All in Philippines

Dutch Maid Chocolate Milk

Strong cocoa flavor in a thin, and slightly under-creamy (considering the fat content) medium. It satisfies your chocolate craving in a pinch, but comes up a bit short on the 'milk' side of the ledger. All in all, it balances out to an average experience.

Pinkie's Farm Chocolate Milk

SUPER-chocolaty and delicious! A brilliant departure from the boxed, rehydrated standard in the Philippines. The non-homogenous nature of it does limit the smoothness— but you get the sense that each granule you feel is working overtime to deliver a cocoa punch to your senses that is hard to come by in creamy, liquid form!

Magnolia Chocolait

Excellent texture and a surprisingly clean finish, making it easy to want more. The sweetness is appropriate, and there’s no funky aftertaste or curious residue left in the mouth afterward. It’s not obvious that it’s rehydrated.

Selecta Low Fat Chocolate Milk

Smooth, bland, tastes of wet cardboard— the kind that had a lot of permanent marker writing on it. There’s very little depth to the flavor, and there’s nothing to hold your attention beyond the initial “I wonder what this tastes like” sip. The answer comes quickly, and you only take additional sips if you’re dying of thirst, or reviewing the product. Damn.

Nestle Milo Active Go

Salty and ferrous, as though someone poured watered-down clam chowder through a rusty gutter and boxed it up for you. The basketball player on the front of the box is blatantly exposing both armpits, perhaps a subtle harbinger of what’s inside.

DVF Dairy Farm Chocolate Water Buffalo Milk

Very unique— not only because it’s the first Kalabaw (Filipino water buffalo) milk I’ve had— but there’s a flavor to it that I've yet to experience in over 1,000 previous chocolate milks. It’s ‘spicy’— not in the traditional ‘hot’ sense, but it’s reminiscent of spices like cinnamon and perhaps tamarind (not a spice, I know) more so than chocolate. Pleasant, nonetheless, and worth a try if visiting Manila.

Selecta Moo Ener-Go

Tastes exactly how a chocolate scratch-n-sniff sticker smells. There's no salt, and a poorly simulated cocoa flavor that feels like it came from an automotive research lab. The mouthfeel isn’t bad at all, and the flavor, despite having the aforementioned characteristics, could also be worse.

Milk Magic Chocolate Milk Drink

More of a ‘light' flavor— not quite ‘bland’— but not far from it. It’s thin and feels milky upfront, but finishes more on the watery side. It exudes that ‘artificial chocolate’ flavor that reminds me of how paint thinner smells— not necessarily unpleasant, but not something your tastebuds will crave.

Oishi Choco Chug Rocky Road Chocolate Milk

Sweeter than its (normal) chocolate counterpart, and the ‘nutty’ aspect of Rocky Road comes off as more of an earthy note. It’s not egregious, and gets more palatable with each sip. All things considered, it's pulled off decently well, and I applaud the uniqueness, as I've not seen this flavor of chocolate milk before.

Zesto Choc-O Chocolate Milk

The drink has a cartoony feel that’s eerily congruent with the lasso-wielding, bi-pedal cow emblazoned on the package. Flavorwise, there's a pronounced sourness that is common with some flavorings, and the texture is unpleasantly inauthentic feeling (and looking).