What is going on with Robinsons orange barley

curly from cork

Orange barley seems to have vanished off the shelves again. It happened a few months ago and re appeared in a new look bottle . Now it seems to have vanished again. Cant find it in any Tesco , Dunnes , Super Valu. Whilst I havent been looking for the Lemon Barley I didnt see that either. They all have orange and fruit barley but not the original orange. Does any one have any idea where to find it ?

drunkmonkey

Yuppie drink. They seem to be taking anything of any quality off the shelves and pushing the cheapest crap possible. Took me about 3mts to get a pack of Carrs water table biscuts they virtually disappeared at the start of the recession.
Asked in the local spar, they said it was down to the recession.

curly from cork

Im a yuppie nice one !! I think you may be right with the recession angle though as it is more expensive than the regular orange. I ll keep looking ...

The Master.

They have some in a shop near me for 1 euro. I wasnt suspicious and poured myself a cup when i got home. It was rank , sickly and sour. When i went to check the best before date i found it was scored out with black marker and a 1 euro sticker put on top.
I dread to think how out of date the bottle was if the shopkeeper felt he had to go to such lengths to hide it but i do remember there was a picture of pete sampras on the front.
Its put me off those drinks for life now.

vibe666

The Master. wrote: »

I dread to think how out of date the bottle was if the shopkeeper felt he had to go to such lengths to hide it but i do remember there was a picture of pete sampras on the front.

just be grateful it wasn't boris becker! :P

the problem is that barley water is an excellent cure for kidney infections and it's something my wife is quite prone to, so we've always kept a bottle of lemon barley around just in case it's needed. a couple of glasses of it and she's back to normal again, but since we haven't bee able to find it recently, we've had to look at alternatives and the solution turned out to be far simpler than the problem.

instead of buying it, make it yourself.

it really couldn't e simpler and not only does it taste better, but it is much more effective than the bottle variety.

it's as simple as buying a 500g pack of pearl barley, 6 lemons and a jar of honey from your local supermarket and cooking it up.

i usually make 2L batches of the stuff which requires 2L of water, 250g of barley, a couple of tablespoons of honey and the juice and rind of 3 lemons.

put your water and barley in a pan and bring to the boil, then reduce to a gentle simmer for 30 minutes with the lid on. remove from the heat and add the honey (to taste, but 2 tblspns is about right for our liking) and and the rind (i use a spud peeler to avoid getting any pith) and juice of the 3 lemons and leave to cool before straining the whole thing (a colander will do, you don't want to strain out the good stuff) into a jug and leaving in the fridge until required.

it should keep refrigerated for 3-4 days without too much bother.

depending on how you like it, you may also want to dilute it slightly to taste if you find that it's too lemony.

i also imagine it would work fine with oranges as well.

i even made a lemon barley sorbet with it in our ice cream maker a couple of weeks ago for a change and it was very tasty.

Doodah7

The Master. wrote: »

They have some in a shop near me for 1 euro. I wasnt suspicious and poured myself a cup when i got home. It was rank , sickly and sour. When i went to check the best before date i found it was scored out with black marker and a 1 euro sticker put on top.
I dread to think how out of date the bottle was if the shopkeeper felt he had to go to such lengths to hide it but i do remember there was a picture of pete sampras on the front.
Its put me off those drinks for life now.

Why don't you notify the FSAI about this. They are most interested in hearing about such antics.