Juice - 935 Reviews

Mike is always complaining about reviewing apple juice. You see unless it's the one out of a thousand times that it's something out of the ordinary and exception, or complete garbage, all apple juices pretty much taste the same. I find that strange because there are so many different types of apples out there with such an array of flavors, that I can't imagine every company uses the same type. I would expect each company to have their slightly unique version of apple juice, yet the all taste the same. Perhaps the problem is that they all mix the various apple types and the result is the standard. I guess I'm okay with that. There are types of apples that I'm not really a fan of, but I can never remember which is which. This way I don't have to worry about buying a juice that tastes like the “bad apples.”

Welch's you've done nothing new, or spectacular, here, but that's fine. You've perpetuated the standard and I enjoyed it. I just don't understand why you ship in your apple juice concentrate from China, Chile and Argentina when your company is based out of the North East which is ripe with apple orchards.

I'm going to make some enemies with this statement, but I don't care: I don't like cranberries. It's true, I've always hated cranberry sauce at Thanksgiving and most cranberry juice/drinks I've had are just gross. That was until I had this soda.

Now I'm not saying "I LOVE CRANBERRY" now. I'm just saying that this is the best cranberry drink I've ever had. That being said, I'm still not crazy about it. It's nice that it's naturally sweetened (no real or fake sugar), and yet still tastes sweet. The cranberry taste is strong yet not overpowering like straight cranberry juice.

It's summer. According to Yo, Gabba Gabba, summer is when it's hot outside and the grass is long. The first part I couldn't agree with more but the latter? I hardly mow my lawn in the summer. Not because I'm lazy, which I tend to be, but it's because the sun is beating down on my poor lawn, turning it to veritable hay. Pomegranates are like summer gold, though. That's a bad analogy. Pomegranates are like winter hot dogs. Wait...that doesn't work either. Sometimes you want sometime but can't get until it's available and then you don't want it...I suppose I can just say that. It's not as much fun, but it's what's going to happen.

So here we have it, a bottled pomegranate. It's fizzy, unlike the original pomegranate, but it's got that bite you like which is cut by juice provided by apples, grapes, pineapples, and cranberries. All those fruits, regardless of quantity don't really detract from the flavor of the pomegranate, which is great.

No messy hands from extracting dozens of arils. No added sugar. No muss. No full. Pomegranates in the summer that aren't small or gross. Out-of-season fruit is nothing if it isn't terribly disappointing. This is your exception to the rule.

Kristall makes nothing but quality fruit sodas. I have loved every flavor of theirs that I have tried, and this one continues their streak of awesomeness. I was at a backyard going away party today and I drank way more pop than I normally do. I also ate nothing but chips and salsa all day (it's my curse) and now my stomach regrets it. This was my ladyfriend's drink of choice for the day, and she was kind enough to share it with me. We drank it early on in the party, so my taste buds were fresh and my stomach wasn't bloated. Lucky me.

Let's face it, 7Up and Sprite don't really taste anything like lemons or limes. Maybe there is a slight hint, but if you squeezed the juices from those two fruits, added them to some sparkling water and then mixed in a bunch of sugar it would not taste anything like those brands. Just ask Mitch Hedberg. That mixture would taste very similar to what is in this bottle. Kristall was able to capture with essence of those citrus fruits without the sourness. Good job guys.

Tommy goes to the tropics often. Ever since he saw that scene in Dumb and Dumber where the Hawaiian Tropics girls drive by in the bus, he knew that's where he wanted to visit. The "lady count" wasn't as high as he liked it but the weather and scenery was gorgeous so he doesn't complain. He travels there a few times a month and the locals have begun to recognize him and charge him a non-tourist rate on things like groceries and essentials.

Graduating from tourist to pre-local, he decided to celebrate by going to a local, non-franchise coffee shop that advertises that they harvest all their own stuff down to having a nearby coffee orchard, and roasting and brewing their own coffee beans. Tommy walked in and being the non-coffee drinker he was, he ordered a Very Berry Hibiscus juice. A couple minutes later he got an ice-cold glass with a sweet smelling nectar inside. He knew he had gone to the right place. He took one sip and loved it. It was lightly berry but still had a solid hibiscus flavor. It was advertised as sweetened with cane sugar and a Stevia sweetener.

He asked the waitress if they made it there and she leaned down and whispered in his ear that it was just a Starbucks powdered drink and that she told him because she knew he wasn't a local anymore. He lost a little bit of respect since they apparently are not all locally made items but he still went back since they didn't treat him like a filthy tourist.

