drinks

Yorkshire Tea Malty Biscuit Brew

I have had a second cup of this tea, only to write this review up, the first cup I had began as ‘oh, this should be interesting’.

I had actually seen this, and its companion “Breakfasty Toast & Jam” tea in the supermarket in the past, and only bought this example to try because it was discounted and on special, otherwise I wouldn’t have indulged in such and unknown quantity. 

Opening the box it’s in a foil packet, it has the best before date on the front.

The tea bags are ‘tea pot’ style bags with no tag on them, and they’re in sheets of two which are joined by a perforated edge.

Smelling the bags themselves, they’ve got a very rich malty, maybe with a wisp of vanilla, it makes for a very biscuity smell to them, it’s kinda unnatural, especially in a tea context.

Back of box.

The ingredients on the box lists; Black tea, and then “natural flavouring (3%)”, but doesn’t elaborate further than that as to what the natural flavouring is.

Making the tea I used a regular mug (one of those Pantone colour mugs 375ml capacity), they’re not my usual mugs I use for tea. My regular mugs are a bit bigger, but I had my doubts about this brew the first time, and again this time.

Into the mug I added one slightly lower than level teaspoon of sugar, then let the bag sit for 4-5 minutes according to the box’s instructions. 

Then I added just a touch of milk.

Contents of the tea bag.

While the tea sat for its journey in the water I opened up one of the tea bags and emptied the contents out onto a plate.

It looks like tea, but there are bits of something within the tea contents. I assume this is the “natural flavouring (3%)”.

Smelling the mug, again it’s that sweet malty smell, like a biscuit, and unlike something you would expect from regular tea. Even a mug of tea you’d dropped a biscuit in. I feel like you’d need to drop a whole packet of biscuits into a mug of tea to get this scent out of it.

The flavour is a sort of uncanny valley where you know something’s off, something’s wrong but you’re not really sure what it is. 

It’s actually perfectly fine for the first couple of sips, there’s the tea flavour in the background and in the foreground this malty, biscuity flavour.

But then as you have more of it, it becomes kinda overpowering, like it’s the only thing you’re tasting.

The malt flavour is the strongest component that comes through when having a mouthful of the tea. The sweetness of the biscuit flavours seems to be more present in the scent coming from it when you go in for a sip of the tea.

When I had my first mug of this tea, I only managed half the mug. And it made the room I was drinking it in smell a bit like the brew itself. 

Yorkshire Tea Toast & Jam and Malty Biscuit on supermarkt shelf.

For this second mug I’m sat in the kitchen with it. 

And I’m now about half way through the mug, to write this up, and I think I’m just about done with it.

I am a tea drinker; Nerada. Just their standard black tea.

Very occasionally I’ll get an Earl Grey, also Twinnings “Australian Afternoon” is nice in the morning if I don’t want to break out the teapot. 

Would I buy this again? No. 

Although I am kinda still tempted by the Toast & Jam variety, only in a sort of ‘how much worse can it be?’ sort of experience, to compare and contrast to this version.

Violet Crumble Chocolate Honeycomb Flavoured Milk

It's no Choc Honey Comb SupaShake, but it's alright.

I saw this on the shelf in my local IGA between the UHT milk and coffee additives.

The fact that is was here and not in a fridge means it's shelf stable and therefore likely a UHT milk base. Not really a problem, especially as it's flavoured. Just make sure to chill it, drinking room temperature milk isn't a great experience even if it's safe to do so.

It tastes alright, but upon opening it, there's quite at hit of a chocolatey smell and something else. The honeycomb mostly comes in the flavour and maybe a little in the unidentified 'other' smell. 

Ingredients wise it's all fairly boring:

Milk (79%), Water, Sugar, Cocoa powder (0.7%), Flavours, Acidly Regulator (339), Vegetable Gums (450,407,466). Salt, Emulsifier (471).

To demystify the numbers:

  • Acidity Regulator (339) - also known as sodium phosphate. From what I can gather it's either in there as what is says to regulate acidity, or possibly as an emulsifier (to make things stay mixed). 

  • Vegetable Gums (450,407,466). 450 I think is in it to change / alter the texture, it's also used as an acidity regulator it's also known as Potassium and Sodium Diphosphate. 407 is Carrageenan it's a seaweed and is a thickener / gelling agent. 466 is cellulose gum and is another thickener, stabiliser, emulsifier or binder.

