Drink review: H2Go Chocolate Water

Gold. Brown liquid gold

Last week, Minister for the Environment Nick Smith announced plans to make 90% of New Zealand's streams and rivers more swimmable by 2040, primarily, it seemed, by redefining what is accepted by 'swimmable'. To celebrate this bold vision, Frucor Beverages and their H2Go brand released a drink based on the general appearance of the average kiwi body of water after it has passed through prime dairy country. 

Nick Smith after a swim near Frucor's bottling plant 

New Zealand's first chocolate water was here! Based on the run-away
hysterical popularity of the, let's face it, slightly better than average at best Whittaker's Chocolate Milk, how could this fail to be a hit?

Back in 2000, retrospectively cringe-inducing poor spellers and 'musicians' nu metallers Limp Bizkit released an album called Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog

Flavoured Water. Judging solely on my life philosophy that anything that reminds me of Fred Durst cannot possibly be good for me, this wasn't a good start for H2Go. Speaking of which, did you know that Durst's latest a of douchieness was acting as a Russian regime propagandist trying to spread acceptance of their claim to Crimea? That's true, though I reckon I could make up just about any story about him and you wouldn't look it up to confirm it for fear of being reminded further of his crimes against music.

I did it all for the Putin
WHAT
For the Putin
WHAT
So you can take Crimea and stick it up your YEAH!

Anyway, I put my misgivings about the Bizkit to one side, gritted my teeth, and bought a couple of bottles of the chocolate water, purely for research's sake of course. Limited Edition!! the bottle label screamed at me. Quite the euphemism for 'product which you'll buy once out of curiosity, then never again when you realise what it tastes like.' Though from the full shelves  my local New World drinks cabinet, not even curiosity was doing a good sales job.

I poured some water into a glass. A transparent dirty brown colour greeted me. Really Frucor? This doesn't look appetising. My dog swims in a stream out the back of our property that has cleaner looking water than this. The smell though.... Actually pretty good. Which is disappointing. It's rich and dark and promising, it lingers like the smell of that aforementioned Whittaker's milk. There is no way this is going to end in anything but disappointment when the taste turns out to be insipid and flavourless. It's going to be like if you sit down to a Garage Project Pale Ale, and it ends up tasting like Tui.

Brown, the tastiest of beverage colours

But I'm kind of wrong. It's palatable. I mean, on the fore tongue, it's just water, slightly sweet. But hold it at the back of the mouth, it actually does taste like chocolate. But it's thin and, well watery. It doesn't FEEL like a chocolate drink should. You want some body, and this has none. I'm not going to be dunking my gingernuts into some muddy looking water, and I think that is where the chocolate water falls down. When we taste a chocolatey drink, we expect to to be creamy and milky, and water is neither. So the limited edition label was perhaps right, I can see a lot of people maybe buying out of curiosity, but it's not going to build a loyal following.

There was one last thing I wanted to do with the chocolate water, and that was to make a cup of coffee with it.... Would the sweet cacao flavouring last the boiling process and give my brew a chocolatey mocha flavour? I boiled up, plunged the plunger, and poured. And it worked! The rich hint of dark chocolate actually lingers at the back of the cup! It's pleasant, it's not overpowering, and actually, it's probably got a helluva lot less sugar than you would get in your traditionally made mochaccino. So maybe this is the H2Go Chocolate Milk's future? Not as a refreshing cold alternative to Coke, but as a healthy-ish coffee alternative. 

6/10

Adult Food Review: Heller's Christmas Chipolata

Behold, the bringer of controversy

It sometimes seems these days corporations are more interested in pissing people off with ill conceived novelty products than actually making money. And, by and large, judging by popular millennial echo chamber 'Twitter', many companies are doing a pretty good job. This became most apparent to me this evening on my purchase of Heller's new Christmas Chipolata, a 'delicious, fruity sausage' promising hints of Apple, sultana, currant and mixed citrus peel.

On my way home from work tonight, I popped in to New World for a quick sausage purchase. Seeing a new Heller's festive product, with the 'Free Farmed Pork' sticker emblazoned across the front, I decided I'd be game to try anything once and grabbed them. When I got home, I realised the reason the pork had been free farmed was to give the pigs at least a shred of dignity before being made into such an abomination of a meat product. For these Christmas Chipolata contained fruit mince, one of the most polarising food products of Twitter. Seriously, look at the ingredients!

Also: Festive gold meat tray!

