#and I still prefer the instant coffee because it's cheaper and the cream and sugar are already in it yum yum

[mokeonn]

I no longer understand coffee purists who refuse to have instant coffee. Like "I only drink the finest beans I grind and brew myself" cool I made my coffee in 30 seconds and it tastes yummy :)

[thekitschdiet]

my take on the literary masterpiece, the chic diet

Firstly, I am no one. It’s part of my charm. My fifteen minutes of fame was years ago, when I had an instagram niche meme page. I didn’t even take any brand deals! And my posts averaged six thousand likes! Anyhow. I am hardly literate and well hydrated and carry a small sephora-CVS-hybrid worth in my mini tote bag. Here is my guide on how to live like me, the intermediate kitsch-rat, aspiring influencer. But like, in an apathetic, somewhat dissonant, ironic way. I like saying I live by dogmatic principles. But a lot of it, um, is just eating disorder rituals. But that’s not really important. You’re as hot as you say you are, and as much an authority on what you write so long as you say it with, you know, conviction. It’s kind of venerable how fucking delusional I am, actually. Giving any sort of advice like I’m anywhere close to the ritzy ideal of the amphetamine-areyouami label-american. New York, ideally. West Village, preferably. But I guess the kind of guide I can write is better suited to someone living in a suburb, in a house with the twelve-paned windows. I always thought those were so chic. SO quaint, in a somewhat luxe way. Like, Connecticut vibes. My parents used to drive me up there as a child to buy books and ice cream. Nowadays I’d opt for a matcha latte with novelty ice cubes, but I guess at the time it was pretty sweet. 

Because I popped a Vyvanse at like, 10pm, this next little bit could go one of two ways. I will write the most articulate, brilliant piece of literature of my life. Magnum opus, if there was a skinnier word for it. Or, I will get wrapped up doing something like folding all my last-season knits (which is part of my look, okay! I don’t have a job!) and fixating on a paragraph on how a girl’s collarbones are almost as identifying as a fingerprint, or a signature. I’m not a graphologist, but if you write your A’s with the little tail on top (like on a computer), you’re probably a snake. Nothing personal, just an observation. Also, I do have a biology final to study for. Not that I’m super anal, or even particularly committed to academia, but even in my precariously manicured (read that as separate terms; I did a good job on my nail polish, okay? But I happen to also be teetering on the brink of an epiphany or a collapse. Hence the use of the word precarious.) state, I know it’s important enough I can let one of my countless side-quests sit idle for a couple more days. 

The first section seems only natural to be about hydration. And the whole idea of drinking things, really. There was a section in The Chic Diet about Adderall dry-mouth, which deeply resonated with me. Once I bit off a chunk of a Nivea Strawberry Shine (my favorite lip balm, more on that later) and swished it around my mouth. Didn’t help. Really, really didn’t. Anyway, I suppose that even if it served no purpose for combatting my prevacatingly ingenious cottonmouth solution, I was able to milk a sentence or two out of the experience. “Do it for the Vine”, all grown up! And wearing bananapapaya resin hoops too. Side note, that Etsy shop is a parasocial enemy of mine. It stems from jealousy, which sucks, but hating from inside a club I’m adjacent to is much healthier than being a hateful individual towards people I would, you know, interact with. Daily. Or something. I stopped going to therapy because I felt stupid about going and I don’t live in the right kind of town to warrant vacuous $300 hours. Bitching about my well-adjusted parents and how desperately I wished my anxiety would just “go away” was plainly gross, and a waste. Like, pretty sure almost every problem I have could be solved by a couple painful conversations taking place during a hurricane. Such a shame it doesn’t rain much here. Anyhow, I digress. 

