I know I can be a stickler, but I really would prefer if companies named their products in the order of the prominent flavors. For example, this is labeled peach ginger, but in my mind it should be ginger peach. That's correct, for the first time ever a beverage has peach in it and it is not the flavor that is smacking you a good one, right in the kisser. In fact both flavors in here are fairly tame, but of the two, ginger is what I am getting the most of. They are not kidding when they say this is lightly sweet. Even though it's 20g of sugar, it tastes on the border of being unsweetened, which is where I like my iced tea to reside. So it's a black tea with a tad bit of sugar in it that tastes like it was steeped with a bunch of ginger in it (not enough to give it a burn, but enough for the flavor to be there) and then a single slice of peach was allowed to soak in it while it cooled down. I know I was complaining earlier, but this really is a nice tea, and I apparently just like to complain about something in every situation. I need help.

To quote my ladyfriend, “Well, this is just delightful.” It is the lightest flavored passion fruit beverage I have ever had. It still has plenty of flavor too it, but this particular flavor normally punched you right in your taste buds. Hobbi just gives you a little “how you doing?” caress. It's more in the aftertaste than in the sip. The basil seeds are nice and slippery and give the drink an interesting texture. If you drink this like a normal human they just slide right down your throat and are easily forgotten. If you want to be a child, like myself, you can strain them through your teeth and play with them for a bit to give the beverage a little bit of a fun edge.

For camping in this chilly autumn weather I really wanted a bottle of Reed's Spiced Apple Brew to sip while I sat at a fire. There is something wonderful about sipping some spiced sparkling apple juice while fire consumes everything it touches in a controlled setting while chatting with some good friends. At the store I discovered that they no longer seemed to stock that particular product (I am more than slightly concerned that it has been discontinued and I need to do some research). While I didn't find what I was looking for I did find this bottle which appeared to be similar, but with pumpkin added to the mix.

So I sat at my campsite and threw a rouge pumpkin I found on the fire and cracked this bottle open. As the fire distorted the face carved into the gourd I sipped on a glass of this sweet treat. It turns out it is very similar to what is one of my favorite drinks that I was bummed I couldn't find. The pumpkin isn't too overpowering and I'd have to say that it is mostly a sparkling apple drink. It is fairly sweet tasting. I could only drink a smallish glass (which is what a human should drink, we don't need to be the gluttons we tend to be). It was very enjoyable for that glass, but I can't imagine drinking more than that in a sitting (or even over an extended period of time). It's good that it's a seasonal product. I hope to enjoy it again next year.

Do you like teas the taste vaguely, and lightly, like raspberry? Do you want the same amount of energy you would get from drinking almost any old iced tea, but only have to drink half the quantity? If you fall into this category you are someone who lives a very specific life and good news, this tea is for you!

I really have nothing bad about this. Nor do I have anything really great to say about it either. See my complaints in my other reviews of their products for non-taste related things. Flavorwise it's pretty unremarkable, but again there is nothing bad about it. It's just there and sometimes that is what a drink needs to be.

Look at being preemptive and getting their winter flavors out before the snow has even begun to fall. Hell, I'm still reviewing summer flavors and they are two seasons ahead.

When I heard this was an upcoming flavor I was beyond excited. Lime is the basis for most of the seltzer I drink and ginger is my weakness. I would probably purchase any beverage that had ginger in the flavor name. This, unfortunately, leaves something to be desired. The lime is right where I want it to be, but the ginger simply isn't strong enough and tastes more like ginger flavoring than the actual root. Ginger is a flavor that is meant to be bold and in your face (as well as burning your throat). This is just not that. It's still good, and I would buy it from time to time, but it is by no means a new favorite. I suppose it's good that it's seasonal. Maybe I will grow to miss it by next winter's release.

This tastes like you took a heaping spoonful of matcha powder and mixed it into a glass of water and then added a tad of honey (almost a negligible amount). It definitely tastes strongly of matcha, but it almost feels powdery still, like you made yourself a protein shake and didn't shake up your little bottle enough. You're quite the exercise fanatic aren't you? You're not like me who uses their matcha powder to mix in with vanilla ice cream. We are opposites you and I. PS. I totally shook the hell out of this and it didn't make a difference.