  • Emulsifier (471) - is produced from vegetable oil. 

I feel like it could've used a little more milk as the mouth feel is a little bit watery. 

It's not very Violet Crumble in its flavour, yes it's a chocolate honeycomb flavoured milk, but it's not a Violet Crumble-flavoured milk. 

I'm not sure I'd buy it again. Because there's the need to refrigerate it before consumption, it's less of an impulse purchase and more of a thing to buy for when I'd fancy it. Also it's just milk rather than the aforementioned SupaShake which threw in the textural qualities as well. 

V Pure mark 2 review

New bottle & label design

Recently I bought a bottle of V Pure and noticed they'd changed the design of the bottle. 

Upon tasting it, I realised that's not all they've changed.

This is V Pure mark 2, a new version of V Pure, originally released in mid-late September 2017 (see my review of that here).

It's in a different-sized bottle to the others in the range at 330 ml. 

Flavour wise, it's sweeter than the original V Pure, but not as sweet as V original. 

V Pure mark 2 nutritional information

Looking at the nutritional information of V Pure mark 2 per 100 ml:

  • Sugar 7.9g per 100ml

  • Caffeine 31mg per 100ml

  • Guarana Extract 160mg per 100ml

Which is similar to V Pure mark 1:

  • Sugar 6.4g per 100ml

  • Caffeine 31mg per 100ml

  • Guarana Extract 241mg per 100ml

The difference being the amount of guarana extract which has dropped, while the sugar has risen. 

With V Pure Mark 2, the ingredients list has also increased to 6 ingredients (V Pure Mark 1 had 5 ingredients). 

Ingredients: Apple Juice, Sparkling Water, Lemon Juice, Guarana Seed Extract, Caffeine From Green Coffee Beans, Natural V Flavour.

V Pure mark 2 bottle back - ingredients

The new ingredient over the mark 1 is the "Caffeine From Green Coffee Beans". 

I do wonder if caffeine as a separate ingredient was added to drop the amount of guarana needed in the V Pure Mark 1, in order to get a similar effect. As I would think the guarana would be the priciest portion of the drink's ingredients. 

The bottle is different on the mark 2. The mark 1 bottle was a glass bottle with white stickers on the front / back. The mark 2 bottle is a glass bottle with a plastic wrap around label. It includes a line down one side with makes it easier to rip off. I'm not sure if this would enable better recycling than the paper labels of mark 1. But it means that the label and bottle are much easier to separate. Although I wonder of the recyclability of the plastic label / wrap.

I'd probably buy V Pure mark 2 again. If it was sold in cans in the 275ml configuration in the supermarket then I would definitely. But at the moment it seems V Pure Mark 2 is confined to convenience shops and petrol stations.  

Barker's Premium Cordial review

Around about a year ago now I emailed Barker's of New Zealand about the availability of their Blackcurrant cordial. I am something of a fan of blackcurrant cordial and was dismayed to find that it was (at that time) no longer available in Coles.

They replied back and said that there would be more in the new year of 2017, but to tie me over they wanted to send me a sample box of three of their cordials and that I should review them.

The box arrived a few weeks later much to my surprise there were three full bottles of cordial.

I opened one (the blackcurrant) and tried the other and intended to write a review.
But things got in the way and now I realised that they're about to pass their best before dates so I thought I had better write something about them.

Barker's Squeezed Blackcurrants

I quite like blackcurrant cordial, I grew up drinking Ribena.
Latterly I have been trying to cut back my soft drink intake (I'm also not much of an alcohol drinker), first it was cutting cutting back the coke and instead lemonade, then got rid of that for a Soda Stream and their flavour liquid stuff.
Then early in 2017 I cut that out and went to other things, mostly Barker's Squeezed Blackcurrant cordial.
I had, before finding Barker's tried all the others that are available in Australian supermarkets; Ribena, Cascade Blackcurrant cordial, Coles Brand Blackcurrant and Bickfords' Blackcurrant cordial.
Ribena, while I had enjoyed it for a long time, but had found it a little too sweet.
I had switched to Cascade's blackcurrant cordial for a time, and for a long time that was my go-to blackcurrant cordial, it wasn't as sweet as Ribena and it was Australian made. But then when Cascade was sold to Coke, something in the recipe was changed and it became more sweet than it had been and I started looking for another blackcurrant cordial.

