When a representative from the Pearl Soda Company emailed us about sending us samples to review their products I was traveling and it wasn't until after I hit send on a message giving them my address that I realized, “Are we even going to be able to use these syrups in their proper fashion?” I had no idea if these were the type of soda concentrate that bars and restaurants used in their guns or what. I decided that instead of writing them back I would just figure it out when the samples arrived.

As soon as I opened the package I knew everything was going to be just fine. I mean look at those fancy little bottles. They look so classy. I ran out to the store and bought a bottle of plain seltzer water and got to mixing. Now normally the recommended amount of concentrate/flavoring is on the duller side of flavor town, but I mixed it as prescribed and it tasted great right off the bat.

I guess I should have stated that these are tea infused flavored syrups. I've never tried anything like it before and they are fantastic. This lime twist is made with greenbush tea with ginger, lime, lemongrass and lemon myrtle mixed in. The results are a concoction that tastes like a lemon-lime ginger ale that was specially made just for you. Underneath it all is a faint tea flavor that simply adds to the experience. Who needs to go to an overpriced bar, filled with turds who you would never interact with in any other scenario, when you can pretend to be your very own mixologist at home. I drank this with just seltzer water, but I can only imagine that people would love it with booze mixed in. I personally think that would be sacrilege and detract from a wonderful beverage.

Did you know that Alley Cat Tea is a Southern original? No? Well, don't feel too bad because I don't think that most southerners know it either. It is a probably that surely needs to be sorted out though because they should all know and love this wonderful beverage.

Whenever anyone thinks about the South and tea they more than likely think of sweet tea. Now take that delicious treat and improve on it by mixing in a bunch of fruit juice. The label has pictures of pineapples, oranges, lemons and strawberries, although the latter is not listed in the ingredients. It tastes like it's 50% pineapple, 25% tea, 10% orange, 10% lemon and 5% strawberry. It's one of those wonderful concoctions where you can pinpoint each of the flavors or enjoy it as a whole. The whole thing is dark and so very cloudy that it looks like it could be cider. I wish I had picked up more than one bottle on my dumb drive from FL to MI.

I predict there will be a divide over this product, albeit with a narrow margin. People who love coffee will say, “It's pretty meh. It doesn't really like coffee.” People who are indifferent about coffee will say, “It's decent enough. It doesn't really taste like coffee.” At least everyone will agree on something.

This is more of an adult chocolate milk than it is an actually espresso drink. If I were handed a glass of this with no description I would assume it was some sort of weak malt drink. There probably sound like complaints, but I did enjoy the taste of this. In fact it is because it doesn't have a strong coffee flavor that makes it a better drink. It is chocolate and sweet with a little something around the edges that makes it a little interesting.

It's common knowledge at this point (at least amongst us that read comics) that Bill Finger got screwed on getting credit for his work in the DC universe. The man helped create some of the most well-known comic characters of all time, but Bob Kane got the bi-lines. In recent years he has finally started to get the credit he deserves. I can only hope that if his estate is not responsible for these energy drinks that they give some sort of credit, because there is absolutely no way the image on this can is not based on his character The Joker. I'm not a litigious man, but if credit is not being given, perhaps a trip to the courthouse is in order.

As for the taste of this beverage, I can only assume its creation went something like this: Harleen comes over to her boyfriend Joe's apartment after picking up some mangos from the grocery store and plans on making them some smoothies with the orange juice that she saw in his fridge. Upon arriving to the apartment she discovers that the orange juice has actually been sitting in there for several years and the inside of the carton looks like some sort of hate crime. The pipes in the apartment are so gross and rusted that the water comes out tinted brown, and there is no way she is going to consume that. She really wants that smoothie though and the only other liquid Joe has in the house is some generic Red Bull type energy drink. With a shrug and a sigh she pulls out the blender and mixes away. The result is this drink. It has a general energy drink taste underneath a very strong mango flavor that tastes authentic, even though I'm sure there's no way in Gotham that it is.

It's easy to be nostalgic for other eras in human history. There were a lot of great things that happened and through forgetfulness things seemed like they were perfect. I often find myself wishing I was living in various decades from the past century when life seemed great and the internet hadn't ruined everything. At this point pretty much all of the “secret” spots my friends and I knew about and enjoyed when we were younger have been posted all over the internet and they have either been closed off, or there are now far too many people there for it to have that special allure anymore. Also, don't get me started on how self-important people are now. So I think back to times that I'd like to think were simpler. Then I remember that racism, sexism, homophobia and the like ran rampant during a lot of those times and things weren't perfect then either. I can say if this truly is a facsimile of vintage and what beverages were like in another era I think I could look past the horribleness and just bliss out, can after can.