As my hand touched this can at the store, an associate who appeared out of nowhere told me that she loved it. Now I buy a lot of drinks and most times I can get in and out without someone's opinion. That's not to say that I don't want it. Why would I do this if I didn't want to hear what people think about drinks? Now I've got an opinion of a drink and, come on, fruit punch? It's all the same unless it's from an exception company. Tradewinds is on the top-end of average companies. Their sweet tea is pretty good but I haven't had any of their "Tropicals" line. Now I have and can tell you that this fruit punch blows.

As I said, most fruit punch is the same. This is not and not in a good way. Reading the ingredients, it's all natural stuff except for the sucralose which you can taste even though it's way down on the list of ingredients and isn't the primary sweetener. It tastes like you mixed a bad fruit punch in with some sort of cherry juice. If you want a diet, fruity, cherry drink, I've got some left over in this can that is split with someone else because I couldn't take any more of it. You can get it from me for a limited time since I will be tossing it, unfinished, into the bin. Like that? It's very British of me to call it a "bin." I'm classier than you can imagine. Too classy to drink this swill.

I currently have a sore throat and I was hoping that by drinking this it would help. I remembered last time I had a chia seed drink, it felt like it was massaging my throat as the slimy little things slid down. While it does indeed still do this, it didn't give the desired relief from pain that I was expecting.

Drinking this is weird because since there are so many seeds, you feel like you have to chew on them before swallowing. I have been trying for 5 minutes now and they just slide out from under my teeth anytime I try to chew. Now I'm thinking about all these seeds I'm ingesting and irrational worrying about that urban legend about swallowing seeds and plants growing inside you.

"We did an x-ray and we found a full size Chia Pet in your stomach". That would probably get me on the cover of Weekly World News, or at least #4 on a blog article titled "10 of the weirdest things found inside a person's stomach".

I was expecting this to have more of a mint taste. Maybe they forgot to mix it in, because all I taste is pomegranate. I love pomegranate, but I was excited to see what pomegranate mint would taste like. Maybe I should drop a 'wint-o-green' Lifesaver inside to see. Rats, I don't have any.

When I moved back to Buffalo for 10 months, the number one complaint I got from fellow reviewer Jason was that I didn't review more Hotlips soda while I lived in Portland. You'd think I passed up a chance to see a one-off Fugazi reunion by the consistency that he would bring it up. If he were my father, he might have disowned me, or at least cut off my allowance for a couple weeks.

So now I'm back in Portland where Hotlips soda can be found everywhere. For those who are not familiar with it, Hotlips is a Portland, Oregon based chain of pizza shops that also make their own soda. They are available on tap and bottled at various grocery stores around the greater Portland area. The great thing about Hotlips soda is that it's made with real fruit, something I didn't appreciate the first time I had one. It only contains whole ingredients, no gross chemicals or filler. People's biggest complaint with Hotlips is their soda is VERY lightly carbonated, so little that sometimes it seems like it's not at all. While it was off putting at first to me, I've grown to like it. Now don't get me wrong, I love carbonated soda, I just think of this as it's own thing and try not to compare it to traditional soda as far as the carbonation goes.

Now to this flavor, black raspberry. It's one of my favorite fruits so I might be biased, but I think it's delicious. Like most flavors, there are little chunks of berry in it that make the drink. If this weren't so expensive, I would probably drink these all the time.

There are certainly apples in this can. No doubt about that. They at one time might have been great apples, too. The cream of the crop. Then science and nutrition and kids had to come into the equation and mess it all up like they always do. Have you ever had a pure apple juice that was too sweet? Nope. Mother Nature has bred apple juice to be just right all the time. Now you take a drink like this which is essentially apple juice with sugar in it, somehow manage to sell it as an energy drink when everyone knows that sugar is not really "energy" as it is a temporary shot in the arm, and market it as such. You can taste the green apples and you are excited. Then follows the first quasi-offensive, more bittering Stevia taste I've ever had and unnecessary carbonation. What was wrong with apple juice that you had to do this to it? Nestle, you should be ashamed of yourself. You ruined a good thing.

Sometimes you wake up in the morning and you realize, "Holy crap I'm at the Grand Canyon." Okay, by sometimes I mean once in my life, and by once I mean this morning. I've been waiting to come to the Grand Canyon basically my whole life. I'm an outdoor kid and my favorite place in the world is Letchworth State Park aka the Grand Canyon of the East. Finally I was at the real thing and it melted my brain. I knew it was big, but it was the most expansive thing I have ever seen. Seriously my brains started to leak out of my ears and nose. I think I need to see a specialist.

