In this episode Scott tries to find a couple of COOLTOYS® and finds a dud too. He also tries out some alcohol free beers.
Transcript of the episode in case you missed something:
Yeah, masks are back in California. Hey COOLTOYS®, people welcome to another episode of COOLTOYS . It has been awhile. I’ve missed you guys. Um, a lot of fun stuff out there, but we have taken some time off and done a lot of cool things. Since the led resto mod of the Mercedes SLK. We’ve got a lot of great compliments on it, but I am sticking to my guns.
Spider needs to brighten those halos up. If they want the cool toys award, it’s just not it. But today it’s Friday pizza day. So that means beer, right. Um, but I’m on call for the weekend. Flying jets, racing cars. Doesn’t always go hand in hand with drinking regular beer, especially some of this newer high test stuff.
NA Beer Test
So today we’re going to go through some non alcohol beers while we’re talking about cool toys, kind of a double show. Um, I’ve heard. That a lot of people might be working from home and imbibing. So maybe this will give you an option. Um, I do want to say one thing real quick, subscribe to the show. If you’re watching on YouTube, please subscribe.
It helps us with a lot of things. It helps us know who’s watching and what we can do for you guys. And maybe what you like better, because if you subscribe, you can make some comments. Tell us what you want to see on the show. We look forward to those comments and it’s a lot of fun to find. That are cool toys to share with you and for you to share things that you find that are cool toys with us.
Um, so let’s get started. What we’re going to do. It’s a simple set of rules for the five non-alcoholic beers, all glass bottles. The trick is to beat Topo, Chico. This is ironically owned by a beer company, but, um, this is just grapefruit twist, sparkling water and, uh, If you can beat this, maybe you got to shout at being in any beard.
This has been a nice replacement for me. A little grapefruit twist. Nice flavor, good stuff. To cleanse the palate. I’ve got some veggie straws. These are screaming hot.
Super Spicy Veggie Straws
Yup. They got a little kick veggie straws. So let’s get started with the show and remember subscribe. First beer, please, director. All right. So we’ve got them all in a glass bottle wrapped in foam. I’ll talk about the calories, the price point and what I think about them. So here we go.
Very light, a little sweet. Um, it’s got kind of that funny malt flavor that I remember near beer as a kid or as a 21 year old drinking.
Beats Topo Chico though. Not bad, not a bad a beer, so, Hmm. Yeah. Pretty good. We’ll talk, come back to that in just a second. Um, but pizza day, right? So traveling around Europe, we learned something here in America. We use pizza wheels, we run a wheel across pizza and it scratches up the aluminum tray. It puts aluminum potentially into your pizza, not a good idea for us.
Better Pizza Wheel
So in Europe we saw them. Kitchen scissors, nothing but simple kitchen scissors cut the pizza and off you go. So we thought this is really nice. We’ve been doing it, but it’s not a cool toy. They’re just kitchen scissors, right? Nothing big. Then cruising the store. And I was checking on this beer again real quick.
Oop, splash. Uh, edit that out. Um, or maybe not the, uh, cruising through a store, looking for scissors, something cooler than this. We found something that looks great on the shelf. And you know, I just don’t know what to think about this. These look cool. They look. But all you have to do is open this little lock.
They open up and you cut and they’re nice and long. This is the other thing that kinda caught my eyes. Look at how much longer they are than the kitchen scissors. So it should just be you with. One cut. And you have a slice of pizza, right? Instead of to get to the same thing, it sounded like a good idea.
Doesn’t work. And I don’t know if it’s this triangle shape is not triangle like a pizza it’s one side with a funny angle and then a straight cut. So not the way pizza shaped, like it comes out of a pie. Maybe they could make a square one or something else. So whoever designed. Neat idea, not a cool toy. So try again.
Another NA Beer
Um, I really had high hopes for it. Pretty interesting scissor, but you know, we want our pizzas, right. And that didn’t work. It just made a mess of the triangle part, lifted up the pizza and spilled all the toppings all over when it’s too hot. So try again. Yep. So pretty watery, just a tad ahead of Topo Chico though.
I’ll give you. Because it does have some flavor. So let’s take a look at what we got. We have Coors edge. All right. So cores edge. This is, um, obviously from course brewing Colorado, and you’ve got the same, core’s yellow here. So it sort of gives you that core’s look. And so with the cores yellow, you kind of know it’s a chorus product, right?
