Today I sighed before I walked into work. It's been a whirlwind of a place; lots of work and lots of switching projects. Not a lot of yelling which is good but at the end of the day, I really feel like I've got to wipe the sweat from my brow. I needed something to calm down with and lo and behold, there was a hibiscus tea in the fridge for me to enjoy.

This tea is better than the other one by a long shot. It's a little sweeter and has a real prominent hibiscus taste. Go figure, right? I think that this is a great base and don't really know how they could improve it. It's a lightly sweetened hibiscus tea. What a marvelous invention. They nailed it. Three friggin' ingredients. Three. One and a two and a one, two three. Water, hibiscus and agave. Done. Nailed it.

I've joked about the name, but I really have no idea what the phrase “Kill Cliff” is all about. I'm 99% certain that it's not about killing Cliff Clavin, but who knows; it's a strange world out there. Maybe the former Navy Seal who created the project really hated the movie Cliffhanger. Maybe he just thinks that cliffhangers are lazy story telling. I certainly have no idea. What I do know is that I feel like I enjoy the way this beverage tastes way more than I should.

Erythritol and Stevia may be the least offensive of the zero calorie sweeteners, but they still normally aren't all that great. In here it doesn't bother me at all and it complements the other flavors. This has a strong blackberry taste that actually tastes like berries. There is definitely some lemonade floating in there as well, so I have no complaints as to how it is names/branded. I mean I actually really enjoy this, to the extent that if it wasn't functional I could see myself drinking it on the regular for enjoyment. As it stands I have a case of it that I will be drinking when I work out. There's nothing artificial in here and it helps in muscle recovery. This is by far the best tasting beverage of this functionality that I have ever tried.

Dear Good Earth, it is summertime. It's hot out and I have no reason to drink hot tea. I don't drink many hot beverages, even in the dead of winter, but especially not now. I hope that you are okay with the fact that I brewed a big pot of this tea, with several bags and then put it in the fridge to cool down so I could make my own iced tea. Actually I don't really care if you're bummed because it was delicious tea. Truth be told it's what I've been doing with most of your products and I have enjoyed each and every one of them in its cold form.

If white teas were more popular I could see myself getting over it really quick (I'm a green tea man myself), but when I have them every once in a while their subtleties are nice. This has a strong white tea base to it, and then an even stronger fruity overtone. Yes there is mango in there, but it's the mangosteen that really stands out. Everything is actually in a really nice ratio and the flavors kind of come in waves. I'm sure this would be great hot, but until the snow returns I'll be drinking it in its opposite form.

This is dumb, this whole thing. An Oreo milkshake is fine but I have this unrelenting anger towards red velvet because everyone's got such a boner for it. It's so dumb. Look, I went into this thing not really wanting it but getting it "for the site." I walk in and a dude is nickel and diming the cashier about something. I'm in the line and a dude is laughing because he asked for a cup and the lady said he could have water. Dude thought it was the funniest thing he's ever heard. Enjoy losing your legs due to "the sugar." Ten seconds later, that same dude is swearing at his girlfriend to go faster. The "best" thing that happened is that a boy, thirteen, ran in, sat next to me, took some fries off my tray and then proceeded to scream when his mom tried to get him to leave. She was a total saint and he was apparently mentally handicapped.

At the end of all that, I've got this dumb, pink milkshake that may or may not be a vanilla milkshake with red food coloring in it staring back at me. It's an Oreo milkshake. It was fine. It was nothing spectacular and if it hadn't been for this entire experience, AKA "the worst time I've ever had at Burger King" I might not have reviewed it at all. I hate you, red velvet.

John learned a lot of worthless stuff in high school. He learned how to sew a plush bear, historical event that won't help anyone outside of a bar league quiz night and what happens when you put vinegar and baking soda together. He always enjoyed science but mixing household events just wasn't enough. He needed something else.

