Review: Apple Beer

A few years ago on my ride to work, I stopped into a convenience store to pick up a soda, and seeing as it was a hot summer's day, I wanted something fruity and refreshing instead of a syrupy, caffeine-laden cola. I found Sidral Mundet-a Mexican apple soda. It was crisp, delicious and very refreshing.
This set me off on a whirlwind of seeking out apple sodas. Sadly, I found very few-the aforementioned Sidral Mundet, Jones/Shasta Green Apple, and a little while later Manzanita Sol. While Manzanita Sol is a little more prevalent(being owned by Pepsi), Sidral Mundet was always my favorite. I would drink the occasional Manzanita Sol, especially since the others I found were carbonated versions of Apple candy. Sidral and Manzanita tasted very much like apple cider with fizz. Then, just a scant two weeks ago my amazing wife brought me home das Apple Beer...

...and it was good. Really good. Like, if I took a bottle of apple cider and ran it through a sodastream I'd get Apple Beer. It's light, sweet, tart, crisp and very complex. I imagine that it is brewed using a few different varieties of apples to capture the essence and range of complexity that only befits the source material. Another advantage over Manzanita Sol? Sugar instead of HFCS. I'm sold.

Packaging- 5/5
Come on-look at that bottle. That looks downright delicious. If you were walking through the soda aisle and saw that label, you'd grab that bottle and never think twice about the fact that you're not an apple soda drinker.

Aroma- 5/5
The initial uncapping brings about an aerosolized tart smell-like cutting into a perfectly ripe granny apple.

Taste- 6/7
It tastes exactly like a carbonated version of two or more varieties of apple mixed together. It's oh so subtle, but it's incredibly potent. They didn't allow the sugar/sweet to drown out everything else, and that's what makes this so damn perfect

Overall- 16/17
Great packaging, great smell, fantastic taste. I would highly recommend to everyone-even if you've had a bad experience with apple soda in the past-trust me, you'll like this.

Review: Royal Tru-Orange Soda

On my previous post I had mentioned buying another obscure soda that was of the more classic variety-so here it is. Royal Tru-Orange Soda.

After doing some research(as I tend to do, especially when it concerns foreign-made sodas), I discovered that this drink originated in 1922 in the Philippines and originally included bits of orange pulp-thus the "tru-orange" label. It is also owned by Coca-Cola and features labeling similar to the Fanta line.

A quick check of the label confirms it is bottled with cane sugar, and contains 10% juice. Gives you a bit of viramin C as well. The most interesting thing, however, is that it contains something called "ester gum solids". Whenever you make a soda containing oils for flavoring, you need to include some kind of stabilizer. Most sodas in the United States use brominated vegetable oil-and upon further research I found BVO to be dangerous in large amounts(4-8 liters of soda a day). Ester gum solids are the natural alternative, and much safer. I personally noticed a huge difference in mouth feel.

Anyways, we finally get to what this soda tastes like. In a word-it's orange-tastic(I didn't say it was going to be a real word). This is hands down the best orange soda I've ever had. I would go so far as to say it is an orange soda that even fruit-flavored soda haters would enjoy. It's crisp, refreshing, and the sweetness is perfectly balanced with the sweetness. Most orange sodas leave you with this melted-popsicle syrupy thickness in your throat along with an oily film on your tongue-not so much here. Somebody did a(non-lemon lime) fruit-soda very, very right for once.

Plus, there's more history. Royal Tru-Orange was banned from entering the United States in 2004 by the Food and Drug Administration. While Coca-Cola explained this was due to different labeling procedures, they obviously corrected it well enough that it found it's way into my local asian grocer. Or, then again, maybe not. I may have just reviewed my first bootleg soda(is that even a thing?)

Packaging- 3.5/5

It's uninspired and kind of tacky. Granted, it has to compete with some other pretty bright packaging in the Asian market, so I guess it kind of has to be. 

Aroma- 4.5/5

Smells like a freshly-peeled orange. It loses half a point for not doubling as potpouri as a real orange would.

Taste- 6/7

Best orange soda I've ever had. Sweet, tart and slightly sour.

Overall- 14/17

Packaging was meh, but the smell, taste and mouth feel were amazing. The ester gum solids should be an across the board replacement for BVO, which doesn't seem too hard a thing when the E.U. doesn't allow BVO and neither does India. 

Recipe: Homemade Cream Soda from Scratch -Batch 2

My wife recently requested I make her a soda that she'd actually like. Knowing that she loves cream soda, I made a batch-and it turned out tasting really good. The last batch I made was too much cinnamon, and ended up with a weird off-taste that most batches with cinnamon tend to develop.
I excluded the cinnamon from this recipe and added something else for a little bit of complexity beyond the vanilla alone.

