I believe the Eurythmics wrote a song about this tea, or was it Heart? Billy Ocean? Taylor Swift? There are a lot of songs out there that deal with things being great in dreams and I can tell you if nothing else, this beverage is absolutely dreamy. Like most Guayaki teas the yerba mate is the main thing you taste, but this has a very faint floral, hibiscus taste to it with hints of lime. There is nothing in here that is overpowering. You know what though, dreams are never perfect though. There is always an aspect r two that seem out of place. In here I could do with a tad bit more flavoring, and just the smallest amount of sugar. When it comes to tea I almost always prefer them to be unsweetened, but mate benefits from the smallest touch of sweetener. Even in its imperfect state I could drink this forever though.

So much smoother. "Than what, Mike?" you ask? Well that the other Arnold Palmer, man. Giving me attitude like that. Come on, dude. Don't give me that.

This is a classic Arnold Palmer but with real sugar courtesy of the good folks at Arizona. I feel like it's been a long time since we've reviewed something from them. Have they become complacent with their seemingly endless array of drinks? Perhaps. Do we, these thirsty dudes, not have our ear as close to the ground as we used to? Perhaps. Is this better than the one that they used to sell? I think so. Between my brother and this dude Mike I used to and will soon work with again they probably drank hundreds of gallons of that stuff. The light (lite) stuff. This is not light. Full sugar. Real sugar. "Good" sugar.

I don't know if they'd like it. Maybe because they're a little older and a little wiser but also because maybe they're accustomed to the taste of the aspartame or the corn syrup or Splenda or whatever they used. Who knows? I suppose I could buy them a bottle but you know what? They can get one themselves. This one was lent to me so I don't have one to give.

Can we take a moment out of our regularly scheduled beverage nonsense to discuss how Whole Foods has gone completely downhill? We don't have them here in Buffalo, but I've visited their stores a decent amount while I'm traveling. While I was never completely onboard with it, mostly due to the price, they were always a mecca of vegetarian prepared foods. I could walk up to the hot bar and have a selection of various delicious meals. While out on the west coast last month I stopped by two separate stores and it was dismal. The prepared foods sections were scaled back a lot more than I remember and other than salad stuff, there really weren't any veggie options other than lasagna. Both times I ended up getting soft pretzels and calling it a day. Of course they are finally opening one in my hometown and it will be essentially useless to me. Without the options what reason do I have to go there over the superior Wegmans, which is way cheaper? Oh yes, it is because of the beverage selection. There is always something new to me in the drink cooler at Whole Foods. This time around it was Alta Palla.

I grabbed this thinking it was a blood orange seltzer water (because it said sparkling). I cracked it open while I ate my pretzel and was nicely surprised to discover it was actually sweetened, but not ridiculously so. During my trip I was doing a lot of hiking, which led to me drinking a lot of water, and eating a whole lot of protein bars and eating trail mix a whole bunch. I didn't realize how much my body wanted this sugar until I drank this. It has an incredible blood orange flavor and it is in the same realm as San Pellegrino, only better. All I can say is that when that Whole Foods opens its doors in Buffalo they better have this in stock, because I want it and I want a lot of it.

This little guy tasted pretty much as I expected it to. It tastes like it serves a more medicinal purpose than a pleasurable one. I'm not saying that it didn't have pleasant taste, but the rest of the ingredients play more of a role in the flavor than the tea does. In fact the tea aspect of it taste more like tea water than the nice strong brew that one expects from a bottled iced tea. The ingredients that make up the chia spice blend are the ones who are running this show. It's almost all cinnamon, ginger, and licorice.

This was made to help with stomach issues and digestion, but if the tea had been stronger I could see this being an instant favorite. Even without the strong tea taste it still left a delicious residue on my lips.

Am I wrong in thinking that jamaica and hibiscus are the same thing (also sorrel)? I'm pretty sure they are the same. I would look it up, but I'm in Mexico and I don't have internet access. So I will assume they are one and the same. I'm not positive what nada is, but I think it's the same fruit as I bought from some cart earlier with chili powder and lime. At least that's what I think the vender said. My Spanish is minimal and a lot of people talk very fast down here. I digress; this is sparkling mineral water with juice added. It's fairly sweet and floral. I like it, but it was a bit much to get through the whole bottle. I kind of wish I had went with the lime instead. All I really want to consume down here involves limes. This has been a fairly uninformative review, but it's what you're going to get, because I don't know what else to say about it.

