Bing Energy Drink: A Review

Let’s talk about famous bings.

Bing Crosby.  Born Harry Crosby.  Nicknamed Bing as a child by a neighbor because of a shared passion for a parody newspaper about hillbillies.  Has starred in a ton of movies. Many are considered classics.  I have not seen one of them.  Entered my periphery through his Christmas album which my great-grandmother owned.  Later entered my lexicon through Clark Griswold’s hilarious freak out in Christmas Vacation, which I can repeat verbatim on command.

Chandler Bing.  Also known as Miss Chanandler Bong.  Iconic sitcom character played by Matthew Perry.  Sarcastic foosball enthusiast.  Works as an IT procurement manager (transponster) specializing in WENUS and ANUS.  Arguably the funniest character on Friends.  Entered the consciousness of every living human being who existed in the 1990s.

Bing.  Microsoft search engine.  Best known for pioneering the hybridization of web queries and tropical beach backgrounds.

Bing cherry.   Wild cherry cultivar originating in the Pacific Northwest in 1875.  Named after orchard foreman Ah Bing.  Delicious.

My wife bought me this can of Bing Energy Drink for Christmas.  She said the can looked cool, so she bought it.  I agree.  I like the can.  The color.  The logo.  The layout.  All great.

Bing Energy Drink, as you may have guessed, is centered on the cherry.  It contains 5% actual cherry juice.  Commendable in itself.  The drink is sweetened with cane sugar, and each 12 ounce can will only add 40 calories to your daily recommended intake.  That’s pretty impressive, though it comes at a price.  More on that in a minute.

The drink is packed with some of the usual suspects: taurine, caffeine, ginkgo, ginseng, and the B’s 2, 6, and 12, among other extracts.  It’s got a nice kick.

I really like the taste of Bing.  The cherry flavor tastes refreshing and authentic, and is delightfully free of the cherry artificiality that we’ve all come to know and tolerate.  The balance of sweet and tart is perfect.  No sugar shudder.  No sour pucker.  This is good stuff.

So, what about the 40 calories?  Sadly for me, the cane sugar is fortified with sucralose and acesulfame potassium.  I loathe these compounds and their lingering, filmy aftertaste.  However, the rest of the Bing experience was so good, I’ve just decided to ignore the horrible ending.  Like the first Superman movie.

If you don’t mind sucralose and acesulfame potassium, and you love cherries, this is your drink.  If you’re not fan of artificial sweeteners, pick up some Bing anyway.  The aftertaste is a mintably fixable situation.  There’s no reason to let those two jerks ruin an otherwise great drink.  Like the Salkinds ruined Superman II.

Drinks

cherry, energy drink

January 28, 2012

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Pepsi Pink: A Review

One of my favorite activities is to dig through Wikipedia like a greasy fingered, digital archaeologist, looking for products from the distant past that I never bothered to notice in my pre-blogging days.  My favorite excavations have been from the entry entitled “List of Pepsi Variations.”  Being an avid Pepsi drinker, this page fascinates me to no end.  I’ve lost several hours in internet searches from terms I’ve found on this page.  Pepsi Tropical Chill.  Pepsi Ice Cream.  Pepsi Raging Razzberry (TWO z’s!!!).  Pepsi Pumpkin Cinnamon Spice.  You can’t make this stuff up.  Ok, I made the last one up.  But the others were totally real!

Occasionally a trip down the Pepsi rabbit hole will lead me to a current product from some far off locale.  For example, this Pepsi Pink, a limited edition strawberry and milk flavored soda from Japan.  For the uninitiated, Japan has an amazing limited edition snack culture.

Cut to a few weeks later and I found myself in Philadelphia visiting the in-laws for Thanksgiving. While there, I begged the wife for a trip to Philadelphia’s Chinatown area in hopes of being able to snag a bottle of Pink fresh off the boat.  And yes, I am aware of the difference between China and Japan.  China is a huge, complex, economic powerhouse with a rich history and culture, and Japan is where everyone loves animated tentacle porn.  But realistically, the “China” is Chinatown, really just means “Asian” at this point.  Or possibly “Kickboxer 4 bootleg.”

