Ginger - 217 Reviews

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.

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.

What exactly does the year 1922 have to do with ginger ale? A quick google search came up with nothing but a couple of ads that came out that year. Wikipedia tells me that ginger ale existed in a marketable form for decades before that. Perhaps, since this is a sugary beverage, they chose 1922 to celebrate the first successful insulin treatment of diabetes. Okay I dug deeper and it turns out that 1922 was the year that College Club Beverages (the company that makes Fiz) opened its soda streams. That makes more sense. Since I couldn't find any info, I'm guessing that ginger ale was one of, if not the first flavor they produced.

This is a nice little soda. It's sweet, but not in the “this is 99% sugar water and 1% flavor” way. It tastes like a fairly standard modern ginger ale. You don't actually taste the earthiness of the root, or the spice, but there is no mistaking that it's ginger ale.

I want someone to pull a prank on me. I want to order a nice cold lemonade and have one of my friends slip this shot into the mix. They will smile as they hand me the glass, stifling a giggle, but the joke will actually be on them because this could do nothing but improve any lemonade. Normally I'm not a huge fan of lemon (well except in perfect lemonade), it just seems like a boring flavor, but it always pairs perfectly with ginger, and boy oh boy is this some ginger. This is the most intense of the shots that we were sent. The sourness of the lemon somehow enhances the burn and I can't take a sip without making a ridiculous face, and I love every second of it. It is so, so sour. I'm making that cartoon puckered lip face that you see on lemon products that don't actually do that to you. This does it. This makes you pucker. I want to give this to Mike's soon and see how he responds. He'll probably hate me. Eh You win some you lose some.

Carl, why did you give me this fire in a bottle? What did I. What did I. What did I do to deserve this? It's like drinking citrus flavored lava. I don't know if there was orange but it was citrus. If I had a straight ginger and drank this side by side I might be able to confirm that it's orange flavored but the burn is just so intense that the flavor is lost. It's not bad at all, though. I appreciate your gratuity in burning off my taste buds but I still don't know why people drink this. Is it energizing? Is it good for my insides? Why did I just subject myself to this self-torture? Fun? Carl. Carl. Baby. Don't do that to me. I've had a long day. You know what? I do like it. Would I drink it again? We'll see if I'm given the opportunity but as much as I'd like to give your tongue an Indian burn, which might be racist at this point, I appreciate you giving this bottled up ending scene from Terminator 2.

Around two o'clock today I started sneezing. By 4 o'clock my nose was stuffy. Come 6 o'clock I started to feel really weak. My question is who gets sick in August when it's 90+ degrees out? Apparently this guy right here, and it couldn't come at a worse time. In order to combat this illness I drank one of these Ginger Shots and I will probably drink a handful more over the next 24 hours. The way the ginger in these feels makes me think that it could destroy anything unhealthy in the body. I'm probably wrong, but I'll let the placebo effect run its course.
Out of all of the ones I've tried this one has the most non-ginger flavor to it. The apple in this is very pleasant and its flavor isn't completely decimated once the ginger takes over. They interweave with each other and I absolutely love it. The ginger still has a ridiculous burn that isn't for the faint of heart, but there is more flavor to this one than the others. Dare I say that this is perfection?

Let's face the facts. There is no one out there who is going to think that these shots are “just okay.” People are either going to love them or hate them and the decisive element is the intense burn from the ginger. Oh, that wonderful burn. It places me clearly on the “love it” side of the coin.

To be fair the additional flavors make up at best 10% of what is going on in these tiny bottles. The vast majority of the flavor is the ginger. With this one you get a little sweet pomegranate taste up front but it is quickly decimated by that ginger that I love and cherish. It makes me feel as if there is any illness lingering in my body that it doesn't stand a chance against this beverage. If live were a videogame this would be the elixir that returned some of your hearts so you could keep adventuring.

Holy burn.

I don't know who or what this is for but man this is hot. This is like, "this is going to hurt later" type hot. This is the hot that you are worried about when you eat Buffalo [slash] hot wings and then feel that "thing" in your stomach. I think ginger is supposed to make your stomach feel better so that might not happen. There is kiwi but it's so low in the mix that you can hardly tell it's there. Like a girl that dresses up for a party that like a thousand other people go to that it's just so congested she's wildly underappreciated. It's a little fruity, don't get me wrong, but I can't really tell that it was specifically kiwi.

You know what it is, though? Hot as balls, man. If this was a review for an eBay purchase, I would say "A+. Would drink again."

