Zucker - 8 Reviews

I spent several days in Germany and all I wanted was a Fritz Kola. Unfortunately everywhere we played was out of it and I was unable to enjoy its deliciousness. When we played Zoro in Leipzig I ordered one and when I was told they were out I sadly just said give me whatever's non-alcoholic and this bottle was placed in my hand. I had no idea what it was just performed the old Euro lighter as a bottle open trick and took a swig. It was fruity and delicious, and I suppose it was good enough to make me forget about the Fritz for the time being.

The next day, when I wasn't shouting over some Chinese punk band that was playing a squat with a shirt that said “Kiss me I'm punk, I asked what it was and was told that it's a carbonated raspberry/red currant lemonade. I don't think lemonade means the same there as here, but it was a great raspberry/grape soda that wasn't overly sweet. I may not have gotten my fix, but I did discover a new treat that I will get again the next time I make it to Europe.

I think this Fritz character may have taken a trip to the UK at some point in his life. It was on this visit that he discovered the joy of carbonated lemonade and decided to bring it back to his home country. Actually as far as I know Fritz may have learned about making lemonade fizzy from his great-grandmother and then brought it with him to the UK on said trip. All I know for certain is that a trip was made, lemonade and bubbles were involved and the world is better for it.

Whether Fritz's people invented this, or they borrowed it is inconsequential, as no matter what the origin, this will remain the best sparkling lemonade I have ever had the pleasure of tasting. It's nice and bitter, the way this type of beverage should be. It actually tastes like lemonade was made and the carbonation was added after the fact. A lot of other brands taste like they tried to do it all at once and it ends up having the flavor of some garbage lemon soda pop.

Germany, you've made some mistakes in the past, but I will always hold a place for you in my heart for your wonderful carbonated beverages.

At some point in your life you may find yourself on a ferry returning to England from France. It's a pleasant experience, even on the dreariest of days. Actually shouldn't life at sea be dreary anyways? That's how I always imagine it in books. If you ever find yourself in the situation I would recommend that you do the same thing I did, listen to The Cure and Joy Division on your headphones and just space out looking at the sea. I don't care if it's overly melodramatic; it was flat out enjoyable. In the moments when you come out of it why not enjoy a nice German soda? I myself chose a can of this Valensina.

Now, I can't read a word on this can, but I can read the language of flavor, and the book I'm reading it a real page-turner. This is a lemon-orange beverage that is somewhere between a soda pop and a sparkling water (although I do consider anything carbonated with added sugar to be a soda). Each of the two fruits are equally present in a battle for flavor supremacy. To tell you the truth I don't want either of them to win, because their struggle is so darn tasty. It's slightly tart and very flavorful. I don't know why we don't get this flavor combo back home, but I really wish we did.

Oh, and when you're ferry is approaching the dock, take advantage of the numerous gigantic seagulls that are hovering around. You can totally get them to eat out of your hand, if you are a turd who gets excited about things like that like I am. One of my traveling companions just wanted to feed them and then punch them as they grabbed the cracker. Now I'm against animal cruelty, but the visual of that in my head is over the top hilarious, and I hope the same visions are now in your mind grapes.

If you were a “cool” teenager in the 90`s you hung out in coffee shops. It was a different time, before the great Starbucks takeover when these locals were the homes of true weirdos. You couldn't just pop off in your local suburb; you had to go the often seedy artsy parts of town. I'm sure if I were to go back in time to 1996 and head to Topic coffee it wouldn't seem nearly as insane as it did to a 16 year old. It was dirty, dimly lit and it seemed like John Cale was always playing. It was filled with the kind of people I wanted to surround myself in, and I felt like I was finally home. There was one problem though; I didn't like coffee. I loved the culture of the place, but I just couldn't get into the drink of choice. Sure at Perkins and Dennys I would get it, but I would also add so much sugar that it could turn a walrus diabetic. I could tell that that would be frowned upon at this establishment, and you know I had to keep the cool air about me. I mean cut-off dress pants with combat boots and a painted army coat only took me so far. My solution was that I would occasionally order an iced coffee (it never seemed as harsh), but most ofhte time I would drink Afri Cola. It always seemed exotic to me with the name and weirdly shaped bottle. Topic was the only place that I had ever come across it during my short time on this planet and since it wasn't a standard Coke or Pepsi I felt that the patrons wouldn't look down on me for drinking it. In reality most of them were probably nodding off on heroin or some other opiate. Oh if my mother knew where her little boy spent her nights.

So now you have the back-story of my love affair with Afri Cola. Shortly after Topic moved, and it didn't have the same esthetic. Coffee culture started to rise and more cafes opened and eventually what I thought would be my savior closed down for good. With it went my supply of Afri Cola. Occasionally throughout the years I would stumble upon it in some small store in another city, but I never had a steady supply. You can understand my joy when I came cross a decent display of it in a grocery store in Frankfurt, Germany. I bought the biggest bottle I could find and it was like going home again. I went home to a hole in the wall that was home to all of the disenfranchised of Buffalo; the punks, the weirdos, the junkies, the transgendered and many more.

