Having some free time for myself, I again went out and visited Sheng Siong. I saw that they have a number of drink mixes on their shelves. One of the cheapest is the Kraft Tang Drink Mix. It cost S$2.00 per pack and can mix up to 4 litres of delicious and surprisingly healthy drinks. And if you buy 2 packets, it is S$3.50 in total. 8 litres of fruit flavoured drinks for S$3.50, I must be in heaven! If only everything in Singapore is that cheap.

Anyway, I have not tried out the mix yet but I have taken a few photos. I bought the Pineapple and the Grape mix. The bored looking female Sheng Siong cashier who took my money didn’t even bothered to take one look at me when I paid her. I must be getting old. Lost my charm.

There are the two packs of 500g mix. Looks great isn’t it. I hope that it will taste even better. Looks like they have Vitamin C, Vitamin B, Vitamin A, Folate and Iron. Wow, is it as nutritious as milk???

Can’t see much from this picture. Basically it tells us how healthy the drink is with big words like C, B, FOLATE, A & IRON.

A bigger picture of the pack of Grape mix. The words are in Malayu, so I guess this is actually made for the Malaysian market and imported in by Sheng Siong to Singapore. Perhaps that is why is it so cheap. If it was made for Singapore, the price would have doubled and the quality reduced significantly.

Okay, the ingredients are sugar, critic acid, calcium Phosphate, sodium chloride, vitamins, sodum carboxymethlcellulose, Natural & Nature Identical Grape Flavours, Artifical colours and iron salt. Cool.  If only I knew what they meant. Don’t you just love jargons? It could have bat’s shit in the ingredient list and nobody would know the difference.

This is for the yellow one. The Pineapple flavour.

Well, the ingredients are a bit different from the Grape mix. It contains sugar, citric acid, sodium carboxymethylcellulose, calcium phosphate, vitamins, permitted artifical colours (including tartrazone), iron salt, natural pineapple juice solids and permitted artifical flavours. Again cool.

I will be testing the drinks once I made them. Will comment once I have done it.

Aren’t you sick of Ribena already? Sure that is the drink we all grow up on in Singapore but seriously, it is not really a blackcurrant drink. When you pour the blackcurrant concentrate and dilute it with water, it is either too sweet or just too weak. Don’t you just hate it when that happens. There is no sure way for you to get the correct concentration for that perfect drink. Furthermore, you can’t taste the blackcurrant flavour at all.

Thus I shall introduce to you Bickford’s Blackcurrant Sparkling Fruit Juice Drink. Now this is really a drink which you can enjoy and something that you won’t feel too sickly sweet when it goes down your throat like our Ribena. I have taken some photos of the drink. You can easily find them at our local supermarkets.

Very nice look.  It contains 8% blackcurrant juice. Surely with so much blackcurrant juice in this drink, you will be able to taste the blackcurrant. Although I won’t say the taste is particularly strong, I would say this is much better than Ribena.

Cool, no artifical colours, no artifical flavourings and a great source of Vitamin C. Plus you get a great tasting and delicious drink. I think it is an especially refreshing drink in our warm Singapore climate.  Best served cold!

Contains carbonated water, sugar, blackcurrant juice, natural flavour, antioxidant and presevatives. I am guessing that the blackcurrant juice is the main source of Vitamin C. The Citric Acid is also another source of Vitamin C. From the label it says that the juice in the bottle contains about 24mg of Vitamin C, much less than the You.C100 Orange drink. Well, they are probably aiming for different markets. The You.C100 drink is meant for persons drinking it for Vitamin C. The Bickford’s Blackcurrant Juice is just a simple refreshing drink for everybody to enjoy.

I am trying my best to cut down on the amount of preservatives I take but it seems that be everywhere.  If you guys know where I can find good tasting but preservative-free products, please give me a heads up.

