Trying Virgil's Handcrafted Root Beer

in

Video subtitles:

Okay hey YouTube, uh we're here in the drink review series again, um we got our little moose mug from Christmas Vacation today we're doing Virgil's handcrafted root beer. This kid is way too excited you'll have to look at the beginning of the video and see the, the, uh, exuberance he is expressing over two very large mugs of root beer and the girl oddly holding a malamute or husky. Interesting choices, I'm guessing that's probably Virgil's kids in real life, if you know let me know down in the doobley-do. So, right off this is part of the non-GMO project verified, because you know, whatever. Uh I'll just start reading the label here - before handcrafting was a thing Virgil's had a vision to create a refreshing beverage that tasted like something, not of this world, I apologize for that sound, Virgil's expertly blended the finest natural ingredients and spices to create this award-winning root beer the ingredients are sparkling filtered water, cane sugar, natural flavors, caramel color, and citric acid it was manufactured for Reeds Incorporated in Norwalk, Connecticut. There are 170 calories per 355-milliliter bottle, no sodium, 42 grams carbohydrates, 42 grams of sugars which includes 42 grams of added sugars, so basically all the calories from this come from added sugar not the greatest thing okay for a treat every now and then I guess, zero grams of protein, no appreciable percentages of anything else. So you'll forgive me I have never used this bottle opener before, I just grabbed it off my keys let's get it open here all right.

Trying not to cut myself on this blade.

Well, this thing's not really going to work well. Is it.

I'm sure I'm doing this horrible and everyone in the comments is going to tell me but this is what I have to work with so you'll forgive me while I, uh, butcher myself here. There we go.

Oops. I will get this, I am not incompetent, okay maybe I am a little, like I legitimately don't know if I have another bottle opener in the house so bear with me here

Uh, if you'd like to support me on Patreon so I can buy real bottle openers oh good grief all right this is getting pretty dumb. Look at my thumb, uh yeah, we might be trying this. I wish it was a twist cap all right we're just going to cut it right there and I'll be right back. Sorry for the jump edit there, let's uh, let's try this that thing is garbage and I'm not putting it back on my keys. Oh for crying out loud.

And, of course, now the cap's just bending because I've angled it there we go. Huzzah! Okay, yeah that one might not like I, I'm not fond of that smell, so we'll go ahead and give you a pour in Mr. Moose here. There is some water in this, I've rinsed it out.

Sorry, I do this thing with my arm over here.

A little bit of carbonation.

Okay.

Yeah, I don't know about that.

Yeah, I'm not a fan of this. Not a fan of this at all. It um, doesn't actually taste like any root beer I've ever had.

There is a very very light root beer taste there but there's something else that's just, uh yeah, let me try, yeah. Definitely not a fan of that. Um, it's not like Barqs, it's not like IBC, if you've ever been to central Indiana I'd definitely say it's not like Mug'n'Bun, it's, it's not like store brand root beer, it is a decidedly different taste. I'm not sure what awards they have won but it's basically just cane sugar in some kind of weird caramel flavor. Not even caramel, but some sort of caramelized flavor,.

Definitely would not recommend this. You might try it yourself, let me know if you have, let me know if it's your favorite or if you don't like it like I do. I'm definitely pouring this down the drain, it's just a bunch of sugar and I'm not going to enjoy it so why subject myself to all that sugar. Yeah, again I apologize about the noise, the echo I definitely need to do something with the sound in this room, you could help me via Patreon, you don't have to, I would appreciate it. I know I mentioned it a lot, I don't have a lot of disposable income to put into this but I would love to, I would love to make better quality videos. I'm going to be trying a lot of stuff here while it's cold out or on rainy weeks and stuff. Drink series, haven't started the food series yet if you're watching this as it goes up, but I plan to do that eventually sometimes too. We're far enough away from the city that, you know, we only drive in once a week for groceries and stuff and it's, you know, 25 30 minutes each way so, uh, once a month I might get some fun food when we're out and about or something and let you know or if we ever go out to eat if this whole situation we're all living in calms down I might start doing that but for now drinks! I'll be getting back to the garden stuff soon, check out the lists, there's a list for my drink reviews, there will be a list for garden stuff, and if I do anything else. Thanks for stopping by see you guys next time!

