Soft drinks what the term I grew up with in Ireland
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_drink
Wiki claims Canada uses the term as well.
All hail Wiki.

I grew up in Atlantic Canada, and we always took the term soft drink to mean the opposite of hard liquor, as in non-alcoholic. More and more nowadays, it seems to be understood by many to mean carbonated non-alcoholic beverage.

Cheers

Around these parts, it's really "soft-drink" as if it were one word, rather than "soft" "drink."

Hey Mark, in your experience and travels, is milk in a bag common elsewhere in Canada? It's an aside, but one of those things friends from the US (and Europe *always* remark on when they're here).

Some supermarkets in the UK tried doing milk in a bag, but it didn't really catch on. I did notice the other day that one of our local supermarkets was trying it again.

I haven't seen those before, but just checked a site and it seems Ocado (Waitrose) sells them. Odd!

edit: Some Sainsbury's stores do, not my (new) local one though.

That bag looks like the same proportions as the ones here in Ontario, but the volume is definitely different.

Here you can only buy 3 bags at a time. They come within a larger bag for a total volume of 4L. Each of the internal bags is either clear, white or translucent blue, with no branding or markings. Only the external bag contains the branding. The translucent blue and white are used by two brands of premium (filtered) milk.

Apart from that you can buy them in a carton in 1 and 2L sizes. You might still find it in 4L plastic jugs somewhere, but I haven't seen those in ages. Single-serve sizes are also available, but I'm talking about buying milk to put in your fridge for family.

Here's an example of a milk fridge in a supermarket:
http://nothingheavy.blogspot.com/2006/04/milk-bag.html

For commercial use, like offices, you can also buy it in Tetra packs as we had them at ATI. These were always from Parmalat. Tetra packed milk is the norm in Portugal (though I'm sure you can buy fresh in glass as well in some places). It doesn't have to be refrigerated until it's opened.

I buy most of my milk (which is not that much, really) from a local dairy in half-gallon returnable glass bottles. I always thought that milk in plastic was creepy; it always left that crust on plastic bottle rims. Paper or glass for me.

Before the local council started offering recycling of plastic bottles, plastic milk bottles were quite a big fraction of my non-recyclable waste. (I get through about a pint a day on average. When I was little our family of four would get through six pints a day.) So switching to bagged milk would have been a big improvement in waste-volume then, but not so much now.

Peter

That website is great!

Definitely so in Quebec & the Maritimes. But to be honest, we haven't gone shopping for bagged milk out west (BC, AB), so I haven't really noticed out there.

Cheers

I haven't seen it in BC (my most recent trip was in July), and a friend in AB hasn't seen milk in bags there.

There is one convenience store chain in Minnesota that sells milk in bags. I never have bought it, it seems weird. They have some special pitcher to put the bags in so you can pour it.

I read, since initially posting, that milk in bags isn't available in BC and AB. In at least one of those places it might even be illegal (so I read). They had bags at one point but due to poor local manufacturing of the bags, they had problems with leaking and milk going bad. So no more bags.

It's supposedly quite common in some South American nations and it's starting to appear in the US and the UK (in multiple supermarket chains).

We get through around 4 to 6 litres of milk a day (3 kids) and to be honest milk in bags would never be a good idea (imagine 3 kids with bags o'milk - the mess!)

Although we get them delivered, I do miss glass bottles - our only option here is plastic. Not ecologically sound at all!

Back to that earlier topic I do love my soft drinks, but only the full fat, full sugar ones... ideally Irn Bru - drink of the gods.

I never drink diet drinks as they make me feel so bad. A half can of diet coke can give me headaches for 3 or 4 days.

Milk in a bag is actually quite mess-free. It's really no more messy than a carton - potentially. The handle on the jug that you place the bag into is easier to grab for a smaller hand, but the whole thing can be a bit heavier since it has about 1.3L of milk when full. But the difficulty is of course relative to whatever size/weight of containers you're now getting.

The drawback is that there's no real way to seal the bag after it's open. So if you were to drop the whole container on the floor, that would be a mess for sure.

Personally, milk quality and recycleability aside, I quite like the Tetra packs I've used in Portugal. I've not actually noticed the milk being inferior in any way, but recycling of the tetra packs may not be available in all areas. Really convenient to be able to have milk on the shelf outside the fridge. Same re-seal issues with this type of container too - drop it and there will be some mess.