So neat idea tastes a little bit like a light course light. I’ll give it that. Um, let’s see what we got here, Callow. 41, not bad. 41 calories to have a little flavor. It’s not as good as a zero calorie, Topo Chico. If you’re going for the. But not bad. So decent start right out of the shoot. Something that you can drink.
Uh, I don’t know that I’d go out of my way for it. It was 6 99 for a six pack. So a little over a buck, a piece and Topo Chico sells. If you look around about 8 99 for a 12 pack, so half the price. And, um, but you know, if you want a little bit. That one cores edge, not too bad. So let’s go to the next one. Oh, wait.
He Needs Direction
Oh, director’s given me the, I need to cleanse the palate. So I don’t have that citrus flavor leftover. Sorry.
Wow. Yep. There’s some heat in some of those. Wow. That’s good. That’s good. Yeah. That’s got some heat. All right. The next. Nice and green green bottle. That’s cool. Green bottle green Cousy.
Whew. All right, that’s good. This one’s gotta be a ringer. This tastes like beer. So let’s just skip to the chase and see what we got. Survey says Bix blue. So, all right. Beck’s blue. Good looking bottle looks like Beck’s it just has a blue label instead of RIT. And it, it does taste like Beck’s, it’s a little lighter, a little sweeter than a regular backs, but for no alcohol, not bad.
Um, again, 0.5%. Alcohol by volume and survey says 68. Okay. 6 99 at 12 pack or 6 99, a six pack, rather. So the same price as course edge, definitely a winner beating out cores edge, for sure. At least in my book. You guys tell me what you think if you think something different, but right now we’ve got two beers that are beaten.
Topo, Chico. This is not bad. This is a good start actually for an NAA beer, uh, test. So let me move on to the next one. Oh, I’m just have a little trouble with the bottle here. Thank you. So a little short, fat snowy bottle. There’s a lot of beers that look like this, especially craft beers. Uh, well this is, um, very grapefruity and given that I’m drinking a Topo Chico grapefruit twist, and I’m still getting a bite of grapefruit out of this.
Jeeps Gone Crazy
That’s interesting. It’s got a little bit of beer flavor and there are a lot of fruity beers that the fruit sort of overpowers the beer. And that’s why I don’t generally like them. I wouldn’t drink this. I don’t know that I’d go out of my way to buy it. We’ll see what that is in a minute. Um, but let’s talk about, uh, a couple of things in the Jeep world.
So you may have. Aware that there has been a little bit of a hacking issue through the entertainment system with Jeeps and our old J K U from way back when series one, uh, season one had some funny issues happening with it. We don’t know for sure, but it acts a lot like what we’re reading about the hackers are doing the thing would just shut itself down while you’re on the freeway.
It would go to third gear and say hot oil and you’d pull over and the engine would just shut off all kinds of weird things like that. So Jeep says they have it fixed. I believe him because something like that you’d want fixed right now. R J L U hasn’t had a single problem the entire time. In fact, here’s a picture we took, uh, just north of St. George, Utah, going up to some falls to do some four-wheeling and I wish I had some great pictures of the four-wheeling, but we don’t. Um, because we’re just having too much fun and forgot to take pictures that just happens sometimes. Doesn’t it. So, um, let’s get back to.
But the Jeep jail, you still a cool toy, still a winner. I’m having a lot of fun with it, traveling around. We haven’t really done much else to it. Uh, we did one little mod that I’ll talk about here in the next beer, but, um, yeah. So if you like fruit forward beers, this, this one is a good replacement for sure.
Um, let’s take a look. Oh, Lagunitas and they call this their IP. N a. So it’s an IPA ish, but a lot of fruit again, M and a. So it’s, uh, another 0.5% by volume. This one has a, I think 75 calories. It’s not on the label. So I had to look at the box and I’ve already kind of forgot, but it was in the 60, 70 calorie range.
And that kind of tells you something about the sweetness it’s in here. Yep. Definitely drinkable, um, little, little. Heavy and bitter on the, uh, grapefruit side. So I can see where some people may not like it I’m in the middle on it. If you’re a fruit forward beer person, you may really like it. So go for a cloud pellet cleanse, which is weird to wash down grapefruit with grapefruit.
