opinionated alchemist

Masafi is a UAE based drinking water supplier. There has been another brand (Al Ain)  which has started the "zero sodium trend".  But what I have to give to Al Ain is, that they just advertised their water what it is: zero sodium. They didn't implied any health benefits or anything else. I found that pretty smart - as a lot of people are concerned about their sodium intake - hence they are "playing with the perception" that the water "can help" to reduce the sodium intake, without being misleading. Masafi though is definitely misleading. They suggesting, that their water actively helps to maintain a healthy sodium intake. Why is it misleading? Because it all depends on ratio. Look - the recommended sodium intake of a normal adult is 1,500 mg (1.5 grams). The sodium content of "normal" mineral water is about 3mg to 33mg (latter is already pretty extreme- it is Badoit sparkling water with one of the highest sodium content of all commerci...

R ussell S anchez MONIN UAE MONIN Rocks @ HARD ROCK CAFE Dubai  — with   Rhiandro Gardiner  and Louie Aquias  at  Hard Rock Cafe . I have seen this on my Facebook timeline. And well... I wanted to write about Monin since quite a long time, but haven't. However this message was a catalyst, to speak up. It is already a couple of months ago, that I routinely checked the ingredient list of a Monin bottle. ...and was shocked.... Point is, that I have always defended Monin against my US colleagues as decent brand. At least with the products they offered here in the Middle East and in Europe; they came from their factory in France. Most of the ingredients [except lets say in Blue Curacao syrup] were natural. Long time ago, somebody from Monin explained, that this is due to the quite strict regulations in France for syrup - there it is a family culture to drink syrup sweetened water/seltzer. And off course ...

Not so long time ago, I had a loose get together with some drink industry friends. As the conversation went along, I dropped, that I actually like Old Monk rum [to the great shock of the others]. For my uninitiated friends in the US and Europe: Old Monk 7 years old is a dark rum from India - and it is dirt cheap here in the Middle East [not to speak of India - where it can be procured for a fraction of it]. It is also No.3 selling rum world wide [but only, because the Indians are drinking it like water ;-) ]. If normal "imported" [yeah - everything is imported] rum will be around AED 80 [which is around $20] Old Monk cost you a cool AED 20 [$5.50]. And you know what - in my opinion it beats the more expensive Caribbean cousins hands down. But lets face it - it is not as good as Gosling [which is here even more expensive, though], but against Myers, Captain Morgan or Coruba it is not only keeping up - it displaces the competition! It has very strong dark roast aroma...

Ladies and gentlemen - please forgive my even more perplexed writing style to the usual mess. I will cover the reason in a later post [for those who care - for those who don't care: don't you worry]. I was proudly appointed as one of the blind tasting judges in the Monin competition yesterday. It happened in the popular Bahri Bar in Madinat Jumeirah - and it was a full day of tasting [but not drinking]. One of the very unique things [for the UAE], what happened was, that representatives of both main liquor supplier, African & Eastern and MMi - were sitting on one table [they usually even don't like to share the side of the street]. Truth has to be told - Becky and Richard are both Trainers and Specialists of the respective company - and those are the most open minded and easy going personalities around. Despite of the "heft" of the competition and the fact, that both alcohol brands were represented, I haven't seen more known faces of those compan...

On the perspective to have a much broader audience, it was a good thing, to change from the Apple environment to the more common google-web environment. Month to date this page had surprisingly 800 page views. As my domain was not reachable and as the new blog is new [means not high in the search engines], it is even a bigger surprise for me. Apparently the most views are coming from the US [thank you folks] and from the UAE [shukran], followed by the Philippines [I had a lot of Pinoy colleagues] and Indonesia. Russians are reading my posts also - I know, that some of my previous colleagues transfered to Russia or are Russians... and English. Of course, due to my origin Germany is also not far back. Readers from Canada [thanks Darcy] and Turkey are quite surprising... Even more surprisingly India is totally white on the map [and I have and had a lot of Indian colleagues] as well as Sri Lanka. Have a look on map besides...

I am still [since 7 years now] confused, that there is not one classic bar in the UAE. A bar like Milk & Honey or Pegu Club or Le Lion. There are fancy places - and lobby bars - but not a really good, solid classic American bar. And I guess, the guys who are the main promoters of restaurants and bars: TimeOut is just promoting this lack of drinking culture - just see the snippet, I have "cut out" of the TimeOut webpage - it is a poll: I think, this says all! A poll about nightlife venues, and they don't even include a proper bar! Please - let me know, if you are as "disgusted" as I am.