Category: beverages

Mountain Dew’s Demographics

Ashley Bischoff4 Comments

From silent-tristero comes this interesting analysis of Mountain Dew’s advertising demographics:

I’ve often wondered why Mountain Dew doesn’t try to do a better job of addressing their actual target consumers, rather than some ficticious, desired target consumers, in their advertising. It’s not as if there’s a huge market of gorge-swinging, sky-diving 20-somethings out there waiting to be tapped, if they can just find the right commercial. But, I do know that at the eight-plus-hour LAN party we're having tonight, we will be consuming an immense amount of Mountain Dew and Code Red. I think they need to have commercials with people fragging each other with rocket launchers, or people having all-night hack-a-thons, or other such nerd-worthy activity. Of course, maybe they just figure that they're not going to lose that market share anyway, so why bother advertising to them?

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.....Matthew P. Gordon

Australian wine dinner

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I was just browsing GuidLive, when I saw “Australian wine dinner” mentioned on their front page. So, I clicked through to discover that Lola the Restaurant is having a four-course dinner, each with a specially selected wine (for the fixed price of $59).

Lola the Restaurant presents a special four course dinner paired with five Australian wines from such vineyards as d'Arenberg, Leeuwin, Chambers and Penley.

The price does not include tax or gratuity. […]

Unfortunately, it's for June 17th, which is today. Had I known about it earlier, it would have been tempting to attend.

Mary Lou Retton, Tea

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I was in the kitchen at work yesterday when I noticed that, on their Lipton Tea box, there's a picture of Mary Lou Retton with the caption saying:

“I’ve always loved the ‘Brisk’ tea taste of Lipton and now there’s great news about its role in a healthy lifestyle. [...] ”.

Man, she must be into her 16th minute by now

As far as tea, though, Lipton is all right, but I prefer other teas. Specifically, my tea of choice is “Tea, Earl Grey, Hot”. Fortunately, I also discovered Julie Catanzaro’s Earl Grey reviews. And, that lead me to my current favorite, Earl Greyer from The Republic of Tea (with extra oil of bergamot, woohoo!). As I drink two to three pots of tea a day, I was glad to see that The Republic of Tea also sells Earl Greyer in bulk (about $30 for 250 tea bags, available in regular or decaf). Or, if you only drink tea occasionally, smaller quantities of Earl Greyer are also available.

Vanilla Coke

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While at the Dallas Anime Club this afternoon, I tried Vanilla Coke. It was definitely less-bad than I expected it to be — sure, the vanilla flavor was there, but not overwhelmingly. In fact, if you were to guzzle it, you may not even notice that it wasn’t regular Coke.

Interestingly, this reporter had just the opposite experience:

The verdict? Not so thrilling. Vanilla is prevalent, for sure. In fact, it's so present that it's all you taste. It coats that delightful, battery-acid kick Coke is known for.

At any rate, I think I'll stick with non-sugared soda made with Splenda (“Made from sugar so it tastes like sugar”). Seriously, if haven't tried Diet RC/Diet Rite, give them a chance (both use Splenda, but the latter has no caffeine). They don’t taste exactly like Coke but, then again, regular RC doesn’t taste exactly like Coke either ;).

Beer in General, and Sam Adams in Specific

Ashley BischoffLeave a comment

Preface: Before reading this entry, I'd recommend reading the one posted just before this one, on Rolling Rock.

So, in that last post, I waxed nostalgic about Rolling Rock beer. Now, it's not my absolute favourite of beers, though it may very well be in my Top 10. (Note to self: I could write an entry about my Top 10 favourite beers sometime).

There are so many good beers, that it's tough even to decide upon a Top 5. Let's see... Killian's would be in there, for sure, and Heineken would likely make an appearance, Bass has a good chance of making the cut as well.

But, without a doubt, I believe that Sam Adams would take the top spot, #1. Now, before I get angry comments from Germans or Belgians ;), I must make a disclaimer: Sam's Adams is my favourite beer, of the beers that I have a reasonable chance of finding in a given maket.

I can't even recall when I first tried Sam Adams. But, man, it's delicious. But, what sparked my interest in writing this entry is that Sam Adams Double Bock has won the Grand Champion trophy at the Australian International Beer Awards in Melbourne.

Samuel Adams Double Bock won the Grand Champion Trophy at the Australian International Beer Awards in Melbourne.

The 8.5% abv German-style lager from Boston Beer Co. won out over 421 other beers from 19 countries.

The Double Bock also won the trophy as best lager, while Rogue Imperial Stout brewed by Oregon's Rogue Ales won Champion Stout.

[...]

Ooh. “Sam Adams Double Bock” is now at the forefront of my must-buy-at-the-next-available-opportunity list of beers. And, if the DFW Mozilla-1.0 party ends up being this Saturday, I have my hopes up that the organizers may choose to hold it at the Flying Saucer (full name: Flying Saucer Draught Emporium). The Flying Saucer for those not aware is a “restaurant”, but only in the sense that it's a beer-paradise (over 100 beers on-tap!) that also happens to server food ;)

So, if we end up going to the Flying Saucer for the Mozilla-1.0 party, then I'll definitely try to snark some Sam Adams Double Bock there. Also on my list of beers-to-try: Sam Adams Triple Bock. Priced at $4.75 per 8.75 oz bottle, and at 17.5% APV, this is no ordinary beer. Hey, the Mozilla 1.0 release is probably one of the better celebrations I'll be having this year, so maybe I'll seek out both Sam Adams Double Bock and Sam Adams Triple Bock if we end up holding the festivities at the Flying Saucer.