The other day on our weekly trip to the grocery store, I took a peep at the holiday Coffee-Mate (CM) display. I have already polished off my first bottle of holiday ‘mate–Peppermint Mocha, of course–so it was time for another bottle. I was planning on grabbing some Pumpkin Spice, which is my second favorite holiday Coffee-Mate, but then something caught my eye. It was a new kind of holiday Coffee-Mate: Caramel Apple! Naturally, I had to buy it and write my review of it for you, dear coffee-drinking reader.

I had my hesitations about buying it. First of all, I’m not sure how Christmas-y Caramel Apple is. I’ve never had a caramel apple outside of October. However, it’s not Christmas CM; it’s holiday CM, which can include Halloween, I guess, though it didn’t appear until November. Second, I was unsure about how good apple would taste in coffee. I’m already a fan of Vanilla Caramel CM; it’s part of my regular rotation, so I knew that caramel + coffee = yum. But apple? I was skeptical.

However, Caramel Apple CM is quite tasty. It blends well with the coffee and doesn’t overwhelm it (depending on how much you use).You taste the apple first, but there’s a good mixture of caramel taste in the background. The apple flavor isn’t too strong, which I think would ruin it; it is subtle but definitely present. The caramel is always present but grows stronger as you sip. After you swallow, there is a nice combination of both flavors that stays on the back of your tongue. It’s sweet and yummy.

Compared to the other holiday Coffee-Mates, it fares well. For me, it is tastier than Gingerbread (ugh), Egg Nog, and Pumpkin Spice. It goes without saying that Peppermint Mocha is the absolute best, so Caramel Apple jumps from obscurity all the way into second place. I didn’t expect it to be that good, but it is surprisingly yummy.

Even though it doesn’t taste like Christmas, Caramel Apple Coffee-Mate is definitely worth giving a try. It adds the right amount of flavor to your morning cuppa without taking over, and the apple and caramel have some synergy. I recommend taking a bottle home and giving it a try, but if you’re running out of time in the holiday season and can buy only one bottle of CM, buy Peppermint Mocha.

When I saw the ad campaign for Pepsi Throwback, I was immediately interested in giving it a try (not because of the ads, which are annoying). Pepsi Throwback is the same Pepsi formula except that’s made with natural sugars instead of the high fructose corn syrup to which we’ve grown accustomed. I wondered how and if Pepsi would taste different with regular sugar. Up to this point in my life, I have had no quarrel with high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), which is the latest in a long line of ingredients that health nuts are berating. I don’t know much about it, and I don’t really care. However, the issue has come to my attention recently due to an assignment in an economics class at the college where I work.

Since I work in the writing center, I’ve read somewhere between six and nine papers that discuss why Coca-Cola switched from cane sugar to HFCS. It turns out that in the early 1980s, the price of cane and beet sugar became suddenly more expensive, and Coke stood to lose a lot of money in overhead. Staying with regular sugar would mean a price hike and a downturn in sales, so Coke found an alternative: HFCS. Corn syrup is made right here in the U.S. of A., and it is cheaper. Thus, Coke made the switch (without telling anybody until a couple of years later) and saved a lot of money. To stay competitive, Pepsi and the other major pop makers did the same thing. Therefore, the Pepsi and Coke I grew up tasting has always been with HFCS, and I never knew the difference.

Enter Pepsi Throwback. Pepsi decided to show us all what we’ve been missing by releasing their cola with regular ol’ sugar for a limited time. It tastes significantly better. First of all, it’s much lighter. It doesn’t feel as substantial as regular Pepsi. It’s easier to swallow, if that makes sense. Secondly, there’s no aftertaste. I didn’t even know Pepsi had an aftertaste until I had Throwback. When you drink it, it’s tasty and fizzy, and then it’s gone. It’s great! J tried it too, and also thought it tastes much better than normal Pepsi. She even thought it tastes better than her beloved Coca-Cola, which is saying something.