Staying hydrated. It is essential to my character, my persona, if you will; to never be without either an elegant metal bottle (I’m loyal to the smooth enamelled S’well ones, printed to look like marble or a semi holographic solid) or a little 16oz tumbler with a metal straw. Hydroflasks were some of the worst things to happen to society. I want to preface this claim with the fact that I wanted one in the same way a teenage girl wants a new iPhone so she can keep up appearances with her dermatologist-dad friends who still have the XR, by the way. But I ended up spending the money on like, a minidress at Brandy Melville before it fled my city. Or maybe a Fresh Sugar tinted lipbalm. For the better, even though the dress has a busted zipper now and the lipbalm tube has inevitably gotten dinged and dented by the other contents of my mini-totebag. Unlike a car, though, a couple scuffs on your laptop or your luxury lipbalm tube looks kind of cool. Like, you’re not someone who values the pristine, unused quality of an item that was ambiguously intended to be used versus displayed on Instagram.  Now, I’m wondering why this paragraph about hydration is so fucking impossible to stay on track for. I literally drink several litres of water a day, and more tea on top of that. And sometimes an almond milk latte if I can budget it in. Not that I’m so anorexic I can’t afford a 45cal latte. They’re just not that important to me. Anyhow. Drinking lukewarm (on the cool side) water is better than ice-cold. Partially because I just get it out of the tap of my ensuite and I can’t be bothered to wait for it to run cold enough every time, and it just seems wasteful. Plus, there is something so.. skinny about drinking water at an “obscure” temperature. Trust me, I want to know why my thought process is like this too. My favorite tea is blueberry tea foraged in a side aisle at my local supermarket. I love a good commercial, high-end steep or fruit infusion as much as the next girl. Maybe more. My pantry is filled with tins labelled with things like “emerald jade organic” and “magic potion”, which is really just currants and butterfly pea flowers. But there is a necessary glamor about drinking dirt-cheap tea on the daily. Seriously, a box of 25 sachets is like, $3. At a higher point with my, um, Adderall problem, I spent like several times that on pills. I didn’t really need to include that, and could have linked the price point to the cost of a drugstore lipbalm, but I wrote it in. And I’m married to it, stubbornly, as all amateur writers should be when they wittle in a somewhat indecorous little joke. This tea is sooo good because it has a strong fruit-reminiscent taste (not as sweet as a fresh blueberry, but who wants that anyway?), it’s zero-calorie, it’s the most GORGEOUS color ever. The latte, the third drink in my little trifecta, is nothing special. But necessary. The trick is to use a milk frother to whip up sugar free syrup with instant coffee and a little bit of hot water in a glass. It’ll make the most luscious foam.. Top it off with almond milk. My dad is a coffee purist, owning both an upstairs keurig AND a downstairs one (among other more analogue methods, but I can’t name-drop, so what’s the point?), so he hates this drink. Now, calling oneself a plebian is so unglamorous and teetering on self-deprecating territory, dangerously close to insecurity. But I can use it here because I am at least posh enough to have a different pair of earrings for every outfit I could possibly come up with, and I only wear Patagonia if I am in a situation where I just have to wear fleece. Like I was saying. It’s such a simple drink, certainly not a delicacy, and… I had a joke about the word plebian but I keep getting up to refill my water and I fear I have forgotten about it. 

Next section; the importance of a good tinted balm

In the intro I alluded to how a girl’s collarbones function essentially as an identifier, the way a signature or fingerprint does. This is a lie, or at least an exaggeration. But one’s ultimate tinted lipbalm is  actually extremely indicative about who you are, as a person, as a member of society, even… 

If you are loyal to Dior Lipglow, I have a couple questions. One; did you shoplift one tube, once, and refill it with cheaper stuff afterwards? I did that. I consider it one of my better-kept secrets, but now you know. Might as well explain the catalyst for my parent’s first separation now, and the horrifying experience that was meeting my dad’s Manhattan sugar baby (?) at the age of thirteen, wearing an overalls dress from, like, Topshop or something else equally embarrassing. .. Kidding. I digress. It’s such a fancy lipbalm, and good too! It smells like thin mints! But I could just never justify cell phone monthly installation payment money on something I will inevitably talk off. I do own three, but two I stole (before I lost the nerve, somewhat unfortunately) and one, a boy(not)friend bought for me. This is not something I feel any remorse about, because his house was easily four thousand square feet and his sisters had a dedicated all-glass room for their shared peloton. Oil money. Ugh!

My personal favorite lip balm, and I have tried a frightening amount, has got to be the Nivea Fruit Shine collection. The frosted one is shit-ugly. Hideous. But the strawberry one is the love of my life. It’s such a pleasant red, looking healthy and rejuvenated and really completes any look. Only downside is it will always, hopefully not always, remind me of Charles. Kissing Charles, specifically. And him asking me what lipbalm it was, because he knew I was somewhat frivolous and definitive and would have a very long answer. But for whatever reason, I simply stated it was from “out of town”. Not really sure why I said that, but it plagues me (minorly) to this day. Of all the things to make up.. .. The peach one is a perfectly demure spring classic shade. Cherry exists too, but the only tube I have ever had the fortune of owning was purchased in Costa Rica and lost somewhere on the way home. Honestly tragic, it was the juiciest shade. Blackberry is perfect too, but I have to layer it with either peach or untinted lipbalm to avoid what I imagine TooPoor would choose if she believed in tinted lipbalm. I don’t mean this hatefully, I think she’s a queen, but super dark, smudgy makeup suits the eyes better in my opinion. Or something. Or something.