This is a very cool Japanese (but made in Indonesia) drink. And as usual the reason why I am reviewing this drink is because I am on a quest to find healthy foodstuff and drinks. As you guys should know, I have been ill for the past 2 to 3 weeks. And this is due to the fact that I have been eating unhealthy food, especially oily and heaty stuff without much nutrients to keep my body in good shape. So when I got infected by germs, I fell ill fast and hard. Took me more 2 weeks to really recover and I am still now feeling the effects of that major illness. So, to prevent any more such illness, I will be eating right from now on.

And thus I am reviewing this little drink. First of all, this is a very small bottle.  Just 140ml of orange drink and it supposed to contain more than the recommended daily intake of Vitamin C! Wow, small but powerful just like me. Secondly, the drink is rather nice. Oh, this can be classified as a soda drink since it is a bit bubbly. But the carbonation is weak (perhaps due to the size of the bottle) and it won’t distract you from the delicious tasting drink. However I have to admit, the orange flavour in the drink is very much lacking. Perhaps it is just a tad too sweet.

You.C1000. What a name.

A close up view of the front label. Notice the Japanese wordings on the label? I am not sure why they have Japanese wordings since this bottle drink is especially made for the Singapore market.

Oh, sugar and fructose. Not really good for your body but in small amounts I guess they are acceptable. Contains honey and Vitamin C and E. Ya! Not too sure exactly what beta-carotene is but from my brief Google tells me that it is just for colouring. The Niacinamide is some sort of Vitamin B.  I wonder why they are using so much jargon on the labels. Anyway, at least there are no preservatives.

Yes, that is 1000mg of Vitamin C in one serving of 140ml!  Remember the name is C1000, so I guess it means that it contains 1000mg of Vitamin C! The recommended intake of Vitamin C is about 40mg daily for adults and by taking 1000mg, you are going to become some sort of lemon. No lah, it is good. Of course, I would like everyone to know that you should take all sort of food in moderation. So don’t think of drinking this every single day and hope that it will be healthy for you. You are dosing yourself with Vitamin C and although I doubt that there will be some averse effect, it would be better to drink this perhaps once per week or so.

Yes, it is yet another drinks review.  This time it is on the Schweppes Ginger Beer. I have been brewing a little Ginger Beer myself using some soda making ingredient kit I bought online and I would very much like to know the difference between the drink that I made myself and the store bought one. However, I think that I could have been a little mistake buying this Schweppes Ginger Beer as I realize that this is not exactly a Ginger Beer. It is more like an artifical soda drink. Don’t get me wrong, I love soda drinks but what I am looking for is the actual Ginger Beer made from just ginger and spices.

Anyway, I bought this can from Shop n Save for about S$0.80. So I guess somehow it should not really be a real Ginger beer, considering the price is so low. I read the those drinks made from real ginger can cost quite a sum, perhaps like more than a dollar. But let’s not distract that from our little review on this drink. Please note that this is a Ginger Beer, not a Ginger ale. Ginger ales are usually meant for mixing alcoholic drinks or even non-alcoholic mixed drinks. I am not too sure about all those but what I like about Ginger Beer is the bite it gives. Unlike other types of soda drinks, Ginger Beer is probably the only one that can really perk me up without giving me a hangover the next day.

Schweppes Ginger Beer!

Ahhh….the ingredients. It’s the flavouring that is important. The reason why the don’t list down the types of flavouring is supposed to protect their trade secrets. Too bad, I could make use of their flavouring recipe to make my own super Ginger Beer. And oh..look it is made in Singapore. I am supporting my own country when I buy this drink.

I had expected the drink to be black in colour, like those Ginger Beer we buy from Australia. But surprisingly, it is not. That means that this could be natural brewed. Most Ginger Beers are actually made from concentrates and these concentrates are normally dark due to the boiling process. So if you drink a Ginger Beer  that is dark, you are most likely drinking one that has been made from concentrates. But I doubt that this will affect the taste of the drink itself.

As for the taste of this Schweppes Ginger Beer, I feel that it is rather low in flavour, more like an Ginger ale than a Ginger beer. Sure, you can feel the ginger in the drink but it is nothing spectacular. For those used to drinking ginger beer, you would have hardly feel any bite at all. But overall, it is still rather pleasant to drink. The light taste makes it easy for beginners to start drinking Ginger Beer, which actually can be healthy. For me, I think I will need something more potent than this.