I searched in every shop I could find, enduring the steely-eyed glare of every store owner burning a hole in the back of my head every time I left without buying anything.  The one guy I actually spoke to just laughed at the idea of such a product.  In hindsight, it may have been somewhat naïve of me to assume the clerk in the ramshackle corner mart knew of the current goings on the beverage industry on the other side of the world.

It wasn’t all a wash though, as I did try my first (and possibly world’s crappiest boba tea).  At the time, I didn’t know what it was supposed to be exactly, but I was pretty sure that I was served some Strawberry Quik with raisins at the bottom.

Empty-handed, I just bought it online and had it shipped over when I got home.  I don’t know why I even leave the house anymore.

So what does a strawberry and milk flavored soda taste like?  Well, there’s a definite artificial strawberriness that is not great.  Think not quite top shelf strawberry bubblegum.  That taste is the key to the experience and could use some work.  It comes on pretty strong and is pretty sweet.  And it’s followed, interestingly enough, by a creamy undertaste.  I don’t know if I’d call it milk, but it’s something.  I’m not in love with Pepsi Pink but it’s decent.

And you have to love the colorful, curvy, and cutesy look of the bottle.  The strawberry’s graphic design is great.  There was definitely effort applied to this product, it just falls a little short.

Adding in the bottle, my love of limited editions, and the ballsy weirdness of Japan, you could do worse.  Keep an eye out for this the next time you’re near an Asian market.

And if you happen to be reading this in Russia, please send me a bottle of Pepsi Ice Cream.

Drinks

millk, Pepsi, sod, strawberry

January 22, 2012

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NutLiquor Peanut Butter Vodka: A Review

Let’s get this disclaimer out of the way right at the top.  I generally try to keep this blog fairly PG rated.  I don’t cling to any moral high ground or anything.  I just don’t want to have to rely on too many f-bombs to hold my beloved readers’ interest. (People are interested aren’t they?  Dear God I hope they are.)  So even when staring at a bottle such as this, I am going to try and do my best to resist making the easy jokes.  From a practical standpoint, there are just too many to make, and I’m sure the stuff you can come up with will far exceed anything I am capable of.  So here we go.

NutLiquor.  Yep.  NutLiquor.  There is a product currently being sold around the country that is called…NutLiquor.  Just take a second and let that soak in.

It’s billed as the world’s first peanut butter vodka.  I guess someone had to do it.  And it’s 69 proof.  Yep.  69 proof.

I first saw NutLiquor a few months back while perusing my ridiculously long blog list in Google Reader.  Of course, it was making the rounds because of its name.  Whoever came up with the name and marketing strategy certainly did their job well.

Their website fully embraces the mild shock value of their product’s name with a Can You Believe We Called It That-type thing.  That sort of gambit can be a little perilous though, should the vodkateers spend more time developing the What A Crazy Name strategy and less time on the Hey Our Product Is Actually Good strategy.

Name aside, the idea of a peanut butter vodka isn’t really that crazy is it?  I mean with vodkas covering birthday cake, espresso, chocolate, and caramel already, it seems like peanut butter was only a matter of time.

The claim is that NutLiquor tastes like the middle of a peanut butter cup.  And that is pretty accurate in that it does indeed taste like sweetened peanut butter.  It’s a little too sweet for me, but then again I was drinking it straight up.  The mouth feel is really thick and syrupy (control yourselves).  And there is a definite warm burn on the way down the ol’ esophagus.  Overall, pretty good.

I’m sure there are a million possibilities for all of the mixologists out there.  It seems like NutLiquor could easily find its niche.  Were there peanut butter flavored cocktails before?  There had to be, right?  Did they just use actual peanut butter?  I could search it, but who has the time?  And I’m drunk.  And smell of peanuts.

I think the name is funny and a good way to get the stuff out there, but at a certain point, if NutLiquor proves to be successful, I think they might outgrow it.  And if they don’t, or won’t, I’m sure one of the bigger companies will be all over peanut butter vodka.  They’ll drop the flavor into their regular rotation of flavored vodkas and wont need to rely so heavily on the novelty card.  It’s a precarious position to be in.

I wish this plucky little product luck and salute their first-to-the-marketness.  If you’re an alcoholic who craves legumes, a creative barkeep, or just want a humorous talking point at your next party, by all means, pick up a little NutLiquor.

All I ask is that you exercise caution when opening the bottle. I got a little in my eye, and it wasn’t pretty.

