Double-Blind Taste Test Party

We decided to host a blind taste test party where we would have a suite of arguably similar products, labeled with random numbers in a double-blind fashion (one person assigns a random letter to each sample, a different person replaces the letter with a 3-digit random number and writes down which letter corresponds to which number to be decoded later) so that guests could taste them all and rank / judge them without any preconceptions. An easier approach some people followed was just putting the brand on the bottom of otherwise identical containers. The results are below, and you can get the raw data here if you like.

We collected a simple rank order for each set of samples rather than a fixed scale (e.g. 1-10), but rather than properly normalizing and analyzing the data we just took the mean of the ranks because of laziness. As such, this data should be used for entertainment purposes only. In a minor concession to science we added the standard deviation and a count of how many guests ranked each sample as the best or worst in the raw data.

Carrots

The grocery store organic carrots won, with conventional carrots clearly the most reviled as bland, and organic CSA carrots in the middle due to their polarizing strong flavor (loved or hated).

Chocolates

Only 4 people submitted data for the 9 flavors chocolates (one of which was partial), partly because the labels got jumbled partway through. But the rice milk chocolate with peanut butter filling was a clear winner, and plain dark chocolate the least preferred overall.

Cocoa Powder

Highly polarizing. The strong and complex cocoa flavor of the Rademaker Dutched cocoa entranced some but others hatred it (but it still nudged into #1), and the same was true of the more metallic / traditional flavor of Hershey’s (a close #2), with the relatively bland Whole Foods cocoa in #3 (which was no one’s favorite).

Cola

These ratings were all over the place and the rankings were close (except Malta Goya, the “wild card” which all but one person hated). Overall Giant Cola was the winner, followed by Mexican Coke, Pepsi, American Coke, RC Cola, and Malta Goya in last. Several attendees requested a blind American / Mexican Coke test when it was revealed I (Jon) successfully guessed all colas blind (except switching Giant and Pepsi), and ranked Mexican Coke as #1 but American Coke as #2. However, no other guests successfully guessed which was which, and I probably got lucky.

Cookies (sandwich cremes)

The surprising winner was low-fat Oreos, with Back to Nature just behind in #2 place. Normal Oreos were a fairly distant 3^rd, then Glutino (mostly b/c one person gave it the top rank), Joe-Joes, and Newman-O’s a clear last. Note that we unscrewed the top of every cookie so that people wouldn't be able to see the brand name embossed in the cookie top.

Grilled Vegan Cheese

Daiya barely beat out Sheese, with Follow Your Heart in 3^rd, but Daiya was another strongly polarizing one due to its strong flavor (either cheeselike or fake depending on your point of view).

Hot Dogs

Lightlight jumbo dogs won out, with Tofurkey dogs just behind. Whole Foods and Tofu Pups were consistently more disliked due to their blander flavor. Tofu Pups was ranked last by all but 2 participants.

Hummus

Cava Mezze was a clear winner with its nicely balanced flavor. Giant came in #2 despite being generally ranked as bland since the 3# brand (Whole Foods) had a strong tahini taste that 5 attendees really disliked.

Jelly Beans
We didn't collect data on this, but we DID have some Jelly Belly "Bean Boozled" beans, which come in pairs that are identically colored but are good or horrible. On the most benign end, everyone agreed toothpaste was pleasant enough (arguably about the same as Berry Blue), and lawn clippings were fine too. I think skunk and barf generated the most awful faces, but rotten egg was apparently pretty epic too (I didn't try that, nor canned dog food which was reputedly bad but less than rotten egg). Stinky socks and booger were bad but tolerable, moldy cheese was quite accurate which some people didn't mind and others couldn't stand, and baby wipes were scarily dead-on.


Tea

This was another surprising one. Cheap old Liptons was ranked 1, followed by the Premium Liptons, followed by the theoretically “better” Irish tea (I forget the brand). I think plain Liptons was less tannic (albeit less flavorful) than Premium Liptons, and the Irish tea was clearly the most bitter. Even odder is that for both Irish and Premium Liptons, the “standard brew” (168F water in a cold vessel and squeezed teabags) was substantially more popular than the “British brew” (rapidly boiling oxygenated water in a hot vessel without squeezing teabags). While the British brew produced more flavor, and all teas were brewed for 3 minutes (not too long), it may be that drinking them without sugar or milk meant that weaker flavors were preferred overall.

