Taste Test: Jones Bacon Soda

BACON. Not only is it one of the staples of life (along with coffee, Billy’s Western burgers and beans on toast), it’s also fast becoming the weapon of choice in the ongoing war between corporations whose survival depends on making us corpulent. Bacon has infiltrated every aspect of food recently, so it comes as no surprise that Jones Soda has made a bacon-flavoured drink. I knew I had to get my hands on some and as Target and Ralphs turned out to be useless I had to mail-order it.

Here’s what you get for $9.99 plus postage — two bottles of bacon soda, a pack of cheddar bacon popcorn, a pouch of bacon gravy and a little tube of bacon lip balm. It’s a plethora of porcine products! I’m only trying the soda as I’ve just shovelled a ham-and-cheese omelette down my face and can’t face eating the popcorn yet.

Here it is overflowing onto our kitchen counter. The first thing you notice is the smell — a sort of fake-bacon odour that is, to be honest, pretty revolting. I mean it smells of bacon but there’s such an awful underlying chemical pong that it’s impossible to think of drinking it. But drink it I will…

[Takes swig, immediately runs to bathroom to vigorously swill mouth out with Listerine]

Yeah, that was a mistake. It’s not good in much the the same way as slamming your nuts in the fridge door isn’t good. Let’s face it, “good” isn’t a word that should be used within the same time zone as this stuff. It’s every bit as revolting as the smell would have you believe. Even the picked pigs’ trotters I tried a while back don’t have anything on bacon soda in the “why did I try that?” stakes. The aftertaste alone is so awful it makes you want to kill kittens. In fact, it’s so bad I’m going to have to make a trip to Thesaurus.com to find some other words to describe it:

Disgusting, nauseating, stomach-turning, foul, gross, abhorrent, sickening, repellent, nasty horrid, appalling, nauseating… the list goes on. I think I’m going to stick to Cherry Coke from now on. At least until Jones Soda brings out their annual Thanksgiving flavours, that is.