Wackity smackity doooooooooo!

Drinks

peanut butter, vodka

January 16, 2012

12 Comments

Sour Cream and Onion Doritos: A Review

This is how the case began.

A little over a week ago, I was in my office, smoking a cigar and thumbing the pages of the new Spicy Mystery Stories I’d just bought from Otto down at the newsstand, when a dame opened my door and slinked in.  She was gorgeous.  I had to spit out the window onto the top of a passerby’s head just to make sure I could still sin, and that I hadn’t died and gone to heaven.  She had an hourglass figure and in my pants it was starting to feel a little like high noon.

She didn’t say a word, just reached out to give me an envelope.  She  dropped it to the floor before I could get my fingers on it.  By the time I bent over to get it, she was gone.  I ran out into the hallway, but it was too late.  She had disappeared faster than an altar boy at a church picnic.

I closed the door and opened the envelope.  “Salsa Rio and Sour Cream Doritos are back!!!”  It was signed JunkFoodDog.

He was a new kid in town.  A real spitfire.  Always good for the dope anytime a new product hit the block.  I picked up the blower and asked the operator to connect me.  She told me the line was dead.  Hrm.

I headed down to the stacks of the city library.  I needed to find out more about these chips.  I found out that the “Sour Cream” Doritos were actually Sour Cream and Onion.  I loved Sour Cream and Onion.  I decided to put a pin in the Salsa Rio and follow up later.  The note mentioned that the chips were “back.”  That bothered me.  I hadn’t heard of them before.

I couldn’t find much, just a grainy commercial video, a bunch of discussion threads and some petitions.  Apparently the Sour Cream and Onion Doritos came out sometime in the late 70s and were discontinued sometime in the mid 80s.  I also found a few mentions of “Sonic Sour Cream” and “Doritos Thins.” Not exactly a lot to go on.

Back at the office, I called all of the grocers I could find in the directory.  No one had the chips.  Some didn’t even believe they existed.

The night was getting long.  I’d have to make the rest of the calls in the morning.

On my way home, I decided to stop by the druggist’s for quick phosphate to take the edge off.  Joe was working the jerk that night.  He was a good guy.  Always had his ear to the street.  I slid him the note.  He walked to the front of the shop and locked the door.  He said he hadn’t seen JFD in days, then opened the register and pulled out a bag of Sour Cream and Onion.  “Last time he was in, he asked me to give these to you,” he said.

The bag looked great.  A real throwback to simpler times.  I opened it and popped a few chips.  They tasted and smelled familiar.  A little too familiar.  During my younger days I used to spend my summers down the shore munching barrels of Cool Ranch Doritos.  These tasted pretty similar, maybe with a slight hint of onion.  They also didn’t seem to be as heavily seasoned.   They were good, though after a 25 year absence, I was expecting something with a little more wallop.

I finished the bag and asked Joe what I owed him.  He waved me away.  I slipped him a sawbuck anyway.

I spun my stool and got up to leave.  I heard a click and instinctively reached for my shooter.  I was too late.  I heard the bang, and the lead deposited in my shoulder spun me around.  I stumbled backward and fell.  When I looked up, I saw Joe staring at me from behind the counter.  The snub nose in his hand was still smoking…

Chips

doritos, sour cream and onion

January 8, 2012

13 Comments

Effervescent Bacon Drink Tabs: A Review

Here I sit on my couch putting fingers to keyboard only 21 minutes into 2012.  Since my wife was out of town and my friends have either moved away or have become generally uninteresting, I rang in the new year by pausing my Netflix Bones marathon long enough to watch Dick Clark drop the ball and then taking my dog out for his first pee of the year.  I’ve never been a wild and crazy party guy, and the older I get, the less willing I am to get T-boned by a drunken, hoochified housewife who’s out with the girls and driving angrily because she’s ticked off at her distant husband who just wanted to stay home and play Modern Warfare.

I got more than one bizarre food gift for Christmas this year, but this has to be the absolute worst.  This little tin of Effervescent Bacon Drink Tabs was given to me by my wife.  They belong in that category of products like Bacon Lube and Ranch Dressing Mints.  Food-themed joke products, not actually meant for human consumption, that are to be placed in someone’s stocking.  Which is where I found them.

