The Weird, Forgotten Drinks Thread

[Toby Gymshorts]

Shandy Bass is still being made and is, frankly, still bloody great.

[Levin]

Tab was a coca cola product wasn't it?

Aqua Libra was a very middle class 80-90s drink. I can't remember the last time I saw that.

[Levin]

Oh wow. Coca cola made a White Coke for the Soviet Union at Marshal Zhukov's request.

Lilt is still made (and apparently ruined by the sugar tax, like Rubicon) but it's not as visible as it was in the past.

[Nocturnal Submission]

I was going to mention the first wave of alcohol-free "beers" - Kaliber, Barbican & St. Christopher. Are they still being made? The taste was truly indescribable but the one thing that they most certainly didn't taste like was beer.

[Snake Plissken]

You can still get Kaliber.

Old Mout Cider do an alcohol free version of their Berries cider. Which, upon thinking about it, I basically worked out was an expensive fizzy fruit juice.

[Benjm]

Shloer sparkling grape juice is still going. It seemed to be pitched as an adult soft drink before there was much competition in that market.

[willie1foot]

'Drink o'clock' is rubbish. It sounds like something a burgeoning alcoholic might say.

Bird's Apeel - agree, very poor name - struck me as being much the same as Kellogg's Rise & Shine. (My mother bought the latter once or twice. Powdery-tasting, IIRC. As I suppose it would be.)

Solo - there's another canned drink that disappeared without trace very quickly. The commercial featured a mountaineer who somehow had a convenient supply of the said lemon soda ready for him at the top of wherever it was he was climbing.

WFLA ('Wrote for luck again'?) I don't recall whatsoever.

Re: Solo ...I think that may have been an import from the antipodes.... and you can still get it here. https://youtu.be/ifFA6_QDY78

[Amor de Cosmos]

The other national keg beer I remember as well as Watneys Red Barrel was Worthington E

Yeah. Red Barrel, DD, Worthington and Whitbread. Ruled before CAMRA came for them.

[San Bernardhinault]

First they came for the Watney's Red Barrell, but I said nothing...

[3 Colours Red]

I was going to suggest Tizer, as I haven't noticed it anywhere in the UK since I was about ten years old. But apparently it's still flourishing.

If by "flourishing", you mean "changed the recipe for the worse even before the sugar tax came in" then yes.

That reminds me about Tizer Ice - basically the old nice Tizer but with added menthol extract so that it tasted "cold" even without being chilled. Surprisingly effective.

On the other side of the coin, there was Fiery Irn-Bru. A "secret ingredient" (most likely some combination of ginger and cinnamon from what I can recall of the taste) to make it feel like your tongue was on fire. Again, surprisingly effective.

Finally, in the list of forgotten colas there's Lucozade's effort. I remember seeing the 1 litre bottles of it for 19p in Savers about a month after it was launched, it bombed that hard. It was rank - like watered-down Pepsi mixed with that Euro Shopper glucose drink you get in Londis and Premier and the like.

[Incandenza]

I really enjoyed Crystal Pepsi. Then again, I was 11 years old.

New York Seltzer recently came back, something I enjoyed a lot when I was a kid as well. Trying it again, i realized that "seltzer" is just a ruse, it's just clear fruit flavored soda. The tiny glass bottles are still cool, though.

[Balderdasha]

Wow, I'd forgotten about jolt cola. We used to keep it in our desks and swig it whenever lessons got boring. Lethal stuff.

[Foot of Astaire's]

Cheap booze in the mid 80s often meant Clan Dew or Newcastle Amber Ale (a softy version of the Brown variety). Google tells me neither are available now but then it said that about Shandy Bass

[Big Boobs and FIRE!]

The most interesting fact in current British politics is that Tim Farron lives in what used to be the Um Bongo factory in Cumbria.

[Patrick Thistle]

Do they still make 20/20? That stuff was awful.

I once bought a drink called Raging Hog in Hyper Value. It was a Coca-Cola product. I kept the can for ages to show people. It was pink with a giant green pig on it.

[Benjm]

Do they still make 20/20? That stuff was awful.

Apparently so. It knocked Thunderbird and Night Train Express right off their perches, with neither seeming to be available any more.

This is based on a quick internet search rather than a tour of the sketchier off licences of Acton and Shepherds Bush, I should point out.

[Patrick Thistle]

My fave alcopops were Hooch and Two Dogs

[Toby Gymshorts]

I quite liked a Reef, if I recall correctly.

[Benjm]

I remember preferring Two Dogs to Hooch. I think it was a bit sharper and less sweet. Either was infinitely more drinkable than fortified wine but with a much lower abv too.

[Benjm]

I quite liked a Reef, if I recall correctly.

Listening to Reef while drinking Reef is what sorts the real mid '90s faces from the wannabees.

[Toby Gymshorts]

Run your fingers through my mid-priced, fruit-based alcoholic beverage.

[Nefertiti2]

did you also have

DAVENPORTS
BEER AT HOME

[Lang Spoon]

20/20 is giving me dry heaves just with the name. That fuckin smell fae the boatil. Also 8% TNT cider, which came in a glass cylinder shaped like a stick of dynamite. White cider of course needing gimmicks to appeal to the underage 90s imbiber who would otherwise pass up the chance to get paralytic for under a fiver.

[Lang Spoon]

Irn Bru once did an alcopop with a shite whisky (probably bells or grouse, can't remember now). It was of course fucking rank.

[Giggler]

I used to quite like Metz. I can’t specifically remember what it tasted like beyond the main ingredient being sherbet.