I’m sure that what I drank wasn’t “real” (brewed) ginger beer, sadly. I read up a little on ginger beer, and it seems that the real stuff is hardly ever made anymore — it’s all carbonation and additives these days instead of actual fermentation. World’s going to hell in a handbasket, I tell ya!
Somebody should get busy and brew some bathtub ginger beer!
@lurkertype and @contrarius — you can home-brew quite lovely non-alcoholic ginger beer, though it takes a bit of work prepping the ginger. Every so often our local CostCo big-box store would have sales on large hands of fresh ginger; my husband made some amazing brews.
He experimented with using bread yeast first, and finally succeeded in getting a ginger “bug” started (the ginger beer equivalent of a sourdough starter).
It wasn’t hard but it was messy; having a food processor and a juicer in our kitchen toolkit definitely helped.
Chupa Chups being fruit(ish)-flavoured lollipops (She says, not knowing whether they’ve reached Oz or not), that tin is probably filled with vaguely grape flavoured fizzy sugar water. It’s mostly harmless.
Yes we have chupa chups (also cheap chops as autocorrect kept insisting). One thing that is less common in the uk and aus than the USA (as I understand) is grape as a generic flavour.
“The purple ones” have to be called some flavour or other – in the UK, it’d be blackcurrant, but if I recall correctly blackcurrants aren’t (or maybe weren’t until recently) allowed in the US. Something about them carrying potential fungal infections? I suppose I could look it up or something (but where’s the fun in that?)
Blackcurrants were a favourite fruit of my mum. So much so that she despised Ribena because she thought that all those blackcurrants were wasted in a drink.
Not illegal around here, anyway. I see them advertised at gardening sites all the time. But the Burpee site does say that they can’t ship to “AE, AK, AP, AS, CN, DE, FM, GU, HI, MA, ME, MH, MI, MP, NC, NH, NJ, OH, PR, PW, VI” — so, yeah, still can’t get em in some states!
I had no idea that blackcurrants, gooseberries, red currants, etc… were banned in parts of the US either. Kinder Surprise eggs, blackcurrants, gooseberries, red currants, etc…, where will it end?
Though it explains why there never was blackcurrant or red currant Strawberry Shortcake doll, even though they did all other possible and impossible berries. And yet they never had one of the most common and popular berries of all. As a kid, that baffled me.
There was a Strawberry Shortcake character called Gooseberry, though. It was another character’s pet goose.
BTW, my old Strawberry Shortcake toys are still in an airtight box in my parents’ attic somewhere, because they still emit that grisly artificial smell after 30+ years.
Going by the taste of Chupa Chups vs. other suckers — like Tootsie Pops — I’d expect very mildly artificially grape flavored fizzy water. I personally wouldn’t have wasted the calories on it.
All the tins in my cellar seem to contain beer. Except for those promising the high delights of paint.
TIMOTHY: Drink the paint! Drink it copiously! I hear it contains wondrous hallucinatory experience!
ME: Perhaps just the IPA today. I don’t feel strong enough for the Wild Beer containing kola nuts which, alas, I cannot persuade myself is essentially different from Coca-Cola with added hops.
TIMOTHY: [goes contemptuously to sleep, emitting only the occasional cynical burp].
ME: I don’t think I’ll be getting an SF Encyclopedia entry out of this….
Hey, what’s Timothy doing in Reading (Berkshire) anyway? I think we should be told.
I was about to ask whether it was redding or reeding…..
Coincidentally, there’s a well-known audiobook narrator who uses the name Kate Reading — it’s not a pen name, so what is it? a cassette name? a digital name? — and she pronounces her name Redding as well. Perhaps not coincidentally, she is sort of British (dual citizenship, raised in both UK and US).
I grew up (in the central Rockies region of the U.S.) with relatives who grew both gooseberries and black currants to make jam. I had no idea that the reason there were almost no Black Currant flavored this in the U.S. was because a bunch of states ban the plants…
I’ve eaten currents and current-flavored things and they’re… all right? Way down on my list of tasty fruit flavors so I don’t mind missing out.
Huckleberries are yummy but expensive since they aren’t farmed.
I have been unable to procure my regular supply of meatballs with lingonberry sauce his year, alas.
And of course there’s the boysen, logan, marion, ollalie and other berries, which spawned lots of jam and Orange County’s second-most popular theme park.
Also some fresh mooncakes. (though I don’t know what the protocol is when the full moon is high in the sky and still looks like it’s eclipsed… all night…)
Same store had tons of Ribena and other current-y things thanks to British adventures in Asia. Along with digestive biscuits and such.
uugggghhhhh I looked all over for mooncakes so I could have a mini celebration of my own on the harvest moon last night! I couldn’t find them so I settled for comfort food (katsu curry, yes I know it’s Japanese and not Chinese) and Chinese music (even though as part of that one of the guzheng albums I have for some reason includes Sakura Sakura)
I’m sorry you’re stuck in a tropical paradise sans mooncakes, she said sarcastically.
