Dear Herbal Mist,
Do you know what yerba mate is? Are you adding so little that you know you can't taste it but you can still say that your tea is made with it? We've got a guy in this office called Dan and he read this, said Joe Nemechek's name and starting talking about some special NASCAR Language. Something about "Jumpin' Joe," and "Boogity, Boogity."

Look, this is a great iced tea but it's nothing that I haven't gotten at every restaurant I've ever been to. I thought that it would be a chance to really see what your yerba mate tea would have since there are no fruits or sugars getting in the way between me and m' tea. You know what? Since Dan had so much to say about Joe Nemechek, I'm going to let him close out this review but before I do, I would like to say that this is good as far as generic iced tea goes but nothing more. Joe, you may be a fantastic racecar driver but you might want to relay the message to Herbal Mist that you want more yerba mate in your tea. After all, your good name is on it. Alright, here's Dan to say a couple things.

Seriously, Joe? You're better than this. You are THE "Jumpin' Joe," or at least you were. You didn't just only turn left like the other dudes. You hopped and galloped your way around the bends of Daytona like a wild pony. This tea is probably more representative of you now: cruising the neighborhood in a Cadillac, judging your neighbors' unkempt lawns after a Sunday breakfast at Hardee's. Grow a pair, Joe. Get some. Act like it's you and The Intimidator (RIP Dale, Sr.) rounding turn three at Talladega, chasing the checkered. Bumpin' is racin'; Joe needs to get back to Jumpin'.

"A Drink For The Tired Athlete" might not be the greatest line, Jim. I know we at NOS pride ourselves on cool packaging and potent energy drinks but the term "tired" is kind of insulting, don't you think? Yes, this is our first foray into the world of hydration but this isn't our first tagline and that one isn't going to push a lot of product. Jim, come on. Look, this isn't our finest drink, I know, but we aren't the type of company to phone it in. We can't be lazy, especially since there are other players already in the market. Let's take a look at what we've got here before we move any further.

We've got an energy drink. We've already proven ourselves a big fish in that market. Let's just move on. We've got a hydration drink. Yes, it's like Gatorade and Powerade but we're mixing other stuff in so it's different. Those other guys don't have caffeine in there and we do so we are going to stand out. The fruit punch flavor is really hard, or so I hear from the flavor scientists at the lab. They did an alright job with this. Right when you take a sip you get a good fruit punch flavor. That lasts about a second. What's strange is that when it sits on your tongue for any longer it starts to get more and more stingy. I don't know where that's coming from to be honest. Neither does the lab. You think they would since they carefully added each ingredient.

You know what, Jim? The more I think about it; maybe it's the lab guys that are the issue. It's easy not to release a bad item into the marketplace. You just don't do it. These guys said it was alright and pushed it out and it's not bad but it's got a certain "really diet energy drink" taste to it. It tastes like a really diet version of two otherwise fine things. That diet branch might have just allowed me to go on a purge of my own because I'm about to trim the fat all over this place, Jim. Get out of my office! I've got some firing to do!

You've got Grapeheads, Lemonheads, Cherryheads formerly known as the racist Cherry Chan, and Melonheads and Appleheads, which I have never seen and Orangeheads. This drink, as you could probably guess, tasted like Lemonheads if you dipped them in limejuice. It was almost hard to convince myself this wasn't just 7-Up or other comparable lemon-lime drink. It's not bad and it might be more real lemon and lime flavored than "those other guys."

If you like your Sierra Mist, 7-Up, Sprite, and the like, this is a nice, cleaner tallboy of that group that you might like to sink your teeth into. That's figuratively speaking. Please don't bite into this can. Just the thought of you doing that makes me cringe. Who bites cans? What are you? A goat?

Coffee coffee coffee. Enough, alright? We get it. The Keurig is the invention of the decade. I'm not even arguing it. Swarms of people who previously couldn't make a decent cup of coffee to save their lives are now regular baristas. You know, just writing this makes me feel bad for actual baristas. I bet Starbuck's, Tim Horton's, and Dunkin' Donuts sales went down since the invention of that thing. I imagine that if you even breathe the word "Keurig" to someone who works at a coffee place they just shudder and their hand involuntarily turns into a fist.

I'm not taking bread out of anyone's mouth with this guy, though. Half iced tea and half lemonade lightly sweetened. It's lightly sweetened. Did you hear me? Real sugar sugared just enough to still be able to taste the tea and the lemony lemons. It was pretty good. I've had two or three of them and intend on drinking that whole, what do K-Cups come in, 24? 16? Whatever. I'll drink all of them.

