IRN BRU

Pronounced ‘Iron Brew’, big in Scotland where it was originally produced as an alternate to beer for the nation’s steelworkers. Funnily enough, IRN BRU now enjoys a reputation as the hangover drink of choice in its country of origin, so I guess IRN BRU and alcohol have to a certain extent kissed and made up.

On cracking the can, you are greeted with a Delicious bubble-gum-esque smell. The colour is somewhere between Fanta and brown cream-soda, leaning towards the Fanta side of things, which is inconsistent with the smell and kind of confusing. The soda is very, very fizzy.

The tagline “Unique Blend of Mixed fruit Flavours” coupled with the athletic-looking can design had me prepared for a Mountain Dew meets Gatorade type drink. The very minimal/watery aftertaste had me at first struggling to put my finger on just what IRN BRU tasted like. I guess it’s mainly orange-based, with a slightly Mountain Dew-esque ‘unspecified citrus flavour’ element to it, and a creaminess that’s not quite vanilla, but is very light and kind of tastes like a weak banana flavour- I think this is the bubblegum I smelled at the beginning. A fairly hard soda to describe, while it does have elements of a number of other flavours/sodas it’s pretty unique I guess. Not amazing, fairly refreshing and not thick at all (which I was somehow expecting it to be, I think because of the energy drink-ish can).

While there is no immediate aftertaste, the IRN BRU did leave a taste in my mouth that I noticed a minute or so after finishing a can, nothing terrible, just a reminder that I’d recently consumed a soda and that this soda was vaguely orange-flavoured.

Strangely enough, the bubbles I can see sitting in the soda while in the glass don’t seem to be making it to my mouth- it’s as if somehow they’re managing to escape between somewhere between leaving the glass and entering my mouth, the drink seems almost flat until after it is swallowed, when a bubble or two that were too slow to escape, make one final last-ditch effort to exit my mouth, resulting in a tiny bit of ‘after-fizz’ just after swallowing. Fairly strange and frustrating, I can see the bubbles sitting right there, I’ve never experienced this sensation before.

Apparently caffeinated but my can didn’t say so?

I can’t decide where I stand on IRN BRU. It’s fairly light and refreshing which is almost always a positive thing, and the flavour is fairly unique if not overly exciting. The weird sensation with the bubbles/fizz is kind of off-putting. I feel like IRN BRU is something that everyone just has to try for themselves to see whether or not they like it. Although I’ve given it a fairly low score, I’ll probably give IRN-BRU another try sometime soon.

63/100

-LC

Available at Leo's Fine Food and Wine, Kew.

Bubble Up

Alright this review was a bit of a wild ride, so I will try and get the whole experience in here. I first tried the soda a while ago and started writing the review but never finished. Here is the beginning of that piece -

"I gave this soda the best chance possible to impress me, I really did, but like trying to find holocaust justifications it's hard to find anything good about Bubble Up, and at least the Nazis were efficient."

Hmmm, pretty harsh. I didn't have high hopes for this one when it came round to sampling it for the second time. But something had happened, this time it tasted much much better. It was like a better version of Mountain Dew, a lemon-lime type citrus taste that was really fresh and flavoursome. I would prefer this over Mountain Dew, a version of it that's not so thick or sweet but just as nice flavour-wise.

But then the soda did a flip on me, back to its old ways. After only about 15-20 seconds of the really good taste, a horrible dirty aftertaste started to creep in, getting stronger and stronger. As much as I wished it away it wouldn't abate and then all of a sudden I had gone from a tasty Mountain Dew variant to a dirty, chemically dime-store lemon drink. For the rest of the drink it was just as bad as I had remembered, cheap and nasty, and I ended up throwing it away at about the 3/4 mark. It just has all your average bad soda problems, strong chemical taste, everlasting bad aftertaste, big bubble carbonation, just not a nice soda in any way.

Whilst not as bad as I remember the orginal tasting being, it turned out to be pretty disgusting. It's flavour inconsistancy, whilst exciting, is probably not a good thing. Pick one up if you want 15 seconds of great citrus soda and then a disguting dirty aftertaste that doesn't fully go away for about 3 hours.

31/100

-DM

Available at Hayat Hypermarket, Brunswick.

Tasmanian Holiday Sodas

A few weeks ago my girlfriend and I went to Tasmania for the weekend. The trip was her birthday present to me for my 22nd birthday (what a gal!), and in between exploring all that Tasmania has in the way of beautiful scenery, food etc, I managed to sample a few of the Apple Isle’s carbonated offerings. For anyone who isn’t aware (overseas readers??), Tasmania is a small island just south of mainland Australia, can be accessed by ferry or airplane (we chose the latter), and is a state of Australia with a population of around 500,000. Tasmania was once home to the fabled Thylacine aka Tasmanian Tiger, is currently home to the Tasmanian Devil (which looks less like the Looney Toon and more like a snarling dog/wombat hybrid. We only saw one the entire trip, ran out onto the road in front of our hire car, thankfully it escaped the incident unscathed). The capital city is Hobart, and this is where we stayed. Enough geography for now, onto the sodas...