I can't imagine bags'o'milk. When growing up, we had pints in glass bottles, left on the doorstep by the milkman. Get 'em before the birds do...

These days, we have 4-pint plastic bottles from the supermarket. Fortunately, Ealing accepts most plastic waste for recycling (though I have no idea what they actually do with it), which accounts for about 60-70% of our domestic rubbish output.



I don't drink diet drinks because (I kid myself) I don't need to lose weight. Also, I can't stand the taste of Aspartame. I pretty much gave up on caffeine 5 years ago. I have maybe one mug of tea per day now; that's it.

Essentially, I drink tap water and Stella Artois.

Honestly one of the few beers I've tried that I simply cannot drink. Strange considering Belgium is my favorite beer producer.

Oh, don't get me wrong. I like most beers, stouts and lagers -- ask anyone who's been to the Amersfoort empeg meets with me, or any of the Cambridge gang. It's just that Stella's my usual tipple. I know that a lot of people don't like it, but I prefer it to the other mass-produced Euro-lagers.

Is the Stella available in the US/North America the same as the Stella in Belgium/Europe? Many mass-produced beers are licensed in foreign markets and brewed locally, with varying degrees of fidelity.

I've never done a taste comparison of different Stellas. That sounds about as exciting as doing a taste comparison of different Budweiser breweries. (And now they're owned by the same company!)

A guy I knew in England called Stella Artois 'Nelson'.

He had to explain Cockney rhyming slang to me.

If anyone likes a nice refermented dark Belgian/Trapist Ale, you have to try Koningshoeven Quadrupel. Made in the only abbey brewery outside of Belgium, in the Netherlands. Bloody fantastic if you like that style.

If you have an opportunity to drink any beer from the Canadian brewer Unibroue (from Quebec), don't pass it up either. Positively the best beer I've ever had from a North American brewer. Most of their good stuff is also on lees, refermented in the bottle. My faves are their Belgian style ales, Trois Pistoles, Maudite and La Fin du Monde. I also quite like their "wit" style, Blanche de Chambly. They all get top ratings at BeerAdvocate so they can't be good only to my palate.

For myself, Stella would have to battle Labatt Blue for the worst tasting beer available in Canada. I really really don't like the taste at all and can't even finish a full glass.

I agree that everything I've had from them is fantastic. There is even a restaurant within 20 minutes of me with some of their beers on tap.


I actually like Stella. It's become common enough here that almost everywhere I go offers it even if the next-most exotic thing on their menu is Sam Adams.

Labatt Blue is Coors Light of the north.

Mandela?

+1 for Unibroue. I don't think they make a bad beer, and most of them are outstanding.

Stella's good mainly because it's finding its way into the spot formerly occupied by Beck's and Heineken at not-very-beer-oriented bars and restaurants. It's quaffable and widely available -- that's a good thing when so many places will have six taps all running yellow fizzy BudMillerCoors crap.

Not sure I understand the Sam Adams hate, though. They make some absolute garbage brews ("Cranberry Nut Crunch Fuckin' Ale"), but also some very solid ones. Boston Lager is nothing special, but I'd take it over Stella any day. Likewise with Octoberfest, Winter Ale, and Double Bock. All solid choices that I'd take over many micros and imports.

Yup

I definitely don't hate Sam Adams. Boston Lager is a solid beer. I also enjoy some of their seasonal beers.

But was it just a ruse to get free beer if the pub displayed a "Free Nelson Mandela" poster?

Peter

I just cracked open one of the bottles from a Maredsous sampler 3-pack I just bought on the weekend. Right now I'm having the Tripel. The pack also contained a Blonde and a Brune. Quite good, but not the best tripel I've had. Though I think I prefer it to the namesake of the branded chalice/goblet I'm drinking it from, Westmalle.

I love that our provincial government owned liquor stores bring in these samplers, I'm just disappointed that there's pretty much no way to get the bottles again locally if you liked what you've tasted.

There's a startup beer web2.0-ish site by the way, that's supposed to recommend beer based on your reviews of other beers:
(in private beta now, but invites seem to be sent out pretty fast)

www.pintley.com