But also surprised you couldn’t find them. Japanese food is fine since they do mid-autumn moon festival too.
there wasn’t much selection left in the non-presentational boxes but I managed to get small ones without the duck egg because our cholesterol is bad enough. And a coupon for a dollar off!
Store I was in is mostly-Chinese but they’ve expanded to be pan-Asian: Japanese, Vietnamese, South Asian, a tiny bit of Korean, and extremely West Asian to the Mediterranean. Fruit, veg, and most especially the live fish and seafood are all Chinese though, as are the burly guys standing by to make the stuff in the tanks not-alive.
it sucks a bit on a personal level since the last time I celebrated it, I was living in Malaysia with my ex (we were together at the time, of course). I would’ve liked to celebrate it in a bigger way than I ended up doing, but a few of my friends got together for lunch and I insisted on telling them about the mid autumn festival, so not a total loss.
Camestros Felapton 
45 responses to “Not sure I should drink this…”
Oh, you should DEFINITELY drink that. We all need the report on what’s actually inside there!
(Incidentally, I drank a can of ginger beer last night. No, for those of you in doubt, it’s not actually alcoholic. Yes, I enjoyed it!)
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You’ve reminded me that I haven’t had a ginger beer in ages. Must remedy that when next at the supermarket.
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I’m sure that what I drank wasn’t “real” (brewed) ginger beer, sadly. I read up a little on ginger beer, and it seems that the real stuff is hardly ever made anymore — it’s all carbonation and additives these days instead of actual fermentation. World’s going to hell in a handbasket, I tell ya!
Somebody should get busy and brew some bathtub ginger beer!
LikeLiked by 3 people
I think there’s artisanal ginger beer that the hipsters brew the old way. Can’t afford that though.
I remembered I had a bottle of TJ’s Triple Ginger Ale! woot!
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@lurkertype and @contrarius — you can home-brew quite lovely non-alcoholic ginger beer, though it takes a bit of work prepping the ginger. Every so often our local CostCo big-box store would have sales on large hands of fresh ginger; my husband made some amazing brews.
He experimented with using bread yeast first, and finally succeeded in getting a ginger “bug” started (the ginger beer equivalent of a sourdough starter).
It wasn’t hard but it was messy; having a food processor and a juicer in our kitchen toolkit definitely helped.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Chupa Chups being fruit(ish)-flavoured lollipops (She says, not knowing whether they’ve reached Oz or not), that tin is probably filled with vaguely grape flavoured fizzy sugar water. It’s mostly harmless.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yes we have chupa chups (also cheap chops as autocorrect kept insisting). One thing that is less common in the uk and aus than the USA (as I understand) is grape as a generic flavour.
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Grape was always my favorite sweet soda flavor as a kid. 🙂
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Makes sense. The generic artificial grape flavor is clearly modeled on concord grapes which have a distinctive taste and are native to North America.
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“The purple ones” have to be called some flavour or other – in the UK, it’d be blackcurrant, but if I recall correctly blackcurrants aren’t (or maybe weren’t until recently) allowed in the US. Something about them carrying potential fungal infections? I suppose I could look it up or something (but where’s the fun in that?)
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I didn’t know that and had to look it up. Poor Americans! Deprived of Blackcurrant! No Ribena?
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We’ve got boysenberry!
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@stevejwright —
Huh. I am today’s lucky 10,000.
https://www.businessinsider.com/blackcurrant-america-vs-europe-2016-10
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Blackcurrants were a favourite fruit of my mum. So much so that she despised Ribena because she thought that all those blackcurrants were wasted in a drink.
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Luckily we can still buy imported ribena, even though its illegal to grow currants and gooseberries (in some States)
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Not illegal around here, anyway. I see them advertised at gardening sites all the time. But the Burpee site does say that they can’t ship to “AE, AK, AP, AS, CN, DE, FM, GU, HI, MA, ME, MH, MI, MP, NC, NH, NJ, OH, PR, PW, VI” — so, yeah, still can’t get em in some states!
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I’m in NC, so they’re illegal. The only time I’ve tasted fresh currants in the past 30 years was on vacation in WA.
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I can happily live without gooseberries.
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I had no idea that blackcurrants, gooseberries, red currants, etc… were banned in parts of the US either. Kinder Surprise eggs, blackcurrants, gooseberries, red currants, etc…, where will it end?
Though it explains why there never was blackcurrant or red currant Strawberry Shortcake doll, even though they did all other possible and impossible berries. And yet they never had one of the most common and popular berries of all. As a kid, that baffled me.
There was a Strawberry Shortcake character called Gooseberry, though. It was another character’s pet goose.
