Soda Pop - 1421 Reviews

I wonder if there is anyone who prefers generic, store brand cola. I've always seen it as a cheap alternative if you are on a budget or don't care that much about the taste. This Wegmans cola is no exception. It may not be the worst cola ever, but it's so bland and boring that I keep hoping to find something different about it while drinking this. Not bad, but not good.

When I was in college, Mountain Dew Code Red came out. I do not follow the chronological history of Mountain Dew and for that reason I will say that this was the first "side project" of Mountain Dew. I was never Mountain Dew's A+, #1 fan. This kid I knew, Stevebay, whose name was Steve and sold stuff on eBay, used to love original Dew. He was one of those kids that would "Do the Dew" by the bottle every day. He also found out that a department store across the street from where he worked was giving Pepsi Blue away for free when they took it off the market so he, without a car, took a taxi to the store where he loaded the trunk of the taxi with cases of the stuff. I never felt the love for anything the way he felt about Cap'n Dew.

More relative to my point of view, my friend Chris Williams said, which I still firmly believe, that you will never find an empty bottle of Code Red. There is always some left, as in people can't polish off a whole bottle/can. Case and point, I've got a 12-ounce can in front of me and I'm done.

Flavor? It's that classic Mountain Dew flavor with cherry. Simple, but the cherry develops this cough medicine taste rather than the candy cherry it has at the start. I don't know if it's a settling thing or what, but something happens about half of the way through that makes me just not want it anymore. I don't even feel bad about not drinking the rest of it.

This is a throwback to old friends that I loved hanging out with and living with, but it's also a throwback to a classic (at this point) drink that we haven't reviewed in over 1000 drinks. This stuff has been staring at us from the shelves for a long time and I wanted to let it know that it hasn't gone forgotten, much like my friends.

In our modern world full of so many natural and small company sodas made with real sugar it's rare that I will choose a "mainstream" soda. They generally lack an interesting flavor, and the HFCS wreaks havoc on my ulcer. When I was in a gas station the other day and I saw pineapple Crush for the first time I knew I needed to give it a try. Unlike other Crush flavors this actually has some fruit juice in it instead of just artificial flavors. It actually tastes like pineapple mixed in with that fruity syrup that you would expect. It's not the world's greatest soda, but it's better than most big name sodas.

This is a new flavor of Mountain Dew that is, like most new flavors, "limited edition". What this really means is they'll stop making it if no one likes it.

As far as Mountain Dew flavors go, this is my favorite. The combo of melon and strawberry is really great and refreshing. It has that normal aftertaste but it is not overwhelming. I for one hope this flavor sticks around and they get rid of Code Red.

First of all, "Squamscot" sounds disgusting. I don't want to say what it sounds like, but there's definitely an ointment or salve for it. Secondly, I had to get this pop. "Fruit Bowl?" What the heck is that? It's so generic and nondescript that it had to be purchased. Bowls of fruit, or fruit salad to layman, are not like BLT's. No, not the black kid from Degrassi, the sandwich, you dummy. What's in a BLT? There's bacon, Lettuce, and tomato. Done. No variation. What's in a fruit salad? Everyone's mom makes it differently. Apples, grapes, oranges, pineapples, gross pears, blueberries, and so on and so forth are merely some of the things you can put in there, but there is no law, like there is with BLT's. One thing that you don't put in fruit salad or fruit bowls are Sucrets. Yes. Sucrets, those little red lozenges that numb your throat that are ideal when you have a cough. This smells a little like watermelon, but it does not taste like it. It's a fun, red color, and kids would go wild, but as someone that should be an adult and clearly isn't, it's frightening.

Small sips are sharp, large sips are more subdued and the medicinal flavor comes in later. It's kind of a lose/lose scenario. It's like as if a cherry candy was crushed into powder and thrown into a cherry pop. Friends? Not for me.

I had no idea what this was going to taste like. I didn't think it was going to be like cola, but I was guessing maybe a ginger ale taste. I wasn't expecting this to taste like bubblegum. This really excited me when I smelled bubblegum because it's one of my favorite flavors of soda. This is different than other gum sodas I've had. To be specific, this tastes exactly like gumballs. Mary Liz thinks it tastes like white gumballs, which is why she doesn't like it much.