Then I found Barker's, which tastes like blackcurrants. Which is as it should be for a blackcurrant cordial, but it's surprisingly hard to find one that isn't overpoweringly sweet.

Barker's isn't as sweet as the other blackcurrant cordials and it genuinely tastes like blackcurrants; with their tart earthiness coming through in the drink.

I drink the Barker's Squeezed Blackcurrants practically every day, it's my go to cool drink.
In the winter, later at night if I want a hot drink and don't want a cup of tea, a little bit of Barker's Squeezed Blackcurrants in a mug with some hot water makes a great late evening drink. Making it with hot water, rather than cold brings out flavours in it that you scarcely notice when you make it with cold water.

The photo is not of that free bottle they sent me, that's one of about 10 bottles that I have in the cupboard, just so I don't run out of it.

Barker's Redcurrant with Cranberry & Pomegranate

This was the other cordial I tried when I first got that box of three free bottles a year ago, and I tried it a couple of times and it's sat in the fridge until now, when I tipped it out as it had just about passed its best before date.

The smell of it, didn't inspire confidence, it had something of an air of 'hand washing liquid'.

The taste wasn't amazing. It was dominated by the cranberry, the red currants gave a sharp tartness to the flavour. It I had to say where the pomegranate flavour was it was probably in the aftertaste of the cordial.

Barker's Lemon with Lime Cucumber & Mint

This is less bad than the cranberry cordial. It again is mostly dominated by the lemon and lime. Again the finish sort of has the vague hint of cucumber, I'm not sure the mint is really present.
If the mint is present it's more for a sort of lingering coolness than really defined 'mintiness'. It's certainly a more adult sort of flavour, but I think it'd be more interesting as an additive to a cocktail or even a mocktail rather than being a flavour on its own.

In summing up I wholly recommend Barker's Squeezed Blackcurrants - Premium Crafted Cordial.
It is a little more expensive than the likes of Ribena, because it's a premium product. It comes in a glass bottle, the Barker's logo embossed on the bottle. The label even has a feel of having thought and time considered upon it, it's not a plastic label like some cordial.
I also think that blackcurrant it an under appreciated flavour, its tartness, its...sharp flavour is one that seldom turns up in drinks. Of the non-alcoholic drinks that are available, many, plenty are *sweet* but few are more complex than that. Certainly you can select something citrus-based, which will deliver a sharp tart hit of flavour without descending into overt sweetness (especially something like grapefruit juice). Outside of the citrus-based drinks are only a few 'other fruit' based cordials or drinks of similar ilk. Blackcurrant fills this space very well, being a flavour that is not present in a lot of foods sold in Australia, but is still familiar and welcoming.

Update 2019: Coles now no longer sell Barker’s, but you (and I do) buy direct from their Australian website if in Australia.

Update 2023: It now appears Barker’s Australian website stocks their cordials under two different headings. “Premium Mixers”; Blood Orange, Lime & Bitters. NZ Apple & Elderflower. Pink Grapefruit & Lemon. Lemon, Lime, Cucumber & Mind. And “Classic Fruit syrups”: NZ Blackcurrants. Lite Lime & Barley. Orange & Barley with Passionfruit.

V Pure mark 1 review

This is a review of V Pure mark 1, released in 2017, for the new version released 2019 see my review here.

An artisanal energy drink.

V Pure contains 5 natural ingredients, so the neck of the bottle says.

Apple Juice, Sparkling Water, Lemon Juice, Guarana Extract, Natural V Flavour

What the "Natural V Flavour" is isn't exactly explained. Given that it's got a 'wheat derivatives' notice on the bottle one might presume that the "Natural V Flavour" has something derived from wheat within it.

V Pure is pretty good. It's not as sweet as regular V, my go-to energy drink of choice.

The V Pure bottle is the same volume as the slightly larger V cans you can buy in the supermarket. That is the 275ml cans. These are marginally larger than the 250ml but obviously not as much volume as the 500ml 'double sized' cans. I find the 500ml cans too much in one sitting. While I might, if I'm out and about throughout the day consume 2 cans of V, I wouldn't want to all at once.