Purity is a company that I have grown to know and love. Their juices are of high quality without putting a huge dent in your pocket book. I'm currently in San Francisco recording a couple of songs at Tiny Telephone and I took a walk to the Mission for burritos and refreshments and my guys grew huge when I saw this bottle. I'm talking cartoon wolf ogling an attractive woman huge. In my head even the "ha-wooga" sound happened.

When I got back to the studio I cracked this open and my first thought was "Wow this is kind of week." The mate flavor is hardly there and it kind of tastes like a watery grapefruit juice with a touch of ginger in it. I had expected to be blasted with a strong bitter mate flavor and have the other flavors there to round it out. The more I drank it the more I grew to enjoy it though. It is tame, but every drink doesn't need to be in your face. There is nothing wrong with this beverage at all. The grapefruit and ginger tastes are very authentic, because it is made with organic juice. I do wish the mate was stronger. If it were this would get high marks. As it is it leaves a bit to be desired, but it is still very enjoyable. I'm just a boy with high expectations.

This is the liquid equivalent of walking up to a roulette table placing down most of your stack on 13 black. You watch that wheel spin and the ball is going around and around. It starts slowing down and you can't believe your eyes it looks like you are going to win and win big. At the last moment it pops out and plops into 36 red. Sure you played a safe bet and also put down a little money on the last row of 2:1 odds, but the big money is gone. It's not a horrible loss, you came out okay, but it had such potential to be life changing.

This is simply brewed green tea with matcha and ginger root in it. No sugar and no other extraneous additives. It should be wonderful in its simplicity. It tastes like tea. It tastes like real ginger. It's good. If you brewed this at home you wouldn't think twice about it, but there's something just a little off that makes you question if it is worth purchasing. That thing is it's a little on the watery side, which leads to it being a bit weak. I like my green tea strong and prominent. This is like beginners green tea. It's as if there is extra water in it to act as training wheels for those not used to the wonderfully strong bitterness that it usually has. Metaphors and similes aside, this is enjoyable, but it could be amazing and it just slightly missed that mark.

Do you remember the Lightning Seeds song “Pure”? Chances are you have no idea what I'm talking about. They were a band from the early 90's that sounded more like they should have been from the 80's. The main guy was in Big In Japan and produced some Echo & the Bunnymen records. Now that you have had your music lesson for the day that you didn't ask for and couldn't care less about, I will tell you my reasons for bringing them up. If I were Love Beets and for some unknown reason I decided that the masses were ready to accept beets in a big way, and a commercial was on the horizon, I would most definitely use Pure as the background music. It's slower, yet upbeat and it would work perfect with slow motion footage of people hanging out and drinking beet juice in various scenarios. The song just popped in my head when I was drinking this, and it's probably because of the line “Pure and simple every time.” You see the only ingredients in this beverage are beet juice, ginger juice and lemon juice concentrate (as a natural stabilizer). Lover Beets surely is both simple and pure and on top of that it's delicious.'

It has the sweet earthy flavor of beets as that is what makes up 93% of the juice. The thing is that in the aftertaste where beet juice generally gets a really almost dirt taste, the ginger steps in and covers that up nearly completely. It also gives it a nice little burn, but nothing too intense. There's really not much else to say about this as it really is a simple beverage that is the sum of its parts in the best way. As for Lightning Seeds, I'll forgive them for ripping off New Order for the solo in Pure. I mean it's a great guitar line in both songs.

Our boy Marvo from The Impulsive Buy found something that we needed and it was this soda. I was at the store and thought I'd grace the shelves with my presence as I tend to do every time I got to a store and found it. I didn't know that it was going to be there. I thought Jay and I were going to have to take a twenty minute pilgrimage to Canada and buy it there but nope. We did not. I found it five minutes from my house which is convenience because it is absolutely incredible.

The cola tastes like Pepsi but it has cane sugar and yes, there is a noticeable difference. The ginger, oh the ginger. The ginger is sharp and hot. Dare I say too strong for some people which is right where Jay and I like it. We like our ginger to be dangerous and alienating. We like our ginger like a masochistic. This is right there. This is great because it tastes the way that it should. Nothing is held back and everything shines.

Find it. Drink it. Pepsi? I've probably said some terrible things about you in the past that I will not apologize for but this? You deserve a pat on the back because you nailed it. I can't wait to get more.

Lipton released its Pure Leaf line as a higher quality, real tea iced tea a few years ago. It started off as Lipton's Pure Leaf and now it's just Pure Leaf with the name Lipton only appearing in the small print on the back. Now they have taken things in an even fancier direction by having Pure Leaf hasa sub-line called the Tea House Collection.