Afraid to bore the reader, I have to move on now. Maybe at a later date I will release an addendum on my ultimate lipbalm buying guide. But also, that is so deeply personal (and everyone needs the excuse of “hunting for the perfect staple shade!!”), so it is really not my place to have any authority on something so intimate and subjective. Etcetera. 

Moving on; Decorating your room

Here is a section I lifted out of my memoir document. It fits, because as enigmatic as I hope I am, I am also quite unchanging.

 I just pushed three hangers and two tiny strappy tops with the tags still on, off my bed. Most nights, all, these days, actually; I spend in my large but cluttered bedroom. I have a little ensuite with a jetted tub I’ve never used because I just never get around to it. There’s a plush grey rug, spanning the expanse of the room (covering an ugly cherry wood that doesn’t match the rest of the house; no clue why. I never asked, and the previous owners were eager to sell so they could finally ditch this town and retire in Montreal for the bagels, or Hawaii for the monk seals. Point is, I’ll never know) with loose beads and loose pills and little shards of glass from plier-crushed beads. I vacuum every day. The whole room tells you exactly the kind of person I am; the clutter I possess, the encapsulation of the projects I start, start, start and the hours I don’t sleep for and the clothes I tried on (these to sell, these to cut up with kitchen scissors; thrifted lululemon and aritzia and heaps of knits and plaid fabric..) I would not say the room is a mess. Lived in, maybe. Chopsticks and mugs and gum wrappers. Single dangle earrings. I just finished the last of my Creme Brulee eos lipbalm; disguised as a relic of 2015, I was gifted it Christmas of ‘20. I think my next waxy conquest will be a tinted Burt’s one I palmed a while back, before I lost the nerve. Peering around the room you will see shopping bags strewn about the mouth of my walk-in closet. Every surface has something shiny or colorful stacked up on it. Cluttered, busy, but intentional. Except for the walls, which are bare. Bare and gray and miles-tall when I lie flat on my back, high out of my mind, willing things to change but knowing I’m responsible for a first step I will always be too scared for. Bare, pristine, no gumtack. Empty, Like they’re waiting. I wait around a lot. It makes sense. That was an awful lot of words about my stupid blank walls when truly it does not bother me that much; I really just don’t get around to it. I have other things on the ground to tend to, like post-email nausea, addressing envelopes, marrying wire and bead.  Writing a document I care about because I am determined and I am alive, alive, alive, goddammit. 