Moving On
Alright, Ms. Director, next beer, please. Here we go.
Uh, well, okay then this is nice. Uh, very much like the cores edge, but doesn’t have that little sweetness at the end and the finish. This is pretty good. So, um, I got to say this one goes between the Beck’s and the, of. Pretty good option. Um, I’ll think about it for a second while we’re talking about what we did do to the Jeep.
And if you look right here, see that is the factory grab handle, it’s in kind of a weird spot you’re in the backseat, kind of reaching up for it might be okay. But we found the old style up here was better. So we went to Bartech and we got these really cool right there, parents. Grab handles and they look good.
They’re easy to hold on to they’re sturdy. You’ve got three big Velcro wraps that wrap around the roll bar. Unfortunately with the J L use that plastic on the bottom of the roll bars. Not, you know, it’s not a real roll bar. It’s not the foam that we had on the JK use in the earlier models. So it does kind of fit weirdly squared and it’s not bar tacks fault.
That’s a Jeep ism in the new Jeeps with our new roll cages. Be more squared out instead of being the round tubular style that we’ve had for the years past. But they come in like 20 different colors. You take a look at this. This is called an Anvil. Uh, and initially they had a little bug on the website.
So I got to test their customer service as well. I ended up with the wrong color and I showed them what was wrong with their website. They were in absolute agreement, sent me the new color, corrected for what I wanted and sent me a return label. So I don’t have to pay for anything. It was very. Great customer service Bartek.
And I’m going to say that. Unlike some pizza, um, scissors, cool toys approved. That’s a, those Bartek grab handles are pretty slick. Um, really, really nice when you’re going off road to have something to hold back there. And especially when you’re going down inclines where you can’t even stop, you have to keep moving because they’re so steep.
So. Bartak, it’s a win for that and win for customer service to, for, to looking great. Um, all right. Let’s take a look at this beer real quick. Uh, boy, happy Friday again. And, uh, let’s see what we got. Oh, duels. So look at there. There we go. Budweiser’s contender. Oduels. Um, pretty, pretty cool. A nice taste. A little bit better than the core’s edge.
More Fake Beer
Like I said, it doesn’t have the sweetness, but if you’re a chorus person over a bud person, you might like to. Edge better. This is a whopping 68 calories. So right in that same it’s actually, the chorus was 41. So this is closer to the Becks and that Lagunitas, but definitely drinkable something you could easily, uh, enjoy on a weekend when you’ve got a race going on or something else important that you don’t want to have the effects of alcohol sort of distorting your view.
Um, all right. Pretty good. So let’s go on to the next one. Uh, A little short one.
All right. This is lemonade. This is bubbly lemonade. I don’t know why they’re calling that a beer. Um, so some other options though, if you’re not a fan of NAA beers, there are now a lot of mocktails out there. I found one that’s called a grapefruit ginger. It’s a lot of work. It takes a little bit of jalapeno being mashed in there and muddled up, and that makes it work.
More than Fake Beer
You got to get all these crazy ingredients, which is worth it. If you have the time and you have the time to get to the market and buy all this stuff, sometimes you don’t. Right. And I learned about this company called escape mocktails. They make pre-made fake. I shouldn’t say fake pre-made non-alcoholic beverages that are supposed to simulate alcoholic beverages.
And I ordered a whole bunch of them. We’ll talk about it later, but we have this one from the owner directly. She, the, one of the co-founders Natalie, uh, mama, mama with a mocktail sent me this cinnamon fire whiskey it’s fierce and fiery. She thinks and says, it’s her favorite of all the stuff they sell?
And what we’re going to do is I’m going to test that at another time. Probably not cool toys, but we have an interview scheduled with her on beach street news. So if you want to check that out and learn more. Non-alcoholic mocktails. And I will tell you upfront, we’ve tried one other brand already, and it was basically overpriced water.
I did get the old fashioned from Escape and we have finished the bottle. So that tells you a lot. We actually drank everything. Having a shot on two ice cubes, you know, 40 calories, no alcohol. It was very nice. It was something to sip on watching TV just before bed, without the sugar rush and without the alcohol.
So that was a nice, nice thing. That’s what got us started. Um, Unlike this, which this just tastes like bubbly lemonade. They, the escape mocktails did not an old fashioned did not taste like an old fashioned. Let’s start with that, but it was a very good option. And it did have that little bit of orange twist at the end, like a good old fashion.