Trying Fresh Thyme Hibiscus Berry Nitro Tea

in

Video subtitles:

Hey YouTube we're here in another drink review series video. today we'll be trying this Fresh Thyme nitro tea hibiscus berry herbal tea. Uh, one thing to note this can is wrapped not printed, I noticed some of the other Fresh Thyme ones are directly printed, just something that interests me it's not going to change the taste of the drink but I found it mildly amusing. So this is just basically kind of tonic water I guess it's organic naturally caffeine-free nitrogen-infused, I'm not sure what that's going to do, i imagine that has something to do with the taste if, if, you're at all knowledgeable in like food science or something let me know in the comments I want to know why the nitrogen infusion is in there. Maybe to act as some sort of carbonation but I don't see how that would stay in there well I don't know just tell me if you know uh ingredients are filtered water organic viscous flour organic hibiscus berry tea blend which is organic rosehips, organic hibiscus flowers, organic currants, organic apples, organic elderberries, natural blueberry flavor, essential orange oil, pardon me I have to burp, and natural mango flavor. just before this I shot a probiotic video it's, it's coming up to rear it's head.

It's produced for Fresh Thyme, uh it's a can that you're supposed to keep refrigerated so it's not shelf-stable.

Tilt clam, tilt sorry I can't talk it's very early in the morning, tilt can twice before opening for best nitro effect. Okay so I think they're doing kind of like um beer that puts those little like ping pong ball things in there to give it some head, this is what I'm assuming, now bright tart and juicy this herbal tea is a delightful combination of hibiscus flowers, currants, rosehips, and elderberries. It's refreshing, naturally caffeine-free, and canned with nitrogen for a smooth and creamy mouthfeel. That's what I said. Grab a can for the road or watch the nitrogen bubbles cascade as you pour it into a pint glass. Well, I don't have a pint glass, what I do have is the Christmas Vacation eggnog glass. Got this at Goodwill for two dollars so we'll be, uh sorry for the water spots we're on a well, uh this is gonna be our drink glass just because it's fun, um that's interesting his nose is actually part of the glass where you can drink, so I think I'll tilt him this way for a second so you guys can see this. It said tilt twice

Oh nice hiss and MRE Steve would approve

I am either pouring it wrong or the nitrogen is overhyped. So it uh, oh you can see some bubbles, I doubt you guys can but I can but it's not much but there's definitely some collecting in his nose here. So, uh,

yeah bottoms up. Oh that um,

it almost kind of smells mediciney.

it reminds me of something I'm not sure what but let's try it

oh yeah

it um

It's not quite floral but it it does remind me of medicine as a child you would get medicine, and it would be liquid, and it would certainly have a flavor kind of like this this isn't something I would drink regularly. It's not bad but if any of those ingredients are something you'd like, I mean it's it's not terrible, it might be worth trying if you have a Fresh Thyme near you obviously it's made for them so you're going to find in Fresh Thyme stores

