FOCO Thai Tea Drink - Wednesday, Aug. 1st

Lately (as you may have noticed), I haven't been doing a whole lot of drinking. I've been keeping it pretty low-key as a lot of the post-surgical meds I'm on say "DO NOT DRINK." This generally means, to me, something along the lines of "proceed with caution" but one of the new ones I'm on is actually a blood pressure medicine so I've been super cautious. And by super cautious, I mean I haven't touched the sauce.

What I HAVE been touching is pretty much every pre-made, bottled tea drink known to mankind. The Arnold Palmer line has come out with some interesting ones. Like the distinctly non-Arnold Palmer drink called "The Honey Bear", which is lemonade with honey. Rather tasty (review soon if I can find some Barenjager to put in it). What I've been drinking a lot of due to my fierce addiction to it...is Thai Tea.

Thai tea, according to Wikipedia is: "a drink made from strongly-brewed black tea. Other ingredients may include added orange blossom water, star anise, crushed tamarind seed or red and yellow food coloring, and sometimes other spices as well. This tea is sweetened with sugar and condensed milk and served chilled." Much to Hermes' delight, this is technically correct; the best kind of correct. What they forget to mention is the liberal inclusion of what I can only assume to be extreme habit forming drugs into said concoction. Because I can't stop drinking it.

FOCO Thai Tea Drink is one of the many available pre-made Thai tea drinks available at your finest Asian grocery. It is, in my opinion, one of the best as it only requires a healthy shake and some fridge chillage to be the perfect beverage. Some of the other available beverages need to be damn near centrifuged before the milky lumps decide to go back into emulsion. It's simple can tells you everything you need to know about the beverage:

This is A) it's Thai tea. And B) it is delicious (as noted by the sweaty glass full of it). Real men drink it out of the can, however. We then crush the ungodly strong can with our bear-trap like hands and then light it on fire with our laser vision. Or recycle it, depending on "love of the earth" status. Okay, enough yammering on. I'll tell you how it tastes.

The FOCO brand lacks what is traditionally a quality sign in Thai tea: BRIGHT ORANGE COLOR. It's more of a slightly orange coffee. But it makes up for it in taste. It is VERY sweet and creamy. The tea itself is muted, if not non-existant thanks to the inclusion of a plethora of spices. Definitely cardamom, a faint touch of star anise, cloves and vanilla? Not sure. It's tough to pin them down because the cardamom and clove is so strong. It's like a slightly different version of chai. But there's something about it that makes me love it more than chai. Perhaps its the fact that its so damn sweet (I have a sweet tooth). Maybe it's the generous helpings of milk and/or cream that make it almost silky. Maybe its the massive amounts of crack they add to it and don't tell you. Either way, it's delicious. And you should try it.

I know a good dealer, man. He's got the good shit. You can find him here.