The Modern Materialist : taste test

Happy Hour Test Drive: Loft Organic Liqueurs

Alex Zalben — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 21:01:00 GMT

With Spring finally sprung, it's the perfect time for a fresh tasting chilled liqueur, and the good people at LOFT were nice enough to let us try a sample of their wares, the first certified Organic Liqueur in the United States.

Did we like it? Did we hate it? You'll just have to check out our video review below:

...and in case you couldn't parse the info from the video, LOFT comes in four flavors currently: Lemongrass, Lavendar, Spicy Ginger, and Tangerine, which doesn't hit until June, but you just watched a preview of above. Boo-yah!

LOFT is produced in small batches from fresh-picked fruit and botanicals. All ingredients in LOFT are grown without chemicals, pesticides, synthetic fertilizers, radiation or bioengineering, and when possible, sourced from local farms with a like-minded commitment to sound agricultural practices. So that's pretty nice.

Bottles are available right now in stores nationwide for $30. You can find a list of participating retailers right here.

Taste-Test: Bacon Salt + Contest!

Alex Zalben — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 20:30:00 GMT

A couple of days ago, I posted about The Most Glorious Thing Ever Created™, a.ka. Bacon Salt. Well, the makers of Bacon Salt were nice enough to send me a sample of their whole line (and, confusingly, a beer caddy). So lucky me, I get to taste all varieties this intoxicating spice. And lucky you, just for reading this post all the way to the bottom, you can win your own sampler pack of Bacon Salt, courtesy of Modern Materialist. Keep reading to find out how!

Until that point, though, you’ll just have to read my live-blog review of Bacon Salt (or, I guess you could scroll to the end if you really wanted to):

- First off, the smell is pungent from the moment you open the box; even though these are in plastic bottles, and well sealed, Bacon Salt smells like bacon. Yum.

- There are four varieties in total to try today: Original; Hickory; Peppered; and Natural. As implied by this, the other three are artificially flavored, and the natural is, well, naturally flavored. Though, least we forget, there’s no actual bacon in any of these. They’re all zero calorie, zero fat, vegetarian, and kosher. Which is crazy.

- I’m going to try the original first. Opening it up, the Salt smells pungently of bacon… Or rather, it smells a lot like Baco Bits, which makes sense when you think about it.

- And now I’m about to do something for you guys that’s killing me a little bit. In order to take good pictures of this, I’m going to dump a cocaine sized pile out of the jar, rather than save all the sweet, delicious salt for myself. What I do for you guys:

- The big question, of course, is how does it taste? The answer is: really, really salty. And, kind of spicy. The first ingredient is sea salt, followed by garlic and paprika, which you can definitely taste the most. It’s certainly tasty, though I don’t know if I would characterize it as “bacony.” There’s also definitely a nice, though not too strong, spice aftertaste.

- Moving on to the Hickory, the initial smell is far sweeter than the Original flavor. It’ll be interesting to see if that comes through into the flavor. I’ll also mention, which I’m not sure how well you can see in this picture, that the Hickory Salt is not as smoothly grained as the Original, and there seems to be bits of something I’m going to guess is hickory?

- Okay, so definitely sweeter than the Original. I think the paprika helped cut through the saltiness a bit, so I’d rank the Original higher than the Hickory so far. That being said, there’s a nice hickory smoke flavor apparent on a second taste, and a good deal of spice right in the back of my throat.

- Despite my initial impression, I found myself going in for a third taste of the Hickory, which I didn’t do with the Original. I think it’s growing on me.

- Onto the Peppered, which smells milder than the other two, and is way chunkier:

- Wow, that’s peppery. Yum. I would actually say this tastes far more like bacon than the other two. Not only that, it brings the sweet of the Hickory, and the spice of the Original together extremely well. It tastes like Peppered Bacon. This is definitely my favorite so far, though it’s also far spicier than either of the others.

- Finally, the Natural. Not only does this come freshness sealed, and in a slightly smaller canister than the other three, it has far less ingredients. I actually can’t really smell it at all, honestly. It may be that my nose is suffused with the other three at this point, or that the natural flavors are more muted. It also looks far less processed than the others; though, ironically, far more orange. Which, again, I don’t know how well you can see:

- This is… This one is not that great. It tastes strongly of onion and salt, and that’s it. I’m not getting any bacon at all, which is disappointing. I guess artificial flavors are the way to go, when you’re trying to reproduce meat flavoring, without any meat?

In summation, Peppered is pretty glorious, and I highly recommend it, while the Hickory and Original are very good spice mixes, without necessarily tasting of Bacon.

So, how do I win me some, you’re probably wondering? Well, it’s easy:

- Comment on this post.

That’s it. I don’t need a story about bacon, or a reason why should win, though you’re welcome to post those below. All you need to do is write a comment on this post, and leave some way for me to contact you (enter your Nerve account, a link to your website, etc.)

In fact, since I'm a super nice guy, any one of you can enter to win as many times as you want! The only catch is that they can't be in a row. Meaning, as soon as someone else comments, you can comment below 'em; but you can't comment directly below your own comment.

Next week, I’ll check back with the comments, do a random drawing from a hat, and the winner will get their very own variety pack of Bacon Salt. No more complicated than that!

Thanks again to the guys over at Bacon Salt for providing their delicious product.

Related: Where's The Bacon?

Chocolate Covered Bacon + Video!

Alex Zalben — Fri, 09 May 2008 18:00:00 GMT

For a blog obsessed with gadgets and doo-dads, it sure took us a long time to figure out how to use our webcam, didn’t it? In any case, the all-text portion of Modern Materialist’s life-span is over, as we have signed up for a YouTube account (that took us a while, too). So now, we’ll be bringing you videos of some of the latest gadgets and products we pick up, with our impressions and pretty mugs, now in muddled, unfocused, moving format. You can subscribe to our YouTube channel over here, and be sure to leave us a nice comment! Or two!

To kick things off, Luca Chocolates from Ramseur, NC was nice to make me a special batch of chocolate covered bacon, fulfilling a life-long dream of mine. Check out the video below, and then hit back for more info, and pricing:

Still here? Cool. What’d you think, huh? I’m pretty shiny, right? And I don’t know how to look into the webcam yet? Anyway, here’s the background info, for those of you non-video watchers: I posted a contest to win some chocolate covered bacon, as long as you could find out for me where it came from. One intrepid reader, Leslie Cooper, let me know that if I couldn’t find some, she'd make it for me.

So I ended up getting sent an assortment that included:

- Bacon Topped Caramel
- Bacon Covered Caramel
- Salted, Chocolate Covered Bacon
- A Tiramisu Cream
- Bourbon and Black Pepper Truffle

Hands down, the Bourbon and Black Pepper Truffle was the best thing in the assortment… A smooth, creamy truffle with hints of liquor, and a sharp, peppery aftertaste. Completely surprising, and completely delicious.

As for the bacony treats, the Bacon Covered Caramel was the most delicious. It was salted caramel, which I’m a big fan of, covered in dark chocolate, with a crunchy stick of bacon on top. Salty, sweet, and perfectly balanced.

I will say that for the actual chocolate covered bacon itself (i.e., a slice of bacon covered in chocolate), I could use more bacon, and less chocolate; but at the same time, I would bet that’s exactly what most consumers don’t want.

If more people end up buying the bacon covered chocolate, Luca Chocolates says that they’ll start marketing ‘em, and selling on the website. So head on over, and let them know if you’d like to try some yourself. It’ll be $16.95 for the half pound, $32.95 for the full pound.

[Luca Chocolates]