Afri Cola has a special taste in the cola world. It's not like Coke, Pepsi or the unimpressive store brands. It's clearly a cola but it doesn't fit into those molds, just like the patrons of Topic didn't fit into the molds of the normal world. If I had to compare it to another cola I would say that it was closest to RC Cola. Keep in mind it is no clone, it is it's own soda and I miss it dearly.

I love when I'm in another country and I find a product from a company that I am very familiar with that we don't have back home. Most notably are all of the crazy flavors of Coca Cola that are hanging around this planet. Some of ridiculously good, and some are just plain ridiculous.

After spending a week and a half in the UK baffled by not being able to find a single bottle of iced tea, I came across this in Germany. Seriously though, we're talking about a region of the planet that probably consumes more hot tea then the rest of the world combined, and the iced variety is not in corner stores? Ludicrous. This was an exciting find though. Not only would I get my iced tea fix, but I would also get to try it in carbonated form.

For some reason I expected this to taste like Brisk with bubbles, and was greatly pleased to find out that was not the case. It tastes like normal Lipton's lemon tea, except you know…€¦carbonated. I'm sure that is what most of the denizens of this planet would expect this to taste like, but I live in America where corn syrup is king and it leads to gross teas.

I have to admit that the bubbles were a bit weird at first, but by the end of the can I was getting the hang of it. This is something I could definitely get used to. Who knows if it will ever make it to my neck of the woods with this formula though? With my luck it will show up and just be a syrupy mess that will deserve one sip and then an introduction to the filth bin.

When Harry Nilsson sang about putting limes into coconut for a nice treat he had it all wrong. When he should have been singing is “You put the orange in the cola and you drink it all up.” That concoction is a true treat, albeit one with a learning curve. When I first tried Mezzo Mix I was not a fan, but after being fed a couple of bottles, I grew to love it. In America we are taught that the only fruit flavor that really mixes with cola is cherry (and to a lesser extent lemon and possibly lime). We have it all wrong. Cherry cola is fine and dandy, but orange cola is wonderful. Unfortunately this bottle didn't have as much orange flavor as I would have liked. I would describe it as a cola with hints of orange around the edges. I'm sure that is what most people like, but I would prefer a bolder orange flavor. The cola is also pretty middle of the road. I wouldn't give it a second thought if my citrus friend weren't involved. When I'm in Germany in the future I'll probably stick to Mezzo Mix, but I wouldn't turn one of these down if it was handed to me.

The majority of the people in the world are probably completely unaware of this, but when bands from the US tour in Europe they are taken care of very, very well by the promoters/venues. I mean I'm sure bigger bands are treated this well wherever they go, but when you're in a small band that maybe two people in the city have actually heard of before you get a bit overwhelmed with what they do for you. The food, lodging and drinks are more than we could ever possibly deserve. Recently when I played Frankfurt Germany we were basically given free domain over the bar, and lucky for me that included a decent selection of German sodas. As a result I drank way more pop than I ever would normally and I felt like crap. I also apparently stored this bottle of cola away in our merch for later enjoyment because I simply couldn't handle any more bubbles/sugar.

I had completely forgotten about it until we were packing everything up to fly home and I found it in some leftover shirts. Keep in mind it's 7am and we're about to leave for the airport and my luggage is at the maximum weight, so I can't store it away. Never one to let a potentially great soda go to waste I cracked it open and started to drink. Let me be straight here, no one should ever be drinking soda at 7am. I don't care if you stayed up all night on some adventure; you find water or juice to satiate your thirst. That being said, if soda was the only thing available and you were in one of those famous drink or die situations that everyone finds themselves in bi-monthly, you could do a lot worse than Premium Cola.

This is a dark, bold cola. Normally when colas branch out from the typical flavor, they do so by going the herbal route, which I enjoy but it's very different than what you expect from cola. Premium didn't do that at all. They somehow took a general cola and made it taste dark. This is kind of like what birch beer is to root beer. You know it's in the same family, but it's just stronger and more flavorful.

The Germans know how to make a cola. Of course I immediately regretted drinking it (and eating chocolate croissants) at 7am, but hell my tour/vacation was coming to an end and why not try to enjoy the last of my beverages?

Melon, it is not just filler for fruit salads. I'm a staunch supporter of these underrated fruits. I've hand numerous conversations in my life about how there should be more melon drinks available, especially cantaloupe. It's one of the most refreshing flavors out there. Unfortunately, the few melon flavored things I've found have all been artificially flavored by some scientist in a lab mixing chemicals together until they have the desired taste. Things done that way rarely hit their mark. This little German treat, on the other hand, hit a bulls-eye. I'm talking the center of the bulls-eye, not that cheater outer ring.

As you might gather from the name, this has a lemon lime base with melon added to it. Let me tell you, they mix together incredibly. I once heard some wise men having a conversation. Upon facing an inevitable death one proclaimed, "Aw, we're going to die and I never tasted cantaloupe." The others reply held the wisdom of sages. He calmly stated, "Eh, you didn't miss much. Honeydew is the money melon." I believe the Fritz company took said money melon and mixed in some cantaloupe to appease both parties involved. The result could have gotten someone burned at the stake in olden times for witchcraft.