Another view of the glass of Schweppes Ginger Beer. I managed to drink finish this glass in just two gulps. Easy drinking. The good thing is that it is not too sweet. I would really hate a Ginger Beer with too much sweetness and no bite. We call that Coke.

God, what a name for a fruit juice. If the creative juices of their marketing department would be any more creative, they would come with up something better than that. Imagine going to a store and asking for this juice. Before you even finish, your face would be completely blue from the lack of oxygen and that would mean that you remember the name of the juice. If you do, either you are some sort of a genius or you have too much free time in your hands or you are a auntie.

Well, I pick up this pack the other day from NTUC but I didn’t have the time to have a photo taking session and a little taste test. Overall, I find the juice quite interesting.  It is definitely not the usual stuff you find in the stores everyday. The taste is “a bit” sourish, especially at the end. I am guessing that this is the mangosteen juice talking. And when the sourish hits you, it hits you hard. Probably because the mixed juice itself is rather sweet as well. Something like a one-two comb. And I really like it. Too bad about the rawness of the mangosteen juice. I am not saying that it is bad but it does distract the drinker somewhat.  Maybe it is just because I am not a mangosteen fan. Don’t worry about the pomegranate taste, you will hardly feel it in this drink, which is surprising considering that the Pomegranate flavour is usually the dominant one. Shows how strong the mangosteen taste is.

Anyway, I have taken a few photos of the pack.

The one with the crown and the white flesh is the mangosteen while the one with the reddish seeds is the Pomegranate.This juice has no sugar added and is made from 100% juice. Made from pure squeezed juice and concentrates! Hooray!

Wow, mangosteen is a wonder fruit!  It is also high in antioxidant Vitamin C just like the Pomegranate. Normally in Singapore, people would eat mangosteen after eating durians, so I guess it also helps to reduce heatiness? Whatever, just drink it.

Not sure whether you can see from this picture but this contains artifical colourings and preservatives. Not good in my opinion. Hey, looking at the ingredients list, it also contains mango puree! I am guessing that this helps to sweeten the juice because I am pretty sure that the Pomegranate and Mangosteen won’t be sweet at all.

I poured myself a glass of the juice. It does look cloudy, probably because it contains some sort of husks as well as mango puree. You will need some time to get used to the taste but seriously, it is rather delicious. Don’t worry about the sourness, it will go away soon enough once after a few sips. If not, then you should probably stick to drinking pear juice or sugar water.

Another view of the glass of F&N Fruit Tree Fresh Pomegranate & Mangosteen Juice from the side. Looks really like a mixed juice drink.

Well, this is the end of the little review. If you have any juice you would like me to try out, leave me a comment. Better still, send me the drink and I will review it.

Was visiting Sheng Siong the other day (getting supplies for the Apfelwein) and found this very interesting drink. Actually, the brand is pretty common in Singapore but I found this in a glass bottle! Isn’t it cool? So I being a very curious person decided to have a taste of this soya bean milk in a glass. The price is about S$0.75 per bottle and it contains about 300ml of delicious soya bean milk. Perhaps it is slightly more expensive than the same brand in those packs we see everyday but somehow I find that it taste a bit different. In fact, the milk seems to be thicker than what we find in those packets we see outside. I guess the reason is because in order to drink from the milk packs, you will need to suck through a small straw but for the glass bottles, you do not need to do so. You can drink it straight from the bottle. Yes yes, of course you can drink from a straw but the kind of straw used would be bigger as well. If you purchase the packets, you could be drinking diluted soya bean milk. I don’t have any proof and this is just from my observations and my thoughts. If you want to complain to Vitasoy, please don’t quote me.

Anyway, here are some of the photos I have taken.

