Teavana Iced Shaken Blackberry Mojito Tea Lemonade (Starbucks) [By @cinabar]

So the new drink from Starbucks this summer has quite a long and complicated name!
Teavana Iced Shaken Blackberry Mojito Tea Lemonade, there are an awful lot of flavours packed into that, and some specifics of how to make make it. As the weather has been so lovely, I decided to cool off with the new drink. I ordered the medium version of the drink, well two actually, and watched the lady make them. Notably something was missing, the shake. The ingredients were put straight into the flimsy plastic take out cup, and I thought as she was doing this that she have to be careful shaking it, but it turns out she didn't at all, she added in the ingredients and that was that. I picked up a straw and gave it a quick stir, but neither drinks were shaken which was disappointing as they kind of made it a thing, it was even mentioned on the door.

All this aside the drink was really good. It wasn't as cold as it could have been, but we have been having some seriously hot weather and there was plenty of ice added. The flavour is predominantly herby, with the mint and green tea base shining through. The black currants add a slight sharpness and the lemonade a citrus hint of sweet. Don't go expecting a sugary treat, this drink is much more on the side of a refreshing tea base. However the background herby flavour and sharp berries with lemon do make it wonderfully refreshing, and the perfect drink on a hot day. It is one I'll be having again, next time I'm hoping for it be shaken properly too.

By Cinabar

Flamingo Fling J2O White Grape and Lychee (House of Fraser) [By @Cinabar]

In a step away from the ordinary the new summer edition J2O juice drink is named Flamingo Fling. The name doesn't give much of a clue to the flavour, but it does give a sense of the fun and fruity taste. As does the fantastically decorated bottle! The bottle is amazing, its colourful and very pretty. Flamingos seem very in at the minute, I’ve seen them on everything from novelty sun glasses to t-shirts.
The actual flavour of the new J2O drink is White Grape and Lychee. You don’t often see Lychee flavour drinks so I was pleased to see something a bit different. I took a sip. The flavour of the drink is sweet and very fresh. The lychee offers a new cooling but creamy sweet hint to the flavour and the white grape gives it a fruity burst, but makes it feel quite grown up. There is almost a hint of something floral about the taste, I assume this is from the whit grape, but it felt almost like it had a splash of rose to the taste.
Its quite a complex flavour, but the unusual combination of fruits works remarkably well. It manages to be very refreshing but also very distinctive. This will be the perfect choice for summer barbecues, now that the sun is shining. Excuse me while I don my flip-flops and flamingo sunglasses.

By Cinabar

Festival Finds - Latitude 2016 (by @NLi10)

This week we have been at the ludicrously sunny Latitude festival. No mud, just grass and pink sheep!

First up we have some of the festival foods. This years big thing is wood fired pizza. Why? Because it cooks in two minutes and kills all the germs!

It's also pretty deluxe and at £10 a pizza must make a decent crust.

I'll forgive them for not using proscutio as advertised because it was nice and welcome. No brand loyalty needed here - every third stall is selling these!

Night time snacks are available too, here we have pofferjes - mini pancakes. At 10 for £5 they aren't cheep.

The guys running this stall were really chatty and nice and while the end result doesn't look like much in the twilight they are actually a really welcome snack.

I had the lemon and sugar but the butter version is apparently the traditional option. I'll have these again!

I got these Mike & Ike lemonade blends for my birthday. Just perky enough to make the shift for Oxfam speedier and they survive the hot weather well.

Breakfast has again been protein based milkshakes and these help give me the energy to get to the site to buy something more solid. 

And lastly some diet advice proving that Latitude is the height of middle class festival excellence.

Budweiser Budvar: B-Original, B-Free & B-Dark (By @SpectreUK)

I do rather like writing beer blogs (and other alcoholic beverages) on Saturdays. When Cinabar told me that Budweiser Budvar had sent me a lager, I was immediately looking forward to writing about it. What I didn’t realise until opening the box was that there were three lagers from the Czech Republic. You may think that getting sozzled writing a beer blog on a Saturday afternoon is fun, but even us bloggers have deadlines. Besides, then I noticed one of the lagers was non-alcoholic…

B-Original

I have enjoyed B-Original before, but I thought I’d write a few words about it. On opening the 5% volume lager I took in a deep breath of the Saaz Aroma hops. That initial bite of hops quickly merges with the Moravian Malt leaving a crisp fresh taste of quality lager in my mouth. The soft water is drawn from wells 300 metres below the ground. So no wonder there is an earthy freshness to this lager. Checking out the 330ml bottle label further I found that Budweiser Budvar have been brewing their beer for 700 years in this way. Steeped in tradition, crisp bitterness, malty goodness… I have a new respect for this lager. Especially as someone else had bought it for me!

