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Tuesday, November 20, 2007

The Great Drink Tasting

This was a great Sunday idea: we bought about twenty beverages that we had never tasted. Most of them came from the Pan Asian Trading grocery store because we couldn't read the labels. The occasional English informed us we had bought things like "Nostalgia Drink", "Mangosteen", "Grass Jelly" and "Sac Sac Grape". Then we organized an event. Some friends provided the guest judges for our tasting event.

The winner: A surprising victory. The mystery bottle, the only one without a single word of English. It turned out to be an Apple Juice with a polite hint of sour. We enjoyed.

The loser: A disgrace to the liquid community. Hawton San Cha was unanimously declared the aggressor responsible for World War I. It received everyone's lowest rating, including the distinction of the only non-numerical score with a "f*ck hawton".

Memorable Quotes from the Event:
"Brio is like that commercial where they squeeze cigarettes into a glass."
"Oh shiiiiiiiiiit!" (excited smelling mangosteen) "This is almost an elixir."
"This drink (Grass Jelly) sounds like a low level RPG villain - grass jelly nears."
"Drinks should not have chunks."
"No no no." (upon drinking hawton)
"If that (Hawton) had chunks it would have been below five."
"I'd like to point out that the front says grape and 20 percent sac."
"The way it came out of the can was like watching birth happen."
"Why does it go reight up the nose like that?"
"It (tizer) tastes like old."

Our Judges and their Biases:


Andrew
Average score: 65
Personal favourite: Root Beer Float (rating: 96)
Matt
Average score: 56.722
Personal favourite: Barely Sweetie Cranberry (rating: 100)
Mina
Average score: 62.5
Personal favourite: Orangeina (rating: 100)
Peter
Average score: 61
Personal favourite: Brio (rating: 100)
Stef
Average score: 64.167
Personal favourite: Beet Apple Carrot Ginger (homemade) (rating: 95)
Shauna
Average score: 61
Personal favourite: Crush's Cream Soda (rating: 100)We plan to hold a Never Seen Before Fruits and Vegetables Tasting as well.

Advice if you're organizing this event:
-Eight people would be optimum. We had six people and Shauna had to leave for work. A can of mystery liquid can be split eight ways. Except Hawton. It should be thrown out.
-We took turns choosing the next drink. That was good.
-We had crackers to cleanse our palates. No one really ate the crackers except for me. I think I downed almost two sleeves of Premium Plus. I have a problem.
-I had my laptop to record each round's ratings. I would have loved to be able to project it on the wall, or do something so everyone could see. Reasonably, people wanted to know their past scores so they could rank the drinks properly.
-Leftover liquid was poured into a central glass. We did not force anyone to drink the Swill Center but it would have been a good way to make a twoonie.
-the whole thing took about two hours. We rushed the end to get out of Andrew's house. He too had to work. I forgot to share the box of chocolate bars I had brought for the ending. I recommend doing this because greed.

3 comments:

Lisa said...

This is hilarious- thanks for doing some quick data analysis for me, too. (I'm in love with averages) That's such a clever idea- trying things you've never tasted before. I'm fairly picky, but I feel that trying new drinks is less risky than trying new foods. I want to host a great drink testing party!

Catspaw said...

This is brilliant. I've decided that I'm going to organize a similar event at Google. Thanks for the idea. :)

(I'll let you know if anyone dies. There are some weird drinks out there.)

Simon said...

Oddly enough most of the drinks you mentioned I have had in the past 3 months. Between Korea and South East Asia I have had so many drinks with mystery pieces of mystery that I have actually grown fond of them.