Starbuck's et al; you will be fine. Something will come out that says that there is a high content of fecal matter in the cups and everyone will come crawling back for forgiveness. That's when you use your foam skills to spell something lewd to which they deserve.

I just had a four-day escape to the woods. My friend Kevyn and I rented a cabin in the mountains and had a glorious long weekend of hiking, kayaking and heading to beaver dams at dusk to watch them work on their dams. It was exactly what I needed to just decompress. At one point we took a trip into town to get a couple of provisions and I saw this bottle of Bing. I had had the cherry version before, but blackberry was totally new to me. I was in the market for some juice, and I thought this would do just fine. It wasn't until after I started drinking it and started reading the packaging did I realize that it was actually a natural energy drink. It took me reading it to realize it was an energy drink, as it tasted nothing like one. I believe that is because it doesn't have taurine or any other chemicals in it to give you a boost. It's all B vitamins, caffeine, ginko biloba and ginseng. It really just tastes like sparkling juice.

Okay, to be fair the sugar in it makes it taste more like a soda than sparkling juice, even though there are only 8g of sugar in this can. It's a mixture of blackberry and cherry juice, and each sip is heavier on one over the other. It's a crapshoot for which one you're gonna get, but both are great, so it doesn't matter.

Unfortunately they felt the need to add sucralose right at the end of the ingredient list. Even though there is such low amounts you can still taste it a bit, and it distracts you from the flavor. Other than that this is great, and if you want a natural energy drink this is the way to go.

As far as energy drinks go, this is good. As far as drinks go, this isn't fantastic. I don't really taste actual grape and I get a whole gallon of hurt. This drink hurts to drink. It tastes like I was drinking juice with needles in it. It felt prickely. What makes drinks sharp like this? Is it the sweetener? Is it something else? It's almost the same sting as you get when you drink Lipton Brisk. Oh, old Hug drinks. Those suckers stung.

Flavor town was fine. It's generically fruity more than it is explicitly grape. It's not offensive like when people stare at you because you've got tattoos or piercings. It's just not...quite...grape. Yes, I will hold it against them because they said it tasted like grape and it doesn't. Don't lie to me, cage fighters. You can beat me up fair and square but you can't feed me this and tell me it's grape. You should also know that I took many years of Tae Kwon Do so you might get hit by my delicate fist once or twice before you give me a bitchin' roundhouse.

I had been seeking this energy shot out for a while but it kept eluding me. Or I would find it when I didn't want an energy shot or didn't have money on me. This went on for months until I had to go to a family function on barely any sleep. My grandparents were being awarded by the city of Tonawanda for doing awesome stuff for the youth (they helped build a skate park among other things). Knowing that I was going to have to talk to family and friends of the family, I wanted to be semi-coherent so I stopped by a drug store to wake myself up. Not wanting to carry around an open can of Monster (seriously, more energy drinks need to come in resealable bottles), I went to the front counter where they keep the energy shots so 14 year old kids don't steal them all. Low and behold, the pink lemonade shot was there!

Now in the past, energy shots are usually borderline undrinkable. This was not the case at all this time. It tasted like pink lemonade should. Sweet, a little sour, and overall delicious. My only complaint was I only got a couple sips of the taste. They should water it down and make a larger drink out of this because it would be awesome and I would drink it much more than I should.

Finally! After all these herbal mists, we finally found one that tastes like actual yerba mate. Yes, it's only for a limited time but for the limited time, it's great. After this limited time offer, you are given a nicely sweetened mango tea. Xylitol, a natural sweetener, and all its Stevia brethren have been in seemingly everything and it's nice to see this used well. It's not too sweet and doesn't taste fake. It has a good mango taste to boot so this whole bottle has got winning all over it.

If I could have a lot of this, it would be great. I don't love mangos anywhere near as much as Jay does but I think that even him, ever-incrementing hater of all things Stevia, would enjoy this drink.

When I hear the phrase “fruit water” I immediately think of a giant glass water cooler in the foyer of a hotel in a tropical area. The water cooler is filled with…€¦well water of course, but floating in that water is a delicious medley of tropical fruits that give the water a hint of the glory of your surroundings. Of course as you drink it a toucan flies over and lands on your shoulder and someone says to you, “Hey let's go surfing!”