I knew these were going to be epically terrible even before I broke the seal on the shrink wrap.  How could they not be?  Just the name alone is shudder-inducing.  The word “effervescent” is one of the most beautiful words in the English language.  Go ahead, say it aloud.  Start the year off right.  Nice, isn’t it?  But the word should never ever be followed by the name of any meat.  Effervescent venison.  Fun to say, terrible to ingest.

Even though its sacrilege to declare such a thing on the internet, I must admit I am not really a fan of bacon.  I never seek it out willingly and ill usually asked to have it removed from whatever hamburger I find myself ordering.  It’s just whole lot of salt.  You know it, I know it.  Which is fine.  If that is your vice, I am not going to fault you for it.  To each his own in 2012.  But when a food becomes a meme (we get it, you can put bacon on a lot of stuff), things need to be reined in a bit.

So yes, obviously, these are horrific.  I dropped one in a glass of water, expecting to see an Alka-Seltzer type fizz bonanza.  I didn’t get it.  These undergo more of a slow bubbling decomposition that methodically turned my water flesh-colored.  They left a frothy white foam at the top of the glass, and the whole thing reeked of dirty, greasy, pungent smoke.  The water itself tasted like it smelled.  I barely was able to stomach a sip.

The only value I can see in these is as a tool for pranksterism.  Slip one into your friend’s beer and make sure you are fast enough to duck the spit take.  Because there will be a spit take.

But on the bright side, we’ve started the year at the bottom of the barrel!  There is no place to go but up.  Enjoy the New Year everyone.  I wish you all fun times and good eating!  May your water be bacon free!

Drinks

January 1, 2012

11 Comments

Soylent Green Crackers: A Review

Movie merchandising has been around forever.  Its roots can be traced way back to 1939 when MGM capitalized on its runaway smash hit by releasing a line of fully articulated Gone With The Wind action figures, featuring that Christmas’s hottest toy, Rhett Butler with Not Giving a Damn Action.  Sadly, the short-lived line was discontinued when concerned parents took issue with what they believed was a defective toy with missing legs, but was in reality, the Three-Fifths of a Citizen Mammie figure.

Usually film merchandise is released when, or in most cases before, a major release hits theaters.  Savvy companies can make millions by striking when the iron is hot.  Then again, there is another way.  Release a film, let it seep into the popular consciousness, then release a tie-in product a scant 38 years later.  When that happens, we get Soylent Green Crackers.

If you’ve not seen Soylent Green (38 year old spoiler alert!), you are probably at least familiar with the oft-referenced line delivered by the always terrible Charlton Heston, “Soylent Green is people!”

The film is set way off in the year 2022, in a dystopian world where the earth is overpopulated, food is scarce, video games still look like Asteroids, and homicide detectives wear neckerchiefs.

Between bouts of bedding hot ladies and chewing the scenery, old Chuck discovers that the main component of the Soylent Corporation’s little green food wafers is none other than dead human beings.  Gasp!

It’s not great, but it’s fun and watchable.

Unfortunately, these crackers are not made of people (stupid government nutrition laws).  They are made from the usual crackery ingredients like enriched flour and buttermilk but also contain a touch of spinach and spirulina powders for color and novelty.  And they are officially licensed through Warner Brothers.  So there’s that.

This product’s package design is excellent.  The box is an imagining of how the wafers would be sold in the film’s world, down to the grasping hands of food rioters and the “high energy plankton” selling point.  Minus the manufacturer’s steam perforations, the crackers themselves look almost exactly like their Hollywood prop counterparts.  Ok, so it’s probably not very difficult to produce edible green squares.  But still.

In Soylent Green, the country’s populace clamors to get their hands on Soylent Green, as it is supposed to taste way better than Soylent Red or Soylent Yellow, the other two processed foodstuffs made by the evil antagonist corporation.  Not knowing what those two taste like, I can’t say that these crackers taste better, but I can say that they taste good.  They are green saltines, after all, and who doesn’t like a saltine?  And to be clear, the greens added to the saltines are not in any crazy amounts, so they only have a marginal effect on their flavor.  Barely noticeable.

They are a little denser than the Nabisco Premiums you may be used to, but that doesn’t detract from the experience at all.  When you’re living in stairwells and scrabbling for resources, you want as much bang for your buck as you can get anyway.