The thing about the Grand Canyon that you don't think about is that there is nothing really around it, so food is super expensive. I knew I needed to keep up my energy, and seeing as I'm sure as hell not eating at McDonalds (no matter what Mike says) it was either burritos or buying a loaf of bread and peanut butter (the combination of the two which ran me $10). I also picked up this bottle of Odwalla to give me a little pick me up. It was a wise choice. The majority of the flavor came from the oranges, mango and peach in it, but it was the plum that really rounded things out. On a "vacation" where I have been eating fairly terribly it was welcomed to consume something that tasted and actually was good for you. I ate some peanut butter sandwiches, pounded this bottle of juice and then started hiking into the canyon. We made it to the first rest house (1.5 miles) before a lightning storm made us turn back. While I loved the canyon I had no interest in getting burnt to a crisp by natural electricity on the sides of it's walls.

Can I let you in on a secret? I love grocery stores. I find them comforting to walk around. I really love going into grocery stores in other cities to see how they compare to the ones back home. Yesterday we drove back from the awesomeness of the Grand Canyon to the wretchedness of Las Vegas. On the way we stopped off in Kingman, AZ for dinner. We also hit up a grocery store, and for a fairly small dessert town this store was packed. Their drink selection was one of the best I have ever seen in a grocery store outside of Whole Foods. On top of that almost all of it was on sale. Who can argue with Sobe for $.88? How could I argue with an $.88 Sobe that we haven't reviewed yet, and that I've never seen back home?

I thought this drink would be nice for the morning since orange and carrot juice are the 2nd and 3rd ingredients. I should have read the label more, because it turns out it only contains 9% juice. As a result it tastes more like a drink than a juice, and "drinks" are simply not fit for just waking up. I don't want to wake up to 56 grams of added sugar. I want to be in a waking dream of freshly squeezed juice at every turn. Instead I'm stuck with this that has that flavor that is distinct to Sobe drinks. It's definitely more orange than carrot. Actually, it's one of those drinks that if someone poured you a glass and didn't say what it was you would never suspect there to be carrots in it. I mean who ever suspects carrots? Well I guess shepherds pie would.

This is basically the standard that all other apple juice is compared to. I'm sure it's not the original, but it might as well be. Motts reigned supreme in the 80's with their juice and applesauce, and it will always be the standard to me.

We don't get around to reviewing too many large bottle juices. There are so many drinks out there for us to review, that it sometimes seems wasteful to drink the same thing more than once, even if it is different servings from the same bottle. In reality I drink mostly water or unsweetened iced tea that I brew. With all of the sugar that I intake doing reviews I try not to drink too many sweetened drinks for pleasure and refreshment if we have already reviewed them. Taking all of that into consideration I felt I had no choice but to buy this juice when I saw it sitting on the shelf. I love apple juice. Who doesn't? I don't think I could trust someone who told me they didn't like apple juice. They would have to be lying. So there we have it a fairly generic base, that you can't really alter much, but that I love. On top of that you mix in some passionfruit and mango juices and you have an instant party in a bottle. I've never tried anything to do with mango that I didn't like, and you obviously can never go wrong with passionfruit. The result of mixing this holy alliance is a fruit punch like you have never tasted. My initial thought was that they all blended together into one new flavor, but then I realized that if you swished it around in your mouth waves of each flavor rolled over your taste buds. Once you swallow the aftertaste is distinctly apple juice.

My only real complaint about the drink is that the bottle says that it is “naturally sweetened,” which led me to believe that it was sweetened by the fruit juice. It seems Old Orchard tried to pull a fast one on us. You see while they are still natural sweeteners they did add cane or beet sugar and stevia. The result is that there are 21g of sugar in an 8oz serving. It's my humble opinion that the drink would have tasted fine, if not better with no additional sweeteners added, or at the very least have the amount of sugar added cut down. The flavors of the fruit juices would have been enhanced even more, and I wouldn't have to feel guilty about downing half the bottle in a sitting. God I'm a glutton.

I dare you…€¦I double dog dare you…€¦I triple dog dare you to find me a better orange juice that is not made fresh in front of you. This is just orange juice and mango puree mixed together and poured into a bottle. It's all juice, and it's not cheap juice either. It's nothing if not high quality. Orange juice is great, but mango juice is better, so what better way to improve your orange juice than to mix in some of that great mango juice? There really is no other way to improve it that I know of. Mango and orange blend together so well.