I obviously knew that this beverage was going to be nothing like that, but that is the vision in my head, and I would like to submit that idea to the development departments of all the major beverage companies. Water that has had fruit soaked in it. No sweeteners or anything else added. It's what the world craves.

While Glaceau did not look into my hopes and dreams they did create a sparkling fruit drink that actually contains no juice. I don't want to be all picky here, but folks, let's face it this is a diet soda. It's water, it's carbonated, it has a sweetener added and it has a flavor. That's soda pop in my world folks. I actually think that is the textbook definition.

When you look at it that way, this is one of the best diet sodas I have ever tasted. I find it straight up enjoyable. There is something about the orange/mango flavor that combats the taste of the sucralose and makes it taste more natural. I know the flavors are fake, but it really does taste like mangos and oranges were used to make this drink, and I can down a bottle without feeling shame about it. You're onto something with this Glaceau, now just take some of those vats of Smart Water and dump a mess of fruit into them before you bottle it. You can thank me later.

Okay class, let's get the giggling out of the way. Yes, this drink is called Bawls, but you are in seventh grade, and you should be mature enough to be able to handle this lecture as well as the one on V-Blast that I have planned for this afternoon. It's 2013, you all lost your virginity at 11 right? Ugh, that's a gross thought. Kids, the internet is ruining your childhoods. Go outside. Explore. Cause some mischief. If you do those things you'll have a much happier life. Don't be in such a hurry to be an adult. Look at your parents and your friend's parents; do any of them look happy? Of course not, being an adult sucks. Responsibilities suck. Stay a kid, the things you have to worry about are nothing compared to what you'll have to deal with when you're older.

Okay back to the lesson. In the beginning there was Jolt. It was cola with excessive amounts of caffeine in it, so that kids like you could stay up late, sneak out and cause trouble. It was something, but it was nothing compared to the Red Bull craze of the 2000s. In between the two Bawls rose to modest fame. It was/is an energy drink that is powered by guarana and caffeine. More important than what the drink was is the fact that it came in these rad glass bottles with little nubs on them. They feel interesting in your hand, and it's just fun. Eventually they expanded their line. One of the flavors they expanded with was cherry.

Most guarana flavored sodas have a bubble gum style flavor like kola champagne. Luckily with Bawls that is not the case. The flavor is there a hint, but it's not overly sweet and overpowering. This tastes like someone made a Shirley Temple with an the original Bawls instead of ginger ale. It has a more maraschino cherry flavor than a cherry soda flavor. The result of it all is that it is wonderful and will give you a little energy boost without all of the weird chemicals that most modern energy drinks have in them.

There's the bell. I will see you all after lunch when we will continue our history of beverages section of the curriculum.

Who doesn't need to drink more water? I know I do. I try. I really do. This constantly growing array of drink concentrates next to my desk certainly make it easier and since they're calorie-free, it's helps me feel alright about "cheat" drinking water.

For those of you on a diet, I've got some advice for you. Number one: calm down. Just watch what you eat but if you slip up, don't worry about it. It will be fine. Stick to it and you'll do great. No need to get down on yourself for having a piece of pizza. Life is for living. Pizza is both life and living. Enjoy it. Number two: this is a good, flavorful way to pound water. It just tastes like grape Kool-Ade so if you can get down with that, you can start drinking the amount of water you need. I believe the rule of thumb is drink half your weight in ounces of water. It's tough and yes, you'll have to pee a lot at first, but soon you'll start feeling better. Now you can feel better about losing weight and drinking grape juice emotionlessly.

Thirsty Dudes. Helping out society one drink at a time.

What a garbage twenty-four hours. Last night, as many of you in the Northeast found out, it rained like nobody's business. It flooded the living daylights out of my basement promptly and I was bailing and checking the sump pump every thirty seconds to see if it was going to be a two-fer type of night. Later that night and into the early morning was a monsoon that woke me up multiple times. I had to go out and re-cover my motorcycle in my backyard at four in the morning. Lucky for me, my dog decided to help out. Moral support pup. This morning I was just beat and everyone was an awful driver and so on and so forth.

I needed to "do me" so I went and got one of these smoothies that look so good in both commercials and billboards. I made a good decision. This tastes wonderful and was a great thickness and consistency. It was perfectly fruity and actually tasted like pomegranates and blueberries. A novel idea, I know, but after reading the ingredients, it's all pretty natural which I commend McD's for.

