I was visiting a newly-opened Asian grocery store and picked up UGUQ Corn Juice on a lark. Have a seat near me on this green velvet couch as I pop it open and imbibe:
Smell
You open it and, right away, it smells like sweet corn.
Texture
The texture is unfortunate. Like a homemade thick soy milk, except maybe a little thicker. Like the thick texture of a European apricot juice from a carton. There is a small amount of corn pulp in this juice, so it’s not one of those totally smooth and filtered juices.
On the texture front, there’s no one here to blame but me. When I saw the goofy “corn juice” label on the shelf, there were two options. One drink had a simple list of ingredients: water, corn, sugar. I chose this other one with the konjac powder and xantan gum. 5g of fibre in a 300mL bottle. I figured a thick mouthfeel = a great time.
How wrong I was.
Taste
There is an intense sweet corn flavour. Kind of like Ding Dong. When you boil and eat corn on the cob (or microwave it in a bag, like my mother does), you get a variety of flavours from the cob itself or the stringy bits on it. There’s none of that here, just pure corny flavour from the kernels. And I think the drink is worse for that. I’d love if it had a bit of a woody note.
It’s not too sweet, but that’s like saying “my date was ugly, but at least he didn’t cuss me out!”.
Aftertaste
There is a mild corn aftertaste that fades quickly.
Thoughts
This drink is so weird (“Look ma, I’m drinkin’ corn!”) that I couldn’t put it down. It’s not good. Don’t buy it. But don’t talk to me either for a few minutes, I’m still sloshing it around my mouf mm mmmmm
Final verdict:
Two corns out of five corns.
Overall there is a remarkably strong throughline of “strange drinks are unlikely to taste good” that goes through my series of stunt-eats. I’m looking at you, Yeo’s Chrisanthemum Drink. Corn Drink continues in this pattern.
