Blue Sky Jamaican Ginger Ale

Deer poop is natural too, and probably tastes better.

Blue Sky Jamaican Ginger Ale

Blue Sky used to make an orange drink that tasted like liquid baby aspirin. To be clear, this is a good thing. A friend of mine would sell it to me at a discount or give it to me for free, letting me guzzle it by the case. When I left the Midwest I went without Blue Sky for a long time, and when I found the orange flavor again it had changed into something else. That was very sad.

My feelings about the Blue Sky have darkened once again. My wife brings out a "research" can of Blue Sky Jamaican Ginger Ale from the kitchen and begins to drink it with dinner. This is a new ploy in our ongoing war over a refrigerator a quarter full of soft drinks, a new way to "disappear" a can of soda. Playing it cool, I ask her to save a few drinks for me at the end, then I take a swig to give it a try. It's awful. I wish I'd let her have it. Not only do I wish I'd never bought the crap, it makes me wish I'd never had a refrigerator.*

Yeah, awful. It has that awful burned tang of honey, though supposedly none is inside. It boasts "real sugar" on the ingredients list, and natural ginger flavor. The ginger taste is way off, I've drank enough ginger beer to start a distillery in my stomach and none of it tasted like this. It doesn't have the cardboard foulness, but it does have a bitter burn competing for my attention with the honey tang and some vague chemical flavor. The whole mess sits in the back of the throat like the "before" image in a Prilosec commercial.

This is pretty unpleasant stuff, real sugar or no. Not much to do with ginger ale, ginger beer, ginger soda, ginger any damn thing. Best just to walk by the Blue Sky aisle without making eye contact and not make a scene, there are healthier things in the health food store that won't make you as unhappy.

*I wrote this article up a while ago, when I reread it I found this asterisk where you see it now. I have NO idea why I put an asterisk there. Maybe I was going to say "No, I really am glad I have a refrigerator, it keeps my food fresh."**

**For the record, I've always been bothered by the word "refrigerator" and the abbreviated form "fridge". Why does a letter get added to the abbreviated form? I can think of no other informal condensation of a word where an entirely unrelated letter is thrown in. I mean, it's obvious why you need a "d" in "fridge" - otherwise you'd have "frige" which is a French word which means 'scaring young children with malicious intent'. What I really want is for that "d" to migrate backwards into the word "refridgerator". But my spellcheck says no.