Somehow seltzer has become a cool thing in our current times. I never saw that coming. I found my way to it because I was looking to lower my sugar intake, but still wanted bubbly drinks and diet soda is just awful. I don't know if that's the route most people take or if it's just a hot item now so they are flocking to it. I will say that I will reap the rewards because the flavors available have expanded greatly.

If you know me, you probably know that I love all things cucumber flavored. I think I may have even been attracted to my girlfriend in high school because she used cucumber melon lotion that was all the rage back then. It's delicious and it's refreshing. I feel like it sounds like I'm building this up for a letdown, but that is not the case. This is wonderful and it's what I wanted out of it. It tastes mostly like cucumber with a faint melon flavor. It's refreshing with no calories. This is guilt free enjoyment here and I could drink a case in a day without blinking an eye, although I would have to make a lot of trips to the bathroom. Everyone who's on a seltzer kick buy this. I'm afraid I may be the only one who will buy it and they will stop production and then I will go in a deep depression and live alone with my riches. When I die my final words won't be about a sled, but about a beverage I truly loved.

No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. Chipotle does not need to go into everything. I like a nice smoked pepper taste as much as the next human, and I put chipotle Tabasco sauce on a decent amount of my food, but I 100% do not need, nor want it in beverage form.

This is not horrible. If I tried hard I could probably drink the whole bottle, but something just tastes not right about it, like the time you ran out of milk and decided to pour orange juice on your serial instead. You powered through that bowl, but you did not really enjoy it.

I've had chipotle dusted dried mango before (which again was okay, but not necessary) and due to that I kept expecting this to be mango and not pineapple. Even concentrating on the pineapple flavor I still get a bit of mango somehow. Psychosomatic folks. The pineapple taste isn't as strong as other sodas of that flavor I've had in the past either. This doesn't even taste like chipotle to be honest, it just tastes weird. It has no spice to it, which I would have expected. Well it tastes like spice, but not spicy if you catch my drift. It's certainly not for me and I'm guessing it's not for most of you either.

Oh yeah, it's also sweetened with a mixture of cane sugar, agave syrup and stevia to keep the calories down. While it's better than it would be in full diet form, it's still not doing any favors for the taste.

Back from a long time off on a thing called a "honeymoon" but I'm back and what do I start off with? A sparkling pomegranate joint. It's good, too. I didn't get a lot of apple but the pomegranate was nice and honest and sparkly. It wasn't too sweet and, according to the promises of the company, all that is in this lil' bottle is sweetening this is the fruit juice itself. There are some natural colors from fruit and vegetable and some preservatives but it's good. I would give this to a child. I think that's pretty telling. Sure, I gave my 9 month old half a sugar cookie which he promptly dropped half on the sidewalk and some mini marshmallows yesterday but he was being good and good kids deserve little treats. I might not be the world's best dad but my kids would like me because I gave them sweet treats.

This beverage leads me to ask the question, Why waste your time roasting coffee beans when you can just brew the green beans? As it turns out you'll save time and it has a more palatable taste (according to my taste buds). You also get the same amount of caffeine plus some antioxidants.

If someone were to ask me to describe how this tastes I would immediately respond that it tastes like someone brewed a pot of coffee, dumped it down the drain, then somehow brewed some yerba mate tea in the same coffee maker without cleaning it out. After that they dumped a bunch of sugar in it. It has a very earthy taste (hence the yerba mate descriptor) and only vaguely tastes like the coffee flavor that comes to mind when you think about said beverage.

This is definitely something that tastes extremely weird and off the first time you try it. I quickly grew to enjoy it though. It's an entirely different beast than your typical coffee, and I could see it turning off hardcore coffee fans who may see it as a bastardization of their holy beverage (coffee people are crazy, right?). On the other hand I could see it being something that those who don't normally like coffee enjoy (oh look, that's me).

They may have dropped the “passion fruit” from the name, but I'm pretty sure this is the same formula as the old Black Tea, Peach, Raspberry and Passion Fruit bottles that I used to drink more often than I probably should have. If it is different it not by much and it's still wonderfully delicious.