I can’t decide if producing Pepsi Throwback is brilliant or foolhardy. It’s quite clever of Pepsi to release a soda pop with natural ingredients in the middle of our more health-conscious culture. I suppose there are still plenty of unnatural ingredients in there, such as dyes, etc., but the anti-HFCS folks have no complaint with Throwback. Oh, and it tastes a lot better. On the other hand, Throwback is around for a limited time. That means that in the future, I’ll have to go back to drinking regular, HFCS Pepsi (or not drinking it), and I’ll know the difference. If a large number of people enjoy Pepsi Throwback more than regular Pepsi, the company might be facing a difficult choice: continue making the popular soda with higher overhead, or go back to the less popular formula that’s cheaper.

It will be interesting to see if Throwback sells well. If it does (and I think it will), Pepsi might have a problem on its hands. In any case, it is refreshing (pun intended) to be able to try pop with natural sugar. I hope you try it for yourself, dear reader, even if you’re not a normal Pepsi drinker. It’s worth the cost of one bottle or can just for the experience.

Now if only Pepsi would re-release Crystal Clear Pepsi…

A few months ago, I noticed I could no longer purchase a Vault from the coolers by the cashier at Target. Weeks later, I discovered the same thing had occurred at my local Albertson’s. Today, I went to my local gas station, and could find only a one-liter bottle of Vault–no cans nor 20 oz bottles.

Have you seen me lately?

Vault is disappearing from the beverage world.

My suspicion was confirmed by the manager of the gas station. “Are you phasing out Vault?” I asked, incredulously. “Yeah. At my old store, they just pulled them from the shelves.”

“People don’t drink it?”

“No. It has a particular flavor about it that lots of people don’t like. We’ve had to throw away lots of bottles because they were expired.”

“Why didn’t you give them to me?!”

It seems that Vault is on the guillotine of consumer demand, and the blade is falling rapidly. How can this happen? Are all you Coke, Pepsi and Mountain Dew drinkers so inflexible* that you can’t grab a more tasty Vault every once in a while? Please, for pity’s sake, broaden your horizons!

Alas, I feel this meager post is too little, too late. Soon I’ll have to choose between a myriad of inferior, over-priced pops if I want a cool, carbonated caffeine rush. Finally, I know how Dan felt about Surge in the late nineties. Goodnight, sweet Vault. And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.

*You’ve got to get yourself into a flexible frame or you are no place!

It took the editorial staff of Ahab’s Quest a couple of weeks to locate another experimental Mountain Dew flavor. This is due to two primary factors: 1. The AQ staff has far better things to do than drive all over Denver looking for potentially yucky pop; 2. Most places don’t stock the three would-be Mountain Dews, probably because no one is buying them. I almost gave up hope on continuing this already below-average serial of blog posts, but then fate (and picking up photos) brought me into my local Walgreens*. There, semi-miraculously, I located “Voltage” and purchased it.

It's actually drinkable

At first I was quite confused. I was pretty sure the first alternate Dew I had tasted was “Revolution,” which was blue and tasted of overly-sugared raspberries. “Voltage,” on the other hand, is blue and raspberry-flavored. And now you know the difference. All right, “Voltage” is darker blue and probably has different raspberries in it…right? Whoops, looks like “Revolution” has wild berries, NOT raspberries. My mistake. Also, there is apparently some sort of “citrus flavor” in “Voltage.”

In any case, there is one major difference between the two: “Voltage” is tolerable. Actually, it’s fairly good. It doesn’t taste overly-sugared like its wild berry opponent, and the raspberry flavor is well-balanced with the regular Mt. Dew flavor, whatever the bleep that is. I drank the entire bottle and enjoyed it.

If “Voltage” wins the upcoming election, I may buy one now and then. I probably would not, but I certainly would imbibe it over Mountain Dew-lade. Blech. In sum, “Voltage” ok; “Revolution” yucky; “Supernova” MIA. Indeed, this may be the last installment of this silly series if I can’t find “Supernova” in any local Quick-E-Mart or grocery barn. I promise to keep a haphazard lookout for it whenever I feel like it and am in the vicinity of a vendor who may have it. Of course, if “Supernova” wins, then I’ll try it and review it for you, faithful reader, even though it would be too late then. Perhaps I’d get a bumper sticker that said: “It’s not MY new Mountain Dew flavor,” and everyone would think I was cool and anti-establishment.