Excerpt over. The memoir is coming out when I get famous, or something earth shattering happens. Like I become the world’s least remarkable entrepreneur, and I get retweeted by Colorpop. I don’t want to be the next Elizabeth Wurtzel. I read two of her memoirs one restless night, absorbing it to make up for the nutrients I didn’t that day (you can laugh. I think that is pretty clever), heart breaking a little bit. She writes about her struggles so intrinsically, you either get it, or you don’t. Anyway. She had the books and the fame from it, and she wrote more memoirs than I think a single person should. That is admirable. Aspirational, even. But I do not want to be like her. Where was I? Oh. Yes. Decorating/adorning/filling your room. Your room should serve as the kind of place to watch a movie (if you believe in film. I don’t) and put on ridiculous glittery eye makeup, or smoke an ~artistic cigarette~ or stay up all night on the phone, which is different from staying up all night simply on your phone. Chatting with someone you are tepidly in love with is much more exciting. Not chic as the whole affair is so juvenile, but fun regardless. It’s somewhere to keep your worldly possessions, too. I know I have a lot! Also, it is kind of thrilling to hide things in your room in little crevices only you know about. Now, unfortunately, everyone reading this will know too. But, like, I trust you not to really.. do anything about it. I keep my extra juul pods in the sliding box my apple pencil came in. That box is almost more useful than the pencil itself. I’m somewhat morally opposed to the iPad. Whole culture is so embarrassing! I have a tea tin with an ounce of golden teacher shrums in it. This is tossed in my closet among tins filled with other things, like lace trim and buttons. Which makes it actually a pretty terrible hiding spot, I see now… Anyhow. Keeping benign little secrets like that is so fun. You can tell I don’t have siblings. I sort of wish I did, but it is easier to believe there is something aristocratic about being an only child. Not sure if older-sister me would be egalitarian enough to share things. But that’s prophesying, which is kind of a waste of time. I live in the now, in a room positively cluttered with meaningless things that mean the world to me, chewing on my lip because my mouth is just so dry and 5gum is just not an after-8 indulgence. To live truly kitschly, you have to have somewhat hideous decor. Now, do not confuse dissonant, or incoherent, with what I mean by “hideous decor”. The kitsch room has as many surfaces to look at as possible, while also shying away from too many shelving units. Then you risk your room looking like a storage unit or something. When my mom renovated (re: paid someone to do it) our New York house so we could sell it, all our stuff was stacked up in a Cubesmart self storage. It was sort of horrifying, seeing my childhood home reduced to plastic storage tubs piled what felt like thirty feet high. Anyway. It’s just not an  inviting way to store things; I imagine it makes your room look like your stuff is all trapped in gelatin. The more fussy, tiny things you have out in the open, the better. Nail polish. Earring trees. Bowls full of rings and lighters and water color pans perched on your windowsill. A rack with the tackiest assortment of knits and bucket hats and baguette bags. And so forth.. Quickly surveying someone’s room is so telling. Bonus points if all your books are spine-in, except for your favorite ones, because you don’t want people to get the wrong idea. (that you read). 

[cliftonsteen]

Sugar in coffee: Exploring an age-old habit

All around the world, people add sugar or sweeteners to their coffee, and have done so for centuries. 

Although third wave coffee consumers generally lean towards drinking coffee without milk or sugar, it is still an established habit in the sector that isn’t going anywhere soon. In the USA alone, a study shows that more than 50% of surveyed coffee drinkers sweeten their coffee.

But why is adding sugar to coffee such an ingrained drinking habit? Where did it come from? And how do people drink coffee with sugar around the world today? To learn more, I spoke to a scientist, coffee specialists, and specialty coffee drinkers. Read on to find out what they said.

You may also like another article on adding sugar to coffee.

A history: Sugar in coffee

Sugar’s relationship with coffee stretches back almost 500 years. The two have been intrinsically linked for centuries.

When coffee reached Europe in the 16th century, coffee and sugar were both considered luxuries, reserved almost exclusively for the wealthy upper classes at the time. However, most beans were low quality, and roasted very dark. To make the bitter and intense flavours more palatable, sugar was often added.

As time went by, sweeter caffeinated beverages (both coffee and tea) started to become more affordable and accessible. Unlike beer and cider (which were both safer to drink than water at the time), they provided a dose of energy without the added side effect of drunkenness.

According to an NPR article: “A strong dose of sugar [in coffee] was an affordable luxury… it gave workers a hit of caffeine to get through a long slog of a day, it provided plentiful calories, and it offered the comfort of warmth during a meal that otherwise often consisted only of bread.”

Sugar and coffee continued to be popular into the 18th century. The first large-scale coffee roaster was invented in the 1700s, and likely provided roasters with very limited control over the roast.

Despite the fact that roasting was now mechanical, sugar was likely still added to smooth the intense flavours that arose as a result of this imprecision.

Similarly, when instant coffee became popular in the 20th century, it was generally made using cheap, accessible beans, often from robusta plants. This further encouraged drinkers to add sugar.

Wilton Soares Cardoso is a food engineer, professor, and researcher at IFES in Espírito Santo. “Sugar suppresses a coffee’s bitterness and acidity,” he says. “By balancing its acids, you can experience other flavours in the drink.”

Sugar preferences around the world 

As we know, cultural tastes for coffee differ all around the world. So while some 50% of surveyed coffee drinkers in the USA take sugar in their coffee, what about other countries?

To learn more about preferences about sugar in coffee in Europe, I spoke to Daniel Riou, a coffee trader and partner at Buraca Roasters, a specialty coffee roaster based in Lisbon and Cascais, Portugal.

He says that in the Mediterranean in particular, coffee is traditionally an intense, dark beverage. This has been further influenced by Italian espresso culture. Finally, he adds that consumers and businesses in many of these countries have had limited buying power in recent decades.

