Calpis Water, also know as Calpico Water, or カルピスウォーター (Karupisu Uaataa) is a Japanese beverage that has been reviewed on this site several times by asianbev.Please read his reviews on Calpis Flavors or Bottled Hello Kitty Calpico Water and his most recent excellent video review on Calpis Concentrate. There is Wikipedia entry on the drink here.
My take on the can version of the drink is this, if you take water and you add milk to it, it doesn't matter how much sugar you add it's a gross concept... However, it's a seriously popular drink and I don't mind downing the odd can when I'm having Ramen or Katsu-don at my favourite Japanese Noodle Bar, Ichi-ban Boshi (That's where the can pictured is from). It has a very sweet taste, and although I'm sure it has some kind of milk in it, I wouldn't describe the flavour as milky at all.
The drink is very refreshing and as asianbev has demonstrated, comes in a variety of flavors, including; strawberry, grape, guava, mango, pineapple, orange, melon, peach and others (sited from Wikipedia). The official Calpis website has a US English version that contains info on their various products.
The flavour is kinda tangy and probably created by the inclusion of lactobacilli which is some kind of yoghurt culture/bacteria I believe, although I wouldn't necessarily have noticed the yoghurty taste. It's interesting enough to make me want to drink it again, and unique enough to ensure that I won't be buying other brands.
Taste (7)
Weirdness (5)
Satisfaction (8)
Taste (7)
Weirdness (5)
Satisfaction (8)
Hi Dorinku, great blog dude. Any chance of adding the "Nutrition Information" to your reviews. Mostly for sugar, corn syrup, Sodium etc.
ReplyDeleteI have some 2% peach (so yummy) on my desk now. I looked up the Korean character for sugar and it says 0% on the bottle label. But it also says in English "Low GI 19, Fruit Sugar" which is somewhat contradictory. It would be pretty interesting to know some of the so called heath aspects of these drinks. I read somewhere that the Asian brands can get away with a lot more sodium than in Euro/US brands due to different FDA regs. You’d easily be able to work out the Japanese and Korean Characters for all these, for example. http://www.zkorean.com/dictionary.php?direction=ek&word=sugar
hi konkon,
ReplyDeletethanks for the comments dude, much appreciated. your idea of adding nutrituonal information is a good one, however neither of the reviewers on this site can read or speak japanese or korean and we are based in the usa and australia which could make it difficult to add the information you are requesting. the focus of this blog is mainly on taste for now, but we are always looking to adding new content, so cheers - dorinku