He went home, put on his dad's safety goggles, you know, for safety, and started mixing. He went in the pantry grabbed iced tea mix and a whole peach. He went into the liquor cabinet using the key that he has seen his dad blatantly hide beneath the globe in the living room dozens of times and grabbed seltzer water; something that didn't need to be in the liquor cabinet in the first place and put everything on the table.

He made a glass of iced tea, regular stuff, and hand squeezed a peach in to it and then carefully and delicately poured some seltzer into it. Once combined he took one sip, for science and discovered something very sad. All he had done was recreate Lipton Sparkling Peach Iced Tea. Not a total loss. He did had a nice glass of tea to drink but he also had quite a mess to clean up. Also, he had some 'splainin' to do because when his daddy got home he noticed that some of the seltzer was gone.

I believe there is a dark magic at work in my life. Over the past couple of weeks there have been a handful of times where I have woken up feeling like complete garbage. I feel like I'm hung over, even though I haven't had a drop of alcohol. The only conclusion that I can reach is that someone is using the dark arts to pass their hangover onto me. They are out partying all night, getting trashed, and then waking up bright and early all chipper while I don't want to get out of bed to do a thing. I must find this person and break their spell so I can go back to living my productive life.

If I remember correctly dehydration is one of the big causes of a hangover. I drink plenty of water all day, so that shouldn't be an issue, but just in case it is I'm drinking this coconut water to help replace all of the precious fluids in my body. This is an interesting variety of this type of beverage. Mixing pineapple in with coconuts is nothing new, but adding tea into the mix is. I don't really understand if it has any real benefits other than taste, but I do enjoy it. The added passion fruit juice doesn't hurt either. Actually the whole thing is a bit sweet after being used to unsweetened coconut water. It seems like the sweetness from the juices would be enough, but they added sugar anyway. I could use a tad more tea flavor in here, especially since the fruit flavors are so strong. It just gets lost a bit. I appreciate where they are going with this though. Hopefully a version with no added sugar will come out and I will totally be on board.

If a lemonade and tea is an Arnold Palmer, and any blue juice and tea is my patented Laura Palmer, what would one call coconut water and tea? The only other Palmer I can think of at the moment is Amanda Palmer, but that doesn't seem to fit. Oh wait, it's a Leiland Palmer. His hair went white, coconuts are white. Send out my proclamation. While you're at it bring me the head of whoever is giving me their hangovers.

I have to say folks, snowy mountain tops do not me think of grape soda. I understand that Jackson Hole is going for a Wyoming aesthetic and even though it may be unrelated, a snowy mountain is visually more appealing than “Cheyenne Backyard BBQ” would be. Maybe a “Rock Springs Vineyard” could have worked out for them. Actually, screw it, fitting or not the Grand Tetons are great and are better than anything I can think of. I would happily drink this bottle of grape soda after trekking up a mountain. Well as long as I had time to rest and cook up some veggie dogs to accompany it.

This is a fairly standard grape soda, with the exception of it being sweetened with real sugar. It's ridiculous how a specific sweetener can make all of the difference. It brings out the flavor a big more and makes it less syrupy than you are probably used to. Why am I sitting in my office writing this review when I could be climbing a mountain in Wyoming? I think I may have made some poor life choices.

I might have broken the law. If I drink something that's listed to be a hot tea and I drink it iced, it's kind of up to me. If I buy a hamburger and bring it home and put peanut butter and jelly on top and gummy bears on the bottom, I can do that. If I buy a bag of chips and put M&M's in there, I can do that.

This intrigued me because it had oh so many things to enjoy; sarsaparilla, anise, cinnamon and much more. It was good. It was cool and pretty refreshing. It was a bit "rooty" due to, and I'm going to assume, the chicory root. I mention that more as a feature, not a complaint. If I complained about it, it would be something to the likes of, "Ugh, this drink tasted like someone carved it out of a tree." or something way too much since we clearly suck at writing reviews. It's not an overwhelming drink. I know people are pretty black or white on anise but this contains less than you would think, regardless of the gigantic star anise on the box. More like a cinnamon red tea.

