100 Plus

The can is absolutely gorgeous. The silvery-white background sits perfectly with the green, red and blue of the design, which is simple, bold and eye-catching. I think that this is the best can design I’ve seen so far in my time as a soda reviewer/consumer. 100 Plus is made by F&N, who have given the world Groovy Grape, Cool Ice Cream Soda, and I’m pretty sure Groovy Taste root beer as well; quite a track record, which is unfortunately horrifically derailed by 100 plus, a terrible soda with a taste that’s as bad as its can design is good. Alarm bells should’ve sounded at the fact that 100 plus is touted as ‘isotonic’ and is marketed as a soda for athletes, like a carbonated Gatorade or something, but I was blind to these somewhat obvious signs and as a result had sky-high expectations.

The smell of 100 plus is like a weak, cheap orange soda. The liquid is clear, with a low level of fizz (although it is carbonated). The taste is pure filth, the disgusting taste of orange sports drinks the world over, perhaps I should’ve been expecting this but the can threw me off and had me anticipating a real winner. The taste is almost completely in the aftertaste, which swells up just after the drink enters/leaves your mouth, and climbs to a sour, foul-tasting crescendo before subsiding again after five or six seconds. I could only handle half a dozen sips of 100 Plus. I poured the rest down the sink, and can’t help but feel that I’ve been literally flooding this city’s rivers with second-rate sodas for the last couple of months, and that surely this has to have some sort of ill effect on the marine life who, I’d be willing to bet, no doubt find 100 plus, Limca, Thums Up etc as foul as I do.

Don’t let the can fool you, 100 Plus is disgusting. I guess if someone can convince themselves that soda and sport are a logical combination, or that soda can be ‘good for you’, they can probably convince themselves that 100 Plus doesn’t taste worse than almost anything they’ve ever drunk, but I hate sport and I hate 100 plus.

4/100

-LC

Available at Minh Phat, Richmond.

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.

Linda Pomegranate

Pomegranates are strange-looking but delicious fruits that are juicy and slightly sour, attributes that I’d think would translate well to soda, so before consuming Linda I considered pomegranate soda to be a pretty safe bet. After consuming Linda I still think that an authentic (or at least mildly authentic) pomegranate soda would be great; unfortunately, if you’re after such a thing, Linda isn’t the drink for you.

A fairly average can houses bright red liquid of garden-variety fizz, which looks a whole lot like raspberry soda. Looks can often be deceiving (and the flesh of pomegranate is very similar in colour to a raspberrys), however in this case they are not- Linda ‘pomegranate’ tastes just like a raspberry soda. While this isn’t a bad thing per se- raspberry soda is, when done well, delicious and refreshing- the labelling of Linda as pomegranate-flavoured is a little deceiving and gives the prospective drinker a skewed idea of what they are in for. This aside, Linda has a solid and refreshing raspberry-esque taste with an aftertaste that is essentially the little brother of the main taste, so no nasty surprises there.

Not much else I can say, pretty tasty but essentially just a raspberry soda, I’d drink and enjoy Linda again but will look elsewhere for a carbonated pomegranate fix.

55/100

-LC

Available at Abbout Falafel House Coburg.

Shani Fruit Flavour

Beautiful can design. The colours- a nice shade of red, along with yellow and purple-work beautifully together. The logo, a visually appealing retro-looking design, sits above twin strawberries, raspberries, and a few bunches of purple grapes.

The soda smells like a berry-type drink, and it is dark red in colour, similar I guess to portello. The fizziness level sits around the average, quite pleasant and ‘just right’ I suppose. The soda itself manages to simultaneously taste like each of the individual fruits/flavours depicted on the can as well as an amalgam of all three: there’s a raspberry flavour much like the Schweppes raspberry or raspberry cordial- that classic ‘raspberry’ flavour; there’s a slight grape flavour, although (thankfully) this has more in common with portello than something like Welch’s grape; as well as all this is a taste uncannily similar to pink marshmallows (!!), something that it took me quite a while to pinpoint but was seemed so obvious once I did. The pink marshmallow flavour is especially strong in the aftertaste- it is left hanging around in your mouth long after the other two have vacated, although this is more than welcomed if you ask me.

The overall effect of the mixing of these three fairly closely-related flavours is very pleasant, and it’s pretty cool that there’s a soda on the market that tastes like pink marshmallows. The place I got this and a few other sodas from - Abbout Falafel House - is, in this humble reviewer’s opinion, home to the best falafel in Melbourne, I strongly suggest you hit it up and grab a Shani while you’re in there.

78/100

-LC
 
Available at Abbout Falafel House Coburg.

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

Fanta Fruit Punch

The fairly hideous can depicts what are presumably the flavours that make up Fanta’s take on fruit punch- an oddly proportioned pineapple, half-orange and a bunch of bananas.

The smell when the can is cracked is very much like candy bananas. The soda itself (inexplicably dark green) tastes like a toned-down banana lolly, not as strong as the smell, mixed with a little bit of brown cream-soda, and reminds me a little of bubblegum flavour. The taste and smell of this soda is decidedly artificial, and a quick look at the ingredients list confirms that the only fruit in this punch is on the can.

For the first few sips I was really enjoying this soda, however after just a few more I was finding it hard to continue. Although the flavour is good, really good, it is far too strong, and drinking the whole can was a struggle. I don’t want to be beaten over the head by a flavour, or battle to finish a single can.

The soda was excessively sweet, far too thick and syrupy. Aftertaste was affected as well, leaving a lingering sweetness without any traces of the delicious banana/bubblegum of the drink itself. This sweetness lasted for minutes after I finished the can, and was a fairly unpleasant reminder of an otherwise fairly forgettable soda.

Had I been drinking this soda purely for enjoyment, I doubt that I would have finished the can. The overly-strong flavour and excessive sweetness made for a thick and punishing drinking experience, which is a shame considering that the flavour itself is pretty tasty. Don’t bother with this soda.

52/100

-LC

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