As a result, Daniel says: “Manufacturers and roasters ended up buying lower quality coffee with a higher percentage of robusta, making it bitter. This bitterness has been eliminated by adding sugar.

”Years and years of this type of consumption ended up changing our palate and creating this preconceived idea that sugar is to be added to coffee,” he tells me. “This is why it is such a deep-rooted habit in Mediterranean countries.”

Sugar has even been used during roasting in some Mediterranean countries and beyond. This process is known as torrefacto, a traditional method where roasters glaze coffee with sugar during the roast. The idea behind torrefacto roasting is that it prolongs the effects of the Maillard reaction to increase viscosity.

Alongside the increase in viscosity, however, torrefacto has also been used to preserve coffee beans for almost 100 years. However, while it allows the coffee to be kept for longer, it also generally lowers its price and gives it flavours which are generally considered undesirable among specialty coffee drinkers (burnt and charred tasting notes, for instance).

As well as being popular in France and Portugal, torrefacto roasting is also used outside of the Mediterranean in countries such as Paraguay, Mexico, Costa Rica, Uruguay, and Argentina.

Naturally, sugar consumption has varied around the world for a huge range of geopolitical and cultural reasons.

In the Middle East, for instance, sugar in coffee is uncommon. Instead, traditional Arabic coffee (often served in a dallah and brewed with spices) has historically been served with sweet dry fruits and nuts to balance out the bitterness of the coffee.

Turki Alsagoor owns Flat Wardo, a specialty coffee shop in Saudi Arabia. He says that adding sugar to coffee is unusual, as it’s heavily regulated by the government and subject to high taxes. Baristas only add it if a customer specifically requests it.

“There isn’t sugar at the counter. You only offer it if [customers] ask for it,” he tells me. Even then, he notes that it’s “really strange” for people to take sugar.

Elsewhere in the world, attitudes to sugar vary. However, traditional beverages such as tinto in Colombia, Vietnamese street coffee, and café cubano in Cuba and Miami are all often sweetened in one way or another during preparation. 

There is a running theme. Generally, where lower quality beans have historically been used to prepare the beverage, brewers have used sugar to balance the intense, bitter flavours of the beans.

This is even the case with more recent trends, such as the Greek frappé and dalgona coffee, which have often been prepared with cheaper instant coffee and lots of sugar.

Sugar and specialty: A breakdown

Despite the popularity of sugar in coffee through history, specialty coffee has in recent years distanced itself from this trend. Today, many specialty coffee consumers drink their coffee without milk or sugar.

Many believe that milk and sugar mask the more delicate, subtle, or complex notes of the coffee, “hiding” the characteristics they instead want to enjoy.

To learn more about specialty coffee drinkers��� relationships with sugar in coffee, we conducted a poll on Instagram. While many rejected sugar in coffee, others maintained that it very much depended on the beverage, occasion, or mood.

For instance, milk-based beverages seem to be more commonly enjoyed with sugar. Luna Soloni, a specialty coffee enthusiast from the Philippines, said that she “craves” sugar when drinking coffee with milk.

Others noted that good alternatives to sugar included honey, flavoured syrups, and more. “When I want something sweet I add ice cream or honey,” says Deandra Gauci, a Coffee Strangers consultant from Malta.

“If I need to hide a bad flavour, I add milk,” Deandra told us. “If someone else wanted to put sugar in any coffee I’ve brewed, I let them enjoy it without judgement. The point of coffee is to enjoy it.”

Todd Gruen is a “home barista” from Tennessee in the USA. In contrast, he says he prefers using syrups to sweeten his coffees. “If I’m digging deeper to taste coffee’s bright, fruity, or sweeter flavours, a bit of syrup can highlight those,” he says. “It can also mellow out the more bitter notes on the other side.”

Sugar, coffee & flavour: An explanation

As we know, historically, coffee drinkers have used sugar to mask the flavours of bitterness in darker roasts and poor quality coffees. This is because biologically, we are evolutionarily “programmed” to avoid bitter flavours, because they are often associated with poisonous substances.

“Our brains recognise sweetness as a sensation of pleasure and reward,” Wilton tells me. “They produce dopamine, a hormone associated with wellbeing.”

In short, this is what causes the “craving” for sweet foods and sugary drinks.