This is organic green tea that has had apple and ginger brewed right into it. This is the way tea should be. It's not garbage tea that has had some sort of flavoring added to it, such as syrup, like a lot of companies do. When you brew all of the organic material together it tastes real and that is what this is. I wish more companies thought this way. I would happily pay a little more for a quality product like this instead of a can of something that makes my teeth feel like they are rotting.


As with most drinks I would have preferred a stronger showing from the ginger, but it's still there in taste if not burn. The Fuji apple is fairly strong. It kind of taste like I'm eating an apple that someone has shot with a syringe full of green tea. Just imagine biting into that juicy beast. That would be great, messy but great. Save on the cleanup time and get yourself a bottle of this. I defy you to find a more naturally tasting mass produced tea.

This drink should come with a rabbit and a top hat, because it is a magic trick. Frisa makes nothing but quality beverages, but I did not know that they also were practitioners of the dark arts. You seem confused, so let me explain. When you pen this bottle you are greeted with the most wonderful ginger scent. Just the smell alone you know you are in for a treat, as if the fancy looking bottle wasn't enough to inform you. So you pour yourself a nice glass and get ready for the ride of your life. You take a sip and you know you were right, this is fantastic. It is a perfect blend of ginger and hibiscus with a little lemon thrown in. There is no burn from the ginger at all, but it tastes so good that you can't bring yourself to care in the least. Then you swallow and a look of befuddlement passes over your face. What happened to the flavor? You take another sip and the greatness is back, but yet again as soon as you swallow it is gone. There must be some enchantment on this sparkling beverage because the instant it is swallowed all trace of it is pretty much gone from your taste buds. I don't know how it works, but I guess that is part of the trick. I tried to let it sit in my mouth for a while and the flavor stayed as long as I kept it in there, but as soon as I swallowed it was gone. I've never had a beverage do this before. It's like someone invited David Blaine to a party in my mouth and didn't inform me. I can get over the strangeness though as it just tastes so damn good while it's still on my tongue.

I know there is a whole culture out there of people into infantilism (grown people pretending to be babies) and while I don't think they were the intended target audience for this beverage I'm guessing that they are responsible for a good portion of Plum Vida sales.

If this juice came in a bottle I feel like I would be writing a glowing review here, minus the fact that I think they went a little heavy on the pear, but it coming in this pouch just makes me think that I'm savaging for food and they only thing I could find was baby food. I'm sure there is a reason they chose this packaging, probably something environmental as everything in here is organic and it is BPA free. I just keep imaging a room of grown men, hairy sweaty grown men, sitting around in diapers and bonnets just slurping away at this juice. I'm not judging, it's just what comes to mind.

Never mind my fever dreams for the moment and let's discus taste. Serve this to me in a glass and switch out that pear puree for boring old apple and you've got my attention. This is cherry, raspberry and beet juice with a bit of ginger in the mix All four of those flavors are present and very accounted for, so I have no complaints (well seriously I'm just not a fan of pear, can we swap it out?) I'm not exaggerating when I say that if a glass of this was served to me at a juice bar I wouldn't think twice about paying $5 for it. Seeing as these are about $1 each that is pretty astounding.

Is it fair to judge this beverage against other ginger beers when it is meant to be a mixer? I mean it's pretty much just regular old ginger beer with a different marketing scheme behind it. Stoli is a Russian vodka company that is trying to sell the “Moscow Mule” with this beverage. If you don't know (like I didn't) that is vodka, ginger beer and lime juice mixed. Alcoholics prefer vodka when they are trying to be sneaky right? I think I remember that from some television show. I think it had something to do with it not making your breath smell. Either way, if you're going to be a sneaky alcoholic you might as well get some good flavor out of it and a Moscow Mule sounds like it would be delicious, minus the whole vodka thing (I will never understand the allure of the taste of alcohol).

The thing is that I don't think this stands up to other ginger beers. It has a nice ginger flavor, but only the most minimal of burns, which if we're being honest is one of the best parts of this specific soda type. There is also something in it that at first I thought was a zero calorie sweetener, but then realized it was salt. I don't know why it's in here as it has no place in soda. Perhaps it's part of the Mule mix, but if that were the case why wouldn't this be lime ginger beer? Speaking of, now I really want a bottle of that. It sounds delicious. The sale though…€¦yeah it's a bit distracting.

This is good on its own, but not in regards to other ginger beers. I'm sure it would work just perfectly for its intended mixer function. I will never find out though.