It's always a shock when a functional beverage can not only taste like the beverage it's masquerading as, but also be an exceptional version of that style of beverage. If this were a regular iced tea that wouldn't make me sleepy I would drink it all of the time. It tastes fantastic and fruity, without being overly sweet. As it is I drink it sparingly when I need to chill out a bit. I do miss it in resealable bottle form though. A full can might just knock me right out.

I had this whole idea for writing to Scotland and telling them that we were cool now and that all is forgiven for that Iron Bru garbage that they spewed into the world. Then, I realized that Cawston Press isn't made in Scotland. I just happen to have been there the first time I drank it. Well, it looks like I still have beef with Scotland, but my love for England is still running high, due to it being the home of these sodas.

No other company in the history of Thirsty Dudes has gotten a five bottle review consecutively for all of their products. They are truly a gift to the beverage world. With this soda that took their patented sparkling apple juice and added a top notch ginger beer to it. This has it all, flavor and burn. You can taste the flavor of actual ginger and not just an intense burn, but it has enough kick to keep you interested.

It seems like a bit of a hefty price at $7 for a six pack, but that's less than $1.25 per can, and that is not bad at all for this quality of soda. I can't wait until their other flavors make it over to the US.

There are two types of cola in the world. The first is “cola,” which includes products such as Coke and Pepsi and it is the taste most people associate with this work. The other is “kola” and there are different ingredients at work, which leads to a slightly earthier taste. If you're into the whole craft soda thing, this is probably what you crave. It's not just one general taste. There are different elements at work and you can make them out separately in the taste. Don't get me wrong there are many times in my life where a Coke is exactly what I need to hit the spot, but more often than not I would prefer something like this.

Kola Nut is slightly bitter and gives the whole beverage a unique flavor. It tastes special, and that more care was put into your beverage. In my head small batches of Caleb's Kola are brewed and carbonated and it's not just a syrup that is added to sparkling water. If this were just a tad bit darker tasting, it would be perfect. As it is I still enjoy it to a great extent and I wish more companies would follow in their footsteps.

You know what happens when you use good ingredients? You get a great tea at any temperature. Temperature?! Why are you mentioning temperature? Well it's because I didn't finish this yesterday and came back today to polish it off and review it. It was better today than it was yesterday. This uses real sugar and not corn syrup so after fourteen hours, it was not a syrupy mess. When it was cold, the temperature kind of made things different than today when it's neat I could taste the blackberry and the hint of sage. It was very nice, too. It was fruity and you could tell there was something. Not specifically sage but "something" herbal.

I think I'm going to have to befriend a bodega employee to sell me back stock so that it's warm. I think I'm going to have to befriend a bodega employee so that I can go hang out at bodegas. My dad used to own a Convenient store but I was too young to work there. Alas.

Part of me wants to trash this for being glorified carbonated sugar water and part of me wants to praise it for being a smallish local company (Detroit) that is still putting out soda in glass bottles that is sweetened with cane sugar. The thing is that this is neither terrible nor great. It simply falls in the grey area of life. Towne Club gets some points for making a strawberry melon soda, but the execution could be better. It tastes so sweet that it makes it hard to decipher the different fruit flavors. I was certainly not able to drink even half of this bottle. Saying I drank a third of it is being generous. I'm sure there is someone out there who loves this and swears by it. I can only assume that same person devours Pixie Stix and Sweet Tarts all day long. They also most definitely live in Michigan. No one outside the mitten can have that much love for this soda.

This tastes like a candle and also tastes like it sucks. No stars. Wait...I can't do no stars? This website sucks almost as much as this drink. I said, "Could I have an iced coffee with vanilla, please?" and I think they misheard "vanilla" and thought I said candle wax. Three sips. There goes $2.16. Cripes. Grozz. Ugh. These are the sounds that I am audibly saying at work aloud as people try to work. "Try to work" is code for "fantasy football" so it sounds like everyone has a hearing impediment today.

My brother finds drinks sometimes and thinks he's going to be mean and buy me stuff he thinks might be gross. This isn't the gross one but is part of the group that he bought me. This one was actually really nice. It was sweet and really spicy, the way that ginger beer should be. It most certainly still had its feet in ginger ale territory but was dabbling in the ginger beer world. The spice was nice and it burns in all the right places. The fact that it was unfiltered means that it was laden with stuff at the bottom and you know how the Thirsty Dudes love stuff in their drinks. A+. Would drink again.