Soylent Green Crackers are novelty food at its finest.  They taste good, are packaged well, and have a very clear line of site to their cinematic inspiration.  Everyone needs a box of these in their home.  The sexy concubine that came with your apartment will certainly appreciate them.

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crackers, PEOPLE!, spinach

December 29, 2011

1 Comment

Dried Zombie Skin: A Review

I’d like to think that when the zombie apocalypse actually does occur (my money’s on 2016), that I will be able to write a review of actual dried zombie skin.  We will all be living under a skeleton government, food will be rationed, times will be tough, but hopefully there will still be a demand for reviews about food posted on the internet.  Though the internet will only be operational for a few hours each day due to the rolling blackouts on our quickly deteriorating power grid.

Marvo will be holed up in an abandoned, well-fortified mansion on the Big Island, quipping about the finer points of the MREs and the canned sandwiches his malnourished minions have scavenged for him from nearby dilapidated military complexes.

Rodzilla will be braving the frigid Pittsburg winters to praise the merits of the various local cannibal cafes and road kill bistros that have survived the murderous turf wars now engulfing the once mighty city.

Victoria, deep in the woods of Virginia, will be typing obsessively about the various kinds of chocolate she still has left in her dwindling stash.  Though sadly the “computer” she uses is nothing more than an old typewriter and a picture frame connected to an oak tree with the split and fraying Ethernet cord she once used to strangle a man (just to watch him die).

And, of course, everyone at Grub Grade will have set up a roving militia, plundering anyone unfortunate enough to find themselves alone and hiding in a shuttered Burger King alongside what is left of the country’s highway system.

But sadly, that day is not today.  Today, future survivors, I can only write about Dried Zombie Skin, a novelty product from Harco Labs.  Dried Zombie Skin is dried seaweed.  Or more accurately dried seaweed, sunflower seed oil, sesame oil, and sea salt.

First, I must address “novelty food” as a concept.  I define novelty food as being a food product, designed to be eaten, that has some sort of novel hook to engage the consumer.  You have your sprays, your lights, shapes, flavors, etc.  But in the end, the food is meant for consumption by someone, even if that someone is only a child.

There is a not so very fine line between a novelty food and a novelty prop that happens to be made of food.  Dried Zombie Skin is the latter.  I can’t imagine any child, adult, or even dirty hippie, ever willingly eating this package of dried seaweed.  Now, I’ve eaten seaweed before, be it at various sushi restaurants or during particularly unsuccessful boogie boarding expeditions at the beach.  But this seaweed is seaweed with a capital S.  The drying process has harnessed every bit of flavor.  Each piece is thin and crisp and delicate and like a punch in the face, while drowning.  It is alarmingly and overwhelmingly seaweedy.

That being said, I really like the minimalist, medically suggestive packaging as well as the label design.  It would look great on a shelf, perhaps next to a machete, or offered as a door prize at your next Halloween hootenanny.  The idea behind it is solid and very well executed.

I can’t say I’ll ever finish the bag, but it is a cool piece to have around to spring on unsuspecting friends.  And I’m sure when 2016 rolls around and it all pops off, I’ll look back fondly on this bag, as I’m flaying the skin off of the undead grocery store employee whose head I just smashed in with the one of the doors in the frozen food aisle, and yearn for simpler times.

Uncategorized

seaweed

December 20, 2011

10 Comments

Clam Chowder Doritos: A Review

I love the fact that I can order an interesting snack food from a country on the other side of the world and have it show up at my home in a few weeks.  It is a testament to the power of technology and how the internet has brought all corners of the globe closer together.

Also.

I hate the fact that I have to order and interesting snack food from a country on the other side of the world and have to wait weeks for it to show up at my home.  It is a testament to the laziness and lack of creativity at American snack food companies.

I know I have waxed on before about the lack of interesting flavors available in the U.S., especially with regards to chips, be they corn or potato, so I won’t go too much into it again.  And the fact is certainly not lost on me that there could not be more of a first world problem than me complaining that I can’t get junk food in the flavor I like fast enough.

“You could flash fry a buffalo in forty seconds.”
“Forty seconds?  But I want it now.”