Wilton adds that for those who have become accustomed to drinking coffee (especially darker roasts and coffees with bitter flavours) the palate acclimates, meaning there is no need to add sugar. 

“Not everyone needs it, but in my opinion, adding just a little sugar to even [good] quality coffees can improve your ability to sense different flavours,” he says. “It balances acidity and suppresses bitterness.”

He also says that the right amount of sugar can highlight certain flavours and aromas in a cup of coffee. But it has to be the right kind of sugar, added in the right way.

For instance, he says that while standard table sugars, such as granulated sugar, add sweetness, they do not add a deeper or complex flavour. Other sugars and sweeteners, such as brown sugar, have their own flavour, which can be overpowering and alter the flavour in the cup. The same goes for honey, as well as artificial sweeteners like Stevia and aspartame. 

Wilton says that the ideal sweetener in coffee is one that “robs” the least amount of flavour from the cup. He says that the best he has encountered in that regard is sucralose (a very close cousin of sucrose, which is naturally produced by the coffee plant).

Adding sugars or sweeteners that have flavours of their own will naturally change the flavour profile of a cup of coffee. Honey, brown sugar, and other sweeteners, for instance, can add anything from caramel to vegetal notes in the cup.

For some, this might be an irreparable alteration of the inherent flavour of the coffee. For others, it might be just what they need to punch through the milk in a latte.

Preferences for sugar in coffee, like many other things, depend on culture and personal taste. Baristas and cafés should consider this when serving customers coffee, specialty or otherwise.

Of course, approaches differ from coffee shop to coffee shop. Carly Ashdown is the founder of Ræfen Coffee Roastery in Edmonton, Canada.

She says: “If a customer adds sugar to specialty coffee, I ask them to sip without any additions to get to know the coffee [first]. After that, it’s up to them.” Additionally, both Daniel and Turki note that customers should be happy and comfortable above all else.

Ultimately, it’s up to the consumer. A cup of coffee is a very personal thing, and making sure that it brightens someone’s day is what’s most important; not that it’s enjoyed in any “right” or “wrong” way.

Enjoyed this? Then read “Strong Coffee”: Definitions From Around The World

Photo credits: Wilson Soares Cardoso, Daniel Riou, Turki Alsagoor

Perfect Daily Grind

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[guiltypleasurefandomface]

A Quick Guide to British Drinks

Tea - boil the kettle, pour it in the cup with the tea bag, add the milk, add the sugar, stir. Or some people put the milk in before the hot water.

Coffee - spoonful of instant coffee, hot water from the kettle, add the milk and sugar to taste. Coffee machines, grinders, caffetieres, and pod machines are popular and probably half the norm now but for decades, coffee in the UK was mostly just instant from a jar. Which we had no problem with, leave your instant coffee snobbery at the door, please and thank you. Nescafe is the leading brand, it’s expensive as hell. The next one would probably be Maxwell House. If you go any cheaper, you’re looking at shop’s own and that’s where your snobbery can come back because that’s just coffee scented dust.

Hot chocolate - 3 heaped spoonfuls, hot water from the kettle, then depending on brand add milk and sugar to taste. The leading brands are cadbury’s and options, the really posh stuff would be Green and Black’s Cocoa. We now have varieties such as Malters, Galaxy, Mars Bars, Magic Stars (which is Rubbish! The packaging made it look like the chocolates floated on the top and they don’t! They just melt and form a melted lumps at the bottom of the cup!) but again, shop’s own versions are available.

Lesser popular hot drinks are ovaltine and Bovril. Ovaltine is a malt drink, people tend to drink it before bed, it’s got a reputation of being an old person’s drink and maybe what grandparents will give their grandkids before bedtime. I can’t stand the stuff. Bovril is a yeast extract drink. It’s got a reputation for being associated with Birmingham, but it’s popular in a lot of areas across England, and it’s also associated with football fans.

Even lesser popular drinks, is hot beef oxo. The poor man’s Bovril. Oxo is a stock cube mostly used to make gravy with, also used in casseroles and cottage pies (beef flavouring only). I don’t know if it’s popular in one area over others, it just tends to be a replacement for Bovril, or because the flavour isn’t as strong as Bovril, as a preferred choice over bovril.