Have you ever gone to a fast food restaurant and asked for a glass of water with your meal and they just give you a cup to fill up with water at the fountain machine using the honor system that you won't actually get soda? Obviously when you are younger the honor system is out the window and you fill that cup to the brim with syrupy, carbonated goodness, but as an adult I actually really just want water. Sometimes when you push the button for the water there is a little residual soda left in the nozzle and you end up getting a very light soda flavor (it always seems to be root beer) added to your water. That is exactly what this tastes like. It's as if someone poured a glass of sparkling water and then added a splash of cola to it. I feel like to some the lightness of a flavor that is normally so strong could be off-putting, but I enjoyed it a great deal. I love a good cola, but rarely want to deal with all the sugar that comes along with it(and diet cola has never been good, don't trust anyone who says otherwise).

This is a light sparkling treat that hints at a cola taste. Sure it tastes like watered down Coke, but it's so watered down that it doesn't taste gross and wrong. It taste refreshing and like something they would feed you at a spa, or so I would assume because I don't live that lifestyle. It's marketed for kids, but I don't think it has a strong enough flavor for most children I know. I do think it would be advantageous in helping adults I know who should kick their soda habits.

You call it snickerdoodle. I call it horchata. This is tastes more like the traditional beverage than it does a fancy cookie I would spend far too much money on in a coffee shop in the late 90s. The difference s is that Instead of rice it's made from almonds and pea protein. It's a tad sweeter than I wanted, but it is flavorful. It goes beyond the "this tastes like the milk left over after I ate cereal" I into more of its own thing. It's vanilla. It's cinnamon. It's almonds. It's quite tasty.

This may in fact be the best seltzer ever created. All other seltzers were given inferiority complexes when this was released. They all lay awake at night, looking at a 4am ceiling wondering where they went wrong in their lives. The poor things never stood a chance.

The mango smell that permeates from this is so strong that in a blind sniff test there is no way I would have guessed it was a seltzer. The flavor rivals that scent and is so strong and pleasant. The lime sits perfectly under the mango for a tropical treat. My senses are treated so well by this beverage that my mind is tricked into thinking I was drinking something that is laden with sugar. In reality there is not a speck of it.

Woah. Talk about a dense drink. Have you ever considered a drink to be "dense." I feel that "thick" is boring. "Rich" is also quite used if you ask me. This drink is dense. Heavy. Dude who I let try it perfectly described it as a "non-dairy creamer." It's as if you were a college kid who had one for a split second, like you found $20 on the street and decided to shoot for the stars and buy some fancy coffee creamer, got home, realized that you should have spent it on coffee and have nothing to drink but the creamer itself.

I did add this to some cold brew coffee and it was good. This claims that it was "cold brew" and although I cannot argue as I wasn't in the room as this was being made, it kind of defeats the point when you are sacrilegiously adding almond and toffee juice to it. That's also coming from someone who can only drink coffee cold and with some form of chocolate or mocha flavoring like an idiot child. This is fine if you were a child but if you were a child you wouldn't like it because it's coffee and kids don't like coffee so who is this for? This is for people that add twelve sugars to their coffees as barely functioning adults.

Birch beer is fantastic. Let's get this. Well this doesn't taste like birch beer. It doesn't smell like it. It doesn't taste like it. This is probably (zero research, friends) the birch equivalent of maple water but doesn't tastes like you strained it through some tasty flapjacks.

Brass tacks. This is water, bruh. It's water with a hint of something you will never know what it is. I promise. It tastes like nothing. It smells like nothing. I could have been had with this drink as far as I know. Is it bad? Well that depends. Are you one of those idiots that thinks water is gross? If so, come on, dude. Grow up. Juice is terrible for you. Learn a book you dummy. Juice is just a cheating way to get kids to drink more water. You're 32. Drink water and eat your vegetables.

Come on Polar, you obviously have the means, so why not make all of your seltzers this flavorful? Why save it for a specialized line? Has there been a new breakthrough in the sugarless flavoring world that has allowed you to up the taste? Going back to your classic flavors after drinking the Seltzer'ade line just leaves me wanting now. I mean I am still drinking a ton of the stuff, but the magic is gone. I have been shown that the world is more than I thought it was and I want it all. This is bursting with flavor, well at least as much as seltzer can be. Or, can there be more? I never would have expected it could have been before, but I was proven wrong).Give me more Polar. Give me it all.

