🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1733@reed.UUCP> purtell@reed.UUCP (Lady Godiva) writes:
>In article <52@ecn-aa.UUCP> westerm@aa.UUCP (Westerman) writes:
>
>>My suggestion to all you die-hard Coke drinkers out there: Take the
>>taste test (you're going to have to find some old Coke first). You
>>may be suprised by the results.
>
>   I did, back before the days of new Coke. I picked Coke. I wasn't
>surprised.

Last Saturday we had a Coke tasting. There were 10 of us, evenly divided
among men and women. All were in the age group 25-35. 90% were round-eyes.
At least three of us claimed to be old Coke addicts. (how can you be a
macho programmer if you don't drink Coke?) Two said they did not
particularly like soft drinks. The drinks tested were old Coke, new Coke,
Pepsi, Craigmont Cola (local store brand), Cherry Coke, and Slice(slime).
Most of the drinks were gotten from local stores, except the old Coke,
which was obtained on a trip to Washington State a month ago. At the time
I was on vacation, both Oregon and Washington were selling what appeared
to be old and new Coke side by side. I assumed they had not completed
the introduction of the new Coke yet.

Testing was done with a blind-folded subject being offered the drink in a
plastic 3 oz cup. 6 drinks were offered in a random sequence with no
promise that the drinks were unique. That is, the subject might get the
same drink twice during the tasting. In that case, one of the drinks would
not be tasted because of the duplication. Subjects were asked to identify
which drink they had been given. Preference was not asked although
subjects were allowed to make comments.

The results were surprising to me. The average number of correct
identifications was around two. No one got more than three right. One
person identified nothing correctly.

I could not tell the difference between old Coke, new Coke, and Pepsi
under the conditions of the test. (nor could anyone else) I sincerely
believe I can tell the difference under normal drinking conditions
(as do the other two old Coke addicts) so I wonder what happened?
Is it really all psychological? Was the temperature wrong? Is 3 oz
too small a sample? Could I have picked up a package of mis-labeled
new Coke in Washington? I am trying some new Coke as I write this and
I really think I can taste a fructose quality in it which is not present
in my "old Coke" stash.

By the way, the Craigmont was identified by most people. One person
made a face and claimed we must be giving him a sample of the bowl in
which we poured the excess samples. Most people disliked it.

I see our local drugstore has Classic Coke now so I plan to run another
tasting. Wonder if I will be embarrassed again.

By the way, after the Coke tasting we had a beer tasting in which people
did about as well. There's a lesson in here somewhere...
-- 
 There are two kinds of people, those who lump people in groups and
 those who don't.

 Phil Ngai (408) 749-5720
 UUCP: {ucbvax,decwrl,ihnp4,allegra}!amdcad!phil
 ARPA: amdcad!phil@decwrl.ARPA