The Aldi Project: Reviewing Aldi Australia Drinks
Aldi have a wide range of drinks covering most of the larger supermarket offerings. Due to the large range you do have to be diligent as there’s definately some hits and misses in Aldi’s drink range.
Farmdale Milk
Unless you’re the chinese, it’s pretty hard to stuff up milk. You get a machine to milk the cow, then sterilise the crap out of it and finally dilute it down with water. Suprisingly Aldi milk doesn’t taste like crap. If you’re drinking milk on its own you might want to splurge on a name brand but for mixing, Aldi milk is fine. It did make my milo seem to taste a tiny bit sour but that might have been in my head.
Costs about 50-70c less then other homebrand milk and comes in 2L, 3L and diet variety; i’d probably skip the diet variety all together.
Manufactured: Australia
Millvale Cordial
I originally walked past the cordial at Aldi mistaking it for kitchen disinfectant, it wasn’t till I got to the end of the store that I went back and started hunting around for it.
Millvale cordial is less concentrated then Cottees, Millvale mixes 4:1 while cottees mixes 5:1. What this means is that for the 1.5L bottles I use instead of 250ml of cordial a bottle I have to use 300ml, so instead of the 6 bottles of cordial I get with Cottees 2L I only get 5 with Millvale 2L. To make up for this Millvale cordial is $2 for 2L, about $1-1.50 cheaper then Cottees.
Tastewise Millvale Lime is very mellow, which sounds bad but is quite refreshing. Lime does leave a bit of an aftertaste in your mouth but it’s nothing to worry about. Unfortunately Millvale cordial is only available in three flavours, orange, lime and fruitcup; Cottees on the other hand has 6-7 different flavours. I need my cola flavoured cordial so I’ll still be buying the Cottees variety of that but will use Aldi for the other 2 bottles.
Manufactured: Australia (from local and imported ingredients)
Flying Power Energy Drink
When I saw this on the shelf I couldn’t help but giggle like a school girl. The name ‘Flying Power’ just screams cheap chinese knockoff of Red Bull but as a semi regular consumer of energy drinks I was actually excited about trying it.
At $1.29 a can it’s definately the cheapest energy drink i’ve ever seen so I was expecting some nasty petrol flavoured stuff, anyone who drank the original ‘Mother’ will know what i’m talking about.
Suprisingly Flying Power tasted more like V without the citrus flavour then it’s namesake Red Bull (red bull gives you wings, flying power… gettit?). That’s not to say it’s a bad taste, it’s like someone got a can of V and dumped half of it and replaced it with fizzy mineral water or something.
I did get a bit of a headache towards the end of the can but I’m not sure if that was drink related. Already feeling guilty about what energy drinks do to my body I probably won’t be having this too often, but it beats paying $2-$3 for a V or Redbull (one day i’ll grab one of those 6 packs of the Asian Red Bull I see at the local Asian supermarket for $10).
Manufactured: Austria
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October 8th, 2011 at 12:49 pm randomname(Quote)
What the…? $1.29 for ONE can? In Germany, 1 can (330ml bottle actually) is 34 cents (1,99€ for a sixpack).
October 8th, 2011 at 1:06 pm ozsoapbox(Quote)
Welcome to the giant ripoff that is Australian retail.
October 26th, 2011 at 8:19 pm Meat man(Quote)
You are not wrong! im not sure why these drinks are so expensive – arent they just tons of caffeine ?
October 27th, 2011 at 12:07 pm ozsoapbox(Quote)
Caffeine, guarana some caramel flavouring and a whole bunch of other stuff – none of it terribly expensive.
They charge what they do because they know it’s a niche market. Most people who can will drink coffee and its only those left, like me, who don’t drink coffee who drink the energy drinks.
That and kids… and they’ll pay anything to look cool.
I recently heard about the CCs energy chips, wtf is going on there? A packet of chips with more caffeine than a cup of coffee, what the hell?
February 19th, 2012 at 11:57 am LOL @ ignorance(Quote)
Lol, you really think Red Bull are sitting back letting ALDI blatantly ripping off its product without consequence?
Maybe it has something to do with the fact that it’s made by the SAME company. You will notice that when flying power is intermittently unavailable it is replaced temporarily by, yep you guessed it, RED BULL.
it’s also worth noting that it is made in Europe, so the price difference has everything to with shipping costs, as is the same for any product shipped overseas. I’ve paid triple the price for Australian meat in Europe.
February 19th, 2012 at 5:37 pm ozsoapbox(Quote)
Why not? There’s plenty of companies offering substandard clones of more popular branded softdrinks on the market.
And let’s face it, Taurine has a pretty distinctive taste, it’s not like Red Bull’s variety is going to taste that much different to ALDI’s.
At the same elcheapo price? Because if it’s not, that pretty much blows your shipping cost theory out of the water.