Bite of the Best » Beverages

Hint Water

Bonnie from BiteoftheBest.com — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 03:59:47 +0000

Bonnie: My thirst-quenching beverage of choice is sparkling water (aka seltzer or carbonated water made using my can’t-live-without Soda Club sparkling-water maker). Second, I’d choose that bubbly water with an added splash of juice — a drink that was the “soda” in ...

Bryan: Imagine you’ve just finished off a bottle of juice, and then refilled the bottle with cold, crisp water. Take a sip. What do you taste? A hint of that juice flavor, just a bit of something to give your water a different sense of ...

Eric: It’s great to finally see a flavored water in the beverage aisle that doesn’t contain absurd amounts of sugar, chemicals and sweeteners. Sure there might be one or two others out there, but none with the similar (subtle)...

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Purista Caipirinha Cocktail Mix

Bonnie from BiteoftheBest.com — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 04:05:36 +0000

Bonnie: “Cachaça?” asked the puzzled bartender.

It was the early ’90s in Beaver Creek, where I was skiing fresh powder with a German restaurateur. Exhausted from skiing, we skied to our lodging for an après-ski drink where Klaus ordered us caipirinhas.

The bartender said...

Bryan: I only really heard about cachaça (Brazil’s prized national liquor) a few months back, when I received an email about National Cachaça Day (insert link). So if you are like me and a bit unfamiliar with the word “caipirinha,” it refers to Brazil’s national cocktail, a beverage made with cachaça, sugar and lime. Cachaça is by far Brazil’s most popular alcoholic beverage. Though it is consumed in massive...

Eric: When facing most challenges in life, preparation is the key to success. Two years ago, I learned this lesson all too well while holding a bowl of limes, a bunch of mint and standing behind a bar surrounded by a crowd of thirsty people. “Cut, rip, muddle, pour” is a sequence synonymous with the painstaking...

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Weaver’s Organic Blend Coffee

Bonnie from BiteoftheBest.com — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 04:01:45 +0000

Bonnie: I begin my day by freshly grinding coffee beans, then brewing a pot full. I find that aroma intoxicating as I sit at my computer beginning to respond to emails while waiting for the coffee to brew. That good cup of coffee makes my morning at the computer so much more enjoyable.

Earlier this year I received an email from Amy Bonetti, sharing information about...

Bryan: Though I sort of hate to admit it, coffee is becoming a bigger and bigger part of my life. Don’t get me wrong. I’ve never had anything against the ubiquitous beverage; it’s just that I never wanted to like it too much. There are coffee lovers and there are coffee needers. Thankfully, I still believe I fall into the first...

Eric: The past two years of my life have been a little chaotic; I’ve moved three times, have been involved with four different jobs (and one potential career), bought a dog and, most importantly, realized that a morning routine is the mother-of-all necessities. This includes a hot cup of freshly brewed coffee. Although my day begins with an early ...

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Señor Sangria

Bonnie from BiteoftheBest.com — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 04:01:23 +0000

Bonnie: People always ask me how we find products to review on Bite of the Best. Some are samples that just find their way into my mailbox, some I trip over at events/conferences and others find us through PR (public relations) pitches.

“Do you ever look at alcoholic beverages?” e-mailed Jeff Davis. “I’m working with a new premium, all-natural sangria. If up your alley, let me know.”

That was the first time I’d heard about this new sangria. What followed next intrigued...

Bryan: Sangria, literally translated, as “bloody,” essentially is a wine punch. The drink originated in southern Europe (Spain, Portugal and Italy) but now can be found as a sweet summer offering all around the world. Sangria is as much a reflection of its locality as any food. There is no actual “recipe” for sangria as much as there is a loose interpretation of the drink, allowing for endless flavors to emerge from a single idea.

Though the rules are loose, the beverage generally consists of a combination (often with vastly... Eric: Ever since my first visit to Spain, sangria has become my quintessential summer drink. It is refreshing, intoxicating and delicious (that is of course dependent on the variety) and even my girlfriend, an avid nondrinker, will usually fill a glass, sit back, and enjoy. The difficulty when it comes to drinking sangria is that if you don’t have the right ingredients at home, you’re usually heading to the nearest restaurant to get a pitcher – and that is not always a sure thing.

In my opinion, the....

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Sunkist Naturals: 100 Percent Tangerine

Bonnie from BiteoftheBest.com — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 04:01:51 +0000

Bonnie: With one taste of this sweet nectar I was hooked on 100 percent pure tangerine juice. It’s not from concentrate; in fact it takes 2.5 pounds of fresh tangerines to make the juice for one 15.2-ounce bottle. The delicious result…

Q Tonic

Bonnie from BiteoftheBest.com — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 04:01:41 +0000

Bonnie: One summer night when founder Jordan Silbert and his friends were enjoying both the summer breeze and gin and tonics, he happened to look at the ingredient list of both the tonic and his friend’s can of soda. (Something I habitually do!)

“Do you know that tonic water has as much high fructose corn syrup as Sprite?” he asked the group. “I thought it had no calories, like club soda.”

Wrong. Tonic water is mostly...

Bryan: It’s funny to think how some of our most revered beverages got their starts. Coca Cola, the world’s most iconic drink, was initially sold as medicine for five cents a glass; mixed with carbonated water, it was claimed Coca-Cola cured many diseases, including morphine addiction, headache and impotence. If that’s what I’m drinking with my cheeseburger, why should it be so odd to find that tonic water traces its roots back to British officers stationed in India? The soldiers went about...