BTW, my old Strawberry Shortcake toys are still in an airtight box in my parents’ attic somewhere, because they still emit that grisly artificial smell after 30+ years.
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That can might be NFSW in my barrio.
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It’s 2020 Cam, how much worse could it make life?
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I drank it. We’ll see if things get better.
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And you lived!
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I transformed the poison within my body and in doing so gained the memories of all my ancestors. I am now the quiz-hat paddy-whack.
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… with a kwisatz haderach, give a dog a bone
this sandworm came rolling home.
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My favorite version of that is still from “DOON” which is set on a dessert planet where they await the Kumquat Haagen-Dazs.
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But how long has it been since he drank it? Might be slow-acting.
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Best ancestor so far?
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Barney McGrew, firefighter of Trumpton Town
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Ahhh, happy days indeed!
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I tried it in Korea and was sorely disappointed. It’s very bland. Welch’s strawberry soda was my jam back when I lived in Korea, though.
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Going by the taste of Chupa Chups vs. other suckers — like Tootsie Pops — I’d expect very mildly artificially grape flavored fizzy water. I personally wouldn’t have wasted the calories on it.
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Fun Fact: The Chupa Chups logo was designed by Salvador Dali
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All the tins in my cellar seem to contain beer. Except for those promising the high delights of paint.
TIMOTHY: Drink the paint! Drink it copiously! I hear it contains wondrous hallucinatory experience!
ME: Perhaps just the IPA today. I don’t feel strong enough for the Wild Beer containing kola nuts which, alas, I cannot persuade myself is essentially different from Coca-Cola with added hops.
TIMOTHY: [goes contemptuously to sleep, emitting only the occasional cynical burp].
ME: I don’t think I’ll be getting an SF Encyclopedia entry out of this….
Hey, what’s Timothy doing in Reading (Berkshire) anyway? I think we should be told.
LikeLiked by 3 people
He’s wandering around annoying locals by pronouncing it as reed-ing
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I was about to ask whether it was redding or reeding…..
Coincidentally, there’s a well-known audiobook narrator who uses the name Kate Reading — it’s not a pen name, so what is it? a cassette name? a digital name? — and she pronounces her name Redding as well. Perhaps not coincidentally, she is sort of British (dual citizenship, raised in both UK and US).
LikeLiked by 2 people
I grew up (in the central Rockies region of the U.S.) with relatives who grew both gooseberries and black currants to make jam. I had no idea that the reason there were almost no Black Currant flavored this in the U.S. was because a bunch of states ban the plants…
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They used to be banned in the whole country. That article I linked to yesterday has the full story.
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I’ve eaten currents and current-flavored things and they’re… all right? Way down on my list of tasty fruit flavors so I don’t mind missing out.
Huckleberries are yummy but expensive since they aren’t farmed.
I have been unable to procure my regular supply of meatballs with lingonberry sauce his year, alas.
And of course there’s the boysen, logan, marion, ollalie and other berries, which spawned lots of jam and Orange County’s second-most popular theme park.
LikeLike
Apparently there are at least 4 flavors: Orange, Grape, Strawberry & Cream, and, uh… Melon & Cream.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/153347321333
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Honestly I’d try the melon & cream one. Melon soda in and of itself is pretty decent.
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I bought some Ramune melon soda today.
Also some fresh mooncakes. (though I don’t know what the protocol is when the full moon is high in the sky and still looks like it’s eclipsed… all night…)
Same store had tons of Ribena and other current-y things thanks to British adventures in Asia. Along with digestive biscuits and such.
And matcha Kit Kats! 🙂
I did NOT buy a durian.
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uugggghhhhh I looked all over for mooncakes so I could have a mini celebration of my own on the harvest moon last night! I couldn’t find them so I settled for comfort food (katsu curry, yes I know it’s Japanese and not Chinese) and Chinese music (even though as part of that one of the guzheng albums I have for some reason includes Sakura Sakura)
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I’m sorry you’re stuck in a tropical paradise sans mooncakes, she said sarcastically.
But also surprised you couldn’t find them. Japanese food is fine since they do mid-autumn moon festival too.
there wasn’t much selection left in the non-presentational boxes but I managed to get small ones without the duck egg because our cholesterol is bad enough. And a coupon for a dollar off!
Store I was in is mostly-Chinese but they’ve expanded to be pan-Asian: Japanese, Vietnamese, South Asian, a tiny bit of Korean, and extremely West Asian to the Mediterranean. Fruit, veg, and most especially the live fish and seafood are all Chinese though, as are the burly guys standing by to make the stuff in the tanks not-alive.
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it sucks a bit on a personal level since the last time I celebrated it, I was living in Malaysia with my ex (we were together at the time, of course). I would’ve liked to celebrate it in a bigger way than I ended up doing, but a few of my friends got together for lunch and I insisted on telling them about the mid autumn festival, so not a total loss.
LikeLiked by 2 people