You only live once, but as it turns out life can be pretty horrible sometimes, especially if you are drinking a beverage such as this. You may be in luck though, because this tastes like it may or not be poison. If I saw a warning on it that said “If ingested call Poison Control.” To me it tastes like carbonated blue Hugs that a neighborhood creep drugged to off the kids on the block. Perhaps there was a mix up and in fact I am consuming windshield wiper fluid? Do you want to know how hard it was to get through this? My friend says it tastes how freshly cleaned toilets smell. Enjoy!

Recently I began what I believe to be a long and happy relationship with Topo Chico. I have no idea why I had never tried it before. I always see it in Mexican restaurants, but I never went for it and I am a fool for it. It's wonderful sparkling mineral water with a little citrus added to it. I recently went to Mexico on tour and I knew I would see/drink a lot of it, and I was very excited. Little did I know that this lime variety existed and I tell you it is a game changer. This is exactly like the original, but better because of the lime instead of lemon. I'd love for everything that has lemon in the world be changed so that it included lime instead. It is the superior form of citrus.

This, my friends, is no joke. You see little old me had a sore tummy like the big baby that I am, but I really, really couldn't pass this up. I figured it was going to be extremely strong/sour and that it would upset my stomach even more. As it turns out it was completely perfect. For the most part this is a mate tea, where the lavender and the lemon are more just a flavoring than leading roles. You may find yourself asking, “What is the point? The flavor should be up front!” For some beverages you may be right, but for this everything sat just where it needed to be. This is nice and earthy with a sweetness that doesn't get too crazy. I love it. It is a bit strange to have a flavor that is known for its calming effect mixed with a stimulant. I will say that it does give it a nice flavor though.

No one in the car? We can get away with something. A milkshake from McDonald's the perfect sneaky treat. I've been cooking fantastic meals from Blue Apron that take me between 45 minutes and an hour to make and I snuck out to get a milkshake. Not just any milkshake but a Shamrock Shake and not just any Shamrock Shake but a chocolate Shamrock Shake. I get it and it looks 50% great. There is a little whipped cream with a cherry and some green, festive, seasonal sparkley sprinkles. Then we get to the meat of the shake...pause for dramatic effect.

Why is this layered? Why is this layered like this? I mean, they came out with a cool straw that was made to drink from two points at a time. What happens if you have a regular straw? It's not a chocolate Shamrock Shake as much as it is a half chocolate and half Shamrock shake. Unless you mix them up yourself, which I didn't, you have to drink through each flavor. I just thought that was strange and wrong. Like when my brother wore seven pairs of underwear at a time so that he could take off the outside pair and not have to put on new underwear for a week. Pause for applause...

I wish I lived in a perfect world. A world where everything wasn't such a mess. A world where everything wasn't falling apart before my eyes. A world where juice was nothing but the fruit it was named after, especially when it's 100% juice. I want mangos, nothing but mangos. I want it to be thick and syrupy, so I can pretend that I am taking a nice big bite of the most perfectly ripe mango. Since this carton cost me a little over a dollar, I should have known that wasn't going to be the case. How could the company afford it? They would be operating at a loss. Instead they have to mix in some other, cheaper fruits to keep the price point down, but retain the 100% juice certification. I'm sure they proudly display their certificate in their offices. I certainly would, right next to my framed dollar bill.

The other juices in here besides the coveted mango are apple, banana, carrot and orange. That is a lot of juice. The apple takes up the bulk of it. There is even more apple than mango, lucky for us mango is a stronger flavor and overpowers it. You can taste the apple, but it still tastes stronger of mango. The banana is oh so faint, but I still kind of hate knowing that it's there, contaminating this juice even if it's only slightly. The carrots and the orange just kind of blend it and are hardly noticeable. I would definitely call this a mango-apple juice. I think I might enjoy it more if they just were honest with the name. It tastes great, but my taste buds were expecting something a bit different. Now sit back and watch the rest of the horror in this world unfold before your eyes.

