Innocent Bright Spark Juice (Waitrose) By @SpectreUK

This cold pressed orange, carrot, lemon, and ginger smoothie called Bright Spark certainly is a glowing orange colour in the bottle. There is plenty of orange juice and carrot in it to make it a super orange colour and with all those carrots this drink should be good for your eyesight. From the ingredients there is also some lemon, ginger and apple in the ingredients, and fortunately no rogue banana to overpower the tastebuds.

On opening the plastic bottle there was a strong smell of orange juice with an edge of carrot at the end of the aroma. On taste there is a definite twang of zesty orange juice to start with followed by a hint of bitter lemon, but the carrot in the background calms it all down. There is also warmth from a little ginger in the aftertaste. This is a very refreshing drink, perfect for the humid summer months, and of course seeing in the dark once the lights go out!

Information on the bottle;
The 330ml bottle contains 127 calories, with 26g of sugar, 0g of fat, and 0.1g of salt. Ingredients include; orange (50%), carrot (25%), apple, lemon (4%), ginger (1%), and a dash of antioxidant ascorbic acid (vitamin C).

Aero Heavenly - Salted Caramel Mousse (Sainsburys) By @Cinabar

I spotted this new dessert from Aero in Sainsburys. The mousse is in individual pots that are significantly larger than the usual size in the four packs of Aero mousse I buy. I couldn't decide if I was supposed to eat the whole thing or share, the only clue to the fact that I was supposed to share was the calorie and nutritional information was “per portion”, and that didn't seem to equate to the whole tub. Reluctantly then I decided to share.
The new Heavenly Aero mousse is Salted Caramel in flavour, and comes with added caramel sauce and pecans.

It does look good when opened, swirled with the sauce and laden with nuts. The pattern was lost a bit when I served some of it in another pot, mousse is not the easiest thing to share. The flavour was exceptional, really rich burnt butterscotch and caramel in taste, with the swirls of sauce adding extra sweetness. I liked the hint of salt, but it was just mild. I am a fan of nuts and the pecans mixed up the flavour and the texture perfectly. The Aero Heavenly Salted Caramel Mousse was a wonderful sweet treat, light and easy to eat. I suppose the only question is still, do you really have to share? :-D

Teavana Mango Black Tea Lemonade (Starbucks) By @Cinabar

I think it is safe to say Mango is my favourite fruit. Its sweet and juicy, so it is my first choice as a fruit to snack on, and I love anything mango flavoured. As the weather seemed to be getting over the rainy patch we’ve just had, I popped into Starbucks to find a chilled drink. I spotted a new drink listed on the menu, and knew what I was going to pick; Teavana Mango Black Tea Lemonade.
The drink is served over ice, which I much prefer to ice crushed drinks which are always too cold for me in British weather, with the exception of some very hot days.
The drink sounds like it is packing quite a lot of elements in, mango, tea and lemonade. The drink arrived, with my name spelt wrongly on the side, but looking like a pale orange colour. I gave it a sip to test it out. The mango flavour is the most dominant, and the fact that it isn’t too sweet is down the addition of the black tea and lemonade. Although the lemonade element isn’t fizzy, I enjoyed the sharper citrus flavour it gave, as it added a nice lemon tang. The black tea was more difficult to pick out, but there was hint of leafy bitterness just rising in as an aftertaste. This gave the drink a more mature flavour. Mostly though this drink is gorgeous mango and that over ice was wonderfully refreshing on a warm day. Think sunshine in a cup.

Pixie Poo (@NLi10)

Over the past eight and a half years my boss has found me all sorts of wonderful and confusing items to review. And here is the last - he retired this week!

There is a trend for garden centres to have a few novelty gift items for presents and especially for this  market there has always been some slightly risqué items.  Here we have a box of edible pixie poo.

This box of mystical mounds are even personalised with the garden centre which they came from, which makes me think that these were originally a seaside style gift where it would say Blackpool Pier on the name slot. It's interesting that we only expect to buy tourism based presents at certain locations and not others. Other than the magnets for the work fridge and international snacks I've cut back on the rock and generic gift buying as everyone just seemed to have too many!

When you get past the branding you find out this is a box of chocolate raisins.

Fairly chocolatey ones as it happens - enough for me to be able to eat raisins which I'm not usually keen on. It's a decent quality set up really and will be enjoyed by those in the office who like raisins more.

I'll miss the occasional surprise gift from Nick's travels, and I'm sure he'll miss eating all the left over review bits that we bring in to the office too.

Bronher Lager (@Beer52HQ) By @SpectreUK

Apparently the troll-like creature in the beer barrel on the front of the bottle is "The Drunk Hop", Bronher. Once I found out it was a beer swilling hop that loves to dive into the barrel and gorge itself on the "Large Lager" rather than a troll had broken into the brewery and had ended up in my beer, I felt better about drinking it somehow. Produced in Spain, this Bronher lager contains Pilsner, Vienna, and Carapils malts, as well as Magnum, Hallertau, Mittelfrue, Citra, Cascade, and Columbus (large) hops, fermented with lager yeast.

Unsurprisingly there was a strong hoppy smell on opening this Large Lager in its 330ml bottle. At 4.7% volume this lager smelt mainly of herbal floral hops with a dash of citrus. Blonde in colour and with a rather excitable head, I could well imagine the Drunk Hop in his diving gear swimming around in the barrel. On taste this lager is an explosion of flavour. There's no way that little green fella would bother to come up for air once down in the depths. There's a whole jumble of herbal, floral and citrus hops falling over each other to reach my tastebuds first, with the sweet malts shouting out from the back of the pack. Wow, gosh! This is a flavoursome craft beer that'd wake up the dead, and make the living stand up and sing; "beer, beer, glorious beer!"