Tortilla Chips

Most people couldn’t tell the difference (or not a strong difference), and only 2 people successfully guessed the color of each (this was inevitably a single blind experiment with one person tasting with eyes closed and another person who knows the color passing them each type of chip). But there was a very weak preference for yellow (the most flavorful), then blue, then white corn.

Twizzlers

We didn’t have actual Twizzlers, but Target beat out Lolli and Pops (despite costing 1/3 as much) mainly on texture (as the latter was very tough). Several people (but not all) preferred the Lolli and Pops flavor.

Vanilla Vegan Ice Cream

Trader Joe’s was a clear winner with all but 2 attendees preferring it strongly to So Delicious (described as having a more beany taste by several).

Vegan Cream Cheese (tasted with bagel segments)

Tofutti was a clear winner, with Follow Your Heart, Go Veggie, and Daiya basically in a 3-way tie, and the homemade cream cheese coming in last (it wasn’t bad, but was the least like cream cheese).

Vodka

This was an upset, with Svedka (the middle of the road price-wise) a fairly clear favorite, and Aristocrat (as cheap as it gets) beating Russian Standard (the premium vodka) for 2^nd place. Attendees were mostly polarized around whether Aristocrat or Russian Standard was the gross one.

Wine

A few things were interesting here. No one (except me) successfully guessed that one of the 5 red wines was a dyed Chardonnay (although some did describe it as minerally, sweet/sour, and oaky, and I knew one of them was a Chardonnay). The relatively fancy Napa Valley 2012 Yountville Cabernet Sauvignon was a clear winner, with the same wine heavily aerated (via a milk frother and a few hours of decanting, see picture below) in the #2 place but substantially less preferred. The Purple Moon shiraz was #3, then the dyed Chardonnay (which I have to say was truly dreadful wine), followed by Charles Shaw Shiraz (which was either a bad bottle, or several attendees had convinced themselves was good despite it being crappy wine). If you want to try dying wine, for this bottle I added 25 drops of red food dye, 2 of blue food dye, and 10 of black food dye. It looks pretty good in a clear glass, but brownish against a white background.

How to throw a Star Trek Party

Although it has been almost 3 years since we threw our Star Trek Party, I recently discovered that the web site we set up for the party is still getting traffic, as are the labels we created for the drinks. So, we thought it would be good to get a bit more mileage out of all of that preparation and write a guide on how to throw a Star Trek party of your very own, especially with regard to the food and drink. We found a few "how to" guides online but they either recommended buying a ton of custom crap (costumes etc.) or were not even trying (cookies in the shapes of moons and stars?). Obviously while we have a lot of ideas here you should pick and choose and make the party your own. You can also see all of our pics from the party.

The basic elements we wanted to go for were:

• Foods from Star Trek
• Drinks from Star Trek
• Star Trek decorations and door prizes
• Star Trek related entertainment (watching it, playing games, etc.)
• A sweet Star Trek website for the party with directions and info about the food / drink / entertainment so people could get excited beforehand.

The food was harder than expected; there's a star trek cookbook you can buy, but it's total BS. They're not even trying. Plus virtually nothing from there is vegan. We knew we wanted to do a "cellular peptide cake with mint frosting" (just a yellow cake with mint frosting, some decorations, and a recording of Troi screaming "no Data!" to play while cutting the cake with a serrated knife):

We also found a recipe online for vegan hasperat (a spicy, briny, Bajoran wrap; this recipe is hummus w/ horseradish and sriracha, plus cucumbers and carrots soaked in vinegar and soy sauce, plus baby spinach leaves) and definitely wanted to do "yamok sauce" (having just watched a DS9 episode all about it), and figured cotton candy could work as truffled baby tribbles:

We also found a great idea for "gagh" (a Klingon dish of live worms) online (cooking spaghetti in red wine instead of water to make it look like worms), and even put some of our compost worms in a little dish for the people who planned to complain about the gagh being dead, and I figured gimme lean cooked with some smoke flavor, maple syrup, and assorted spices could stand in for targ (Klingon pig).