I noticed that you didn't take me up on my dare. You're a baby. That's right a weak little baby. Don't you know the rules? You can't back down from a triple dog dare. Now get out there and try to find me a better orange juice!

So I reviewed this a few weeks ago, and Honeydrop emailed us to let us know that they reworked the recipe and they think we will like it a lot more. They were right. They reduced the amount of honey in the drink, so you really taste the blueberry now. It still tastes like honey as well, but it's not so overpowering. They also took out the erythritol and use stevia instead. They said it helps bring out the flavors. I can't taste it at all, so good job on that one. You guys have taken a really good drink and made it even better. Thanks.



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So honey is waste from bees, correct? Bees are just puking up honey for our consumption. I find it odd that I am way more okay with eating bee puke than I am with drinking milk (there's a completely disgusting food). Okay so does all honey taste the same, or is it flavored by what the bee eats/what time of plant they get their pollen from? I'd like to think that if a bee got its pollen from some sort of fruit plant that the honey would have a hint of that fruit to it. Do fruit plants even produce pollen? Am I completely insane? I guess we will never know because the bees aren't talking no matter what sort of interrogation we put them through. All I know is that I want guava honey. That is my dream, and I would like for someone to turn it into a reality. Bees, I'm looking in your direction.

Until the bees find out a way to make me some fruit honey, the best we can do is to sweeten some fruit juice with copious amounts of honey. Honeydrop has been put in charge of that. Their drinks really, really smell like honey. They taste like it too, which can be pretty neat, but sometimes it's a bit too much. I would like a little more blueberry and a little less honey in this drink. It's really more honey than juice. It tastes like there is enough honey in this drink to put me into a diabetic coma, and I don't even have diabetes yet. The consistency of the drink is even thick due to the high concentrate of honey.

The thing that boggles me the most about this is that it is sweetened with honey, yet they also felt the need to add erythritol. Whosever idea that was, you're fired, for adding a completely unnecessary ingredient. All this needs to be is blueberry juice and honey (in proper percentages), and I would be perfectly content.

Alright, we're all set. All of the presents are wrapped and waiting in the car. We can pick up the ice cream cake on the way. That's everything right? Okay let's get in the car and head over…€¦..oh no! We forgot to make the punch for Sally's birthday party! Her mother was very specific that I was too make the punch. She's going to be so pissed at me. Ugh, the party is going to be ruined…€¦unless...yes that's it! Every down stairs to the deli!

Okay how much fruit do we have laying around? Well that is a lot of variety of fruit (an apple, pineapple, half a lime, a little guava, some mango, orange, a banana, apricot and one passionfruit), but there is not enough of the fruit to make more than a quart of juice. It looks like we're going to have to spread it out with some veggies. Okay grab some cucumber, spinach, carrots, beetroot, green pepper and celery. No Jimmy! Oh man why did you throw in an onion and some sauerkraut! That is going to be completely disgusting! Whatever it's too late now we need to bring this punch to the party. Blend it up!

Wow that really is green isn't it? It looks almost nuclear. It's so bright green. I can't get over it. It also doesn't smell bad at all either. Hopefully the taste is half of what the smell is. That way I think we'll be okay. Wow! This is seriously good. Not like, this is passable good, but this is so good that I wish we had written the quantities down so that I could make it again. You don't really taste the veggies at all. It tastes like apple and orange juice missed together with a pinch of passionfruit and a bit of cucumber. Even though we didn't add any sugar it's very sweet and refreshing. The kids at this party are going to love this, especially because of the color. We are going to be the hit of the party. No one mention what is in it! Jimmy, especially don't mention your blunder!

Barry, stop our crying. You know that every time you get eat ice cream you get distracted by something else and then it melts. Of course you then get upset and the crying and yelling starts. I'm sick of it. I don't care that you've been diagnosed with ADHD, you're just a big baby. If this keeps happening I hear the coach is going to stop inviting to you to get ice cream after our baseball games. Imagine that, life without ice cream from mini plastic baseball helmets. Well at least you didn't have a cone, so you can still spoon up the melted mess. By the way, who the hell gets berry ice cream? In a world of chocolate, peanut butter and mint, who chooses berry? You're not going to eat your melt? Well it looks like you really are a baby. Give it to me, I'll eat it you wasteful baby!