This was good, though. I've got nineteen bags left that I don't anticipate gathering dust like some of the other ones I've got up there. It's just different enough that maybe for every five bags of black tea I make, I'll swap in this or the chai black. You've got to keep things fresh, you know? Like when you wear the same socks for four days in a row. Change them out. They're stretched out and need to get back to where they belong. Yeah. It's just like that.

Cookies. More cookies. Big ones. Small ones. Medium ones. Dark ones. Medium ones, again. Light ones? I don't think that I want anything like that here. That would involve white chocolate and no thanks, friends. No thanks.

You know what I want cookies in? Mostly everything, honestly. I don't drink coffee, as you boringly know. This though, man, all day. This is kind of spectacular. "Kind of spectacular" seems like an impossible status. What makes this good, though? Well the fact that it's a good split between Oreo syrup and coffee. Two things that are probably not great for you and together they're most certainly not good for you but you don't give a rip because you're an adult and you can't tell me what to do anymore, Dad! Wuh....what....where am I? I blacked out. What was I doing? I was doing a review? For what? Oh, Oreo iced coffee from Dunkin' Donuts. Let's start up that old engine again.

This is great. Well, was great. It's gone. Like Daryl Hall said many, many times at this point, "she's gone." I would like to take Daryl Hall out to Dunkin' Donuts. I would buy him this cheerful, summer drink. Maybe after that he wouldn't feel soul alone. See what I did there? Daryl. See what I did?

Why do they hate him so much? Sure he's lazy. Sure he spends all of his time in a bar when he should be working. Why though, why do they want to kill Cliff Clavin? Did he steal important mail from them? We're talking about an entire product line based on the hatred of a fictional character from a television show from the 80s. Maybe the actor that played Cliff had an affair with the mother of whoever named this beverage and broke up his happy family. The world is a strange place when a television actor can ruin your life and you can spend your whole life devising a way to destroy him.

While I do not agree with the motives, I can't argue with the flavor. This is a carbonated pomegranate beverage that is sweetened with erythritol to keep the calories down. There's also a bunch of other functional ingredients in there as well to help you recover after a workout. A little trick they did was to include some ginger extract, which seems to be combating the dietness of the erythritol and it seems to be winning. The diet taste is not strong in here, and every drink is made better with a hint of ginger.

Kill Cliff was nice enough to send us a case of each flavor and Mike's ladyfriend and I are beyond pleased. You can catch us looking like idiots at a gym that is probably nowhere near you. Oh yeah, if you think this is all based on Cliff Clavin, you my friend are kind of an idiot.

A lot happened in 1966. There were Vietnam protests, cigarettes had to start having warning labels, and the Moors Murderers were jailed in the UK forever influencing a young boy names Steven Patrick Morrissey. All of these interesting things happened that year, but that is not what Bruce Cost is celebrating with this soda. What all rant party hats and streamers are for is that they have created a soda that has only 66 calories, without the aid of artificial sweeteners or stevia/erythritol. This Brooklyn based company has come up with a mixture of cane sugar and monk fruit extract that gives the soda sweetness, without tasting gross and diet. Monk fruit has been used for centuries in Chinese medicine, and Bruce Cost thought to try it in their sodas.

I have to say the results are interesting. This tastes much better than most low calorie sodas, there is no doubt, it just has a very strange, distinct type of sweetness to it. Actually it tastes like someone was at a magical fountain machine that served Bruce Cost's regular ginger ale, and some other stuff and mixed some flavors, Laser Tag style. It really tastes like two different sodas, one normal and one weirdly diet, were combined and didn't really combine into something new. Unfortunately the delicious ginger soda was the weaker of the two in the grouping. If you're looking to cut back on the calories and love yourself some ginger soda, you're not going to find anything better on the market. It still feels like it could use some improvement though. Now, if you're looking for me I'll be wandering around Brooklyn, searching for that elusive fountain soda machine that I mentioned. I bet it only exists in my mind.

Summertime = Watermelons. Summertime = Hot Dogs. Summertime = Strawberries. That's what summertime means to me. Simple mathematics. Combining two of the three strategically makes one heck of a refreshing drink.

