Pokka Soursop Juice Drink

Greetings drinks fans!

The Drinks Master has emerged from his winter hibernation to again risk life, limb and taste buds for your reading pleasure.

Today's wish-wash is a brew that apparently is made from the curse of the common garden - soursops. Pokka's Soursop Juice Drink claims the down to earth moniker "good & refreshing", which one must assume is superior to "bad & dehydrating".

It is packaged in a can which depicts a mystery green fruit / vegetable rather than the humble soursop it claims to embody. This caused the Drinks Master to query whether the description was accurate, and drawing upon his linguistic powers of deduction the Drinks Master noticed a description in Malaysian of "Western Durian" buried in the ingredients list. Instantly sick to the stomach at the thought of having to quaff durian juice, your hero turned to the internet for assistance. Sure enough upon a quick Google search it was revealed that deception was at play!

According to my colleague "Fruity" over at the Fruit Species Blog, soursop is "a native fruit from the West Indies, Central America, down to Brazil and it is a common fruit in tropical Asia nowadays." Apparently amongst the Chinese community soursop is known as the "Western Durian" due to its durian like appearance, although they taste nothing alike (thank the lords). One rather distubing factoid was noted however that the fruit contains "numerous, black toxic seeds"...hmmmmm.

While disappointed that he would not be sharing the sweet joys of ingesting bovine ambrosia, the Drinks Master pressed on. Upon cracking open the can there was a suggestion of fizz, noted by the familiar "shht" one would hear from a common can of Coke. This notwithstanding upon pour one discovers the brew is naught but flat.

Olfactory exploration of the open can revealed a sweet smell, not unlike passion fruit. However a transfer of the liquid from the can to a glass presented a murky fluid akin to water after one has hand washed yesterday's underwear.

Furthermore, after a brief slosh around the glass a white film or residue took hold on the glass further reinforcing the concept that washing powder deposits remained after the underwear was removed. A curious description on the can read "contains permitted food additives of a non-animal origin", which perhaps lends assistance to explain the Omo like appearance.

Ingestion of the washing water leads not so much to a flavour explosion, but more of a slow leakage of taste crossed between passion fruit and green melon. It's not offensive, but it could hardly be called exciting either. Perhaps this is where the "good & refreshing" line becomes most appropriate. It's a safe and boring description for a safe and boring drink.

However as noted by Ms. Drinks Master, the more you drink the washing water the more you realise you probably shouldn't be drinking it. The can was polished off in only a few minutes, and while the Drinks Master was left refreshed his stomach reserved judgement of such swift ingestion.

In short, the Drinks Master was disappointed. He expected sourness, he expected offensive flavour explosions, but was greeted quite simply by "meh". If you're of the kind who wants to appear like you're a daring character prepared to imbibe anything to impress, but you're really a lightweight sissy, then is is the brew for you.