Spuma Bionda



Cryptically described on the (fairly impressive) soft drink menu at the Hobart restaurant we ate at on our first night as “a little like a ‘drinkable’ creaming soda??”. I still don’t understand what was meant by this, all I can come up with is that the author confused cream soda with spiders/floats?? Nevertheless, this was the first soda that I drank on our trip, and by far the best.

This is an excellent tasting soda. Golden in colour, and with a charmingly retro-looking logo, I knew I was in for a treat the second I saw it.

The flavour is a light brown-cream soda taste, almost like cream soda mixed 50/50 with lemonade. I love cream soda, and I love Spuma Bionda, but the thing that sets it far above the back of creaming sodas vying for the soda-drinking public’s love and consumption is the sweetness level. Unlike many sodas, which mask a bland or unpleasant taste with near-saturation levels of sugar, Spuma Bionda is pleasantly un-sweet. Not to say that it lacks sweetness at all, but the subtle, tasteful level of this soda is something of a rarity and a large part of the reason, I think, why I like it so much.

Having had only a mouthful since returning to Melbourne, I can’t really remember any specifics regarding carbonation, aftertaste and the like, but considering that I bought 3 or 4 more bottles of the stuff over the remaining two and a half days of our stay, I think it goes without saying that I was at the very least satisfied with these aspects of Spuma Bionda as well.

Spuma Bionda(did I mention it is Italian?) apparently translates to ‘the foam blonde’ (although the label features a brunette). There were two other sodas manufactured by the same company (Paoletti) with similar logos, a lemonade and a chinotto. Enamoured as I was (am) with Spuma Bionda I didn’t try either of these two, and I figured that if Hobart had them in such abundance then Melbourne (which unless my geography is wrong is actually slightly closer to Italy) must be swimming in bottles of the stuff. Not so- although I haven’t looked too deeply, I haven’t seen a single bottle since I got back, save for the one I brought back with me. However, a little bit of research has revealed that a company in North Melbourne- Sapori International - imports the three sodas mentioned so far in this review as well as a number of others. They can be contacted via the link above.

87/100


Tasmanian Chilli Beer Company

I got these two sodas, along with a few different ginger beers (I hate ginger beer, gave one to Darcy who may review it in the future, my girlfriend drank the other- also made by Tasmanian Chilli Beer Company- and as far as I can tell she enjoyed it), from Salamanca market. Tasmanian Chilli Beer Co. had a tent set up amongst the sea of body wash/knick-knack/book stalls where they offered free tastings and sales. From memory there was another flavour available aside from these two and the Ginger beer, can’t remember what it was and I guess the fact that I didn’t buy it must mean something. Apologies for the terrible quality of the following photographs.


Raspberry sparkling



Smells very strong of raspberries, the real thing not flavour, “Organic Tasmanian Raspberries” are the third listed ingredient (after water and sugar), when we bought these the woman emphasised that the berries were grown locally and organic, seems to be the case for most boutique beers/sodas/foods etc these days.

Completely devoid of fizz, however the fact that ‘sparkling’ makes up 50% of the name leads me to believe that this is due to the fact that it was carted all around Hobart in a backpack, taken inside the pressurised interior of an airplane and across state borders rather than a lack of fizz when manufactured. From memory the liquid in the shotglass sampler we tried before buying these sodas was carbonated but as to the level I cannot say, buy one yourself if you really must know.

The taste is a little more subtle than the smell, pleasant but nothing to rave about. I guess it just tastes like raspberry cordial (this likeness is increased by the lack of fizz), although the “hint of chilli” is a nice touch, creating a sensation much like the ‘zing’ of ginger beer- a tiny, tiny kick right as the drink is swallowed, creating a highpoint that the aftertaste (not that great- tasting like the drink itself but with the ratio of raspberry flavour to chilli flavour flipped) creeps out from under.

Not an amazing soda, would definitely have benefited from being fizzy (my fault not Tasmanian Chilli Beer Co’s). Chilli is an interesting and unique touch, all natural for you health nerds.

58/100



Lime Sparkling




My first impression is that it smells like ginger beer- a bad sign. The taste is like an overly-strong lime cordial (the kind that comes in a glass bottle, not Cottees), especially bad in the aftertaste which is about 2x as strong as it should be. This lime kick overrides the chilli kick which is probably for the best considering that the lime is so strong.