This day has just begun and already blows but, like in the commercials, all was fine when I was drinking this smoothie. Now I've just got metal in my ear calming my nerves. I know it doesn't make sense. Neither does a thirty one year old listening to metal. Pick your battles, people.

The county fair is one of the most wonderful places in the summer. There is a ton of gross awesome food, animals galore and great people watching. Sometimes spending all day out in the sun gets to be a little too much in the heat department, so there are little “mist tents” set up where you walk through a little tunnel and water is misted on you from spray bottles and fans. It's really not the most effective thing in the world, but any little bit of help is appreciated.

All I can think about with the name of this company is one of those tents, but instead of spraying you with water, it pumps out iced tea. It would be the stickiest refreshment anyone has ever seen. It would also be absolutely terrible. If I were forced to go through one, I would choose the diet peach option. I can only assume it would be less sticky than real sugar, and also the peach doesn't taste as insanely strong in this as it does in the regular version. I would just wander through, with my mouth open and let the refreshment wash over me, and hopefully get a little flavor on my tongue along the way.

Like every flavor in this line, it tastes nothing like yerba mate, which as always is disappointing. It tastes a little bit diet, but not in a chemical death way. It's a little strange because it's specifically the peach flavor that tastes diet and not the actual tea. It tastes diet in a way that makes you say, “Why not, there's nothing else to drink, and I don't find this completely disgusting.” Can you really ask for more in a diet drink? The answer is yes, but this is still better than most 0 calorie beverages on the market.

Memorial Day. Yes, it is a day to remember those who have served our country over the years. It's also a day, weather permitting, to do yard work. All day we weeded, mulched, dug, planted, cleaned, got dirty, and everything else. Days like this require you to keep hydrated. Water is great. One step better than water is water with "essence" in it that makes it taste like really wet fruit. I mean that in the best possible way. I love stuff like this. Flavored water can go one of two ways and there are a fair amount of both. Ayala and Hint are awesome because it just somehow infuses the flavor and no calories or anything. I don't know how they do it. The other ones, basically anything that adds any sort of sugar, sweetener whether it be natural or artificial, is grotesque.

This will not be the last of this I drink. I promise. It's somehow naturally sweet and tastes like blackberries and is fantastically delicious. It is lightly flavored but is somehow just flavored enough that I don't want it to change at all. Magic. If this came in a larger container, like those sixty ounce Ito En tea bottles, I would buy it in a heartbeat. They have many new flavors that just came out so stay tuned for passion fruit and the others.

I'm standing in the aisle and a woman walks past me and says, "Too many choices." I promptly respond with, "Not enough choices." I swear, as soon as I pass the New York line, my fame and fortune is forgotten because if we were in New York and not New Jersey, I would have swarms of people surrounding me pondering what drink I will pick. That would obviously be followed by a loud cheer and sometimes but not always, confetti. I think there is a confetti brigade that follows me around but they are very stealth and I can never see them in the open.

I picked this tea because it was "not too sweet" which is what I needed because I have been eating like absolute garbage this whole trip. Not poorly, just in excess.

This tea was alright, though. Not too sweet but a little off. I couldn't place it but it's not like the sweet tea I am used to. It was black and sweet but didn't add up to "sweet tea." That lady should have picked my drink for me because I could have done better.

There aren't a whole lot of non-dairy coffee drinks on the market. Asian markets usually have some, but they are just black coffee with nothing else in them. I drink my coffee with soy/almond/coconut milk and a little sugar. For this reason, I was excited to find this carton of iced coffee in the dairy cooler today.

It was hard to decide which to get first of the three flavors they are offering: vanilla, mocha, and caramel macchiato. The latter seemed like it would be the most exciting, but I decided to go with the classic vanilla to start. As I expected, it's heavy on the almond milk. This reminds me more of coffee milk than actual iced coffee. It's really sweet, but also has sea salt in it to give it a nice kick. I wasn't expecting that but I really like it.

Now if you'll excuse me, Arrested Development season 4 isn't going to watch itself.

For a good portion of my life I consumed far too much sugar, and the majority of that sugar came in the form of iced tea. I love the stuff. Can't get enough of it. With the advent of the iced tea tall boys and the expansion of the medium they are everywhere and generally only $1. That's a deal that was hard to pass up. Eventually I got to the age where what you eat/drink finally catches up to you, and it was quite a shock. For 30 years or so I ate and drank whatever fancied me and my weight never went under 170 and never above 175. They were the golden years. Then I started to notice a change and I decided I needed more exercise in my life and a change to my diet. I am happy to say that I have actually stuck with it, and things are looking good.