What in the hell is this? It's been a while since I've drank something this disgusting. This is 100% medicine. The Stevia, of which I am typically fine with is wildly overpowering and sticks with you for what feels like an eternity. The acai, of which I am not a huge fan of, tastes like a poorly under-mixed syrup concentrate. There is no ginger flavor regardless of it being the second ingredient. The sugar is nauseatingly sweet and overpowers and ruins just about everything. It's been a while for me friends, but this drink gets the lowest rating we give here at Thirsty Dudes. I wish I had a toothbrush.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, where do I even begin with this beverage? Is it wonderful? It is horrendous? Even though base logic show us that one thing cannot be both, this somehow is. This beverage defies logic, and perhaps other sciences. One thing that I can say for certain about this is that it is intriguing and unlike anything I have ever encountered before.

When I came across this in a Brooklyn deli, I grabbed it without a thought and put my money on the counter for it and a delicious jerk sandwich. It wasn't until I got a couple of blocks away that I realized that what I bought actually sounded terrible. Sparkling coffee is something that can be acceptable when it is done right, so more than likely no problem there. I can totally see mint in coffee. Actually it sounds like it would be delicious and it's probably something that exists in most coffee shops. So far, so good. Then we get to the grapefruit and everything gets thrown out the window. Grapefruit and coffee sounds like one of the strangest combinations I could think of, and it very much is in reality. It's unlike anything I have ever tasted before. The grapefruit isn't subtle. It's right out in the front. I would say this is 42% coffee, 42% grapefruit, and 6% mint. It's a wild ride in your mouth, and my taste buds are very confused. So much citrus and bitter coffee; I think I may be short circuiting.

With each sip, I hate it, yet a few seconds later I find myself taking another drink. By the end of this I think I may truly love it. I hate myself for it, but it's kind of fantastic in the worst possible way. It's like an ex that you know is bad for you and who you never feel good about hanging out with afterwards, but somehow in the moment things work and nothing else matters. This drink may be the best bad decision you ever make that will have zero consequences. I need to try the other flavors. Good thing Mike and I are going back to NYC in a few weeks.

Dear Readers,
I am a slacker and I am waaaaayyyy behind the times. This summer Polar released their Seltzer'ade line and here I sit in autumn's grasp and I have only reviewed one of them. To be fair, the blueberry lemonade was the only one of the five flavors that I actually saw in the stores around Buffalo during the actual summer. Now that a Whole Foods finally opened here a couple of weeks ago I was able to pick up some cases of three of the remaining flavors (the tart cherry is still elusive). Summer may be behind us, but I certainly hope Polar leaves these available all year around. As much as I hate to admit it, they are superior to the classic Polar flavors that I live off of. The flavors are way more pronounced, to an extent that several times I have found myself checking to make sure there isn't any sugar involved (there isn't).

I would best describe the watermelon lemonade as someone dissolved a handful of Jolly Ranchers in a glass of carbonated water, and then somehow removed all the sugar. It doesn't taste particularly like an actual watermelon, but it is uncannily similar to the pre mentioned candy without the sweetness. That blows my mind because that candy is probably 99% sugar, yet this tastes exactly like it.

This particular flavor isn't something I would drink all of the time, but I wish I would have had it during the summer. I also think this line is the key to weening children off soda. Slowly replace their soda with cans of this and they will be off the sugar in no time, to the dismay of the Dental Association of America.

It's fairly sad that walking through the grocery store and a new fancy juice presents itself to you, and that is the highlight of your day. I guess it is understandable when the juice is guava flavored, one of the elusive fruits that doesn't make its way into beverage form nearly enough. I personally can't get enough of this tropical treat.

This is a cold pressed juice from the Dominican Republic. It is simply cane juice, guava puree and filtered water. I shook this bottle with all my might, but the first half of the bottle was fairly weak and was more like a guava flavored water drink rather than a juice. As I pressed on, the taste got stronger with each sip. By the end it tastes like a great guava juice. I was hoping that the entire bottle was going to be a flavorful guava puree, but I will take what I can get when it comes to the world of guava.

Sometimes I feel like companies are taking things a bit too far with calling things energy drinks. This is just a mixture of black and green tea. Yes, I know that caffeine gives you energy, but with that logic every tea should be labeled an energy drink. The X2 name also makes it seem like it's going to be a crazy ride, when really it's just 106 mg of caffeine per can.