B-Free

This non-alcoholic offering is also served in a 330ml bottle. The label mentions the wells, so the soft water is the same, but doesn’t mention the Saaz Hops or the Moravian Malt. However, a good non-alcoholic beer in my mind should simply taste exactly like an alcoholic beer. Now you may say that’s unlikely, but I have recently drank a few non-alcoholic beers and been blown away by their taste sensation. So much so that I just couldn’t tell there was no alcohol in them.
After savouring the B-Original and still having that crisp fresh bitterness and malty goodness in my tastebuds, I reached for the B-Free. On opening this B-Free there was less of a fizz, which is odd, because that’s surely just carbonation? It also didn’t smell anything like the B-Original. It didn’t smell particularly hoppy, in fact it smelt more of barley malt. Of course it didn’t have to, as it didn’t promise anywhere on the label that it would taste or smell anything like the B-Original, so I shook off my foolish notions and poured the beer.
The B-Free poured with a decent head and looked much the same as the B-Original. On taste it was a completely different kettle of fish. I don’t think I’ve ever tasted such a malty beer. This was definitely not a lager in any sense. Checking the label it never promised to be, so I figured I’d probably drunk the B-Original a bit too quickly… B-Free is a heavily malted beer with hardly any of the bitterness you’d expect from additional hops. Here the hops sit underneath the malted barley flavour and are used simply as a preservative. And why not, why should it taste anything like it’s older brother? This B-Free sits on the opposite side of the table. If someone gave it to me in a bar, I doubt I’d be able to tell that it didn’t have any alcohol in it. If someone said that was a Budweiser Budvar I may laugh and say, “it doesn’t taste anything like Budweiser!” but why should it? Why should one product made by a company taste anything like another? Diversification is the key here… and I’m glad of the spell checker, because that B-Original went straight to my head!

B-Dark

It’s rare I have two beers in a row these days. I only really have more than one beer when I’m off on my holidays somewhere. So three beers in a row was an even rarer treat indeed. After being told off by Cinabar during a prolonged bout of uproarious belching and manic giggling I opened the B-Dark lager.
Produced in a 500ml bottle this B-Dark lager has a combination of Pale, Munich, Caramel, and Roasted malts pitted against the Budweiser Budvar traditional Saaz hops. On opening this B-Dark there was a roasted malt smell mixed with the sweetness from the Caramel malt. The beer was almost jet black in colour and I immediately understood the comment on the label about this beer being “straight from the heart of darkness”. This seems like the type of beer I’d drink on a dark stormy night with the fire on and the lights down low. And wow on taste this is another world apart from the B-Original and B-Free. This is a strong hearty beer with notes of coffee in the roasted malt, and an edge of sweetness towards the aftertaste. In between this roasted malty flavour and sweetness come hints of the other malts and an indication of bitterness from the Saaz hops, but this beer is really about the roast and no mistake. Full of flavour this beer has its own original black magic and is really something quite special indeed!

By Spectre

Cadbury Desserts with Toffee Clusters (Morrisons) [By @Cinabar]

These new desserts are from Cadbury, and I spotted them listed online when I was doing my online grocery shop. When they arrived I popped them in the fridge to chill and I noticed their best before date... It was in 2017! I realised these must be long life in some way, but still put them in the fridge because I knew I'd want to eat them cold.
After dinner one night I opened up one of them and again was a bit confused. These had been stored flat in our fridge for a few days. However the filling on the chocolate side was only filling the bottom  half of the tub. It was like they had been kept on their side, but they really weren't, these desserts justdefy gravity. All of them were like it, and I'd bough four pots. It meant there was a neat place for the toffee clusters to fall into.

The chocolate substance was thick, and slightly gelatinous in its texture. I like the flavour, but it didn't seem as indulgent or as creamy as the usual Cadbury desserts. Mainly it was the texture, it was just a bit to thick. The crunchy bits had a nice toffee flavour and added a bit of a crunch, but even these seemed lacklustre. The desserts are fine, but not something I'd pick up again, every other Cadbury dessert I've tried has knocked these ones out of the water.

By Cinabar