Cold drinks:-

Almost all drinks with -ade in the name are fizzy drinks. Powerade, which is a brand of energy drinks, not a flavour, are not. But lemonade, limeade, strawberryade, cherryade, orangeade and raspberryade ald other flavours named like that all are. We do not use the word soda besides when talking about Cream Soda, a specific type of fizzy drink. Regional and age demographics with determine on if it's called pop or not. In some areas pop just means lemonade, in others it means all fizzy drinks. It can be one of those family idiosyncrasies.

Rootbeer is a modern American import, most people aren't likely to drink it, we also don't have Yahoo. Almost every popular type of branded drink we have here has a shop's own version, except Tizer, Irn Bru, Lucozade. You can have a good fun time making up discounted versions of drinks. In real life we had Panda Pop Cola, Rola Cola, and Happy Cola.

Ribena is a leading brand of squash, that's a bottle of concentrated fruit syrup that you dilute down with water. It comes in blackcurrant, orange and summer fruits. There's a non-concentrated ribena strawberry version, originally available in just a little carton that you drink with a straw, but now available in bottles. Vimto is Ribena's main competitor, it’s basically the same stuff.

Depending on social class, Ribena will either be called juice, squash or cordial. Cordial is actually something slightly different. It's the same principle, a fruity syrup you dilute down but it can also be mixed with alcohol. Cordials come on fancier flavours, like elderflower, barley and fruits of the forest and is mainly aimed at a more adult market. Squash is juice, cartons of fruit juice from concentrate is juice, freshly squeezed juice from fruit is juice, bottled freshly squeezed fruit juice is called juice. Ribena has a separate cordial range but they're fairly new to the cordial market. This is a sweeping generalisation, but actual cordial is middle class. Calling squash “cordial” is “Poshing it up”.

Going back to the ribena strawberry in a carton. We do not call them juice boxes, they are “small carton drinks” and only snotty people would comment on someone drinking from a carton with a straw. I’ve seen some wierd reactions to people over the age of 12 drinking from a small carton with a straw on american television shows and it baffled me, because that’s not the general attitude here. In fact, this is a general lesson everyone should just learn actually: Don't be rude about other people's drink choices. You have no idea why someone might be drinking from small cartons with a straw. In fact, for a while CapriSun were popular with everyone, not just kids.

On the other hand, Ribena Fruit Shoot, which are small bottlles with sports lids, are marketed at kids and young teens, and you don’t find many adults drinking them, but because they’re self contained and easy to hold, I saw them quite regularly being used in disabled circles, for both kdis and adults.

Other popular soft drinks we have, besides the obvious coke and Pepsi and ones mentioned above are: Lilt, 7up, Fanta, Rubicon, Dandelion and Burdock, innocent smoothies and innocent juices. And yes, orange juice from actual oranges will come in either "Orange Juice" or "Orange Juice with Bits".

Lucozade for years was touted as a sort of cure all. Have a cold, the flu, upset tummy, or headache? You'd drink Lucozade to help the actual medicine along a bit. In the 90s it changed tactics to be more of a sports drink but I'd say it's only in the last 10 years it was able to shake off the idea that it was good for you if you were sick. It then fell out of favour a few years ago when it changed its recipe to reduce sugars, and now a lot of people don't like it.

There was a whole craze between 2005 and 2011 of drinking RedBull energy drinks and there were so many channel 5 health documentaries that talked about how bad it was for you.

Energy Drinks are still quite popular and are also something you can have a wild time coming up with names for. Popular brands here are Monster, Relentless, Rockstar, Grenade and, er... Well, I don’t want to say the name of the other popular one. The people behind the product swear they don’t mean it in a sexually vulgar way but at the same time, their advert got banned for being sexually explicit, and there’s no cats involved in either the marketing OR the making of  process. Just think of the name of the James Bond character played by Honour Blackman and you can figure it out from there.

And then there's water. Generally speaking, all water in England has been safe to drink out of taps for decades. It would be highly unusual to have unsafe drinking water from a tap. However, it does happen and it’s a nightmare to sort out because you get passed from pillar to post as every department possibly involved blames all the other departments. So it does happen. But generally speaking, no big deal if your England-based character just drinks water from their tap.

And on a slightly related note, most water from the Midlands to the south is hard water - it produces lime scale - most water in the North is soft - it doesn't produce lime scale.

If your character is from the north and goes to university in the south, they might get a nasty shock one day after using their kettle for a couple of months if they didn't already know what lime scale in a kettle looked like.Especially when they’re tipping a kettle to pour the water, and lime scale comes out along with it, ruining the perfect cup of tea.