This tastes a lot like the drink my sister always has in the fridge. She's a vegan, so she always has weird stuff in there. Yeah this definitely tastes like that protein drink she always has, and always yells at me for drinking. I always sneak some because it reminds me of melted ice cream. Well, I guess melted “soy cream.” Basically it's a bunch of berry juice mixed with soymilk with some plant-based protein added. It's basically like a berry creamsicle. My sister always boasts that it doesn't taste chalky like other protein drinks, since there is no whey in it. Whatever it tastes good so I drink it, and she yells at me.

You really are a baby Barry. You're just lucky that you always hit homeruns. How did such a baby get so good at baseball?

Boy Scouts are trained for weeks to find specific berries. Which ones are poisonous and which ones are safe to eat. Badges are given out to scouts all around the nation who can tell the difference between the two. It's a crucial skill to people who spend any amount of time in the wilderness and don't always have the luxury of a grocery store that sells consistently nonpoisonous berries.

Grapes? Anyone can pick a grape. We've all seen green and purple grapes and can pick them. We don't need Boy Scouts for grapes, thank you very much.

We do need them to mix these two berries together. Anyone who says that the Boy Scouts do not have worth in today's society is full of nonsense. It's more important than ever because juice has to be made. Good juice. Quality juice. Quality juice such as this. This is a wonderful split between nonpoisonous blackberries and grapes. It's good. It's strong. It's sweet. It's juice. It's the type of juice that reminds you of the juice that used to be. Remember good juice? No, you don't, because companies have stopped making it. No, not all companies, but a lot of companies. It's not every day that you can get a blackberry juice. Grape is old hat. It's good, but you've had it. Everyone has had it. Blackberry is the main character, the protagonist. Grape is the supporting role. It's fine. Everyone is fine with the casting. The Boy Scouts are still a necessary organization, and the Girl Scouts aren't forgotten since they still sell Thin Mints. Everyone and everything is fine. This drink helps make it all possible.

Margarittaville? That place is for suckers. Pinacoladaberg? Only if you're looking to get murdered. When I plan my tropical getaways I book a one-way ticket to Organicville. Specifically to the part of the resort called Orangeville. It's a little slice of heaven where they know how to party. Walking around all day with the sun shining down, but it's not overbearingly hot. The ocean, as terrifying as it is, is right there for you to enjoy. To top it all off there are trees bearing citrus fruit everywhere. All you have to do is reach up and pluck what you want from the branches. Now that is living.

On those times when my beverage-drinking schedule keeps me away from my little island paradise I make sure to have plenty of their soda on hand. You see they don't just take orange juice and add a little sugar and bubbles to it and call it a soda. They go the extra mile and add a bit of grapefruit juice to the mix, and what a difference it makes. It makes Orangina look like generic orange soda. It's light, not too sweet and full of citrus power. It has mostly an orange juice flavor, with just a little kick of grapefruit. It's all I could ever ask for in a citrus-based soda.

Now if you'll excuse me, my flight to Belgium is about to depart. I have a lead on some crucial drinks that I need to follow up on. Now that a mythical creature has devoured Mike I really need to step up my game.

Perry had decided to become a vegetarian a few months ago. He was still in high school, but he knew it was the right thing for him to do. He loved animals. He didn't want to eat them. Every time he thought about eating meat Gorilla Biscuits would pop into his head;
”Cats and dogs have all the luck.”

At first it was hard. His parents didn't think he was serious, so they wouldn't buy him special food. As a result he ended up eating a lot of the vegetable side dishes his mom made for dinners and a whole mess of peanut butter sandwiches. After a month, they saw that he was serious and started buying him veggie burgers and the like. His mother was also concerned that he wasn't going to get all of the vitamins and minerals that he needed out of his diet. She always went on and on about how he wasn't getting enough protein. She would buy him protein energy bars all the time. When Bolthouse came out with their Protein Plus line she took it as a sign and bought some for Perry. It's every mother's dream to have her kids drinking juice with no sugar added and with a whole mess of protein in it.

At first Perry was put off by it. The whey protein in the drink gave it an almost chalky consistency. It was unlike anything he had ever drunk before. It also kind of tasted like someone dumped a carton of heavy cream into some mango puree. It was like a chalky mango creamsicle. After he drank about half of the bottle Perry became acclimated to it. The fruit flavor started to shine through more and the dairy aspect of it faded into the background. It got to the point where he down right enjoyed the drink. When he was finished he was a bit upset and he couldn't wait until the next time his mom would go shopping. Even though he had learned online that the foods he was eating were giving him more than enough protein, he wasn't about to tell him mom that she was a big dummy. If she wanted to buy him fancy “candy bars” and juices who was he to complain?