but yeah not bad it's it's pretty weak

I've used herbal teas in the past from Mountain Rose Herbs,

They have some that are supposed to be for like bedtime and stuff that I've, I've, tried and liked and I will add things like, uh, red clover because I like that flavor that are in parts and I'll usually make it pretty strong this is definitely weaker than I would brew in a herbal tea but yeah not bad. Five calories per serving which is the entire can, zero grams of fat, no sodium, one grams of carbohydrates, no fiber, no protein, two percent of your calcium which is 13 milligrams, two percent of your potassium which is 55 milligrams, and that's it it's basically flower water so yeah not my favorite thing. Definitely not going to buy it again but if I was somewhere and I was only going to drink I'd have no problem drinking this it's just not not my cup of tea if you'll pardon me expression. Uh, yeah, I won't include links to this it's just Fresh Thyme, it's a grocery you either have it near you or you don't, sorry if you don't you might look up other teas that kind of follow the ingredients list. Patreon and stuff's down there sorry about the echo Ii need to get some kind of sound solution in here to dampen the sound the microphone's still not the best, I'd like to get a wearable mic at some point right now I'm using that Rode mic that I've mentioned in other videos it's nice um yeah that's it um like, comment, subscribe, tell me you hate my guts, maybe recommend some new drinks for me to try, uh I'm in central Indiana, if you're aware of stuff that I can easily get here either online or in person yeah let me know I'll try it. I'm uh kind of getting into this trying drinks thing and it's you know something easy to do so I'll wrap it up there. you guys have a nice one see you next

Ryan poorly explains the Glyos toy system

in

In the spring of 2020 I discovered the Glyos compatible toy system and fell in love. Here I, very poorly, explain it a bit and show a few of my acquisitions off while I ease back into making YouTube content after a decade or so of not.

Here are the seeds I will be planting in zone 5b in 2021

in

Having bought a house last fall I now have a little over a half acre. I plan to use some of that to grow a lot of our own food. The soil isn’t the blest (clay) so this year probably won’t be great yields but I plan to bring raised beds online as money allows, with at least 1 in place by the end of this year for 2022.

Trying to figure out how my wife uses our air fryer

in

Shortly after getting married last year my wife and I bought an air fryer. We use it at least 5 days a week but I’d never actually operated the thing on my own so, I gave it a shot without reading the manual. It’s fairly intuitive, it did however help I knew roughly how long my wife uses it though.

Trying Olipop Orange Squeeze fizzy tonic

in

On a recent Buff Dudes they had the sponsor Olipop, the soda alternative sounded interesting so my wife and I got some at Fresh Thyme when we were doing our groceries, here’s my impressions on their Orange Squeeze.

Video subtitles:

Hey youtube what's going on um I was watching another youtube creators account the other day uh buff dudes it's I guess it's two brothers and a dad their mom runs their merch and stuff for them but they, they have some interesting sponsors sometimes they'll have like this super expensive cereal that's you know low carb high protein or whatever and I'd love to try it but it's fantastically expensive uh then this week their sponsor was Olipop - and grab yourself a crisp refreshing Olipop - so

First I'll say if you go on their website this stuff comes out to like three dollars a can shipped and that's a lot for tonic water or soda sparkling tonic is what they call it. It's unique because, at least it's unique as far as I know, it's a prebiotic you know it's got botanicals and plant fiber it's not joking about the plant fiber. What I found interesting was in this can of orange squeeze which I'm about to try for the first time it contains 45 calories but nine grams of fiber, five grams of sugars, and then zero grams of protein. It's 160 percent of your daily vitamin C in a can. Now, my wife and I found this at fresh time yesterday uh you can go on lollipops website, this isn't sponsored or anything, I've just decided when I try something unique uh I'll share it with you guys so you don't have to waste your money or so you can be like well hey he liked it so maybe I will like with the solo stove which I haven't done another fire with yet. I was going to this weekend but yesterday we got a lot of rain, snow, rain, snow, rain, snow, and it's snowing right now so I didn't get around to that but let's uh let's check this can out. Again, I found it on the buff dudes, it was one of their sponsors, they're not sponsoring me. I'm nobody, as you can tell by my subscriber count, and the three of you that are watching this but it claims to support digestive and immune health you know whatever but it's plant-powered and microbiome approved - I'm not sure what the certifying body for that is and you know they make the proud claim that it's non-GMO, I don't care if something's genetically modified in a lab within reason before it's introduced into the wild and I don't think eating GMO crops is necessarily bad, it might kind of reduce the fiber and up like the carbohydrates with you know things like corn or whatever where they're trying to get the most bang for the buck, but I think some things are important like genetically modified rice. If we could get it to grow in different conditions and, um, you know we could we could really go a long way with world hunger and you could get it to synthesize vitamins and stuff inside while it's growing so that's cool. So I don't really care about the non-GMO part of it but it's an interesting thing. So the ingredients in this can uh they have several different flavors and they're all a little different, I know the cola one contains caffeine this does not, the cola one gets its caffeine from um green tea extract this one though, however, is carbonated water and then OLISMART which is cassava root fiber, chicory root inulin, jerusalem artichoke inulin, nopal cactus, calendula flower, kudzu root, hey a beneficial use for kudzu really bad invasive species, marshmallow root, slippery elm bark, that's all in their OLISMART, and then you have lemon juice, apple juice concentrate, mandarin juice concentrate, cassava root syrup, clementine juice concentrate, rosehip, uh acerola cherry, stevia leaf for the sweetness, Himalayan pink salt it does have you know 35 milligrams of sodium which is kind of on par with regular soda, and then natural orange flavor extract. It appears to be manufactured for Olipop in Oakland California, it doesn't say where but it wouldn't surprise me if it's regional, um one thing that is interesting is the can here, it's not printed on the aluminum it's definitely some kind of plastic wrap on just a bare aluminum can, uh yeah. Oh, it's gluten-free, it's vegan-friendly, it's paleo-friendly, but that's why you're paying $2.65, $2.70 I think we paid at fresh time and they only had three different kinds and a couple of cans each. I imagine it's not a super high volume sales product for them but it does sound like they're kind of new too so you know let's try it, my wife wanted to try it off camera so we're going to pour this in a glass