Still, I'd bought the things, so, at least purely for science, I may as well try the things so others may avoid my mistake.

The sausages certainly looked the part, slim, pork coloured fingers, with small little nodules of fruit protruding through the thin skin. Into the oven on bake for thirty minutes, possibly slowly too long, and they still looked not too different from your standard pork sausage. Scent wise, the pork strongly came through as well, but with weird undertones of orange rind and currants. Cutting the Chipolata in half, I was greeted by little nuggets of fruit peering back at me.

Taste wise, it was almost a disappointment how much these tasted just like your average pork sausage. Sure, occasionally you might catch a shrivelled currant or a hint of citrus between your teeth, but I found the maligned fruit mince to be almost disconcertingly absent in taste. The texture was there occasionally, which added a strange sensation of eating a meat product with little squishy bits in the middle. That said, it wasn't really true fruit mince present, but singular pieces of diced up fruit. That said, I'd say If you wanted a true taste of what was promised on the packaging, I'd probably advise buying a bag of homebrand pre-cooked pork bangers, and chucking in a pack of raisins.

So do these sausages really deserve to be so hated? Probably not. But do they really warrant a special packaging and a hefty price tag of $1.33 a sausage? Again, probably not. There's better products on the market with much less gimmicky tastes. But they've got people talking Hellers, and that's probably going to help them bring home the bacon.

4.5/10

Grown up food review: Whittaker's K Bar Choolate (lime and raspberry flavours)

Girl
I wanna take you to a K Bar
I wanna take you to a K Bar
I wanna take you to a K Bar
K Bar
K Bar

Not my words, but the words of early 2000s disco rock band Electric Six, slightly re-interpreted by myself. And words which, perhaps, would have made a better announcement of the forthcoming release of Whittaker's K-Bar flavoured chocolate than the image they did use.

About this time they realised it was lucky they hadn't exclusively used white chocolate

That's right, though, Whittaker's have taken the nostalgic tooth breaking toffee, made it a little softer, and encased it in their dark and milk chocolate. Not all their flavours, mind. After much trial and error, Whittaker's have chosen, apparently, the 'best ' three flavours, a deeply subjective, some would say wrong, selection of raspberry, lime and pineapple. I used to be a big fan of the blackcurrant flavour, however I was then exposed to other taste sensations, and realised that orange is the new blackcurrant.

Anyway, the big release date is tomorrow morning. But because my local supermarket is cool/slightly incompetent, I've managed to score a couple of bars, purely for research purposes. So behold, the first review of Whittaker's K Bar chocolate.

So new they're still using the Jellytip chocolate stands

The first bar is lime in milk chocolate. I'm a big lime fan: sliced in Corona, garnishing a gin and tonic, or mixed with lemon and vodka, all perfect tastes, so I was pretty amped for this. Whittaker's are renowned for their milk chocolate. Even Nigella Lawson endorses it, and she knows a thing or two about addictive substances. So I was hopeful that the two would complement each other perfectly.

Unfortunately, the creamy milk chocolate all but obliterates any tangy limey zest. Sure, if you break the chocolate open and lick the gooey centre out, the citrus flavours are there, but unless you have a very small tongue, you're going to have difficulty. So on the whole, this ain't really a bar of chocolate I'd go out of my way to buy. As chance would have it, I didn't actually have to go out of my way to buy this: the stand was between the fruit aisle and the meat, but to be honest I would probably go out of my way in order to buy a more exciting flavour, or a bar of milk chocolate without an indiscernible goo in the middle.

Raspberry in dark chocolate, however, is where the magic lies. The flavours complement perfectly, the bitter 72% cacao set perfectly against sweet berry flavours. Biting it in half, the bright pink filling even resembles what I can only imagine genuine unicorn snot to look and taste like, pure fantasy (the dreamlike sensation, not the drug). Does it taste of real raspberries? Of course not, but you're hardly eating this for your five plus a day, are you?

Mmmmmm..... Sweet, delicious unicorn snot, right there

I didn't buy the pineapple flavoured bar. I don't really trust a fruit that looks like it should be hanging off a tree, but in fact grows on some long spikey grass. Maybe another time.

Behold, the origin story of the internet's most controversial fruit

So there's your first Whittaker's K Bar review. Buy the raspberry flavour, give the other two a miss. Maybe we'll get the orange and blackcurrant flavours soon. Or maybe we'll get another Nigella inspired collaboration with Coke.