Today I bought myself a Ramune strawberry flavored Japanese soft drink. I have had them before so I could not pass up buying another and reviewing them here. How good are they? What are they made up of? Lets check it out.

I went grocery shopping today and found that my grocery store had finally restocked on Kimura brand Ramune. It only took them months to finally re-shelve them but I happily bought them the very second I found them. Ramune had to be my introduction to Japanese imported goods, besides anime and video games if you count those. I myself find the strawberry flavor to be my favorite but I love every flavor I have tried thus far, especially the original flavor. With that said all my local stores only stock Kimura branded Ramune and I have yet to try any other brand.

What is Ramune?

Ramune comes from the Japanese term for lemonade (Crown trading Co.). It is a carbonated soft drink that is sealed with a marble. They seal them with a marble for nostalgia’s sake, to keep a novelty from the past alive as that was the best way back in the day to keep carbonation inside the bottle (Ikidane Nippon). The bottles all come with a plunger and instructions on how to release said marble and begin enjoying their carbonated beverage!

Packaging.

Ramune styled drinks are all well known for their bottle shape. This is to try and keep the marble out of the body of soda as well as for style. I really love how the curves of the bottle catch the eye and you can immediately tell this is not just some normal American soda from a can. Not only that, they market them in a clear concise way letting you know that it is indeed a fun marble drink, as they so aptly put on the bottle, and that it is a carbonated soft drink. The glass works in their favor again as you can see the color of the drink, helping the consumer to have as much information about the drink as possible before buying.

The marbles inside the containers are made of glass, same as the bottle. They do not come out of the bottle naturally, so if you want to get your hands on the marble you might have to look up several methods to extract it. This I do not recommend, as I did a method involving cutting, and cut my thumb quite deep in years past. There may be safer alternatives, but I still advise against them. I tried breaking the bottle and found that these bottles are insanely sturdy, which I put as another point towards their packaging. The last thing a consumer would want is to bring their soda home, drop it, and have it shatter all over the floor. They are confident in the taste of the drink, as well as the sturdiness of the bottle.

Ingredients.

Again I like to preface this in the sense that I am no dietician. I am a blogger with the power of google at my hands and can’t elaborate too far into the ingredients. I know enough to know that the ingredients are indeed important to the taste and texture of anything you consume. So with that said lets check them out, I know they can’t all be seen in the picture above so I will list them all out here:

• The first and most plentiful ingredient is carbonated water. I sure am glad that in a soda, it is the first and highest concentrated ingredient and not some form of sugar, but that leads to the next item.
• High fructose corn syrup. This is a sugar compound that is used in many items in America, most notably soda items. This is no surprise as this syrup is the king of soda ingredients replacing a lot of the sugar that was once used in soda.
• citric acid, which I covered in my kasugai review. where I stated that it is an edible acid used for flavoring and preserving.
• elderberry color, another way of saying that it is red food coloring, which gives the ramune that nice red hue for the strawberry flavor, some are organic but there is no indication here whether it is or not.
• Artificial flavors, here is finally the strawberry flavoring. This is the second to last ingredient and I do think that it shows in the taste.
• Sodium citrate, is the salt from citric acid. it has a certain salty taste to it and is used in club sodas for that salty sour flavor and is usually used as a preservative or for flavoring (Modernist Pantry).
• as a side note, notice how it is caffeine free!!!

How does it taste.

Knowing the ingredients here really is king if you want to identify this unique flavor. It definitely has a subtle strawberry flavor that has that sweet and yet still sour and a little salty flavor all in it all at once. They all merge to make this very unique flavor that I could call unique to Ramune. The strawberry flavoring on its own is very common in artificial flavoring and I assume uses the same strawberry as most candies in the world. With that said the citric acid and sodium citrate, although being lesser amounts in the ingredients list, are definitely present. The fact that there are not many ingredients means that you can pretty much taste each and every single one if you have a very trained tongue. I do not consider myself to have a strongly trained tongue for ingredients but the corn syrup and that sour salty taste are recognizable, even if they are subtle. All of this creates a flavor that works great with the carbonation and makes you want to drink the whole bottle in one sitting. So in short I would have to say I love the flavor.

Closing.

I urge you all to go and try Ramune for yourselves. Try a different flavor or brand if you want and let me know how you would rate them yourselves down below in the comments. With that said this flavor of Ramune, as a whole is about an 8/10 for me. Thank you all for reading to the end it means a lot and I hope you enjoyed. Please feel free to follow me here or twitter and leave a like! till next time.