But everyone needs a hobby and complaining is mine.  I don’t understand why the American arm of Doritos doesn’t do anything interesting with their product.  No bizarre flavor experiments.  No weird limited editions.  Nope.  Just the same old business as usual.  How many Cool Ranch Doritos can one man eat in a lifetime?

I can’t buy that even a one-month limited run of Clam Chowder Doritos or Grilled Chicken Skewer Doritos or even Squid and Soy Sauce Doritos (all real Japanese varieties!), wouldn’t completely sell out in the U.S.  I would buy all three, and I never buy Doritos!  Sure not everyone would love them, but many people would.  And the rest would still try them at least once, so they could tell their friends.

The nosegrope upon opening the bag is a little fishfoody, worrisome, but the chips themselves are not overly fishy.  When I was a kid, my mom banned Doritos from our house because she claimed they stunk up the place. But it has been my experience that Japanese Doritos never go overboard with the amount of seasoning.  It’s there and it’s good, but it won’t knock you out.   The finger remnants are very manageable.

Let me assure you that your local grocer would have no problem unloading a pallet of Clam Chowder Doritos.  Novelty aside, they taste good.  As with all weird flavors, the go-to test is the Blind Flavor Identification.  I would guarantee that most of your friends could identify these as clam chowder.  The flavor is surprisingly authentic.

Also, if you’ve never had any, Japanese Doritos are a little denser that their U.S. counterparts, and they have rounded edges, because rounded edges are just classier.  These are part of the Doritos Gourmet line after all.  And yes, Doritos Gourmet.  I know!

I recommend these without reservation.  You can get them on the internets.  I got mine at NapaJapan.  They’re a fun flavor.   What I enjoyed most was mentioning them to my friends and associates and having them go slack-jawed and wide-eyed while repeating the flavor back to me in disbelief.  I would simply nod knowingly, as if to say, “Yes.  I am way cooler than you.”  But sadly, because of flavors like this, none of us will never be as cool as Japan.

Chips

Japan, Japanese

December 17, 2011

6 Comments

Me Curious Blueberry-Lime Sparkling Beverage: A Review

There are many ways to bring a new product to market.  Sometimes, it’s the result of years of testing and research.  Sometimes, it’s just a sudden flash of genius.  Sometimes, it’s looking for a hole in the market and filling it.

My theory for this product is that a group of Ed Hardy wearing, Entourage loving, faux metaphysical Matthew McConaughey types, with the shine not yet off their Marketing degrees, got together with their autistic pet parrot and pulled their trust fund money to make a drink that was like, ya know, totally, cool and awesome and stuff.

“Dude, we’ll totally call it Me because each drink will like, be for a person’s personality.  And we’ll put a fingerprint on each can for individualness because like only one out of a hundred people have the same fingerprint.  We’ll call one…”

“Squawk!  Vivcaious!”

“Yea!  For hot chicks that are all energetic and wild and crap.  It’ll be…”

“Squawk!  Tangerine!  Squawk!  Pineapple!”

“Totally!”

“Then one will be like Curious, for dudes that are all smart and think outside of the bun.”

“Squawk! Blueberry!  Squawk!  Lime!”

“Rad, parrot!  Blueberry and lime!  You’re sick man!”

Ok, I have to stop the tableau there.  My soul started to blacken a bit.  There are two other flavors in the Me line of sparkling beverages: Uninhibited (pink grapefruit) and Unavailable (dragonfruit-blackberry).  Yep.  Someone thought it was a good idea to name one of their products Unavailable.

In completely unrelated news, this line of drinks appears to be defunct.  The website, where you could take a personality test to find out which flavor suited you best (blech), is gone.  I found this can at Big Lots.  Shocking.  But you can still get the stuff on Amazon, should you suffer a traumatic brain injury and lose all ability to make good decisions.

Me Curious is just absolutely terrible.  The name is stupid.  The idea behind it is stupid.  I’m sure the people who worked on it were stupid.  Just a complete train wreck.

The blueberry and lime concentrates taste cheap and they do not, in any way imaginable, work together.  How could they?  I’m sure the thought was that they would compliment each other in some unexpected way that would produce a nuanced flavor revelation.  Instead, together, they taste like medicine.  Crappy, tart, foul medicine.  And Me doesn’t even have caffeine!  There is not one redeeming quality about this product.  It offends me.