Oooh nice hiss, Steve would approve. MRE Steve, check him out.

Well, right away,

right away it smells like McDonald's orange juice, I don't know if they still have it but if you're a child of the 80s or 90s you'll remember it. It was kind of pulpy and had a very distinct orange juice taste, and we're definitely carbonated, you know it's a, it's a soda, it just looks like any number of energy drinks or something but there's no, no stimulants in this so let's give it a taste

It kind of tastes like Sprite

Yeah, it has a decidedly Sprite taste, I like that uh, at 250 to three dollars a can I'm not gonna rush out and get it but I may actually order some more of this just to have a treat. Um I've had two diet cokes this year it's january 30th or 31st when I'm recording this prior to that I was doing two or three Diet Cokes a day and when I ran out at the end of December I just decided not to buy anymore, um got a couple you know at the gas station or whatever when we were out and about and I wanted something to drink but yeah, that's that's pretty good, um I really should have prepared better and have a list of the flavors - they do have a root beer one I'd like to try assuming it's uh, not caffeinated like Barq's and some root beers are, I doubt it is but I'm just trying to stay away from the caffeine - it's uh, it's been surprisingly easy, I used to be a very heavy coffee drinker back in the day and you know, I would drink a pot, pot and a half of coffee a day and then I switched to Diet Coke and now that I've given it up I find generally I don't need it anymore. I miss the taste of the Diet Coke which is what interested me about these but, yeah, I was never a big fan of Sprite but I would drink it sometimes. I'm sure you've all had Sprite when you were sick to the stomach you know mother's wisdom and all that but it's not exactly Sprite it's...

It um, it's kind of like Sprite if it was watered down a little, eh, that's not fair because it doesn't taste bad it just tastes "light" I guess but yeah, probably want to go on their website and order a case of it you have to order like a whole bunch of it and the shipping makes it expensive plus it's winter so coming to me would probably freeze but go to their website it's drinkolipop.com I think, I'll have the link in the doobly-doo. Again not sponsored, if they'd like to send me some I'd gladly take it to try the other flavors, but I'm nobody so Ii don't that's gonna happen, but yeah look it up see if they have it in a store near you and just try it. It could be a nice little treat every now and then, uh, I might drink one or two of these a week some of the other flavors sounded interesting, I believe they had strawberry vanilla or cherry vanilla, I wish they had like a vanilla cola without caffeine. That I can get behind, but yeah, I'm gonna look for more of these. Uh sorry for you know not doing a fancy video today, I'm just kinda, it's winter don't really have a lot of great ideas just going to try stuff share it with you my wife and I have been doing plant-based, whole food plant-based, for a while we're going to probably share some of that with you as, uh, as we try it. Why not, and uh, yeah I'm gonna stop rambling now this is probably going on for like 19 minutes or something and I intended it to be a 45-second video so cheers! Like, comment, subscribe, dislike, check out the Patreon so I can get more weird stuff like this, uh tell me you hate my guts, that's been Ryan Mercer - uh, you guys have a nice one!