The last two foods (not pictured) were just cool things we found at the farmer's market that we assigned star trek names to (we used things that were referred to but never actually shown so they could be believable): pineapple tomatillos (aka ground cherries) become "takka berries" and an orange watermelon became "Alvinian melon."

The most fun was definitely coming up with the label designs for the drinks, and my absolute favorite was the design for "Tea. Earl Grey. Hot" (each of these 6 panels made up one side of the tea box, with the directions on the bottom):

You can see / download all of the labels for the drinks, but in addition to tea and earl grey infused vodka, we did prune juice (courtesy of Worf), Slug-O-Cola (from a DS9 episode, we used green apple soda and wheatgrass juice, strained through cut okra to make it just a bit mucilaginous), bloodwine (just red wine, we rejected the idea of dissolving an iron pill in them as over the top), chech'tluth (from a TNG episode, we used mostly 150 proof rum, plus scotch, some gin, and lots of bitters), Romulan Ale (blue food coloring in vodka and white cranberry juice), raktajino (weird coffee substitute with dry ice in it, I think we used "Teecino"), etc. The key is putting dry ice in everything, just for fun. To make the labels I had to download klingon, ferengi, and romulan fonts, but it was worth it the results (note that we printed out "menus" to explain what all of the food and drink was supposed to be, and what it was actually made from):

We ordered a lot of star trek figurines for door prizes, got some wall stick-ons, and printed this for our coffee table (which we have retained):

Once everyone had food and beverages, we quickly determined that we weren't hardcore enough to be able to play "star trek scene it" and just picked episodes to watch (with a borrowed projector and screen) by consensus:

We still have all of our templates, so if you want to start with any of our labels and tweak the text on your own, or just have a higher quality version to print from, send us an email!

How to throw a flavor tripping party

Once we learned that there was a berry that made sour foods taste sweet, we knew we had to try it. I mean, the active ingredient is called "miraculin!"* Anyway, to prepare we got our tablets (we used Miracle Frooties XL from Amazon and they were great) and procured a wide array of sour foods. We wanted some things that were super-sour, other than were sweet and sour, at least one "plain sweet" food as a reference, something bitter, and some surprises. We kept the party small both because the tablets are expensive and so our gimpy dog wouldn't get too wild.

We started out with fruit:

The pink grapefruit was the best, it wasn't very sour so it just gave it enough sweetness to overcome the bitterness. The kiwi was good, and the strawberries were delicious (I didn't like them dipped in vegan sour cream, even though it did taste sweet [I liked it! -Sarah]). The Granny Smith apple was too sweet but edible, the Gold Rush apples (which are already intensely sweet AND intensely sour) were way too sweet to eat. Ditto with the limes and lemons, they were like eating straight sugar. We were going to make sugar-free mojitos or something, but they're so sweet (and not sour at all) it's way too intense.

Here's most of the rest of our spread:

I would recommend skipping the vegan blue cheese (which just tasted normal), grapes taste normal too but it's a nice reference to the super-sweet foods that are usually sour. Sauerkraut is definitely recommended for the unique experience, but it was so sweet and cabbagey that we found it pretty revolting. The salsa we had was sweeter, but strangely not gross. The hummus and tapenade tasted about normal, which was a nice relief from everything being so sweet. Not pictured are some amazing unsweetened lemon-raspberry tarts.

For drinks, we got some dry high-acid Italian wine which ended up tasting sort of like a dessert wine, but more complex than they typically are. The beer was good too, Sam Adams black lager was especially tasty, and the Stone IPA was nice since the bitterness balanced out the sweetness. I also had some Angostura bitters I added to my attempt to make dilute sugarless lemonade, but even with the bitters it was still too sweet. Taking a shot of vinegar was universally acclaimed as the most interesting and surreal experience of the night. It's still intense and burns, but also very sweet. Not something you'll forget.

If we did it again, we might try the normal fruit tablets instead of the XL version, since the XLs have twice as much and perhaps that's why everything was so painfully sweet. If you try it out, let us know how it goes in the comments section!

*does calling an ingredient miraculin remind anyone else of 'unobtainium' from the movie Avatar? -Sarah