I love that Sparkling Ice is taking a step back from sucralose, well at least with their Essence line. I just could not get into the dietness of it all. These new ones though have been mostly pretty great. It's just flavored seltzer water, but the flavors have been good, up until now. This isn't bad per say, but it really teeters on the “tastes like a cleaner” line of things. I feel like everyone involved in the lemon industry should file a class action lawsuit against household cleaners because they have ruined a once great fruit. I feel like the world used to embrace lemon in all its forms, but now folks are reminded of cleaning chemicals and it's a turn off. Big money could be made. Big, big money.

Once you get past the association, this isn't bad. I could do with a tad bit more lime, but I'm always going to want more of that. It's not really a flavor for me, but I wouldn't dump it down the drain.

As you may know from reading thirsty Dudes (You don't, because you don't. I mean, why would you?) I have a sensitivity to caffeine and energy drinks can really screw with me. I don't drink them very often because of this. The thing is that I actually kind of like the weird energy drink taste that exists nowhere else in the beverage world. On top of that there are situations where I have to be up until nearly dawn and the chances of me staying awake that late on my own are slim. Friday was one of those nights. I knew I needed some help and figured I might as well cross another drink off the Thirsty Dudes list, so I stood way longer than any human should in front of the beverage cooler checking each of the energy drinks to our master list to see what we hadn't reviewed yet. Shockingly there were very few that we hadn't written about. I'm a fan of citrus, and the green of the can made me think it would be heavier on the lime side of things, so I chose this can of Rockstar Revolt.

This most definitely did not taste like I had anticipated. I had expected a lime version of a classic energy drink. That weird part bubblegum part citrus taste mixed with a whole lot of lime. Instead, this tastes like 7 Up or Sprite with a little something extra in it. That something is kind of like this was made from a powder and it wasn't missed up enough. There isn't an actual gritty texture to this, but it tastes like there should be. I don't understand where that is coming from. There is no trace of the “energy drink taste” that I mentioned earlier, this is its one thing. There is also no real taste of the orange juice that is listed in the ingredietns.

I personally think that lemon lime is the most boring of soda flavors, but I know there are people out there who love it, or it wouldn't be such a staple. This is going to make some people very happy.

Ahh ginger beer. Always a welcome guest in my house. Gosling's, Goya and now Trader Joe's. Sure, there are other ones. What? Do you want me to make a list? Well it's not going to happen. Alright, fine. Here. Happy?

This is good. It's sweet. I could put this in the category of "entry level" since it's not going to burn the skin off your mouth. Tame. Could you give it to kids? Sure if the kids you are giving it to aren't wimps and if their parents aren't around. If I saw you giving my kids pop, I might say something. If I saw you giving my kids ginger beer, I might say something after I saw the look on their dumb, wimp faces as their tiny, young mouths are on fire.

This is sweeter than I like my ginger beer but makes up for in earthy, ginger flavor. It's like losing a game only to come up a couple points short in the fourth quarter. Everything was against you and you are still going home a loser just not as much of a loser.

Back to basics. I can't tell you how refreshing seltzer is after some of the crap we drink. Look, nothing we drink is literal crap or figurative crap. Everyone puts their hearts into the products they put out but come one, after 4600 reviews, we have earned the right to start calling things "crap."

This is great. It's pure simplicity. Water, bubbles and peach. I assume they have some sort of vat of peaches just stewing all their Georgia essence into some tube mechanism that sucks up the scent, injects it into water by way of science/witchcraft and then stores the vapors for someone lucky enough to drink it.

If you like seltzer, this is just seltzer. They can call it whatever fancy name they want. It's sparkling water with flavor. La Croix? Polar? The other one? Same deal, bro. Same deal. It's all great seltzer.

Companies have been flavoring their colas with various things for decades and we no longer bat an eye at cherry, vanilla, or even lime cola, this may be the first berry cola I've come across. More than likely I have and it's slipped my brain. I mean I do get dumber by the day and find myself forgetting normal words I use all the time. I will choose to believe that my brain is not malfunctioning this time and say that it is my first cola of this variety. I have to say, I'm into it. I do wish it had a stronger cola flavor, but what is there pairs great with the berry. It's similar to a cherry cola, but with a little twist. Is it better? I can't say. It is different though and that makes it stand out to me, and that is a hard thing to do these days.