2x 6 inch vanilla beans(cut into many pieces with kitchen shears)
1 pinch of raisins(about 6)-each cut in half by kitchen scissors
1 pinch of dried cranberries(about 6)-each cut in half by kitchen scissors
1 tbsp. honey
2 cups sugar
1 gallon of water
1 dash of ale yeast

Fill a stock pot with 2 quarts of water, place vanilla beans, raisins and dried cranberries into the stock pot. Bring to a simmer on medium-high heat. Let simmer 20 minutes, stirring on occasion.
Add 1 quart of cold water to the brew, letting steep about 10 minutes.
Stir in 1 tbsp of honey, add last quart of water and remove from heat. Let steep another 15 minutes. While steeping for 15 minutes, get your bottles and caps ready. Fill sink with cold water and ice. Not too full, as you'll be placing your stockpot in there to cool the brew.
After the brew has cooled to about 90 degrees Fahrenheit, scoop some into a coffee cup and add the yeast.
Strain the brew into your bottling bucket(or another stock pot). Stir in your yeast and bottle!
I got about ten 12 oz. bottles.
The sample taste I tried before bottling reminded me alot of Thomas Kemper's. It was double-vanilla strength with slight fruitiness. It had a beautiful golden-yellow color-much like honey or ginger ale.

Review: Jus Cool Sugar Cane Natural Drink

Upon a recent trip to a local dollar store/smoke shop to get the coveted "Medio Litro"(half-liter)Mexican Coke, I discovered a new, interesting canned beverage from Thailand. Jus Cool brand Sugar cane Natural Drink. It wasn't carbonated, but I had to try it and review it on principal alone.
A little background, Jus Cool is a Thai manufacturer of canned juices, and apparently someone decided that it would be a good idea to can up Sugar water and call it "Sugar Cane Juice". Anyways, the ingredient list is short(as could be expected)-Sugar cane juice, water. The can features exactly what you'd expect-a logo, some writing and a picture of the source of the juice. Even if there were no English written on the can, there's a pretty good bet anyone in the world could figure out what this can contained-either cane juice or dehydrated spider legs. However, the most interesting part of the can was the expiration date(something that is always wise to check on any product at a shady-looking dollar store). The can said "good if consumed by date on bottom of the can". So, I flipped the can over-this is what I saw...

A scribbled on price-$1.49(not too bad for imported anything really). And "BCBBBB". Hmmm....I had to check the date on my phone to make sure we weren't past the date "BC/BB/BB", or even "BC/BBBB". My phone assured me that it was "07/22/2011", and not "BCBBBC" or any other date past BCBBBB. However, I'm not entirely sure if there is an alternate means of telling time that involves some kind of marriage of Greek-rooted letters and Thai numerals. I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that since it's basically syrup in a can that I should be ok.
Here went nothing. I popped open the can-still a little disappointed not to have heard a "psst"-but I took a whiff-smelled deeply like a can. I tried really hard to smell something, but it just wasn't coming. So I took a drink-hmmm....that's some thick sugar water. It was very much like drink cold syrup, but with that weird gummy feeling that bottled fruit juices get, particularly orange juice. Must be something to do with the sterilization process. Either way, this tasted like very bad sugar water. My eldest was super-excited about trying this new "soda" after discovering it in the refrigerator. I put it out of her(and her sister's) view so that I could partake of this peculiar beverage before they discovered it and begged their mother for a chance to try it. She was sorely disappointed to discover this was not what she expected it to be.
I was pretty disappointed as well. I mean, I wasn't expecting anything too great, mind you, but I recently had an experience with something that was supposedly a "root beer" recently that gave me high hopes for this. I'll get to that review soon as well.
Anyways, on with the ratings...

Packaging- 6/5
Again, the packaging was everything it needed to be and more-if you consider a mysterious expiration date to be "more"-which I do.

Aroma- 0/5
Can something have negative smell? I think that after attempting to waft this for at least a minute it took me about 20 minutes to smell anything again. Also, I originally mis-typed this as "arp,a", so maybe that is a better way to describe this canned contrivance's smell- "arp <pause> ahh"

Taste- 2/7
It wasn't entirely unpleasant, but I could have done with the weird, milky pasteurized feel that also accompanies bottled orange juice(which is why I hate orange juice that isn't fresh-squeezed). Funny thing is, I'm pretty sure that the process of extracting cane sugar juice probably involves dropping large amounts of sugar cane into a big vat of hot water-which is probably sterilization enough before your machine dispenses it into a can. Whodathunk it needed more than that? Whatever, it killed the drink-ability for me. Everyone can make better sugar water in their own home with very little practice.

Overall- 8/17
Not the worst canned beverage in the world. Hell, it's probably better then their actual fruit juices, which is a very disconcerting thought. It's a good thing they had a cryptic expiration date system, otherwise they would have gotten half the score on packaging.

