hillside coffee self heating

Lifesaver · Post by **Lifesaver** » Mon Nov 12, 2007 2:08 pm

Our Wal-Mart has the coffee, the hot chocolate and the soups. All the ones my wife and I have tried have been good. I'm not a huge fan of tomato soup; but, the tomato vegetable soup they sell is good. I like their mocha coffee, too. It is a great pick me up on a cold morning at the range.

Treesuit · Post by **Treesuit** » Mon Nov 12, 2007 8:35 pm

Hey everyone,
I am just wondering why it is so hit an miss with the Wal Mart stores? I checked Ontech's on line site and they do sell outright to the public but after doing some number crunching a case of 12 at 34.99 comes out to 2.92 a can before the shipping and handling. I bought mine at 2.00 a can with minimal sales tax.
I seemed to remember in another thread that one of our members actually works for Wally Mart. Maybe could explain it to us why Wal Mart seems so reluctant to stock these drinks?
I agree that this would be great for an outdoorsy type of store but at the present time I think this the best we have to deal with.

Post by **kman** » Wed Nov 14, 2007 11:29 pm

It seems to me that it's just a matter of how Wal-mart stocks things regionally. I don't know how they work internally, but it's almost as if one distribution certain gets X number of pallets of these drinks and then divides them up amongst stores however they see fit.

I was in one a local Wal-mart a couple of weeks ago and they had a huge stack of these. Then another Wal-mart 1 hour away didn't have any.

Post by **kman** » Thu Nov 15, 2007 12:01 am

I picked up a few of these Hillside self-heating cans for review. I'll put up an official web page at some point, but for now, here are the pictures with a brief commentary.

Three Hillside Self-Heating cans: Mocha Latte, French Vanilla Latte, Hot Chocolate

Directions from the back of a few cans:

Tops of the cans, bottom of one can:

Bottom of one can - pull tab, tab pulled, cover off:

Push button to activate heater, turn back over to heat:

When hot, rotate top around, lift tab (yes, it spewed out a bunch of coffee when I opened it). The third picture shows how well the stuff poured out of the can into a glass - very messy!

Contents in a glass:

Treesuit · Post by **Treesuit** » Thu Nov 15, 2007 12:46 am

Kman,
How was the taste and the overal experience in comparison with say other coffee brands or chain type coffee stores? When I had my version (hot chocolate) it tasted like any other brand of hot chocolate on the supermarket shelf. Is this any different?

Stef · Post by **Stef** » Thu Nov 15, 2007 3:07 am

waow, imagine the mess in a trucker's cabin

I've never seen that kind of cans in France, maybe in Germany, UK or Netherland... ?

Is the sugar supplied?

SpikNik · Post by **SpikNik** » Thu Nov 15, 2007 3:41 am

I've seen these type of heatable drinks (not this particular brand though) for quite a few years, in the UK and also in Spain. One tip I would mention is this. They heat the drink inside BY a certain amount of degrees, not TO a certain temperature, so if taking them for days out or camping etc, don't store them in a cooler box or similar place, or if you have to, at least allow them to return to ambient temerature before use.

Post by **kman** » Thu Nov 15, 2007 9:34 am

Treesuit, review-wise, I'd say the stuff is on par with the type of instant-latte drink mix you can buy and mix yourself. It doesn't come anywhere close to a Starbuck's or anything like that. As someone mentioned in an earlier review, for as big as the can is, there's a surprisingly small amount of beverage in there. And for my tastes, I'd almost want to thin it out a bit by adding some water.

After heating it up and drinking it, my first thought was, "This tastes ok but if I was travelling and cold and wanted something hot very fast, this would probably taste great."

And yes, Stef - the sugar is included. Lots of sugar in there! If you click on the picture of the back of the cans (with the nutritional info), you can see the coffees have about 28 grams of sugar and the hot chocolate has 40 grams.

sag45 · Post by **sag45** » Sat Jan 10, 2009 11:54 pm

I tried two of these after seeing a co-worker with one. I think there were pretty costly and didnt give too many ounces for a good coffee drink. Wouldnt be bad to have for an emergency in the trunk, yet I dont know the shelf life of them. I did keep one can and was going to hack saw it in half to see what was in there, but never got around to the project. I think your better off with a beverage bag and FRH - which is okay if you can wait 15 mins for it to heat up. The other down side of that is if you dont have a cup, drinking out of the beverage may take some practice which I found out one day at work.

Garron · Post by **Garron** » Sun Jan 11, 2009 7:35 pm

Stef, I've seen somthing similar in the UK, they had some at ASDA (Owned by Walmart) a while back has to be 3 years ago as I was in my last year of school.

From what I remember there was next to nothing in them it was mostly the heating device. Quite shocked when I got to the bottom and realised that was it, I thought there was going to be more.

I bought them just for the fun factor... I don't really like coffee

Gaz

hillside coffee self heating

Re: hillside coffee self heating

Re: hillside coffee self heating