Trashy, Tacky Cocktail Pouches

Daily's Ready to Drink Frozen Pouches

I Paid: $2.49 for a 10-ounce single-serving pouch (prices may vary by region)

Taste: 3 stars

Marketing: 2 stars

Every so often, while browsing the shelves of a rural Wisconsin gas station, I stumble upon a strange yet slickly packaged consumer good and think: "My goodness, this is probably not aimed at my city-dwelling, house-made-aquavit, cocktail-drinking self."

Daily's individual-serving freeze-and-sip cocktail bags are one of those consumer goods.

In essence, these plastic pouches are full of premixed cocktails; I tried the Margarita, Strawberry Daiquiri, and Frozen Mojito varieties. Each pouch is 10 ounces of 10-proof mixed drink, meaning that each is equivalent to taking a 100-proof shot. A punch, therefore, is packed.

Serving is a snap. Freeze the pouch overnight, and then the next day simply massage the pouch and pour a mostly frozen Chi-Chi's-style alco-slushie into the glass of your choice. (You can also save yourself the effort of getting a glass and just consume these directly out of the bag, but think carefully about how this reflects on your lifestyle before you go this route.)

The quality of said action varies pretty wildly. The Frozen Mojito was bad, bad, bad. My tasting notes include actual swear words, but to put it more usefully, it tasted as though a spiteful bartender had sprinkled mint on a citrus-themed toilet bowl cleanser and served it with a twist of lime.

The Margarita was better, which isn't really saying much. Tasting like a lime/artificial sour mix/sugar snow cone, it had a nice tartness to it, but the overall package conjured up long, sad nights at a neighborhood Applebee's.

And then, the Strawberry Daiquiri, the drink that made me hate myself. This one-dimensional strawberry-bubble-gum-flavored snow cone is something that no person of taste or quality could possibly consume, let alone enjoy. And yet ... I kept sipping it. And then slurping it. It was good like a Twinkie, or a Mountain Dew on a humid summer's night. It was good like Hershey's chocolate in a s'more. It was simple, it was theoretically bad, and yet—it was dang delicious. Only the spirited intervention of my wife prevented me from finishing the thing.

So if you see Daily's Ready to Drink Frozen Pouches, consider carefully before making an impulse purchase. It's one thing to have a drinking problem; it's another thing entirely to have a "drinking spiked slushies out of plastic bags" problem.

James Norton edits the Upper Midwestern food journal Heavy Table. He's also the coauthor of a book on Wisconsin's master cheesemakers. For his Supertaster Daily videos, he samples offerings from supermarket aisles and fast-food menus. (Click here to see all of James's previous Supertaster work.) You can follow him on Twitter and fan him on Facebook.