I just now found out that I can see the status of the Dew race in every state! Out here in Colorado, it’s “Voltage” 41%, “Supernova” 33%, and Beetlebong at 25% as of this post. But does “Voltage” have a plan to stimulate our economy?

*You know, the one right next to the Starbucks and across the way from the other Walgreens.

Every so often there comes a phrase that needs immediate expurgation from the English language. Saying “OMG” for example, when of course the abbreviation arose out of laziness in typing, warrants an immediate punch in the kidneys. Another such phrase is “get [whoever] a Starbucks,” e.g. “I hope Susan will get me a Starbucks.”

I have my beef with Starbucks. Their milk is burnt. They don’t put enough espresso in their drinks, so they taste like flavored milk. Their size names are nonsensical (how could a “tall” be a “small,” and why is there something bigger than “grande?”). They call any cold drink a “frappucino,” regardless of whether it contains coffee or merely fruit juice. They’re everywhere. The shortcomings of the coffee chain, however, are not at the root of my annoyance with this idiotic phrase; it’s the carelessness. Naturally, the person who says “I hope Susan will get me a Starbucks” is not expecting a Starbucks, i.e. a franchised building that sells coffee; squi is hoping for a DRINK.

The small part of me that thinks well of humanity wants to argue that perhaps this lazy phrase derived from the various drinks Starbucks sells. After all, one could want something from Starbucks that isn’t a coffee (like a frappucino!). The majority of me thinks its simply stupidity. I go to Starbucks to get drinks, ergo the drinks and the place are the same thing. The bad logic hurts. Ouch.

Let’s just band together to eschew this “get me a Starbucks” atrocity, shall we? As my astute wife pointed out, we’ve already adopted too many brand names in place of the actual noun we want (“Band-Aid,” “Kleenex,” and “Chapstick” in lieu of “bandage,” “tissue,” and “lip balm”). We don’t need to continue the trend. Besides, you don’t want a Starbucks! There are employee issues and overhead and early hours and late hours and loud, expensive machines and protesters and monotonous color schemes and stupid size names and competition from your own company one block away (not to mention other companies) and rent to pay and benefits to iron out and politics and lots and lots of drinks to make every day; you want something to drink. Why not say so?

Yesterday as my wife and I were eating another yummy dinner complete with a refreshing glass of Squirt, I happened to glance over at the ingredients list of said soda pop. I think what drew my attention was the “Less than 1% real juice.” Naturally, I wondered of what the more than 99% consisted. First on the list was good ol’ water. Second was: “High fructose corn syrup and/or sugar.”

And/or sugar? How is it that the fine folks who bottle Squirt do not know what is in their beverage? Isn’t the entire purpose of the ingredients list to know exactly what is in the foodstuff or drink I’m consuming? What if it read, “High fructose corn syrup and/or cyanide?”

I am simply stumped about how Squirt employees don’t know what’s in their drink. Is there a giant vat into which corn syrup and sugar are poured indiscriminately? Maybe there are two vats, one for each ingredient, but no one knows which is poured into the bottle of Squirt as it passes by. Perhaps they received a shipment of high fructose syrup and sugar, but the containers came sans labels.

In any case, the “and/or” quasi-conjunction in a list of ingredients was most unsettling. One should try to avoid using “and/or” too often in any circumstance, but when it comes to telling me what’s in my drink, I’d like to be able to say for certain. Even so, Squirt remains one of my top five pops*.

*In no order: Cherry Jones Soda, Vault, Squirt, Cherry Coke, and Welch’s Grape. At least, that’s the list today.

Here at Ahab’s Quest we pride ourselves on staying abreast of the latest in Coffee-Mate flavorology. Naturally, when we saw a the new Cinnamon Bun flavor at our local Super Target, we couldn’t say no. I should begin by saying that I’m not a huge cinnamon guy. I do enjoy cinnamon-flavored food stuffs on occasions, but despite Jerry’s great line in “The Dinner Party,”* I haven’t found cinnamon all that great. However, I do love cinnamon rolls, so I was ready for anything.

What really intrigued me about this flavor was the “bun” aspect. Anybody can make something taste like cinnamon, but to make something liquid taste like something cinnamon, sweet and and made of dough? I had my doubts. When I first tried it, I thought it nothing extraordinary. It tasted like cinnamon with a little undefinable something else thrown in. The next day, though, I added more ‘Mate to my morning coffee and–lo and behold!–it tasted like a cinnamon bun.

