Saturday, January 27, 2024

testing a TikTok trend

Make your own soda! 

This is sometimes miscalled Make your own Coke, and you'll see why I say "miscalled." The basic idea is that you take club soda or sparkling water and add a shot glass of balsamic vinegar. Stir, add ice if you want, and enjoy. This surfaced recently as a TikTok trend, with video after video claiming, "It's not Coke, but it's wonderful!" My first thought upon seeing the "soda" was to think it'd simply taste like carbonated balsamic vinegar.

Let's take a trip through pictures, shall we?

Perrier and balsamic vinegar at the ready.

The fateful shot glass.

The pour.

It does look a bit Coke-tinted.

The sip.

The reaction.

As I thought, the drink tasted like carbonated balsamic vinegar, not any kind of soda at all. You're free to try it for yourself, but as for me, I threw the rest of my drink out and will never give in to curiosity about TikTok trends ever again. Because young people are stupid.

It's a shame, really, because if this had tasted anything close to good, I'd have switched to it as a sort of health drink right away. Balsamic vinegar, like the other types of comestible vinegar, has some small value in managing blood sugar and blood pressure, and other things besides. But as things stand, it sucks as a drink. Don't believe the hype.

I might do straight vinegar shots, though.

ADDENDUM: one science-y video says to make sure the sparkling water has a high sulfur content. My intuition says that that's not going to affect the level of suck.



1 comment:

John Mac said...

I like to add gin to my soda water. Tastes fine, but it does have some nasty side effects.