Regarding the sugar content the lack of it is noticeable, though not unpleasantly so, there's certainly a more tart flavour that comes from the lack of sugar. V Pure per 275ml serving has 17.7 grams of sugar while regular V per 275ml serving has 29.2 grams of sugar.

Will I buy V Pure again? Probably, it is less sweet and more interestingly flavoured. But it probably won't replace the regular V for me, in part because it is more expensive than regular V, but also because sometimes I'm looking for that hit of sweet tartness that V brings.

Tea Capsules

I have never been disgusted and angered by a product until I saw this product being advertised the other night. I saw it during the ad-break of “Escape to the Country”, and it disgusted me that this product existed.

“now also available in convenient tea capsules!” so says Dilmah’s website of their Tea Capsules.

I know, they’re attempting to cash in on the coffee capsule craze.

But coffee and its myriad of flavours and whatever I can sort of see a purpose, as much as any other coffee device. There’s plenty of coffee making devices, the stove top brewing the moka pot, or plunger or even coffee bags. Plus the poor cousin; instant coffee.
I don’t really know where one method of coffee sits against the other, I’m not a coffee drinker.

But tea.
Tea is different, essentially you can have loose leaf tea in a tea pot or some sort of single cup device that replicates a tea pot on a smaller scale. Or you have tea bags. Simple.
Everyone who drinks tea will make it by using either or both of these methods; loose leaf or tea bags.

Why, why, why would “tea capsules” be good?
Or more to the point why would they be better than tea bags or loose lead tea?

I presume (again as I don’t own a ‘capsule coffee make’) that you would need to pass some water through the nozzle of the coffee machine to clean it prior to making you tea other wise you might end up with a little bit a coffee in your tea. Dilmah’s website does indicate you should do this.

Also, what of cost?
High to extreme I would think.

I don’t drink Dilmah’s tea as I have always drunken Australian grown tea, which is Nerada tea. So I’ll be comparing the prices between that and Dilmah’s tea capsules.

According to the Dilmah’s website a packet of their English Breakfast has 10 servings in it and costs $5.20 AUD, according to Woolworths’ website it costs $5.90 AUD.
Compared to Nerada’s 100 pack of tea bags on Coles’ website is $4.61 AUD, I’ve listed Coles’ website rather than Woolworths as theirs is currently on special (it’s on special for $2.99 but is usually $4.57 AUD, essentially no difference in price between the big two).
So in order to equal the servings of the 100 Nerada tea bags with the Dilmah capsules you’d need to spend $52.

What of the environmental costs?
As I mentioned above, I drink Nerada Tea, which is grown in Australia, an Australian company, employing Australians. The tea only travels as far afield as Australia, from where it’s grown in the fields to the factory where it’s dried and packed.

Dilmah’s and every other tea company has to at least be shipped into the country.
But these tea capsules, they’re made out of plastic and aluminium (according to the Wikipedia page).
I very much doubt that the bits of aluminium in these tea capsules are conventionally recyclable by the council.

On tea bag front, tea bags are made out of paper, they’ll rot in any compost or in any landfill.

Finally.
Control.
I like my tea a certain way, I use tea bags because that gives me the best balance between control and simplicity. Occasionally I’ll use loose leaf tea in a tea pot (and not use Nerada’s tea, in that case I’ll use T2’s Daintree tea as Nerada’s loose leaf is sometimes blended with imported teas.
I like my tea strong, I usually use 2 tea bags and let it steep for a while.
With these capsules, high pressure hot water (from what I understand) is forced through the capsule.
So you can’t control *how* your tea is brewed, it just gets spurted out into your cup.

Tea making was already a simple process, with infinite control and minimal amounts of waste.
These tea capsules make the process complicated, produce a lot more waste and take away all control.
If I didn’t already not drink Dilmah I’d boycott it.

Buy Nerada Tea Bags or T2 Daintree Loose Leaf Tea. Both are good, Nerada’s is inexpensive, T2’s isn’t as cheap, but is still cheaper than tea capsules.

Choc Honeycomb SupaShake

Some years ago Cadbury produced a range of shakeable milkshakes that you bought in the supermarket and at milk bars and the like, based on their chocolate bars. There was a chocolate one, a Crunchie one and I seem to recall a Cherry Ripe one.

The instructions on the cartons were “shake until you can’t hear any liquid sounds” or something to that effect. At the end you had a milkshake. Frothy and fantastic.

