As anyone who has to write a last minute article about Thanksgiving can tell you, the holiday is fast approaching. And we all know that means the four F's of Thanksgiving: food, family, football, and flavored-like-Thanksgiving-food sodas.
I will admit that last one was kind of forced.
Luckily, we have the kind folks at Jones Soda who have been providing us with questionably-flavored holiday soda for years. I had long wondered how these flavors actually worked. Were they sweetened sodas with hints of meats and vegetables, or were they truly flavored like their horrifying descriptions?
There's only one way to find out: I would taste these bizarre holiday sodas, along with how they stacked up against their real-world food counterparts.
Experiment #1: Turkey & Gravy Soda
It's bad enough that I'm dreading this flavor already, but did they really need to include bare, warmed feet on the label?
Making the prospect of a Turkey & Gravy flavored soda even worse was that my soda was five years old. (I bought it off eBay.) Well, I reasoned, Thanksgiving is all about leftovers.
The smell of the soda was truly peculiar: a mildly sweet aroma, with overtones of turkey gravy. The taste was a combination of sweet and savory, like sugared gravy. Let's call it "a really unsettling combination."
Forget pills: in the future every meal will come in bottled form
You will usually have some sweetness creeping into your turkey from the cranberry sauce, sweet potatoes, or pie (if you're a weirdo who puts all your courses on the same plate). But you don't expect the gravy to be sweet.
I think unsweetened gravy is a tradition for a reason: sweet gravy is horrifying.
"Turkey & Gravy soda sounds delicious," you might be thinking, especially if you are obese, "but can it really compare to actually eating turkey and gravy?" To find out, I compared the soda to the lowest quality turkey meal on the market: Banquet TV dinners.
Redefining the notion of "white" and "dark" meat
Even handicapped by its 89 cent price tag, real turkey and gravy comes out way ahead of the soda. The biggest advantages of the real turkey and gravy: it wasn't sweet, wasn't liquid, and wasn't in a bottle.
Experiment #2: Wild Herb Stuffing Soda
The grossest-looking liquid in the world that isn't actually medicinal
What goes better with turkey than stuffing? Nothing, of course. But would stuffing-flavored soda make for an even better complement? I'm going to assume no, but we should confirm that fact. For science.
Opening the bottle, I waShakespeare with a violent wave of herb aroma. If they made a stuffing-flavored ramen, the flavor packet would reek like this soda. Unfortunately, it tastes just like it smells. A bitter taste, followed by a brutal onslaught of herbs and spices. This is the gin of sodas, except that gin is awesome, and stuffing soda is wretched. And right about now, gin is sounding really good.
However, the important question remains: is stuffing soda better than real stuffing? The answer might actually surprise you.
Oddly enough, it tastes exactly as good as it looks.
It might surprise you, especially if you're paying no attention to what I wrote above, because of course stuffing soda isn't better. It's awful! Even this sad, soggy stuffing easily won over the soda.
Experiment #3: Brussels Sprout
The family was excited to be on a soda label, until they found out which flavor it would be
This was, without a doubt, the soda that I was fearing most. I actually like Brussels sprouts, but I was concerned about their ability to be a delicious and refreshing beverage.
You can't accuse Jones Soda of trickery. If that shade of green doesn't warn you that something is truly amiss, you might be beyond help. Whatever food dye was used to color the soda could be reused if they ever decide to make a line of Exorcist-themed beverages.
Ralphie had it easy; this was MUCH worse than Life Boy
I stared at the bottle for a long while, working up the courage to open it. Finally, I went for it. As the top came off, the room was filled with this noxious odor. It certainly didn't smell like cabbage. It smelled like the bottom of a homeless person's shopping cart.
Miraculously, it didn't taste as bad as it smelled. Mind you, that just means it tasted disgusting, instead of "maybe suicide is a viable alternative to finishing this."
I'm definitely glad the soda didn't have "butter flavoring."
One thing both the soda and the real food have in common is an unpleasant smell. While real Brussels sprouts have a faintly off-putting aroma, the soda smells like it was stored inside the Ark of the Covenant that the Nazis opened.
Experiment #4: Cranberry
Gosh, that bike seat looks uncomfortable
I was feeling pretty confident when I got to Cranberry. The worst flavors were certainly behind me, and a cranberry-flavored soda sounded pretty good.
I should have known it wouldn't be this easy.
Upon opening the bottle, the smell hit me with the question: "Wait, is this flavored like real cranberries?" Almost anything flavored with cranberries is awesome, but the fruit itself is kind of terrible.
The soda had that bitter cranberry smell, mixed with the smell of a bottle of red wine that had been left in a hot car for a few weeks. The taste of the soda made me think it should be consumed by Norse gods, drinking it from upside-down skulls. It was incredibly pungent on the tongue, a mightily-flavored beverage that manly men would drink, before people like myself came along.
10 points for presentation
Since I didn't know if they were trying to have this soda emulate real cranberries or cranberry jelly, I pitted the soda against both. As I said, fresh cranberries are just not good, and neither was the soda. Still, I don't know if I could declare the soda a winner. We'll call it a tie.
Cranberry jelly beats the soda, hands down. That is mostly due to the fact that cranberry jelly is awesome, and gets an unfair reputation from people who are too afraid to enjoy foods where the serving can be described as "cylindrical."
Experiment #5: Pumpkin Pie
Ironically, a lizard would taste about as good as what lives inside this bottle
This time of year, everything comes in "pumpkin" flavor. Beer, coffee, donuts, Pop-Tarts, and of course pumpkins. It's the flavor you can't get away from, but wouldn't want to. Because pumpkin-flavored foods are almost always awesome.
Which is why I had such high hopes for Pumpkin Pie soda. Opening the bottle, though, something seemed wrong. Sure, I was getting all the right spice scents, but something else was crashing through my sinuses: actual pumpkin.
The soda smelled, and tasted, like raw pumpkin pie mix. Which, if this was a flavor like cookie dough or cake batter, might work. But raw pumpkin, no matter how fancied up with cinnamon it gets, is disgusting.
I guess I should be grateful they only decided to have it smell and taste like raw pumpkin mix. At least there weren't chunks pulp and seeds floating around in the liquid.
I don't understand why my career as a food photographer never took off.
Not surprisingly, actual pumpkin pie wins out. You know why? Because it was cooked.
And that wraps up the most disgusting and depressing Thanksgiving meal ever. On the bright side, this meal doesn't stretch the waistline like a normal Thanksgiving dinner, since all these sodas have zero calories. Yes: diet disgust!
I'm not sure why they went for the target market of "people who want to try weird and disgusting flavors, but don't want to get fat," but somehow they reeled me in.
Unfortunately, the meal was over, but the experiment was not. Time for football!
Please continue to Part 2: Dirt, Grass, and Ben-Gay Soda!
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