Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans are a candy based off the popular wizard jellybeans in the Harry Potter series. These sweets are mentioned several times in the books and movies. In they books they can be purchased in several places including the food cart on the Hogwarts Express and the Honeydukes candy store in Hogsmeade.
In the ‘real world’, Jelly Belly, who also makes Jelly Slugs, another popular wizard sweet, manufactures these jellybeans. You can but them in many candy stores as well as some other stores, such as Target. You can also purchase 4, 12, or 24 box sets on the Jelly Belly website, along with a ten-flavor discovery box. True to their name, the jellybeans come in many flavors, pleasant and unpleasant.
Some of the more unpleasant flavors include pickle, black pepper, booger, dirt, earthworm, earwax, sausage, rotten egg, soap, bacon, and vomit. There are however, some nicer flavors like grape jelly, cherry, green apple, and blueberry. The gross flavors outnumber the good ones, so it is always best to read the flavor guide before you eat them.
Some of the gross flavors taste worse than others. One that you should avoid at all costs is rotten egg. It will make you sick to your stomach to even take a nibble out of it. Black pepper, grass, and dirt are also horrible as it is very hard to get the taste out of your mouth.
Sardine also has a flavor that is hard to get rid of. The best way to get rid of these nasty flavors is to eat another bean with a better flavor. If you have to eat a gross flavor, chose bacon. I even heard a story once, that someone swallowed something and needed to throw up, so that person just ate a rotten egg flavored bean.
Sausage, soap, and bacon do not taste quite as bad as the others do and surprisingly, neither does vomit. I would not eat any of the earthy sounding ones like grass and earthworm if I were you. Those ones usually seem as if they taste like the actual thing. I have not tried pickle, but a friend of mine told me that it does not taste very good.
Jelly Belly keeps coming out with new flavors for the beans, but it will be a while before they can truly have ‘every flavor. Flavors mentioned in the books include chocolate, peppermint, marmalade, spinach, liver, tripe, and sprouts. When Harry first tried them he ate toast, coconut, baked bean, strawberry, curry, grass, coffee, sardine, and pepper flavored beans.
Many of the flavors, as previously stated, are extremely nasty. If you find yourself in need of relief from such flavors, drink soda or eat something with a strong flavor. Eating bread also helps a little bit as well as sticking your tongue under the faucet, but I do not think you would want to do that.
Many people play games with the Bertie Bott’s because of their unusual flavors. One such game is a contest to see who can eat the most grossly flavored beans or who can keep one in their mouth the longest. In another game, the players guess which flavor a bean is and then eat it to see if they are right.
Sometimes a game is played with two people where one has the flavor guide and lays out two beans, one good and one bad. The other person then must identify which bean is the good one. Since there are more bad then good beans, the second player must sometimes select the bean that is not as bad as the other is.
Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans make great party favors for a Harry Potter party. The beans are expensive though, so some people buy cheaper jellybeans and mix the Bertie Bott’s in. Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans are an interesting candy that you can have a lot of fun with, just be warned that they can be sickening.