Eric: Tonic water is an acquired drink taste, and just like certain foods in this world, it is one that I can gladly live without. It’s bitter, it’s tasteless and it doesn’t mix well with my favorite spirit, Bourbon. That aside, I can understand why some people live by it, either straight up, on the rocks or as a mixer with their favorite spirit. I know this because during the last two years I was in college, I started and successfully operated (with the help of a few friends) a cocktail bar named “The Alchemists.”

Part of the appeal of standing behind the bar...

Tropicana Pure Valencia

Bonnie from BiteoftheBest.com — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 04:02:13 +0000

Bonnie: The best tasting orange juice? The fresh-squeezed glassful I’ve sipped while sitting outside in a Florida orange grove. Second best? This new 100 percent Valencia orange juice. It’s sweeter and less acidic than Tropicana’s Pure Premium (which to date had been the gold standard of supermarket chilled juices.)

To be honest, at first I was skeptical — and confused — when the varieties of Tropicana Pure arrived at my doorstep. Skeptical about how this new Valencia juice could be described as the most premium Tropicana had ever offered, as I had thought that Tropicana Pure Premium was....

And while we’re talking grapefruit juice, let me add a Health Note from WebMD: “limit fresh grapefruit consumption while...

Bryan: You might ask, what is there really to say about orange juice at this point? The beverage has become such a staple of morning routines that we rarely discuss its various qualities these days. Americans drink it in all forms, but mostly from concentrate and rarely with any thought, aside from price. I was among this group of ‘sale’ buyers until...

Eric: The commodity FCOJ (Frozen Concentrated Orange Juice)...The first thing that came to mind when I was thinking about “orange juice” was the movie “Trading Places” where Billy Ray & Winthorpe’s cornered the FCOJ market. It is curious to me that my first thought was a movie reference, and not the usual childhood...

Lipton PureLeaf All Natural Ready-to-Drink, Unsweetened

Bonnie from BiteoftheBest.com — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 04:01:37 +0000

Bonnie: The South has always done ice tea right: freshly brewed and unsweetened, with your glass continually refilled. It’s somewhat like the North does with tap water. I’ve experienced this bottomless beverage service during my many visits there.

I like that fresh brewed unsweetened ice tea. But I don’t like tea with added sweeteners and flavorings—that includes most bottled ones — especially where sweeteners and flavorings are artificial. This is the main reason I’ve always avoided most bottled tea.

And then I tried Lipton PureLeaf Unsweetened Tea.

I wasn’t expecting a fresh brewed taste from a bottled tea, which is why it surprised me when...

Bryan: As you may have realized last week, I love tea. Hot tea is great, but iced tea is my true love. The affair with iced tea began with my first job; I was a short-order cook serving the breakfast crowd. Snapple was in it’s heyday then and the kitchen’s fridge was full of it. Every morning revolved around a hot egg sandwich and an iced tea. I loved them all sequentially, going through a long raspberry phase before falling head over heels for...

Eric: To be honest, I really couldn’t tell you what a good iced tea should taste like anymore. While growing up, I followed in many of my brother’s footsteps, but the Iced Tea Incident of 2002 ended my love affair with Lemon Snapple, and scarred me from trying an iced tea for a few years to come. It all started during my summers working on the beach in Connecticut. I was an iced tea junkie and would get my “fix” from my daily Lemon...

NOTE — Bonnie: Before sending Snapple the bottle to find out exactly what the “finger-esque” object was, I had taken this photo of it. Little did I know that six years later, Eric would reference it in a blog we would be doing together.

After receiving the bottle, a spokesperson from Snapple ...

Starbucks Coffee for Tassimo

Bonnie from BiteoftheBest.com — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 04:10:25 +0000

Bonnie: In general, I’ve never really been a fan of “pod” single-cup beverage machines for many reasons. For some (Senseo), the resulting coffee is too weak and watery for me, where you almost see the bottom of the cup.

My one exception was my Nespresso machine that always makes a good cup of espresso. Its pods — that look like a foil-sealed, half-and-half creamer found in diners — are well sealed, keeping the coffee fresh. And, the maker of the brew controls the amount of liquid in the cup, and thus the strength.

And now there’s another good single-cup brewer: Tassimo, but only with their new Starbucks T-discs.

I must, though, first back up to May 2005 when at FMI (the supermarket industry convention) Pat Riso (then a Kraft spokesperson) demonstrated their new beverage-making machine to me. According to Pat, you...

Bryan: Do any of you remember those drug commercials from the 80’s: “I learned it by watching you, Dad!” I learned much from this ad and tactfully avoided my mother’s vicious coffee addiction. Bonnie needs a full pot of strong brew to get going in the morning. This fact was driven home to me on a trip to Brussels long ago. Staying at my aunt’s...

Eric: I nearly laughed out loud after reading my brother’s recollection of our trip to Brussels and the withdrawal my mother went through with her “decaf episode.” It is amazing that coffee is not considered a soft drug or, for that matter, that caffeine itself is not recognized as just as an addictive substance as nicotine. Working in the hospitality industry you start...

Contrex Natural Mineral Water

Bonnie from BiteoftheBest.com — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 12:50:05 +0000

Bonnie: When invited on a European Great Springs Safari many years ago, I couldn’t resist. Not only would I get to sample waters at the source of four different springs, but I’d learn how each source affects the water’s taste and character, about the latest research in hydration, the “gastronomy of water” and hydrogeology itself. (The latter, a branch of geology concerned with movement of water underground through rocks or on the surface of the earth.)