It’s so hot where I’m living, so very hot, that I’m thirsty all the time.
When I go shopping, I buy drinks. Water, horchata, beer, juice and Aquarius. If there’s room in the bag, and there won’t be, then maybe something to eat – cheese, bread and anything simple that my air-fryer can handle.
They’d run out of Aquarius yesterday, the drink that is an isotonic beverage made by the Coca Cola people. I’m told that it ‘helps with hydration and to replenish fluids and minerals lost during physical activity’, like tipping the shopping bag full of drinks straight into the fridge. Anyway, they had a special new version in the shop, red instead of grey, so I bought a bottle of that instead: Aquarius Melocotón Rojo: Red Peach! Google says they are far rarer than the ‘yellow-fleshed type’. Who would have guessed?
Anyway, cold, it slips down easily enough.
The beer too.
I was wondering about ingredients. A water bottle will tell you it’s got all these interesting minerals and salts, but a beer will just say, Contents: agua, malts, hops and yeast, and then in smaller print, ‘Stop reading this stuff, I thought you were thirsty’. The vital ingredient which makes beer such a popular refreshment is mentioned elsewhere: Alcohol: 4.8% (I never saw the point of non-alcoholic beer, which anyway, says Google, is ‘high in calories, carbohydrates, and sugar’).
So, what sort of agua do they put in the beer? Where’s the list of minerals and salts for this leading ingredient that makes up 95% of my tinned cerveza? Is it maybe distilled water we’ve got here?
Back to the helpful IA that attends my every doubt. No, they use mineral water or even tap water. The water gives it taste, apparently. Works for me.
Water features as the first ingredient in any liquid in my fridge – even the horchata or the apple juice. Let’s see… what else did I pick up at the supermarket?
One of the juices I bought home – I’m a sap for anything new – comes from those good folk at Granini. It’s called Exotic Break (hard for a Spaniard to say) and it tastes like a banana and cherry combo I tried in Germany the other day. Better with a dollop of ice cream.
This juice, and I’ve drained the bottle already, says ‘Pitaya y Guayaba’ on the label, but (once again with my nose in the small print), the guayaba (guava in English) is third in the ingredients (behind apple) and the pitaya lies in fifth place, just behind sugar and in front of beetroot. Who makes these things up? It’s got to cost the manufacturer a fortune to push a new taste, and how on earth did they come up with the cunning addition of beetroot juice?
Pitaya, by the way, turns out to be dragon fruit (one of those fruit that turns up in the markets after a successful crop, like chirimoyas and membrillos – custard apples and quinces). Like I say, as long as it’s wet.
For those who think I should eat more, let me say here that I get my daily vits and roughage from the little gazpacho and salmorejo bottles available at Mercadona.
It’s odd though. None of those drinks, not even the beer, fail to refresh me as much as a nice cup of tea. Served hot with a squirt of milk and a spoon of sugar. Sometimes, my Englishness still peeps through.