Yes, this is the Vitasoy Soya Bean Drink in all it’s glory. Nothing spectacular though. I think it would be wise for them to improve on their packaging. A lot of Singaporeans don’t like buying drinks in glass, especially those that require a bottle opener. Lazy slugs these Singaporeans. The only way you can attract Singaporeans to buy your stuff is to make it look good like those Japanese ones.

A more detailed look at the front label. This soya bean drink is a good source of soya proteins, comes with no preservatives added, no cholesterol and is non dairy. Wow! Goodness all around, I think.

Some nutrition information and ingredients for you guys to enjoy.  Too bad, they have added sugar into the drink but all-in-all, I find this drink rather delicious. And no, it isn’t too sweet at all. And yes, it is thick, just like what real Soya Bean milk should be. Furthermore, it doesn’t have this “packety” taste which we normally get when drinking from packets of soya bean milk. Not sure whether that is just in my mind or not.

Made in Hong Kong, not China. Thank god. I don’t like being poisoned.

This is a shot of the milk I poured into a glass. From this photo, you can see that it is slightly viscous which means that it is thicker than what we normally find in the stores.  Nowadays even those hawker centre stores dilute their soya bean milk to the point that it taste and feel like drinking water. If you are old enough, you would have tasted such soya bean milk before. Now it is rare in Singapore.

Another shot of the milk. Looks yummy doesn’t it?

Wow, the glass is now empty? Guess what happened to it?

Well, this is my little review on the Vitasoy Soya Bean drink in a glass. Not expensive, taste great and I would highly recommend it to anyone. Just that it is rather difficult to find in Singapore. One of my friends said that you can find them easily in Malaysia though. Good luck and good drinking! And if you are looking for some online grocery store to buy your stuff, please take a look at the listing of Online Grocery Stores in Singapore.

I know, I am a bit slow to be reviewing Coca-Cola Zero. It had been in the stores for a while already but I wasn’t into reviewing drinks then. So now, I will review my all-time favourite beverage - Coca-Cola Zero. Apparently, Coca-Cola Zero is just like Coca Cola just that they have no calories. I suppose what they meant by that is there is no sugar in the drink? So it should be just like Coca-Cola Light? Or all those variations of Coca-Cola which doesn’t have any or less sugar in them?  And they claim that it is real Coca-Cola taste. Does that mean that the original Coca-Cola is fake? Wow, that means that we have been drinking fake Coca-Cola all these time. Their CEO must be from China.

Anyway, I know it is very confusing. Too many marketing gimmicks and what-not these Coca-Cola guys tend to come up with and we have no idea what goes into the actual drink. Worse, it seems that in different countries, they have different ingredients! I think that the main reason why they come up with so many slogans, logos, ingredients and variations is because the top guys, just like our government officials, are just too free. If you are paid big bucks and you don’t have anything to do, you will tend to think of new logos, slogans and shit to ply on to the consumers. What can I say but to just enjoy the great tasting drink.

 I have taken a few photos of the Coca-Cola Zero I bought.

That’s the PET bottle which the Coca-Cola Zero is being stored it. The label looks a bit different from the original Coca-Cola bottle but the beverage looks exactly like the original. If you expect it to be pink or yellow or even clear like Sprite, you are mistaken.

The nutrition facts of the Coca-Cola Zero. Apparently it doesn’t provide any energy, protein, fat or carbohydrate to the consumer. This must be some sort of miracle drink! And no wonder it is called “Zero“. And we should all note that although it doesn’t come with any sucrose (sugar), it does have artifical sweeteners, artifical flavourings and for those who like coffee, it contains caffeine. Wow, it is like all sorts of articial stuff mixed together to make a great tasting drink. I wonder what’s the recipe for Coke? I am just surprised that it did not contain rat poison.

That’s the Coca-Cola Zero poured into a glass. This is how the beverage should be drunk - in a glass. From a glass, only then can you appreciate the fine colour, smell the delicate aroma of delicious caramel and let it tickle your senses. I mean by looking at the above photo, doesn’t it make you want to grab the glass and gobble it all down? Drinking this Coca-Cola Zero is like drinking from a well in heaven. Maybe years later, you would thank the Coca-Cola company for hastening your trip to heaven, but that would be another story. 

