Kotas Reviews Maple Water

Coconut water has been trendy for a while now. If you don't know what coconut water is, basically someone decided that refining the slop that comes out of coconuts was an unnecessary step in the refinement process and just bottled the stuff straight up. Now, it's been the healthy beverage advocated for by athletes and health nuts alike. Me? I can't stand the stuff. I dislike most coconut products in general, and as a flavoring, it isn't my first (or second or eleventh) pick. Still, maybe there's a product that appeals to me? I suppose we have to find out. Ladies and gentlemen, today we crack open some Maple Water.

Yup. Mostly water.

According to the reputed scholars at Drink Maple's Labeling Institute, maple water is just "maple syrup before we boil it into actual maple syrup". Straight from the tree to your throat is where it's at, apparently. Uh, hooray I guess? Honestly, I didn't even know this was a thing until my spouse brought some home one day, but I don't know why I'm surprised at anything anymore. This job is tough sometimes, but we do what we do. 

The label isn't very fancy, just some text, a circle, and a maple leaf. I guess it's hard to make interesting packaging for what is effectively tree squeezin's, so they have my sympathy here. I think the labeling is just somewhat sterile is all. Maybe put a whole maple tree on here? Some bucket icons? Anyway, it's what's inside that counts, right? So let's pour one up.

Yeah, it basically looks like slightly tinged water. It does kinda vaguely smell of maple syrup, but other then that? It's water. Now, I'm not opposed to paying for water in a bottle. I regularly do so as a convenience for camping trips and other outdoor activities, but I can't seeing myself pay too much for bottled water, because it is after all just water. Maple water price wise is about the same as coconut water, which is around $2-$3 a bottle, so I don't know, I kind of expected a bit more from this? Whatever, down the hatch!

Have you ever drunk something that tastes like nothing until after you stopped drinking it? This is what drinking maple water was like. I drank some water, then suddenly smelled maple syrup. It was really weird. I know taste and smell are very tightly linked in the old sense bucket, but my tongue was telling me "water bro" while my nose is all "syrup, yo". It was very...disconcerting to say the least. My 4 year old didn't like it though, so I got to "enjoy" her sampling. Hooray.

On the FACE Rating System, this gets 0 Faces. I don't hate it, but I would never seek this out as a treat or a refreshment or anything. If you hand one to me, I would drink it out of politeness. It's just water with the lightest note of maple taste and a heaping of maple scent, but only after you drink it. I'll give it this, it was quite refreshing, but so is tap water. Try it if you want, or just, I don't know, add a few drops of maple syrup to your glass of water.

Kotas Reviews Kettle Maple Bacon Chips

Lovers of food around the United States know that bacon has held a special place in our bloated, cholesterol-caked hearts for a number of years. Once merely a staple of the "hearty farm boy breakfast", bacon has wormed its way into our collective food culture as both the cause of, and solution to, many of life's culinary problems. Of course, food fads such as these are often taken "too far". With that, I present to you today's subject: Kettle brand Maple Bacon Chips.

By naturally, they mean "naturally developed in a laboratory."

I've been a fan of Kettle brand chips for a long time, particularly their "waffle" style, because they deliver a most satisfying crunch. Their various flavored varieties are also heavy on the flavor while keeping a really solid potato base, which is something I appreciate in my flavored chips. Of course, it is always possible to go too far in pursuit of the latest taste sensation. Let's rip this bag open and see what we can see.

This is definitely a bowl of chips. 

The chips themselves are standard kettle style potato chips, twisted into interesting shapes by the kettle frying method. They are coated with a reddish brown powder which I suppose is adequate for indicating that these are, in fact, flavored with maple syrup and bacon. The smell that hits you is intense, a cross between the scent of liquid smoke, overdone pork, and the barest hint of vague sweetness. I admit, gentle readers, that I entered into this with some trepidation. Luckily, I had a hard cider to fortify my efforts.

If I had to describe the flavor in one word, it would be "inconsistent". The flavor is...essentially a more different version of that vague flavor called "Barbeque" which in chips always seems to taste almost but not quite completely unlike any barbeque I've ever had in my life. I say inconsistent because in most flavored chips, while any particular bite will have more or less flavor (depending on the density of 'flavor dust' dispersion), these have the added dimension of being either sweeter or savory-er with each bite. Even eating multiple chips at once seems to suffer from this, rather than balancing it out as I had hoped. The maple notes aren't even there, being relegated to "background sweetness" that doesn't really convey the stated theme. The so called "bacon" portion of the flavoring is also nondescript. You could have labeled these "sweet barbeque" and I wouldn't have been able to say they were NOT that flavor. Unlike the actual labeling.

On the FACE Rating System, these chips get 1 frowny face. They aren't bad exactly, but they are neither maple nor bacon in any capacity, so for those of you craving breakfast in chip form will have to look elsewhere. I certainly won't be buying them again. If you really, REALLY like barbeque flavored chips though, you might give it a whirl. One person's crushing disappointment might be another person's new taste extravaganza! But probably not.