Anyways this smells exactly like that, is why I mention it. FYI and FWIW.

My first sip of Natural Brew Ginseng Cola started with a nice cola bark, and ended with what felt like a quick lick of the drawer where we keep the spices. That’s the ginseng finish, and it caught me off guard at first.

So I guess here’s the question: do you want a cola that just lays back and thinks of England, or do you want a cola whose hips rise to meet yours?

You know me, I like to get down, so I tore the t-shirt from my well-oiled abs and shouted Hunker down, Harriet! Josh I don’t know if you’ve ever been with a woman, but the general concensus is that extra care and attention on the object of one’s desire will cause your own pleasure to greatly increase. That was pretty much my experience here exactly: I dug in and quickly started enjoying myself. The ginseng is actually not a bad kick, and it makes the beverage stand out from the crowd, like so many SSC’s. The ginseng crashes nicely against the very strong vanilla notes, and is there ever a cola that has enough vanilla in it? I’m asking.

I think one of the major things we like about Coke is that it drags its fingernails across the insides of your mouth, so I say kudos to this company, for coming up with a different–yet similarly interesting–experience.

I for one am definitely down for another round. I just need, like 5 minutes. OK an hour.

My World Tour of Sodas Of That Are More Popular Than Coke In Certain Countries makes its second (and final) stop today, with Scotland’s IRN-BRU. I was looking forward to this because it’s got a punchy, bad-ass name, and the can declaims “ORIGINAL AND BEST,” which is the sort of no-nonsense, declarative hyperbolization I respond best to.

The smell immediately reminded me of Inca Kola, so maybe I’m completely losing it, or maybe there’s actual science at play here, I don’t know. But anyways don’t worry because the taste is nothing like Inca. Unfortunately the taste is somewhat flummoxing, and thanks to the limits of the English language, you’re not going to like how I describe it. It’s basically a plain, sugary flavor, with like a light, cumulative orange melody playing somewhere in the background. Imagine if you will a watered-down orange soda, without the water-y taste. Or a lightly-carbonated version of the orange drink you got a soccer games in elementary school. You never scored one goal, did you. I’m sorry.

In summation, Irn-Bru is original and curiously engaging without actually being good, and I’m hard-pressed to figure out why the good people of Scotland prefer it to Coke. [Gonzalo, please insert a joke about haggis here.]

I’m sure we can now look forward to a flurry of outraged comments from the kind of blindly-devoted groupthinker this sort of “kooky” off-brand drink is likely to engender. Welcome Juggalos, and readers of McSweeney’s.

So I picked me up a six of the All Natural 7UP just to see what the fuss was about. The bev community is being torn asunder by this hurly-burly. It just makes me sad more than anything else. Friends who once shared shitty white tea in the spirit of brotherhood are now calling into question each other’s sexuality or family lineage. And all because some people think high fructose corn syrup is unnatural.

But you know my deal, DJ Fanny. It’s all about the flavor. 100% natural or no, maybe tinkering with the formula resulted in something awesome and new for 7UP, that old workhorse of adequatulence. Certainly a mainstay of my own personal childhood, when I was forbidden from enjoying caffeinated drinks. And I’m ashamed to admit that the new label stirred … feelings within me. I was affected by marketing. The bright yellow band talking about how it’s “more crisp, refreshing” and the big bold limes and lemons — I actually thought: This is going to be a very special drinking experience. This is going to be fruity. This is going to be like suckling at the very ripeness of life itself. This is going to be the next evolution of sodie pop.

I’ll tell you in the name of accurate reporting that my hands were shaking a little as I raised the bottle to my lips. My mind was a delicious blank as the liquid cascaded across my tongue. My eyes were mostly closed. And upon my first swallow, I shouted to the heavens: “This tastes basically like regular 7UP!!!!!!!!!!!”

Seriously no noticeable difference. And I was really looking, too. But no, it’s your garden-variety 7UP. And frankly I think I prefer Sprite. It’s a little sweeter, right? 7UP seems over-carbonated for my tastes. Maybe I’ve just been softened up by the smooveness of Mountain Dew and its kin but I don’t needs these bubbles all up ins.

Is it wrong to have actual feelings of love for a juice? I’M NOT SAYING I DO, I’M JUST ASKING FOR A FRIEND.