This is another shot of the glass of Coca-Cola Zero. The amount of carbonation is just right for a drink like this. The development guys at Coca-Cola got that right. The amount of sweetness is also right. I don’t like my beverages too sweet anymore. And of course I would like to thank the Coca-Cola guys for developing a great tasting drink like this for all of us to enjoy. I really hope that they will make it cheaper because the price of everything is rasing in Singapore and with a beverage that is Zero in everything, it should be cheap. Plus unlike the ingredients in other drinks, all the ingredients in Coca-Cola Zero are artifical stuff unlike root beer, ginger ale and others, which again can be obtained cheaply. Please pity us poor folks. We just want to enjoy a fine refreshing beverage after a hard day’s work in the fields. Ok, ok, I work in an air-conditioned office but it amounts to the same thing.

Thank you for reading. And oh, for those who are curious, I am using the Coca-Cola Zero to clean my computer’s Heatsink. Apparently, it works very well in removing dirt and dust from hard to reach places in the heatsink. Wow, this stuff is just great!

I am again here to review a juice drink for you guys. Yes, it is easily found at our local supermarkets so you don’t have to search high and low for it which is a good thing. Don’t you just hate reading about something in the news only to NOT find it available at the stores? Although I won’t say that Minute Maid is a very common brand in Singapore, I am pretty sure that it can be found at our supermarkets. I tried a few supermarkets like NTUC and Giant, I did manage to find them. So if you look carefully, I am sure you can find them.

Anyway, this time round, I am reviewing Minute Maid’s Apple & Cranberry juice.  I am sure that Minute Maid has a variety of other type of juices and drinks, but those are better left for later.

Well, it is a “premium” juice. Please excuse the photos as this was taken at night. The colour of the juice actually isn’t that dark. It is definitely lighter and more reddish.

A little more closeup view of the Premium Apple & Cranberry juice drink. I find the plastic bottle of this juice quite nice. However, I don’t know whether this can handle carbonation. If it could, I will be using this type of bottle to fill my homebrew apple cider or ginger brew. But judging from the quality of the plastic, I don’t think it can handle carbonation at all.

Some more information on the juice at the back. Please note that this juice drink has added sugar (sucrose) so it is definitely sweet. But surprisingly, even with the added sugar, I don’t find this juice too sweet at all. Too bad, it does come with artificial flavouring, so I guess it is not true to the taste of apple and cranberry.  The taste of this juice is more close to sweetened cranberry. Even after drinking two cups of this juice, I still can’t taste any apple in it. With that said, I have to admit that this juice drink is very tasty and delicious. And with the right sweetness, you won’t get sick of drinking this even after a few big cups. Two thumbs up!

They even have information from the National Healthcare Group, which I am sure most of us never even bother to read. Well….

This shot shows the true colour of the juice. Very nice reddish colour.

Another shot of the juice. Please excuse the messy table. I normally do my phototaking at the kitchen table but it was “booked” for the night, so I had to settle for desk.

At first, I was thinking that this “premium” juice would be just like what you will normally find at the stores - very sweet, tastless and flat. But this Minute Maid Apple & Cranberry juice is not like that. You can taste the cranberries in the drink, although the apple taste is a tad weak. A simple recommendation would be to pump up the apple juice content. And I am guessing that if someone carbonated this drink, it would even be taster!

Not everyone have heard of the Ceres brand. This is because they are manufacturers of fresh juice and it is surprisingly that a lot of Singaporeans do not even know what the brand they are drinking, especially when we are talking about packaged fresh juice. I don’t know why is it so, but simply we just go to the local supermarket and pick one without even looking at it. Luckily, all the China made brands have been removed from our stores. This will surely help boost the confidence of Singaporeans when it comes to the consumers purchasing stuff.

