Sun Tropics Carton Juices

I'm a little sick of all the cartoned juices out there that have tons of corn syrup sweetener. A while ago, though, I stumbled on Sun Tropics brand at my local Whole Foods. It has a lighter and fresher flavor. They add sugar, but it's real sugar at least, and not so heavy. I really like the Calamansi Lime and the Soursop. I'll probably be experimenting with these for the Tiki Oasis Room Crawl. Anybody else tried these?

Wow, I had to look up soursop because I had never heard of it! What does the juice taste like?

Most Hispanics know it as guanábana. You can find it under that name in the Goya section of the supermarket, both as a juice/nectar and as pulp in the frozen food section. The pulp is closer to the real flavor than the juices/nectars. When I was living in South America it was my favorite.

The carton for the Soursop juice actually says Guanabana on the other side of the carton, so they covered their bases.

I've tried two other Soursop products and both were from a big Asian market in San Gabriel. The first one I tried was a can of Soursop fruit, which had the consistency of mucus and tasted really bad. I dumped it immediately. I'm not sure if I got a bad can or what. The other product I'm still using. They had a big bottle of Soursop sugar syrup which is extremely tasty in drinks and has much the same flavor as the carton juice.

I don't know how to describe the Soursop flavor. It's really not sour. It has a light flavor and is kind of cloudy and sweet. I just tried a sip and thought it might be comparable to pear juice, but that doesn't really describe it.

My new favorite drink which I've been making the last couple of days includes 4 oz of the Soursop carton juice and 4 ounces of the Calamansi Lime carton juice with a shot or two of dark rum and then ice the rest of the way. Obviously it's not a Mai Tai, but I think it hits many of the same notes as a good Mai Tai. It has the right combo of sweet and sour. I may tweak it some more, but I think this is what I may serve at the Room Crawl at Tiki Oasis.

I picked up some "Boing!" brand canned Soursop nectar at my local Hispanic food market. It's not sour at all but I really can't identify the flavor, seems to have a slight salty/savory note to it (like a vegetable of some sort, maybe cucumber). Wikipedia says soursop is the same genus as cherimoya, coincidentally I just tried my first cherimoya a few days ago.

Anything worth doing, is worth doing to the point of wretched excess.

[ Edited by: MadDogMike 2008-05-31 21:46 ]

I had been using these juices with dark rum, but I finally settled on something that everybody seemed to like also.

I call my latest drink creation the ZOMBIE JAMBOREE.

Single Servings (16 oz):

5 oz Calamansi Lime Juice by Sun Tropics
4 oz Soursop/Guanabana Juice by Sun Tropics
3 oz Cruzan Estate Light Rum
Splash of Cocopandan Syrup
4 oz (1 cup) Ice Cubes

Shake & then pour into glass. Garnish with cherry on umbrella.