We were eating Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Jelly Beans–an odd concept in the odd magical world of the Harry Potter series. (Professor Dumbledore famously had an earwax flavored jelly bean in the story.)

Without abandon, the 14-year-old and I were experimenting through the box of the foul jelly beans. In addition to grape jelly and cinnamon, we had dirt and sardine flavored “jelly beans.”

The candies are made by the Jelly Belly company, who despite having a God-awful web site, make incredibly tasty jelly beans. You eat the buttered popcorn candy and it tastes of butter. The blueberry is a really sweet blueberry, not a generic “berry.” So it is no surprise when they make a vomit flavored candy it tastes like uh, vomit.

Now when they make a grass or earthworm flavored candy, most people can’t say if it really tastes right. But we have all puked, and all have a point of reference.

The candy started out with a hint of licorice and then promptly–and quite authentically–went downhill from there. Needless to say, we didn’t finish the “candy” but spit it out (and then furiously pawed through the remaining beans to find the glorious cinnamon to replace the yuck).

Here’s the question. Who are their taste testers? Imagine the lab. How do they refine the taste of the barf flavor. I gotta leave it at that.