I can only hope that the parrot has moved on to bigger and better things.  I hear he was one of the writers on Adam Sandler’s most recent film.

Drinks

blueberry, lime

December 11, 2011

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Rogue’s Voodoo Doughnut Bacon Maple Ale: A Review

I don’t believe in a lot.  I don’t care about politics or sports, nor am I one of those God and Country kind of guys.  If the U.S. fell to some foreign invader, I generally wouldn’t mind provided my internet service wasn’t interrupted.  At my core, the only thing I really believe in is the potential of the human race.  And rooting for the potential of the human race is like rooting for the…ummm…you know, that one team that loses all the time.  See.  Not a sports guy.

Let’s face it, the human race has produced some of the worst people that have ever lived: Adolph Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Vlad the Impaler, Carlos Mencia.  The list goes on, and could easily break the spirit of the most stout-hearted man.  But on the other list, the far far shorter list, we find shining examples of what a person should be and can do: Abraham Lincoln, William Shakespeare, Albert Einstein, Samwise Gamgee.

(Ok I know he’s not real but quick aside.  Samwise Gamgee is totally the hero in the Lord of the Rings and NEVER gets ANY credit!  Oh everyone loooooooves Frodo.  Oh what a great hobbit he is.  Oh he saved Middle Earth.  Well ya know what jerks, your precious Frodo sucks.  He had a magical ring fall into his lap, put all of his friends through hell, and guess what, in the end, he DECIDED TO KEEP THE RING FOR HIMSELF!!!  Yea, everyone forgets about that!  He chooses evil!  The ring is only destroyed when that frog man bites his finger off.  You know who never faltered?  Not once?  That’s right.  Samwise Gamgee.  He carried that little tool all the way to Mordor.  But he doesn’t get the fanfare.  He doesn’t get to sail to elf heaven.  Nope.  It’s right back to the shire.  And never once does he complain!)

Sorry about that.  Thank you for indulging me.  It’s been a big point of contention in my household.  My wife is a slavish Frodo zealot.

So when I saw on the internets that Oregonian brewer Rogue Ales had teamed with Oregonian doughnutter Voodoo Doughnuts to make a beer based on their bacon maple bar, and that it came in a bright pink bottle deckled out with pigs and maple leaves, I thought that humanity had reached its apex and now everything else would just be a footnote on our slow crawl back into the oceans. 

I mean come on, a beer inspired by a pork product topped pastry in an obnoxious bottle.  It’s the world’s opinion of the United States distilled into a convenient drinkable container.

Needless to say, I couldn’t purchase it fast enough.  $13 dollars for a 26 ounce bottle in addition to $13.13 for shipping!  Easily the most expensive beer I’ve ever had by a good $20.

The nosegrope of the ale is crazy.  It really smells like smoky bacon.  Way more authentic than I imagined. 

Now, a lot of reviews I’ve seen mention that there is no doughnut taste.  And there isn’t.  But it’s not Voodoo Doughnut Bacon Maple Doughnut Ale.  It’s Voodoo Doughnut Bacon Maple Ale.  So let’s get that out of the way.

The beer drinks very smoothly and very weirdly.  The bacon is most definitely there but is strongest in the aftertaste.  The smoke flavor hits way back in the throat.  And it lingers there for quite a while.  My mouth felt really smoky and a little greasy.  Waiting even longer, I felt like I had just swallowed something salty and had the parched mouth that comes with it.

I couldn’t really find too much maple flavor.  There were very very light sweet notes very occasionally, but certainly nothing to make me feel Canadian.  It smells a lot sweeter than it tastes.

I can’t really recommend this as an enjoyable, regular rotation beverage.  It is indeed a bacon ale, but I don’t know if that’s really a good thing.  I do recommend picking up a bottle for your next get together though.  It’s definitely a conversation piece, and you can present it with a flourish and your most regal “Behold!”  Also, no one will fault you for holding on to the glorious bottle.

In t he end,  the fact that some enterprising young maniacs made this a thing, well, it just makes feel a little better about humanity.  Not every experiment can be a success: Jurassic Park, Brundlefly, et al.  But with a bottle this pink and a drink this bacon, I know we are at least going in the right direction.

Drinks

bacon, beer, donut, maple

December 1, 2011

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