How they accomplished this feat, I know not. With the Cinnamon Bun CM in my coffee, it tastes somewhat like I just dunked a cinnamon roll into my coffee, which is something I love to do anyway. One tastes the cinnamon bunny-ness, but it’s never overwhelming. If I liked cinnamon in general, I’m sure I would love this flavor. As it is I still enjoy it, though it’s not one of my favorites. The flavor of the ‘Mate is fine, but I wish I didn’t have to put so much into my morning brew. The best flavors are yummy whether the amount of creamer is large or small. Still, I’m planning to add it to my general rotation. 7.2/10, B.

Take my word on it, reader: it’s worth a try, even if you buy only one bottle.

*Jerry: I beg your pardon? Cinnamon takes a back seat to no babka. People love cinnamon. It should be on tables at restaurants along with salt and pepper. Anytime anyone says, “Oh This is so good. What’s in it?” The answer invariably comes back, “Cinnamon”. “Cinnamon”. Again and again. Lesser babka – I think not.

Yesterday, this humble blog received a whopping 79 hits. I wish I could pretend this is normal, “But clearly,” thought I, “something is up.” Forty-five of those visits were all for the same post, which is a lowly post about how much my dad would love Blueberry Coffee-Mate.  “Hmm,” I thought again, “I wonder if something is going on with Coffee-Mate.”

Unlike many of my visitors, I checked it out by going directly to coffee-mate.com, which is, you know, the actual website of my favorite coffee creamer manufacturer. Turns out they are giving away coupons for a free bottle of any flavor ‘Mate you want. All you have to do is take a little survey, and they send you a coupon. Naturally, I filled out the survey with visions of Amaretto dancing in my head. If you want in on this promotion, click here.

This is the only reason I can think of that so many folks would stop by my blog searching for Coffee-Mate-related material (of which we have no shortage). I admit that this post is, in part, a shameless ploy to get more hits along these lines, but I also want to spread the free CM joy.

Seriously, Coffee-Mate should be paying me for stuff like this.

Oh, and no, we at Ahab’s Quest DO NOT manufacture, sell, or distribute Coffee-Mate IN ANY WAY; we just drink it and like it a lot. This will not stop many of you from asking me for free creamer anyway, if past comments are any precedent.

I’ve stopped drinking pop for Lent this year. If you live on either coast, that means I’m having no soda; if you’re from the South, Coke is off-limits for me. For most of my life, I’ve not been into Christian tradition nor the Church calender. In high school around this time of year, I abstained from abstaining because I felt that being different in my Catholic school was an important part of my non-denominational status.

However, I’ve slowly reconsidered my anti-tradition stance, and this isn’t the first time I’ve made use of Lent to sacrifice something, small though it is. I like pop, especially Vault, and I’ve grown accustomed to having some a couple times per week. Now that I’ve given it up, I find that I think about drinking pop a lot more, so the reminder function of Lent is really working for me.

I don’t know that I’ll always give up something between Ash Wednesday and Easter, but it’s neat this year. Maybe I won’t even want pop when Easter arrives; I’ve gone a year without having any before, and that felt good for some reason (it burned when I drank some again). In any case, it feels good to be a part of the Lenten tradition for once. Man, I really miss Vault though…especially the red kind.

If you were to purchase a house, you wouldn’t walk in and say, “This house is perfect! I’m not going to buy any furniture! Let’s just leave it as it is.” Why? Because a house isn’t really a house without all the comforts of home in it. Sure, it stands on its own, but it has no personality, no appeal, no flavor…

So it is with cheese pizza. Did you know that every pizza comes with dough, sauce and cheese? Indeed, they all do. I don’t understand why, given that fact, that so many people order their pizza with no toppings. “No, just leave it as it is.” Put some dang toppings on it! If you’re a vegetarian, they have vegetables to throw on there. As for me, I need meat; I don’t want a pizza that comes without sausage, pepperoni, ham or something along those lines.

Cheese pizza tastes like boring. Give me some flavor on my slice, or give me no slice at all!