Coke vs. Pepsi: An in-depth comparison, Part 2

Coke vs. Pepsi- Which is better and why? A continuing saga.... (click here for Part 1)

Caffeine Free
Hands down, neither one is champion. It boils down to personal preference, but caffeine free Cola is like decaf coffee-you just don't drink it unless you need to for medical reasons. I'd give Coke the edge just on taste alone.

Cane Sugar(how it's meant to be).
There was a lot of speculation back in the 1980's that Coke changed to "New Coke" as a clever marketing ploy to distract people from the fact that they were going to switch from sugar to HFCS. While that is total bullshit(Coke switched to the new formula because Pepsi consistently beat it in blind taste tests(Coke almost always wins when the labels are prominently featured)), it does raise an interesting question-does Coke(or for that matter, Pepsi) taste drastically different if the sweeteners are changed? The answer? A resounding hell yes.
A few years ago Coke decided to start allowing their bottlers and retailers to import Coke from Mexico-where it has remained sweetened with sugar. I had to have some, so me and the wife went to Costco(the only source I knew of at the time), and plunked down $18 for a 12 pack(!!!) of 12 oz. glass bottles. It was totally worth it. Coke with sugar is like suckling from the teat of a coffee goddess while someone tosses bouquets of cinnamon sticks and vanilla beans about your head and shoulders. I realized at that moment that HFCS Coke tasted very much like 2 things-the burnt, slightly off sweetness of HFCS itself, and Phosphoric Acid. Coke has such a complex arrangement of flavors it's no wonder there were cook books dedicated to using it as an ingredient. Since the HFCS doesn't drown out everything else, you can actually smell the vanilla and cinnamon as you take it into your palate. You can detect the sweetness of the sugar and the sour of the citrus, and then you feel the sting of the acid on your tongue.
Pepsi(Hecho en Mexico) and Pepsi Throwback(one in the same, as far as I can tell), on the other hand, doesn't get much better in it's sugared form. Don't get me wrong, it's still decent, but I actually think it's better with HFCS. Pepsi's primary appeal over Coke is it's incredible sweetness-so adding the burnt sugar taste of HFCS is kind of like plopping a toasted marshmallow in your hot chocolate-a regular marshmallow is fine, but a toasted one just makes it that much better. If I had my choice, Coke would be sold exclusively in glass bottles made with sugar, and Pepsi would be in any bottle made with HFCS.
Fountain Drinks.
Pepsi is much better out of the fountain then the bottle, or Coke from the fountain, except in one instance. McDonald's is that exception. McDonald's Coke is the second-best Coke in the world(behind Mexican Coke), and the best fountain drink I've had in my life. The only thing that could possibly make it any better is if it were sweetened with sugar instead of HFCS. I don't know what it is about McD's Coke, but I'm almost positive they tweak it in some way to make it better. Whether it's a higher syrup to water ratio, extra sodium, or simply more cinnamon(makes it more savory), or a combination of all of the above, McD's Coke is far and away better then any other fountain Coke I've ever had. Again, people bring up the fact that Coke may have changed it's formula when switching from Coke to New Coke back to Coke Classic, but it's nothing more then speculation. However, I'll add on to that speculation and say that either McD's has either maintained original Coke formula, kept New Coke, or combined the two to make something all it's own.
New Coke lived on in many countries after the backlash-but it did eventually find new life in America-through Diet Coke. Diet Coke has always been sweetened with Aspartame, but a few short years ago, they tried something new. There was a new alternate sweetener on the market, and it didn't carry quite the same bitter aftertaste of aspartame-Splenda. Diet Coke with Splenda came out, and to make sure it was very distinct on the tongues of discerning pop-drinkers the country over, they made Diet Coke with Splenda using the "new Coke" formula. It tasted like a Coked up version of Pepsi-of you will. Imagine a flat coke with the same acidic bite as regular Coke, and you have a pretty good picture in your head.
Diet Coke and Diet Pepsi are kind of on even ground with me, but I found Diet Pepsi to have a bit more of an artificial taste to it. Diet Pepsi offered far more flavor options, and as usual Pepsi won out in the added flavors department, even in the Diet world. Diet Pepsi with a flavor would be my go to Diet Cola, but really if I needed to drink a diet soda I'd choose diet root beer or diet Dr. Pepper. Their flavors just tend to mask the bitter aftertaste of artificial sweeteners far better then a cola ever could.
Overall, I think Coke is still the clear winner, but if I could my hands on a glass bottle of Vanilla Coke made with sugar I'd be in heaven. Hopefully Pepsi's success with their throwback line will inspire Coke to do the same with theirs, but it doesn't look very likely to happen.
No matter what your preference, both will always be available-so drink up and enjoy.


Originally when I discussed added flavors, I did leave out one abomination-Coca Cola Blak. Coca Cola flavored with coffee extract was completely awful. It was like drinking a coke that someone had spilled coffee grounds into. Bleh!!! It did come in an awesome bottle though...