All of that nonsense aside it tastes like a fairly light tea that is very heavy on the lemon. The combination of the two teas is nice, but I would have liked it to be a bit stronger.

Here we have it, the fourth and final Seltzer Jr flavor of the season (Also the first one released last year that I couldn't get my hands on). The season is ending the hot weather is gone and fall is rolling right in. Should I have reviewed this when the weather was still nice and you were still able to find this on the shelves? Of course I should have, but life gets hectic and the 1 minutes that it's going to take me to write this were too much to spare between hanging out in the woods and reading comics (and work and travelling). Did I drink a bunch of these and not write about it for about a month? You can bet your kids on it. Let's be honest here, this was a limited line and there was no way that Polar wasn't going to sell out of it. They barely lasted a week at my grocery store in Buffalo. They didn't need my help pushing the product. They were kind enough to send me some samples before they made their way to the Western NY market though, which was very kind of them. We have nothing but love for Polar here at Thirsty Dudes. We just tend to be lazy sometimes. We do this for fun, and that's that.
It turns out that a unicorn's diet mostly consists of cucumbers because that is what this slobbery kiss tastes like. I also detect a bit of melon in there. On top of that it's all candied up, even though there is no sugar. At first I was so-so on this one, but once I realized it was cucumber my interests rose.Well done Polar. Can't wait until next summer.

How does one kill off the diet taste of stevia? The answer is apparently to bombard it with ginger. This is a joint effort from Bruce Cost and Brooklyn Organics to create a sugar free spicy ginger beer. Guess what? They did it and it's pretty darn delicious. As far as I can tell the base of this soda is the plain Bruce cost ginger beer, except it is sweetened with stevia (the Brooklyn Organics way) and the amount of ginger in greatly increased. The result is a soda that only vaguely tastes like stevia with a fairly hefty burn to it. It doesn't quite hit Goya level of painful, but it's on its way. It is definitely at a level that makes this beverage a slow sipper. This isn't a soda you are going to slurp down in a matter of minutes. This is something you'll nurse over a decent amount of time, enjoying it with every sip.

As with most beverages that solely use zero calorie sweeteners, I would prefer it had real sugar in it, but I understand their reasons for not doing so. This may be the best sugar free soda I have ever tasted. It most definitely is the best diet ginger beer I've ever had (which has not been many). Sometimes you need to make tradeoffs in your life and I'm very happy this is out there as an option.

Somewhere out there, someone's dreams have come true. The stage is set like this; there is a human out there who is a total soda fiend. I'm talking like Mike's mother in law who keeps a glass of diet Pepsi next to her bed at night (is that a real thing, or did my mind make it up?), except there is no diet in this addicts world. We are talking full sugar. For most of their life it was high fructose corn syrup this, and high fructose corn syrup that. Then cane sugar came back into vogue and their palate evolved into appreciating fancy sodas. There were no more two-liters in our subjects life it was all craft six (four)packs. Over time they realized that they didn't feel quite right, something was obviously up with their health so they saw a health professional and were diagnosed with diabetes. The doctor informed them that their soda days were over unless they wanted to drink sucralose or aspartame (neither of which were recommended). Years went by and the Days of Soda seem like a mere fever dream. Then stevia came into fashion and there were sodas that were available that still tasted diet, but not like chemical death. The thing is that there was nothing on the market that matched our characters beloved ginger ale. Then Brooklyn Organics came about and suddenly they could have that classic ginger taste that they missed so dearly. Sure, it tasted heavily of stevia, but it was way better than what was on the market. It was a soda that tasted like real ginger, but with only the faintest hint of a burn. A true ginger ale.

Now, since I can enjoy beverages sweetened with sugar, this is clearly not for me. I know it's healthier than regular soda, but I don't drink them very often these days, so I'll take the extra calories for a better flavor. To me this would be fantastic if it had real sugar. The ginger taste that fights its way through the stevia is wonderful. Unfortunately that stevia taste is really strong, and it's simply not for me. This is for those out there who need to rely on zero-calorie sweeteners due to health, or those who for some reason can see past their flavor. If you fall into one of those categories get out there and buy this immediately. You won't be sorry.