While this isn't what I think of when I think of seltzer (They are right. I am wrong.), this still has possibly the smallest ingredients list I have come across for a soda. It's simply carbonated water, cane sugar, citrus acid, and natural flavors. It's simple, it's clean and it's delicious.

Just like that we have come to the last submission of the 2017 Shake it Off Challenge. So far the contestants have been decently chocolatey and mostly enjoyable. For this final installment we will visit the shake whose packaging looks the most medicinal. With a name like Medifast and the Caduceus logo how can one not think of a doctor's office while drinking this? I understand that they are trying to show how healthy this beverage is and show that it is recommended by physicians, but the symbolism has me expecting this to taste like garbage medicine. Sometimes you hate when your expectations are met. This is clearly my least favorite of the three shakes we reviewed for the challenge. The chocolate tastes fake and chalky (yes I shook it up for as long as recommended). While the other shakes let you feel like you're cheating and drinking some sort of desert, this never lets you forget that it has a function and that is to help you lose weight, which will not be enjoyable. With 14g of protein and 100 calories, it's pretty close to the others in that regard. Unfortunately the taste does not match up.

In a couple of weeks I'm going on tour in Mexico. Since we all know you are not supposed to drink the top water there if you are not a local I fully expect that I will get all of my refreshment from this company. If you've read Thirsty Dudes before you likely know that it took me over 30 years of my life to be able to enjoy seltzer water. It took me even longer than that to give Topo Chico a try, but once I did I kicked myself for not having it in my life already.

For those of you who are not in the know, Topo Chico is a sparkling mineral water. The minerals give the water just a hint of a flavor that makes it stand out from regular sparkling water. To add to that there is a bit of citrus in here by the way of lemon in a way that makes it interesting and not like boring restaurant water. Overall it tastes classic and classy. It's the kind of beverage that would pair perfectly with the world's greatest burritos. Oh Mexico, I can't wait to visit and hopefully I will not get stabbed while I'm there like people keep telling me I'm going to.

In an added note I just heard that Aldi bought this company, so now it will be easy to find at an affordable price throughout the US.

I'm not exactly sure what this beverage is supposed to be. It's not really a juice, but it's also not a sports drink. The bottle says it is an “organic fruit infused beverage,” and according to the ingredients list it's kind of a mix of everything. It is composed of coconut water, 4% juice, white tea, and a whole mess of organic, zero calorie sweeteners. The result just tastes a bit generic, like some random “juice” box you'd get as a kid, expect now it tastes overly diet. This sort of tastes a modern version of Kool Aid. The orange/clementine flavor is there, but it tastes a bit powdery. I appreciate what they are trying to do with this, but the arrow is hitting just outside of the target. It's almost good, but it just doesn't mess right.

Chai. I got into it too late. It's good and I love a nice spicy, hot tea. This isn't half bad, either. Should I think less of it because it is an Aldi brand? No. It's probably something else branded to look like an Aldi brand, actually.

This had a good, strong anise taste to it mixed with whatever other magic was in here. I promptly drank it and, presumably ruined it, adding a packet of sugar. It was the morning and daddy needed a little pick-me-up.

To whomever I stole this from that works in my office, thanks. I'll pay you back in whatever the equivalent of one bag of tea is. Pretty sure that's a wet T-shirt car wash.

This tastes better than it smells. It smells like...listen...I'll be honest with you. I haven't always been straight edge. Back in the late 90's, it was a difficult time for everyone. I snuck, a bottle of red wine out of my parent's basement over to my friend's and we hid it in the drop ceiling and took sips of it. It was disgusting then. Two, maybe three baby sips. Tops. This smelled like that but sweeter.

How did it taste? Not that much better but good enough that I drank a fair amount of this bottle. It tastes like the fruity part of wine mixed in with a can of Pepsi. It had a bit of a burn to it which was probably from "Christmas spices." It did taste like it could have been alcoholic. It wasn't but if you pulled the wool over my eyes and told me a week later, I wouldn't call you a liar. I'd call you a jerk and probably puke on your car, but I would have had my hunches the entire time.