Rant 2,192: Build Me Up. Bubblecup

Yes, that is a play on words, but if you decide to accept your mission and read on, you will find out exactly what I am talking about.

I am not the biggest water drinker, but I have upticked my water intake as I have gotten older, and usually, at least during the week, I try to drink at least a half bottle a day of water, sometimes even a whole bottle.

And that is because my place of work is a constant 78 degrees year 'round--too hot in both the summer and the winter for me to stand it, but that appears to be the temperature that they like, so there isn't much I can do about it.

So using both a bottle of water and a mini-fan, I try to stay cool at work, and using both in tandem kind of works, in particular when the water is ice or ice cold as it melts through the day.

But now, I am on another beverage kick, having found the perfect solution to this non-problem I have had for decades.

I finally found a bottled seltzer that I actually like.

I have always like seltzer, but I prefer the real kind, the one that comes out of the bottle with the spout that you used to be able to get when I was a kid.

That was the real thing, the real deal, and my family got that delivered to the house as long as it was available, so that stopped in the late 1960s, when the "seltzer man" stopped making deliveries to our house.

That seltzer was always bubbly, as it was pressurized inside that thick glass bottle, and always ready for you to enjoy either straight or as the major ingredient of an egg cream (to those who don't know what an egg cream is, it is kind of chocolate milk mixed with seltzer, but that isn't even a fair description of this New York concoction).

Anyway, since the late 1960s, I have not really been searching, but I have been trying to find a seltzer that I actually like.

When the seltzer companies pretty much went out of home delivery--and many went out of business--there was still a market for his water with fizz, and several local beverage companies--and even some of the big national ones--put seltzer in a can.

I guess it was OK drinking the first "zup" after the can was opened, but even if you drank it in one sitting, it lost its fizz pretty quickly, not being under pressure anymore. That was the beauty of those old soda bottles, because the contents of those bottles was under pressure all the time, so every time you drank it, it had that fizz in it.

So people pretty much had to settle for what some called soda water, others called seltzer, but was actually a product that really wasn't satisfying at all.

I would have seltzer here and there over the past 50 years, but it was never part of the my regular beverage intake.

I had tried so many of the so-called canned seltzers, and they were as flat as a board with their fizz, so I was pretty much drinking water with minimal fizz, but not seltzer.

And then, about 10 years ago, the backlash against sugary soda started, and people looked for other beverages to quench their thirsts--bottled water for sure, but later, energy drinks, and ready to drink coffee and teas, and some natural juices.

And seltzer was part of this emerging niche, in particular when beverage companies added flavors to the seltzer to boost the taste.

I tried a couple, but the flavoring tasted artificial, and again, the fizz wasn't there for me to enjoy for very long.

So, up until recently, I stuck to drinking soda, water and, of course, milk, and that was that.

Then a few months ago, I finally found the motherlode, exactly what I was looking for as far as seltzer was concerned.

I bought it out of curiosity, pretty much, and I came away maybe not wholly satisfied--no, it just doesn't come even close to the old seltzers that were pressurized in those thick bottles--but at least it was something I found appealing to drink.

It was Poland Spring Seltzer, but in the bottle only. I found one of those big bottles of the stuff in my local Walmart, tried it, and again, it wasn't as good as the stuff I drank as a kid, but it was good enough.

And again, I am talking about the pure seltzer, not the seltzer that they put out with the flavoring.

You open the bottle, take a "zup" of this stuff, and you can feel the bubbles hitting your tongue.

And being in a bottle rather than a can, the carbonation lingers a little longer, so you feel that sensation for a bit longer than you would with canned seltzer.

It has a nice taste, and while it isn't the "real" stuff, I guess it is good enough.

I am sure in today's world, and especially living in New York, I could probably locate the last seltzer company in the world and have the real stuff delivered to me, if they still did that (heck, I can even remember the seltzer being delivered by horse-drawn trucks, believe it or not!).

But admittedly, I just want something that I can easily get while I do my weekly shopping, and this stuff seems to be it.

So while I am not being paid by Poland Spring to say this, but if you crave the old seltzer you drank decades ago, this stuff doesn't replace it, but it at least is the best seltzer from a bottle that I have probably ever had.

Try it, you might like it.