Didn’t finish the bottle, barely got below the neck, not for me. After drinking even this small amount I got an acute belly-ache, possibly from the chilli (I drunk the two Tas Chilli Beer Co. drinks back-to-back, with about an hour or so in between), or possibly from the fact that anything above moderate sugar consumption has made me feel ill lately.

Similarly un-fizzy, for the same reasons I’m sure.
If you really, really love lime (Muller I’m looking at you) then I’d say give this a go, otherwise stick to the raspberry or, better yet, go for a walk and find a place that stocks Spuma Bionda.

44/100



Spuma Bionda was the clear winner of the trip, I cannot stress enough how great of a drink it is. I’ll definitely be looking into where I can get it in Melbourne (will post any details I find on the blog), and I suggest that anyone serious about soda in general and especially creaming sodas do anything they can to get their hands on a bottle.

-LC

Hansen's Mandarin Lime

First up, this can lists some pretty interesting facts you don’t normally get on a soda; no caffeine (fine with me), no preservatives (good work), no sodium (I have no idea what this does, probably a good thing?) and all natural flavours (makes me think of a lemon sparkling mineral water or something but alright let’s do it).

As far as I know all Hansen’s Natural Sodas are clear which I think is really cool. A see-through soda is just really exciting and not often done, especially in Australia. It has the exact smell of sour mandarin gummys, which are pretty close to real mandarins, it’s a delicious smell and my mouth is watering again now thinking about it.

The taste starts off with a strong burst of mandarin, it’s really tasty and true to the real fruit. The flavour then moves towards lime which is really good too but more like soda lime flavour than real lime flavour. The flavour overall is fairly light, verging on lacking, but this means it is really refreshing. It wasn’t too sweet or syrupy and went down easy. There was no real aftertaste either which I don’t mind, again it means it was a lot more refreshing and doesn’t leave any thick taste in your throat.

The more I think about this soda the more I like it, the flavour was so tasty and the light refreshing bit was something that I have really been craving after the thick, sweet drinks that we are constantly exposed to. The all natural approach is a plus too and I can’t wait to try all their flavours. Is it too early to suggest that Hansen’s is the news Jones?

91/100

-DM

Available at Munchies & More Coburg.

Pakola Fresh Lime

The Pakola brand seems to have pretty heinous can design right across the board (their Lychee and Orange designs are particularly bad) but their Cream Soda has given me a blind faith in the whole range that means I am willing to try to enjoy all their flavours no matter how bad they look.

This one smells and tastes a little more like real lime than your average lime soda but I am stll yet to find a lime flavoured soft drink that lives up to my love of real lime. If someone could capture the taste of biting into a lime wedge, that would be the soda for me. The taste is fairly light and refreshing, definately suits the flavour. There is something a little gluggy that sticks in your throat and stays in the aftertaste. Maybe its the sodium as a preservative doing this? Ah fuck it, I don't know what sodium is or does so I won't pretend to, all I know is that something isn't right. They did get the carbonation right, perfect little bubbles that don't make you need to burp to save your own life from bloat like some cheap sodas have.

Overall this soda is pretty tasty and refreshing but nothing too special. One day someone will make my ultimate lime soda, or I will make it myself.

68/100

-DM

Available at Hayat Hypermarket, Brunswick.

Limca Lemon-Lime

Imagine combining discount-store lemon dishwashing liquid and the powder on the outside of Warheads candy; Imagine Combining Lift, liquid hand-soap and baking soda; Imagine hating yourself enough to drink an entire 400-odd mLs of this. If memory serves, Limca was purchased by Darcy, so I wonder, how’d I end up having to drink this horrible stuff? Tastes like a cheap lemon lolly, with the texture of talcum powder.

1/100

-LC

Available at Hayat Hypermarket, Brunswick.

Schweppes Grapefruit

The smell of this soda is spot-on, almost as if you had just cut a real grapefruit in half, and the characteristic sourness is here in a fairly realistic quantity.

The taste is less faithful, far sweeter and all but lacking the sourness that the smell promised, but still pretty great. This soda tastes a whole lot like Lift (which it resembles in appearance to a T) or other lemon-flavoured sodas, with a roughly equal amount of Grapefruit flavour alongside the lemon. Like most lemon sodas, this drink is fairly light, fairly bubbly, and definitely refreshing.

While the sourness is much weaker than the smell led me to expect, it is not entirely absent and in fact the sourness level is very pleasant, if maybe a little too weak for my liking. In place of the sourness, Schweppes have opted to up the sweetness of the drink, and while compared to Lift etc this drink is relatively light-on sweetness wise, I wish that it was just a little less sweet and a little more sour.

The can looks great, fairly basic and uncluttered, nice colours and an appealing design. I’d go so far as to call it ‘classy’.

I really, really like this soda, but wish that the sourness of Grapefruit had been emphasised over the sweetness.

78/100

-LC

Available at Central Grocery, Melbourne Central and other various Asian grocers.