Wow, 99 of these suckers? Shit. That means I probably need to have something cool for number 100, don’t I? Oh shit, they’re here. WHY HELLO THERE, and welcome back to Kitchen Catastrophe Quick Tips, where we unpack a weird facet of food culture, and talk about it. Today’s topic is Mountain Dew. Why? For very dumb reasons. Let’s dig in.

Do The Dew

For those NOT entrenched in American sugar-water hegemony, Mountain Dew is a soft drink, which in America is used predominantly to mean “a carbonated flavored beverage”, rather than the broader “any nonalcoholic drink” used in many parts in the world. An American would almost never call a lemonade a “soft drink” (and lemonade in America is almost never carbonated, as we covered in the Culinary Compendium – British edition) for instance. It is often regarded as something of the “worst” American soda options in terms of healthiness: it’s INTENSELY colored, in a different color than the flavor it’s mimicking, with a lot of sugar AND caffeine. As such, it is predominantly marketed to younger people, often with the implication of either Extreme Sports, or, somewhat paradoxically, really nerdy shit. (This is because Nerd events like LANS or RPG sessions can actually go on for HOURS, so the added energy is “useful” for them)

It helps them “attack the darkness”, as it were.

Now, those with a keen eye for history/Scots/Irish slang may find the name Mountain Dew slightly humorous for a soft drink, since mountain dew is an old nickname for Moonshine, the (often-illegally) home-distilled, HIGHLY alcoholic libation. (As a side note: this is what that song you might have sung/heard as a child was about: “I’ll hush my mug if you fill up my jug with some good ol’ Mountain Dew” is NOT an invitation to quiet children down with heavily sugared, caffeinated soda: that would be counter-productive. No, it is LITERALLY someone extorting another over illegal moonshine. Also, there’s apparently SEVERAL songs.) The terms come from colorful terms/euphemisms of the era: most people making moonshine had to work at night, without lights for fear of discovery, so they literally worked BY moonshine, and “mountain dew” was a sarcastic/knowing joke about what the jugs of clear, expensive liquid that these men were selling were filled with.

You’re not wrong to have that impression, and it actually hints at the backstory of the beverage: Mountain Dew was, essentially, invented to be a carbonated substitute for Sour mix. It was developed SPECIFICALLY to be drunk as a chaser to or mixed with whiskey.

“Yes, a snifter of your finest Scotch, and a 20 oz of Dew, please.”

Now, that’s a neat little fact, and one that many food sites like to bring up as a “did you know” attention grabber. Me, I brought it up because I’m stalling. See, today’s post was ALWAYS going to be weird, and this was the best idea I had, so I’m trying to wrangle it into shape as best I can in the moment.

Because I actually ended up briefly leaving town and working an actual day job for a couple days, to give one of my friends a break, so I lost a LOT of research/prep time, and the one kind of idea I had I completely bungled, along with several other issues: See, since I’m only out of town a few days (By the time you read this, I may already be back. So DON’T TRY IT, POTENTIAL THIEVES)

The ever-powerful “Swiper No Swiping” technique.

…as I was saying: as I’m only out of town a few days, I didn’t do my normal “pack everything you could want, and another two boxes” mentality I inherited from my mother. Unfortunately, I trimmed it down to “pack two boxes”, not “pack everything you want”. I was going to bring Mountain Dew Liberty Brew, and force the guys in Leavenworth to try and analyze the supposed 50 flavors in the bottle (I also straight up forgot to bring a Wi-Fi receiver, since I’ve been on an Ethernet Cable since late March, so I had to drive 30 minutes to the nearest office supply store so I do anything online)

So, I was mentioning the idea to Joe, and it prompted a discussion of various Mountain Dews. (By the way, not that I think you’d believe it, but this is in no way sponsored by Mountain Dew.) Because, I don’t know if you know this, but there are a LOT of varieties of Mountain Dew. Take a guess how many. Go on. Don’t just look it up, I’m about to tell you, but get an estimate in your head. How many flavors do you think there are?