We’ve talked about the Bolthouse Mango Lemonade via both email and html, so I felt like a proper review was in order. How’s this: LIQUID HEAVEN.

I drank one a few days ago, took my notes, and left the bottle sitting on my desk while I waited for my thoughts to collect themselves into some kind of actual review. This morning I was looking at the bottle and realized I wanted another one so badly that OK maybe one single solitary tear slid down my face, all Iron Eyes Cody style. I’m not ashamed. It just would have hit the spot perfectly and my wanting something I couldn’t have at that moment is nothing to be embarrassed about. That’s the kind of stuff we need to talk about and share. That’s the good stuff, Josh. The good stuff.

This here is a very sweet drink, so people who are candyass should be aware. I find it works particularly well with hot weather. I drank it often last summer, and have officially started up again for the season. The mango to lemon balance is perfect. Let’s face it plain old lemonade is for dumb kids. We are adults now and we need to act like it, by adding things such as mango to our lemonade. The mango tempers the cloying sourness of typical lemonade, maybe? It’s got a strong finish of just straight-up sugar, but for me personally it’s a nice antidote to all that unsweetened tea that everyone won’t shut up about.

Liquid heaven. Like a goddamn little plastic bottle of sunshine and rainbows and big puffy girl handwriting. Dear Bolthouse Mango Lemonade will you be my boyfriend/girlfriend, circle YES NO MAYBE.

I wasn’t sure what to file this under. Is there a legal distinction between soda and juice, I wonder. Does fruit juice + carbonation always = soda? Or does the presence of fruit juice, no matter the percentage, keep the beverage firmly entrenched in juice territory? An interesting philosophical conundrum, I’m sure you agree. For our purposes today the debate is largely academic, I suppose, given that this isn’t a beverage flying off the shelves and causing mass panic, so we needn’t stress about this review being easily locatable by future generations.

So. Kristian Regale Peach Sparkler is comprised of carbonated water and peach juice. The word “sparkler” got me all wondering if this was going to be a wine cooler at first, you know how I sometimes get. Unfortunately the most interesting factiod turned up by a quick scan of the ingrediments was that this is a Swedish beverage, but a product of Spain. What exactly makes it Swedish then, I wonder. Oh Europe.

The peach juice is operating here in a 25% capacity, so it comes through loud and clear. That much I liked, but I found the carbonation to be fairly heavy, causing me to suffer dearly from a lot of burps. And there was a kind of cumulative weight to the drink, so by the end I was like “Dang am I even going to be able to finish this?” (Spoiler alert I did.)

So in summary, whether or not this counts as juice or soda, to me it tasted pretty much exactly like Clearly Canadian, so I didn’t feel like it was worth the extra import tariff I undoubtedly paid on it, and I probably should have just had the wine cooler I so obviously wanted. But that’s what happens when you are trying to branch out.

God I am so sick of antioxidants. I mean I’m as opposed to free radicals and premature aging and heart disease and certain cancers as the next guy, but when did pricey bottled beverages get so stodgy. My grocery store is cluttered with these antioxidant drinks and I guess maybe it’s because of the demo where I live in SW Connecticut (Botox County, USA), but I’m washing my hands of the whole thing, like OCD-stylee.

The last straw was Bossa Nova Açai Juice. Açai is “nature’s healthiest, highest antioxidant fruit” is says here, and in [yet another] chart on the back of the bottle, we learn that the humble açai crushes even the pomegranate when it comes to antioxidants.

I’ll be honest with you, for once. There was a small part of me that was hoping that I’d be experiencing a flavor I’ve never experienced before. That I’d knock back the juice of this fruit I’d never heard of and be just flat-out gobsmacked, and stymied as to how to describe it to you. There would be no reference point. I’d have to talk about it with bad album-review descriptions like “imagine if kiwi juice had sex with fresh salmon and their offspring went to Mexico for a three-day peyote journey into its own soul.”

Luckily I can spare you all that because this tastes basically like blueberries. And it’s another one of these drinks that is almost all aftertaste? It’s almost like water at first and then the flavor comes rolling through a second later? Like a quiet storm..? Anyway it’s smooth and pleasant enough, a nice level of sweetness, and it’s far superior to pomegranate in the flavor department, but whatever. Next time I’m spending my hard-earned $18.00 on three dozen cans of Sunkist. Just kidding it was not $18.00 but I am not kidding about the Sunkist.