Anyway, this is actually from South Africa and they have a various of different types of juice. I am trying out their Grape Juice. You can find it easily at all major supermarkets in Singapore like Shop N Save, NTUC, Giant and even Sheng Siong. However the price range from S$1.80 to S$2.15, so it is better for you to do some market research at your nearby store. Oh, by the way, I often see discounts for certain type of juice at certain periods at these supermarkets. You can save quite a bit if you purchase in bulk with discount.

Yes, 100% pure grape juice. The packaging itself doesn’t look tempting but I guess the most important is how it taste right?

This is from the Muscat grape family. However, it is important to note that the Muscat grape is usually not used for making grape juice but are commonly made into dessert wines. We normally get Concord grape juice which is supposed to be sweeter and juicier. And this is intriguing that we can find Muscat grape juice in Singapore as I am rather keen to make use of this Muscat grape to make some dessert wine. I know, I know, you think that making wine is going to the orchard and stomping on a few grapes to get the juice and the must and so on. But the truth is that you can easily make wine from juice. I have tried making a cider direct from these kind of packaged apple juice! It works the same as the sugars and the flavours of the wine does come mainly from the juice.

This is a glass of the Ceres Grape Juice. The colour look like what we normally get from other drinks. Light reddish tint. The photo above was shot in the evening, so the colour may look a bit off but I will tell you, your kids will like this grape juice. Anyway, the taste is quite nice. I had expected it to be a bit sourish since this has no added sugar or any additives but luckily it wasn’t. Of course, it wasn’t as sweet as what we would commonly find at our local stores these days, which is a good thing. I don’t like drinking stuff that is too sweet nowadays. Overall, the Ceres grape juice is a delicious and healthy drink. It should be served cold but undiluted. Not too sweet, very nice for a breakfast drink or even for an evening wind-down drink. In fact, I would say that it is good for all occasions. I drank mine (1litre pack) in just 2 seatings.

Have you heard of this drink before? I only recently heard of this drink from my local brewing forum. It seems that it is very very popular in Malaysia. People are willing to pay hundreds of dollars for 1 litre of such stuff. I mean, if they are not willing to spend hundreds of dollars on alcohol, but they are willing to pay that amount for some concentrated fruit juice, there must be something great about it. First of all, I am not sure what to make of this drink. Is it sort of a health drink? Or is it just another term for wine/mead? I have been reading up a on this subject on a number of websites, and most of which never mention anything about alcohol being produced. Either it is true and only enzymes are extracted and there is no alcohol, or this enzymes drink is actually wine or mead at the early stages. It is my opinion is that there should be alcohol in the drink.

These are the basic steps to make Enzymes drinks:-

1. Thoroughly clean utensils and glass container (must have a tight seal)
2. Ensure that the utensils are all dry and clean
3. Peel and cut fruits into slices (commonly used fruits include Papaya, Dragonfruit, Pineapple and apple)
4. Peel and cut lemon into slices
5. Place one layer of sliced fruits and lemon in the glass container and add raw brown sugar
6. Continue to add layers of sliced fruits and lemon with the brown sugar till the container is full
7. Seal the glass container and keep it in a cool, dark place for 3 days
8. Open up the container to let air escape
9. Stir the container
10. Let it rest in the container for 2 more weeks (however open up the container regularly to let air escape)
11. After the 2 weeks are up, strain the liquid and store in an airtight container

And there you have it. Enzymes drink. I think the process is like extracting the liquid of the fruits due to the high concentration of the sugar and this draws out the enzymes from the fruits. However, it seems that everyone is forgetting that there are always wild yeast present in the environment. Especially there are wild yeast present in the skins of fruits, some of which will be transfered when cutting the fruits. So the yeast will definitely consume the sugars and this will produce alcohol. Yes, the time period is short and the amount of yeast will probably be rather small but since there should be some sort of fermentation going now. So, don’t be surprised to find that this enzymes drink taste like wine!

Anyway, for my next brew, I may be making some enzymes drinks. Well, I would like to take care of my health and these few days I have been feeling a little down. Perhaps it is due to work or stress, but somehow I feel extremely tired everyday. Even blogging doesn’t perk me up anymore.