Firing up the Bonfire fire pit by Solo Stove, an honest review

in

Last year I saw a Facebook ad for Solo Stove. Having bought a house last year and not wanting to dig a firepit until I’ve decided where all of the garden beds will go, I went ahead and bought the Bonfire model. Here’s my first impressions.

Video subtitles:

- Hey, YouTube. What's going on? Sorry I didn't do a video in a few days or a couple of weeks, actually. I did my fathers funeral, I think I put that up last Sunday. That was kind of neat. We found the cassette. My mom had it for the almost 23 years since my father passed. I think it's 23 years. Yeah. '98 to 2021. Yeah. 23 years. And we'd never played it or anything. So it broke when I was trying to digitize it. And that was fun. Before I even got to really hear any of it, I had to repair it, but I got that done and got it up. And that was neat. Four copyright strikes, four, for song hymns, because Sony has to make their buck off the video. But I don't care. It's my father's funeral. I was just trying to preserve it digitally. But today I have something called the Solo Stove Bonfire for you. Some of you may be familiar, I really should've gotten mine out as a prop, I'll show it to you in a little bit. There are these little camp stoves that are about this big and you put twigs and stuff in, and as the fire burns the wood, you get gas off the wood. So there's little jets that run around the perimeter of the cylinder and they funnel that gas, and then you get nice flames off of that too. This thing works the same way. I saw it on a Facebook advertisement and when I was scrolling, I normally don't go for stuff like that. I have a couple of things. There's some soap and stuff that I've bought that I've been pretty pleased with, but mainly the stove cried out to me because we had a fire pit when we moved into the property and I'll show you that, it's just stupid. It's right next to a utility pole. There's, there's one of the giant, not capacitors. You know what I mean, transformers, right up the pole next to the smokestack, maybe three feet off of the little smokestack. And it's adjacent to the power lines. So I took a hammer to it and when we first moved in so I wouldn't be tempted to use it. And I had been kind of trying to think out where I wanted to do a fire pit on the property. Well, we've got a lot of trees and stuff, and I'm not sure where we're going to be planting stuff because I still have to get a good idea of where the spring and summer sun comes in. So I didn't want to take a fire pit yet. And we have clay soil and that adds a little difficulty to it. Sorry, the neighbors looking at me like I'm insane. The joys of YouTubing, right? So we've got, no good place for a fire pit identified yet. So this thing just seemed cool. It's basically a much larger version of those. It gasifies the wood a little, you get the flames, it looks pretty, it's stainless steel. It's a little pricey. And my biggest complaint so far was their demand has been so high, I guess 'cause of stimulus money and stuff, that it did take 7, 8, 9 weeks to show up. I ordered it in November and it came in January. So not the most ideal situation but it's because they're selling a lot of them and I've actually ran into some people in some of the subreddits I frequent that have got the Bonfire specifically, too. And they've been happy with it. So yeah, let's get it out. I'll show you the box here in a second. And then we'll go out setting this up and doing the first fire together. All right, as I promised, here's the box. It's the Solo Stove Bonfire. Portable backyard fire-pit, easy to use, low smoke, 3 0 4 stainless steel, mesmerizing flame, lifetime warranty. I highly suspect the lifetime warranty because it automatically tells you not to store it outside, not to let it get wet because, even though it's stainless, it's still gonna rust to some extent and pit and stuff. But I imagine this thing has a decade of casual use in it, but eventually even the stainless steel is gonna get fatigued and stuff, but it comes in this giant box and it tells you over here this is how to do the perfect flame. So you don't have wood stacked up out of it. And I guess a common thing is, it's got a ring on top, that I'll show you. And it kind of directs those flames up. People put it on