We live in a world where there is a bear in New Jersey that just walks around erect on its hind legs all of the time. It's not someone in a costume; it's just the coolest bear ever. It's just a matter of time until more bears adopt this mode of conveyance and that will most certainly lead to bears riding skateboards, as seen on this can. This portrayal of our furry friend is the peak coolness that any bear could hope to achieve. It makes sense that it should adorn the can of one of the best ginger beers I have tasted in a long time.

Now I love a good burn in my ginger beer, which you may know as I never shut up about it. This soda has somehow surpassed that love of mine. There is definitely some heat to this drink, but it's more on the mild side and it does not overpower the actual delicious flavor of this soda. There is a ridiculous amount of ginger flavor in here with some burn at the end. It's very, very good and the kicker is that this is “cheap” soda in Scotland. The cans are like 40p each. If I lived there it wouldn't just be the deep fried everything that would make me fat.

Just Chill has been good to us. They have sent us samples several times, and when they have they have sent a lot of them and we appreciate that. Here at Thirsty Dudes we are not to be bought though, just ask Mountain Dew about the time they sent us a care package with the samples of their Kickstart line before they hit the market. The same can be seen in our first Just Chill review. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't great either. It was a perfectly serviceable middle of the road beverage and because of that it got a 3/5 bottle rating.
I'm pretty sure they accidently sent our samples to us twice because I got two identical packages with a whole lot of beverages in each. It's no secret that I am a sucker for ginger flavored drinks, but the mountain of cans staring at me that clearly state that they are zero calories had me a bit standoffish. I can handle stevia and in moderation it's just fine, but thinking of so many ounces of it just waiting for me was intimidating. I let a can chill (get it) in the fridge for a while and then cracked it open for a nice relaxing night on the couch with a movie.

There are two important things to acknowledge at this point.

First, this is a relaxation beverage, but it did not put me to sleep and that is the way I feel these things should work. I have no doubt that has I went to bed shortly after drinking this I would have been fast asleep in no time at all, but I appreciate that it allows me to stay awake in a calmer state. I've had a handful of other drinks of this variety and most of them just make me sleepy. This one still allowed me to function and that is great.

Second, ginger reigns supreme. Zero calorie sweeteners are no match for a healthy dose of ginger. Think of the perfect ginger ale, with just a hint of a burn, and then up the ginger flavor a bit more and you have this drink. If I were to place a wager I would put my money on 95% of the stevia flavor is masked by the ginger. Only the faintest hint of it remains.

You may not be able to buy our opinions at Thirsty Dudes, but I am very grateful to have a stack of these on hand to drink at my leisure.

Everyone knows that wolves howl at the moon. What we don't know is why they do it. Sure there's some magic with a full moon that transforms human into beast and inspires wonderful movies, such as Ginger Snaps, but what else is there. I submit is that while in the moonlight (were)wolves can get a clear view of their paws and are reminded that they simply do not have any ginger beer to drink and they howl out of frustration. I know I would do the same in that situation. The bottle also tells me of a legend that an elixir brewed with ginger and steeped for a fortnight can bring on the change from man to wolf. I don't know if ginger has the same effect as a full moon, but it is certainly delicious. Actually I'm going to say it doesn't work. I've drunk enough ginger brews in my life and have never changed form. Maybe the steeping time was off, but yeah I'm calling poppycock.

This ginger beer may not cause a change, but it does make my taste buds happy. It's made with natural ginger flavor and hot pepper extracts so it has a nice burn to it. It's not too out of control, but it's more than I had expected from a beverage made by Orca. Along with that burn is also a nice sweetened ginger flavor. This is actually what I look for in a ginger beer. It walks the line between burn and taste without falling off of the tightrope. I wonder is being part wolf helped with that balance.

At our show in Atlanta I went on an adventure with fellow soda enthusiast/bassist Dakota Floyd to find the elusive Brood Soda. We walked about a mile through somewhat rain to get to the store only to find that they no longer carry it. Luckily it wasn't a complete bust and I stumbled upon this beverage. I was bummed that they didn't have Brood, and I wasn't even looking forward to this, but was it ever a treat. It ended up being the best thing I have drank in quite some time.

This is a watermelon agua fresca that actually tastes like watermelon and not a gross fake candy. It's really smooth, but the flavor is so perfect and specific that it tricks my mouth into thinking that I can make out the texture of perfectly wipe watermelon (aka the only time that this specific fruit it truly great). The ginger and lime are there, but not as strong and merely serve to make the watermelon shine more brightly. The lime gets stronger in the aftertaste, but it never overpowers the melon. This is the perfect beverage for hot humid weather. Califia Farms has transitioned from coffee drinks into wonderful juice.