They disappeared after a while, likely some time ago.

However there still exits a product that does the same thing.

The SupaShake (or possibly Supa Shake), produced by Fonterra Brands (Australia). I’m occasionally partial to their Choc Honeycomb flavour.

Being Chocolate and Honeycomb flavour it does have a familiarity with Crunchie and those other honeycomb-based products.

Looking at the ingredients list was probably a mistake, and looking at the ingredients list whilst writing up this little musing on the drink, with a web browser in front of me was doubly a mistake.

First up there’s low fat milk and sugar. These I expected. It’s a sweet milk drink.

Next glucose syrup (from maize), which according to Wikipedia is used in commercially prepared foods as a sweetener, a thickener and a humectant (something which keeps moisture in food keeping it fresh. Probably not relevant to wet things.)

Now there’s the things only listed by numbers. Four vegetable gums; 460, 412, 466, 407.

The use of four different vegetable gums I imagine bring the super to the SupaShake.

460 is cellulose.

412 is Guar gum. It’s from guar beans. It has eight times the water thickening potency as cornflour, which itself is pretty fantastic if anyone’s made gravy or thickened a casserole or sauce with cornflour it can turn liquid in thick sauce very quickly.

466 is carboxymethyl cellulose it’s also cellulose, like 460. It’s a thickener and a stabiliser. Used in stuff like ice cream. Also things like toothpaste and personal lubricant, which is interesting.

407 is Carrageenan. It’s seaweed. It’s used as a vegetarian and vegan alternative to gelatin. It’s also used in a lot of things that need a consistent structure, texture or gelatinous structure. It’s used in ice creams, milk shakes, pâtés, soy milks, toothpaste, personal lubricant some diet drinks and various other things.

Next ingredient is chocolate a whole 0.3%, though this contains soy lecithin. This seems to be there to make the chocolate more soluble and combine with the milk more easily.

Next, “flavours”, and it doesn’t explain any further than that. It’s something I hate on ingredients lists, the other one which is just as bad and unhelpful is “spices”. No explanation further than those incredibly vague statements that these products might contain “flavours” or “spices”, just that, a vague statement.

Now onto the cocoa powder, 0.1% of it.

Finally two colours 110 and 102.

These ones I wish I hadn’t looked up.

110 is also known as Sunset Yellow or Orange Yellow. It’s manufactured from aromatic hydrocarbons from petroleum, according to Wikipedia.

It’s also banned in Norway and Finland.

Made from petrol. Marvellous.

102 is Tartrazine. Wikipedia says it’s a “synthetic organic chemical”, but other sources say it’s also a petroleum based colouring. Or coal tar.

It’s also banned in Norway and Austria.

Now having read all the ingredients and what exactly the numbers of the colours mean, I’m not sure if I want to drink this chocolate and honeycomb flavoured drink again. I still have one in the fridge though, it’s got a longer shelf life than regular milk. So I don’t need to make a decision as to what to do with it too soon.

V Not Orange

Not awful I think is my initial impression of V’s newest energy drink flavour.

It sort of reminds me of Berocca with all the gritty and other horrible bits taken out.
It is orange in the vaguest sense of the flavour of orange. Though orange specifics wise it’s probably closer to Sunkist or Fanta than it is to the spherical fruit that commonly grows on a tree in a grove.

There’s a flavour which isn’t passionfruit, isn’t even Passiona, but has a similar tang of...something to it, it’s not quite acidy, but it’s similar to those flavours.

I quite like V, the original normal bright green can / bottle flavour. I much prefer it to Red Bull and other energy drinks and rather like its strong sharpness.

V Not Orange is quite inoffensive, it’s not as acidy as V’s regular flavour and it’s not as outright awful as V Black (which was as though they’d got some coffee and mixed it with regular V; result; horrible).
V Not Orange seems to be aiming for anyone who doesn’t like the acidity of V regular. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing though. One of the defining points of energy drinks is their fairly sharp flavours. With Not Orange it’s more like Sunkist that’s had some extra something put into it, or Berocca that’s had sugar added.

Would I buy it again?
Maybe. I only bought it today because Safeway had it on special and there were only the huge cans of regular V.
It’s not that bad flavour wise, but it’s kinda as though they’ve decided to create a flavour that is less acid and more sweet than regular V.