Iowa Beer Run: John’s Grocery

Well, John’s Grocery was as good as Ratebeer promised. Awesome selection crammed into a tiny area. The prices were awfully high on some of the beers I’m used to seeing, but I managed to pick up two mixed six packs of all local Iowa beers for about $25. Still high, but hey, whatever.

Iowa Beer Run

I travel about 10-15 times per year for work, but most of the time I’m on a plane and don’t get a chance to come home with any beer. I’ll be in Iowa City this weekend, though, and like most great college towns it has to have at least one great beer store. As luck would have it, John’s Grocery is half a mile from my hotel, and I’m driving because the trip is shorter in the car than by plane, when factoring in all the changes, etc etc. So, I will be coming home with a bunch of beers you can’t find in Kansas City (I know it can be a little frustrating to readers who are in KC). Can’t wait!

The Rant Against Super Limited Releases

At the risk of sounding curmudgeonly, I’m going on record to say I dislike the trend of super limited release beers and the people who go nuts to collect them or stockpile/resell them. I was reading the KC Beer Blog about Founder’s CBS release and it required being on a list, going out of town to buy it, etc. People are mad because others were buying full cases (for example, it seems the entire city of Columbia only got three cases of the beer to begin with) and it sells out in a matter of minutes most places. It’s ridiculous. Between these releases and bars tapping stuff to a waiting crowd of throngs of beer geeks who will drain the keg in a matter of minutes, I really wonder what sort of “life” a lot of our KC beer geeks really have? Does anyone work, have families or non-alcohol related hobbies anymore? It would be more than a full-time job to stay up on all this crap and yet here they all are. I am making a stand. Who is with me? If I stumble across something special like this, I’ll pick it up, but there are thousands of great beers that are offered all the time… life is too short to make beer the focus of the whole thing.

Ayala’s Herbal Water: Cinnamon Orange Peel

I was at Cost Plus World Market in Westport the other day and as I was waiting at the checkout I spied something in the cooler that caught my eye. Gee, ever wonder why they put those things right by the cash register? LOL Anyway, I walked out with a bottle of Ayala’s Herbal Water in the Cinnamon Orange Peel flavor.

The company appears to have been around since 2005 and this is their only product I have tried. It is clear and colorless and packaged in a relatively widemouth clear, colorless plastic bottle. There were several flavors to choose from, but the Cinnamon Orange Peel attracted me the most. The product is USDA certified organic and uses only natural flavorings.

The water has a faint citrusy aroma and a warm, earthy orange flavor with a cinnamon finish. It tastes decent but has a somewhat synthetic character to me, immediately bringing up an image of bubblegum in my mind. There is no sugar or sweetener in the water, but it has a slightly sweet character all the same. I don’t know what was in it that made me think “cheap bubblegum” but that was the only thing I could picture as I drank this water. It must’ve had something to do with the cinnamon, and even though the bottle listed “natural flavorings” I wonder if they weren’t extracts that are also used in the making of, well, bubblegum, too!

I’d have to try some more of their products before rendering judgement, but I probably won’t have Cinnamon Orange Peel again. It wasn’t bad, but I’d just as soon drink some good ol’ Kansas City tap water, honestly.