Thanks to Polar cracking the code as to which flavors work and which ones don't work, we now are presented with a wonderful little drink that encompasses two fantastic fruit flavors into a bold number. It's well and heavily infused with the fruits. A great entry-level seltzer.

Stop hating seltzer. Start enjoying summer.

Jimmy, I'm sorry, son. I had to go back to work this weekend and finish up the Johnson report. I know I was going to take you camping. I'm sorry, buddy. I didn't come home empty handed, though. So put down that backpack and sleeping bag and come over here. I bought you, get ready, a S'mores Iced Capp. It's got all the things that kids like including but not limited to, chocolate, graham cracker crumbs and marshmallows. It's just like we're camping but while you eat s'mores, daddy is going to work on the Johnson report.

What do you think? I'm on page twenty-nine of this report and you look to be about half way done. Yeah, I don't know what the actual "iced capp" part is. It tasted almost like a salted graham cracker base. I liked it but couldn't tell what it was. I'll tell you, though. That chocolate whipped cream on top was a nice touch and since none of the chunks of graham cracker or marshmallows on top could be sucked through a straw, that final little bite of it was great. It tasted like a really unhealthy cereal.

Look, buddy. I'm sorry about doing this to you. The boss dropped this bomb on me and I've got to do what he says or I won't have the money to buy you such frivolous drinks. We'll be eating hobo pies on the side of the road. Yeah I know your mom has a job and we'll be fine...Jimmy! I'm trying to paint a picture. Let me focus on this report. Drink your s'mores and watch that ten hour loop of the yule log and it will be like we're camping.

PREVIOUSLY ON THIRSTY DUDES: (Insert montage of how I thought the green tea Chai Elixir. It's highly dramatized and leaves you on a cliffhanger).

Now that we're all brought up to speed I wonder what excitement this week will bring us. Oh this time around it is white tea with a little bit of white peach nectar thrown into the mix like some quasi interesting secondary character. I have to say that yet again Chai Elixir has delivered something interesting. The chai isn't as strong in this variety, but I'm okay with that. It's mostly white tea with hints of peach around the edges. There's some extra spices in there, but they are more subtle notes than a full on flavor. I don't think a higher level of chai would really have worked well with the peach so a wise choice was made.

I must warn people that these drinks are not your everyday soda. They are unique and are made for sipping and pondering, not just mindlessly gulping them down. So go in with an open mind and you can go on an interesting little trip. Speaking of trips I hear they are going to Asia next week to work with oolong tea.

On a recent, and terrible, trip to Richmond, Virginia I was pleased as punch to find this little number hiding in a cooler. Without question I bought it and anxiously awaited the nearly ten hour trip home which would allow me to drink it. Obviously I forgot and was left with two bags of snacks and drinks that were virtually untouched.

Green jasmine?! Dude. Please. You have an open invitation to come with Jay and myself to PF Changs where we kill glass after glass of the green jasmine tea. Paired with hibiscus should be a match made in heaven but is it? That's my little click bait for you. Answer? Scroll down to find out. There's another.

No. It's good but it tastes a little like a hibiscus tea that someone left the bag in too long. It's the tiniest bit sweet which actually helps but at the end of it, it comes off a bit flat. There's a tiny bit of green jasmine tea but the hibiscus tea is really strong, almost overwhelming. All-in-all this kind of falls flat. It's really heavy like my heart while I have to write this honest review about a tea I really wanted to love but have to give a mediocre grade to. I could never be a teacher. Some kids show promise but end up disappointing you and you have to fail them. I'm not going as far as to fail this tea but saying that the name of a baby chicken is a pigeon is just wrong and they should know better.