The answer is: there’s a lot of ways you could measure it, but it’s at LEAST 21.

As in “If you don’t count “diet”s or “zero”s, or Discontinued ones, or Slurpees/Freezes, or the Kickstarts or Amps, there are 21 (maybe 24) different flavors of Mountain dew they are CURRENTLY making, around the world. If you include all the weird side-Dews, there are 46 flavors currently in production, and if you include the SIXTY NINE Discontinued Flavors (most of which were limited releases), there have been 115 flavors of products with Mountain Dew in the name.

Don’t try and read all that small text, just try to grasp the WAVES of it.

And that was a sobering discovery for me: I am, as you probably know, a food nerd. You are likely reading this BECAUSE you are aware of my food nerdery. I am also a NERD-Nerd. I’ve played Dungeons and Dragons for over 20 years, I work in a Comic Book shop, I have two 6 foot-tall shelving units of board games. I have probably consumed literal buttloads of Mountain Dew in my lifetime: a butt-load is a 128 gallon barrel, a fact and number I knew off the top of my head. (It’s technically a WRONG number…but it’s wrong by TWO gallons: a beer-butt is 130 gallons.) If you had asked me, “Jon, do you think you could name most of the Mountain Dews?” I’d have answered “probably”, and then given you a list of 13-14 Mountain Dews. And I’ve have felt pretty confident that the list had to be comfortably a majority…and been blown away when I learned my list had one they weren’t making anymore, and three they MIGHT not be making any more, meaning I got 10 out of 21.

What followed was at least 40-50 minutes of digging through the Mountain Dew wikia, and learning which drinks were still being made, which ones weren’t, and the almost absurd number of region or chain specific varieties there were.

Did you know that KFC has an exclusive Mountain Dew flavor, Sweet Lightning, which supposedly tastes of Peach and Honey? (Supposedly, it tastes like a LOT of peach artificial flavor, and some honey)

Did you know that Bojangles, another fried chicken chain with around 1 store for every 7 that KFC has, has its OWN Fruit-Punch-based exclusive flavor?

They’ve tried to make Grape Mountain Dew work in Japan THREE TIMES, and Joe asserts that, when he had it there last year, it wasn’t good.

New Zealand has a Passion-fruit flavored one!

New Zealand gets all the nice things.

I learned almost as many names of Gas station chains in those 40 minutes as I did in the proceeding 30 years of my life: Sheetz, Kum and Go, Speedway, etc.

Sorry if this feels a little underwhelming as a topic: Like I said, this was never the plan, and I didn’t really have time, but what it DOES do is illustrate one of my favorite little lessons: every hobby is fractally complex: the more you look into a thing, the more you tend to find. I would have guessed, three days ago, that there had been, MAYBE, like, 40 mountain dew flavors: I’d guess there’s currently around 20, and 20 others had come and gone over the years. I would have been SUPER wrong. I would have never guessed there’s an “Atomic Blue”, or “Citrus Goji Strawberry”, or “Passionfruit Frenzy”. And I think discovering the huge range of flavors is a fun experience. Is it as fun as watching three men in their late twenties and early 30’s try and find FIFTY flavors in a sip of soda? Who can say.

(Also, and this is a follow-up note from last Thursday’s post, but holy shit, Australia, well fucking done. I was told to expect my delivery of Solo sometime in late August or Early September, but they did it in UNDER A WEEK. DHL does not mess around! )

MONDAY: WE BIBIM-BOP TO THE TOP, AS WE REVISIT BIBIMBAP AS A BURGER!

THURSDAY: SPEAKING OF REVISITING THINGS WE DID BEFORE, SEASON 2 OF STREET FOOD! WILL IT BE LESS OF A PARADE OF HUMAN SORROW? OH BOY DO I HOPE SO, THIS IS NOT A GREAT YEAR FOR TRAGEDIES.