upside down and it's a common complaint. So they put that on the box. But yeah, it's just a boring box. It shipped well. It did have Styrofoam on top and bottom to keep it from bouncing around. So I didn't notice any dings or anything, which was nice. Some companies would have just thrown it in the cardboard box. So yeah, let's go and get this thing out and get a fire going. So like I said, here's the fire pit we already had and you can probably hear the hum from the transformer up there. So not really a good location. Oh, real quick, I said, I would show you the little junior version of this that I've had. This is Lagzada. There's a bunch of different Chinese-ium clones of this on Amazon and eBay. But same principle. You get your air coming in here, underneath this ring. It's just like this ring that I just removed. You have all these, and then you have a little tray, not unlike this, that you drop in and then it does it's thing in there. I'm not gonna light that one because, breaking sticks down that size is just gonna be a pain. Normally, you just use twigs when you're camping or whatever, but I am gonna go and get this thing going. And yeah, I'm probably only gonna burn this much wood today. Maybe not even that 'cause I'm just testing it and I have things to do, but I thought I'd show you guys. All right, so to get this going, I don't know how well you can see this and I'm sorry about the sound, there's a dump truck right over here on the road idling. I think he went inside his house real quick. So try to get in the sun here. I've just gotten a little bit of pine pitch on here. Like, just pine sap, straight pine resin. I'ma try these, to get this thing going. I've got some smaller ones down here. If not, I'll go inside and get something better. But I just want to try these and I figure I'd try them with you. You can't see it, but these took off good. So I'm going to get to this. So I'll show you real quick. See, you can't see it. Oh, I guess you can see it. We've got a nice little fire going. I love these things. I'ma make a bunch more of them. So I'm gonna get to this real quick and we'll jump forward to when I've got a good fire going. I don't think you can see this well on camera 'cause of the sun. Hopefully, I'm blocking it so you can see it a little. Obviously, I have it stacked out really high. Not ideal. And even just dropping that in, I singed some hairs 'cause that's pretty hot. The wood gasification is working. I can see it already. I got carried away with my initial burn, but yeah, I'm gonna give this thing a thumbs up. Like I said, I wish it was a little wider. I don't even know if I'm in the frame. Sorry if I'm not. Ooh, gettin' a little toasty, let's get back a little. But yeah, I'm happy with my purchase. I think I paid like $220, $250 for this and it did seem a little shocking at first, but it is stainless steel. I didn't have to dig a fire pit. I'm using two edging pavers. If you can't tell. I'm going to get away from this though. It's popping a lot. There's a lot of smoke on here even this was supposed to be smokeless, but it's 'cause I put a bunch of pine in there and now I see the camera's in the smoke cloud so this probably looks terrible. I'm gonna move the camera and we'll get some more footage of this. Okay. Yeah. Here, I'm behind it. And let me open my coat up. You can see the flames much better there. It'd be nicer if I did this in the evening and maybe I'll show you that eventually, but for the time being this is the Solo Stove. Yowza. Yeah, I'm pretty happy with it. I'm gonna let this burn out. I don't think I'm gonna put any of this on and that'll be the video for today. Links in the dudally-do. Patreon in the dudally-do. Give to me, don't, I don't care. I'm just doing this for fun. This is something I bought and I thought I'd show it. I'm about to get resined on here, I think, so I'm gonna get out of the way. But yeah, not sponsored, not promoted. Just, I paid the money for it. I thought I'd create some video content in case someone else was interested in buying it. Maybe my opinion will change over time with this. You can't leave it outside. That's why I'm doing this so early in the day. Yeah. I'm gonna let this burn out. Thanks for stopping by. Like, comment, subscribe, dislike. Tell me you hate my guts, whatever. See you guys.