Okay, I've gone from disgust, to passive fan and now I'm into avid drinker of seltzer water. It's been a wild ride, and it might all culminate with this drink right here. It's no secret that I am a fiend for guava and this beverage has somehow completely captured the essence of the guava without any sugar. I have no idea how they have done it. Most fruits lose their true flavor without some sweetness to them, but it's all here, right in this bottle. Sure there is a bit of mandarin in there as well, but who cares about that when you're getting greeted with guava every sip. In the world of fruit guava is king. There I just ruined the end of Game of Thrones for everyone. It ends with guava riding a dragon that is wearing a tiny crown.

Oh the summer series from Dunkin' Donuts is going hard. Last year was ice cream flavored drinks. This year? Cookies. I love cookies. Who doesn't love cookies, really? Men, women, teachers, murderers, clowns, baby sitters, arsonists, girls, firemen, security officers and even ladies love them.

When ordering this, the option was presented to me, "Coffee of vanilla?" which I answered overwhelmingly "Coffee, ma'am." I don't know if she heard me because there is little to no "coffee" in this but it is a Coolata which I think is as far from actual coffee. This is one rung away from milkshake territory.

You know what, though? It's really good. They put whipped cream atop with some Oreo crumbles to really finish it off. Look at me, "finish it off" like it's some sort of high-end garnish. It's cookies, dude. It's cookies in a milkshake, whipped cream and cookie crumbles on top. It's delicious. It's everything you want in your life. You lead a regular life. Take no extra chances and get this. You're not going to surprise anyone else in your white bread world if they "catch you" drinking this. You aren't going to surprise your mother who raised you on chicken noodle and bologna sandwiches. This is cookies. Liquid cookies. This is liquid cookies and it's fantastic. Hello summer. Welcome back. We've missed you.

The best time to enjoy a nice cold bottle of soda of any kind is while sitting around a fire in the middle of nature. Don't let anyone tell you anything different. Okay, orange soda may be better at a bbq but everything else is at top speed at a camp fire. This weekend I escaped to the woods with some friends and after a day of taking the majesty of it all in and getting caught in a torrential rainstorm halfway through a five mile hike, the skies cleared and we settled in around the fire. Everyone else popped their beers and I cracked open this ginger beer.

With the first sip I experienced some disappointment. It tasted like a generic soda with a little bit of a burn to it. With hope in my eyes, I put my thumb over the top and gently swirled the bottle around to mix it up, in case settling had occurred, and lo and behold we have a whole new drink. It suddenly went up to a medium burn and the flavors started to burst out. It's the type of ginger beer that tastes more like a ginger ale with a kick. It's what I actually prefer. The ginger actually has a flavor and not just a burning sensation. I slowly sipped it until we ran out of wood and then everyone else went to sleep and I tried to read with a head lamp, but it just attracted every moth in the forest and I needed to run away.

Ladies and Gentlemen of the parish, I stand before you a changed man. For years I stood up here and told you of the evils of seltzer water and how it just had a disgusting aftertaste. I informed you all to stay on a righteous path and steer clear of the sugarless carbonation. I am here to inform you, my congregation that I was terribly wrong. There is a good side to seltzer and one only needs to become acclimated with the taste in order to enjoy it fully. I know I am a fake as I have stood before you many times over the past few weeks and not acknowledged my wrongdoings while I was secretly downing bottle after bottle of this bubbly goodness.

This bottle that I drink before you today tastes like someone squeezed a pink grapefruit into a bottle of plain sparkling water, and it is exquisite. There is no sugar in it, making you feel like garbage and bringing down the natural flavors. I've seen my future people, and it is sugarless (or at least reduced).

Okay folks, let's be honest with ourselves, can we really in good faith call this an energy drink? This is really just coconut water with guarana seed extract in it. I know you're out there saying well that's something that I've seen on the ingredient list for other energy drinks, but the thing is that it is just a source of natural caffeine. Sure this tastes good. It tastes like coconut water with a little bit of flavoring in it. The thing is that this isn't going to give someone the boost they are expecting with an energy drink. It will help rehydrate them when they feel like they are hungover even though they haven't had alcohol in decades, but that's a different story altogether. Let's be fair; if we call this an energy drink then we have to start calling colas energy drinks and I don't think anyone is comfortable with that.