Oh how I wish I had one of these now. No, not a 48 ounce bottle as that would be suicidal but the smaller, equally available 10 ounce bottle. Long nights, friends. Long nights. I know it would make me sick and dizzy but anything over this underslept feeling, which is garbage. I took a shot or two of this over the weekend, you know, just to get by, and it was nice. It was smooth, and although advertised as "not too sweet" it was definitely sweetened and possibly more than many people would like.

I don't have a preference as far as coffee goes, as you may well know, but sweet and usually with some sort of syrup is preferable. This met the criteria just fine. Lucky for me, there is a 48 ounce bottle with two shots missing at home waiting, for a girl like me (to come into my life).

"Nutritious Plant-Based Milk" isn't really milk at all, is it? I mean, you could argue that almond milk or soy milk isn't milk but I guess it's all in your definition of what "milk" is, now, isn't it? One thing I can say is that whether you call this milk or a plant-based milk, I can tell you that it is one thing, it's not that great.

It most certainly tastes like something is "up." It doesn't have the smoothness of milk. I don't want to say gritty but there is definitely some stuff up in there. I get that it's a nice alternative to dairy and for vegans, if you had the strength, you might do a backflip to hear that you've got another alternative to murderous milk.

This tastes like chocolate but as far as chocolate milk goes, it's definitely lacking in both sugar and chocolate. I'm not saying that as an insult but you might want to think of this as not only dairyless milk, but also think of it as "chocolate milk light" but put "light" in double quotes because this 12 ounce bottle still manages to cram 220 calories in her. It's a difficult battle, milk, but I suppose we can't let them have all the fun in Mootown.

By naming their company Americana are they insinuation that that their products are artifacts of American history? Are these sodas a glimpse into our nation's past? If so, we've had one hell of a history of soda, because this is ridiculously delicious. Fruit sodas are a tough sell for me. They rarely turn out correctly and mostly taste like sugar water that is flavored nothing like fruit at all. This tastes distinctively like berries and I'm not talking about those of the straw-, rasp- or even blue- varieties. This is pure huckleberry, or so I'll assume as I don't think I've ever had the fruit in its natural form. It doesn't taste artificial at all, but rather like someone carbonated juice and added a bit of cane sugar. Sure it's fairly sweet, but some sodas call for that. If only America still tasted like this instead of like racism and hate I wouldn't feel so disgusting all the time. Okay I would still feel gross from consuming too much, but I wouldn't feel as bad.

I knew I was in for a wild ride when I didn't even have this cap completely off and I was blasted in the face by the familiar sent of anise/licorice. How is it that I hate black licorice/black jelly beans more than I have hated almost anything in this world, yet I kind of dig that flavor when it's in beverage form? Sure this tastes a bit like carbonated Nyquil, but it's still somehow pretty great.

There really isn't anything about this that would make me think sarsaparilla if I blind taste tested it. I would just assume it was supposed to be an anise soda, because that's all I'm getting. Perhaps sarsaparilla is something different in Australia, where this drink comes from.

This bottle is only 9.3oz, but I think it would be perfect at half that size. I really enjoy it, but it gets to be a bit too much for me at about the half way point. I really hope I stumble across this companies other flavors though, because I anticipate great things from them.

This, this was a pleasant surprise. I've been sitting on it awhile and I thought it was a boring old lemon soda. You know, the kind that only vaguely tastes like lemon and mainly tastes like sugar. At best I was hoping it would taste like a carbonated lemonade, since it's 4% real lemon juice. It was none of those things. Instead what I got was a boring seltzer water with lemon juice in it, which as it turns out isn't all that boring and rather tasty.

I find lemon water unnecessary. I'm the jerk that requests no lemon in my water when I go out to eat. I prefer plain old water. I love water; I don't need to spice it up with a fruit that has generally been ruined by household cleaners. Something about this is quite nice though. It thankfully doesn't taste like something I used to polish my furniture. It tastes like go ordered a plain seltzer and then instead of squeezing a single slice of lemon that was cut four hours ago into it, you grabbed one of those squeeze bottles that looks like the fruit and pressed it for longer than you are recommended to. Sometimes I look back on what I've been drinking lately and I don't recognize that man reflected in my glass anymore.