So there were some similarities and you just can’t expect it to be the same, right? This like those beers, I would expect to taste a little bit more like beer and even the Lagunitas, you could still have taste a little malt in there. That grapefruit, this is lemony. This is just lemonade. Now this is bubbly lemonade.
Take a look. Let’s see what we got. And Paulsteiner. So these guys make a great beer. Um, it’s a non-alcoholic and it’s got lemons right on the bottle. So obviously they know it’s a lemon flavor. Great taste of Poland. Our Hefeweizen blended with lemon juice. I think they’ve kind of over lemoned and it’s a whopping 112 calories for only 11.2 ounces.
You don’t even get the real 12 ounces and it’s 112 calories. Wow. Yeah, that’s just, you might as well get a Coke and that’s, you know, one of the things I don’t like drinking real Coke because all the calories and I don’t like drinking diet Coke because of the chemicals in it. And just wanting to keep healthier and live a little bit better lifestyle.
It Gets Worse and an Empty Wallet
And I’m told. That beer is a very natural thing and especially low alcohol or no alcohol beers are healthier for you than drinking sodas, especially with all that sugar. So little cleanse here again. Uh, and do we have another one?
All right.
Oh, no, that’s terrible. I’m going to come back to that just in case it’s the Topo Chico in the hubs, hot sticks, steaming hot smoking, hot screaming, hot veggie straws, whatever those are. Um, wow. And I’m gonna talk about the last cool toys. Ridge the Ridge is the company named, they make this cell phone case.
Very cool case, a leather. Um, I like it a lot. It has two, two slots in the back, very thin. And I’ve dropped this a dozen or so times, and this one is still in pretty good shape. My previous one, I beat the snot out of, and it’s possible that I’ve given this a cool toys award before. I don’t know. Um, but it’s a.
A really nice package in their email marketing is fantastic because they don’t email very often, but when they do, it’s always something new and something slightly different, which led to me getting a Ridge wallet some years ago. Now this one has been beat to absolute snot. You can see that I have used it as a hammer and it’s still great wallet.
So Here it is. You’ve got this little slot over here, you push up your credit cards, driver’s license, whatever pop out, you get to them. And off you go, it’s got a little elastic strap. There is a money clip option, and you can put your cash there. Not very much, cause you know, I’m married, but I have some cash recently.
They sent me an email and that beat up three-year-old thing was getting a little bit tattered. So I grabbed this. This is the new aluminum TKI and being a Tiki guy that lives at the beach and the surf bum. This just looked like the right thing. So here we go. And you can see there’s the whole envelope of stuff.
They’ve got to carry less, live more rich logo, cool little sticker. And then you get a screwdriver and the wallet and the screwdrivers, these six screws around the outside so that you can. Take it apart and change it from a elastic to a money clip. I prefer the elastic. You might prefer the money clip, but they give you the option, which makes it cool.
So you can buy it any way you want. And then there’s. And they even give you the first little plastic thing to open up so you can get in there and get your credit cards in very cool wallet. Um, I am very much a fan of Ridge and their marketing being not overpowering. So toys award. That is a cool toys approved wallet.
A COOLTOYS Approval
Ridge, congratulations. Now back to this. Oh, still terrible. This is basically foamy weird water. Oh, this is sad. This is one that I had higher hopes for bit burgers, zeros, zero. Um, yeah, I had really hoped a bit burger would’ve made a much better non alcoholic beer and the idea of a zero zero. I like even better than a 0.5, but no, this is just unacceptable.
So that one is going below Topo, Chico. That’s just terrible. Um, so. That’s it. We have gone through 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 non-alcoholic beers. We found four that are drinkable 5 1 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, Ms. Director. So I just got corrected that we only had five beers, but there are six bottles plus a Topo Chico up here.
So that makes a six in the test. If I, my public math is correct. All right. So we talked about six different, any beers. We found a few that we liked that I liked at least, and hopefully a couple of years. And we talked about a cool wallet, some cool stuff for the Jeep, a lot of fun. There’s a lot of cool toys out there.
There’s a lot more to come. I look forward to seeing you and until next time, take care and have a great one. .
Scott Bourquin Host COOLTOYS TV –
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