Ovaltine: Chocolate milk in a can
When I first arrived in Taiwan one of my priorities was finding a daily Milo supplement. Despite eventually settling on readily available chocolate tea, I went for about a week experimenting with Ovaltine.
In Taiwan Ovaltine comes in two varieties. Tiny little 200ml or so cartons and 375ml cans. A far cry from 1L of Chocolate milk tea or the 700ml glasses of Milo I was having daily, but you take what you can get here.
The carton is obviously way to small but the can is kinda do-able. The main issue for me was that I readily associate cans with soft drink. Thus when you put a can to your lips and drink, it’s a bit of a weird sensation to have chocolate milk come out.
Taste wise I can’t shake the feeling that it’s not quite the same. Kind of how soft drink doesn’t taste quite the same when it’s out of a can vs. a bottle. Having said that I’m not sure if it’s psychological or an actual difference. Soft drink definitely tastes a bit dull out of a can so it wouldn’t surprise me if it’s the same with milk.
The other think that worried me a bit was that 7-11 serve cans of Ovaltine either hot or cold.
Now they’re not sticking the cans into a microwave or anything and I don’t know the particulars of can manufacturing, but part of me wonders if any chemicals leech out into the drink when a can is exposed to heat for long periods of time.
The cans are heated in a pie warmer style thing so it’s general electrical heat and nowhere near boiling (the can is ok to touch). If nobody buys the can for a while though it’s potentially there for a long time.
Not too sure on that one but it’s a non-issue for me seeing as I don’t drink hot drinks anyway. Speaking of which most 7-11′s don’t seem to like refrigerating cans of Ovaltine. My local one sometimes does the odd can but more often then not it seems to the smaller cartons are for the fridge and the cans are for warming.
On account of all this I eventually just gave up and continued the search. Probably a good thing too… something about chugging anything that’s not carbonated from a can slowly irritates me for some reason.
Maybe ‘new formula’ is code for ‘now with 300% more added sugar’ to conform to Taiwan’s crazy sugar standards.
June 18th, 2010 at 6:42 am Harry(Quote)
Yeah, this whole warm canned milk drinks freaked me out in Japan. Of course I had to try them from one of the amazing Japanese vending machines. It was hot chocolate and tasted like shit but I was cold to the warm liquid was nice.
June 19th, 2010 at 3:08 pm ozsoapbox(Quote)
Yeah I’ve noticed Asians, well Taiwan at least seem to have trouble getting chocolate right. Even the chocolate milk (non tea variety) still isn’t rich choclate. Chocolate tastes watered down here no matter how you have it.
It’s like Taiwan is using its own recipe for chocolate and haven’t quite worked out how to get it right yet.
June 20th, 2010 at 8:56 pm Yi(Quote)
the ‘coffee in a can’ is pretty good.
June 21st, 2010 at 8:00 pm ozsoapbox(Quote)
I’ve had the energy drinks but haven’t gone near coffee in a can yet.
I think the most popular one is Mr. Brown’s (?) I don’t really drink coffee (only iced or frappacino style) so I’ll have to psych myself up to give it a try one day.