One of the steps I took was to start brewing my own tea at home. I would boil a huge pot of water, throw a couple of tea bags in and them transfer it to a growler after an hour or so. I learned to love unsweetened tea, and it help stave off the cravings I used to have for tallboys. I still drink more tea than is probably good for a human, but at least there is no sugar involved.

One of my go to teas to brew is “original” Runa guayusa tea. It has an earthy taste that is similar to yerba mate, but with it's own twist. Sometimes I drink it just like that; sometimes I throw in a different tea bag into the mix of flavored tea. Either way it's always delicious. I love that I have the option to get these teas in ready to drink form. I wish this were available at every gas station around the country, so I could easily find them when traveling. It is a perfect balance of earthy tea and limejuice. It's mostly tea, but the lime flavor is very obviously there.

These days “mixologists” are all the rage. It seems like just a fancy word for a bartender that knows how to do their job. If I were to use the term though, I would say that Runa has one of the best mixologists around, sure this is a simple beverage, but ratios are as crucial to a drink as the quality of the ingredients used, and they have it down to a science.

Oh I think I'll just take a little walk. I've got about five hours before I have to do anything. I'll take a walk, get something to eat, look for some cool cars, and look for some drinks. It will be fun. (opens door to go outside) Oh fantastic. It's windy, raining, and cold. One better is there are no sidewalks. I'll just walk on the side of the road like a bum.

Here I am at a Panera and I know what I want to eat. Clearly the cinnamon crunch bagel but what to drink? That giant sign advertising tropical hibiscus tea piques my interest. I'll have that. (sits down) There is a real lack of "cool" car's out. The weather sucks but still. No one wants to drive their Porsche 911 to get a bagel? This tea is worth the drive. It's got a great floral tea taste with just a touch of sweetness from, presumably, the tropics. I don't taste any pineapple or mango or passion fruit; just a nice hibiscus tea, which is fine by me. Sure, a pineapple hibiscus tea would probably reign supreme but I'm not working at the Panera Bread flavor center now, am I?

Now this bagel is done. Looks like I'll aimlessly walk around like a hooded creep who doesn't have a car and enjoys running into the end of sidewalks because Jersey doesn't care about tourists without cars.

I am in Jersey for a wedding. I was just at an Italian restaurant for three hours. Do you know how long that is? It's a long time. It's a long time to sit there. Three courses. That's an hour per course. One hour dedicated to a Caesar salad. One hour dedicated to a small amount of pasta. The food was fine at best but the dessert was a wonderful chocolate mousse cake. Don't tell anyone, but I ate some of the cake from the girl that sat next to me because she wasn't as crazy about it as I was. She got up and left and I ate some of her cake. I talked to her. She's in the wedding party. It's fine. Well, the girl who sat across from me needed some medicine so I walked out to a 7-11 and got some. Being who I am, I also stopped at the drink cooler and checked it out and was pleasantly surprised with what I saw and basically had to buy.

I had to wait for another hour and a half to drink this, and I offered it to a nice girl in the elevator who politely declined, but here I am, sitting on my hotel bed watching an awesome episode of Seinfeld, drinking this rather awkward drink. Awkward? Yes. I said awkward. It's got chocolate, that for truth. Bosco, another Seinfeld reference, is chocolate syrup they used. The fudge I think they might be grouping into the chocolate. I don't know if there is an additional ingredient. The float? There might be an element of cream in there. It's got an almost sparkling chocolate seltzer taste to it. It's not bad.

I like that this is another Brooklyn treat and I am so close to enjoy it. Now if only that nice elevator girl would have enjoyed it, too. She missed out. Not on much, but she missed out regardless. I take a little offense that people don't drink my drinks when I offer them up. Don't you people know who I am?

There comes a time when mankind makes something that is not needed/wanted. Jones fulfilled this prophecy by creating this monster of a soda.

*Editors note: in the beginning of the video, Mike thinks I say it's in a can but I was trying to say that it was an exclusive to Canada but I don't know how to talk on video because I get nervous.

Without further adieu, here is a video of us drinking this collection of fries, gravy, and cheese curds in a bottle.



Jones Poutine soda was easily the worst soda I've ever had. It's been hours since I drank it and my stomach still hurts and I still feel like I'm going to throw up. I appreciate that Jones sent this to us, but on the other hand I feel like they played a huge elaborate prank on us.