Not me though, I love this drink! It's not incredible, and some of my love for it might be due to the rash of horrible drinks I've had lately. Nevertheless, this is good and I look forward to finishing this bottle.

I hate fermented drinks. I have not been looking forward to trying this. But as a Thirsty Dude, I had to give this a try. Mary Liz says this tastes like a red wine spritzer. While I have never had one, I can only say that this is gross. This reminds me a lot of other fermented/barley sodas I've had in the past. I can't get into this at all. It taste dry and does not agree with my mouth.

The bottle says: "Cascal is made with fermented juices and fermented malt for a "grown-up" taste. In the words of Mary Liz, "Grown-up tastes means mildly disgusting". I agree 100%.

We found the warning on this bottle to be very amusing. "Warning: Contents under pressure. Cap may blow off causing eye or other serious injury. Point away from face and people especially while opening." Heeding that advice, I did not point this bottle at Mary Liz while opening it.

This is quite a refreshing soda. It's a really crisp, but light lemon-lime taste. Mary Liz says: when it first enters your mouth, it taste like a seltzer. After a few seconds, the sweetness kicks in and the lemon-lime taste shows itself. It's very lightly sweetened, so sugar fiends should stay away from this one.

I enlisted my friend Mary Liz to help me review some drinks today. We didn't know what to expect with this one, but since it has barley malt and hops in it we had a feeling it would taste like beer.

The smell, in a word, gross. It's really strong and sort of has a molasses hint to it. The taste isn't any better. Mary Liz says it tastes like rotting fruit and vegetable juice. I honestly can't figure out what it reminds me of, but it's too gross to drink anymore. It almost tastes like molasses that has been sitting out for a year. Mary Liz asked if we could give this drink a zero, but unfortunately we can't.

I had a less than stellar experience with this companies mango soda, but I decided to give them another chance. It's locally made in Hawaii, and the label design is pretty great. We were driving around late last night with the windows down and the music up. Seeing as we have yet to have anything close to a warm night in Buffalo, it was pretty spectacular. The combination of the vegetation, ocean and the lack of industry makes the air smell amazing around here.

I twisted off the cap on the soda took a sniff, and it smelled like strong vanilla. Things were looking up. First sip, not so bad. The second sip is where things started to fall apart. I don't know what it is with this company, but both flavors I've tried have this weird undertone flavor. The main taste is a fairly decent vanilla, but then that other strange flavor creeps in and holds the soda hostage. I don't know what sort of ransom he's looking for but I think we should pay it. If it wasn't for that flavor terrorist this could be a great soda.

When it's nice, you know it. When you live in an area that's nice for a limited time, you can't not know it. Today was one of those days. It was sunny. You could wear anything. Shorts, hoodies, dresses, pants, hat, anything. Awesome. Sans wind, I would want it to be like it is today for the rest of my life. Nothing says nice weather like hot dogs. It's a fact. Oh, vegetarian? Veggie dogs. There. Everyone is taken care of. To take care of your thirst, you might want to calm it down, though. When you enjoy your first hot dog of the nice weather you want to taste it. You don't want some uber-sweet drink messing up your palate when you want to taste that delicious dog. I opted to get the pale dry ginger ale from good ol' Shasta. Why is it that every time I think of "Shasta" I think of Roseanne? I don't know. Maybe they always had it. Maybe the production company got kickbacks from product placement of bottles of Shasta. I don't know how television works.

This was perfect for hot dogs. The pale, dryness came out in a subtle way. It was a thirst quencher, not something I would drink after I ate something gross and wanted to mask the taste in my mouth. Pop shouldn't be mouthwash. You know that, I know that, and clearly Shasta knows that. Good job, team.

This soda really surprised me. I was expecting this to be a ginger ale or lemon-lime type soda. Never in a million years did I expect this to taste like bubblegum. More specifically, Monet says it has a stale Bubbalicious flavor. I'm not a big gum connoisseur so I can't confirm or deny this statement. To me, it tastes like the gum you get in a pack of 1985 Topps baseball cards. It's not bad, it's actually kind addicting. The more I drink it, the more I want to drink. I wonder if there's a reason why they don't market this as a bubble gum soda.

It has a slight cough syrup smell. This kind of excited me because I have yet to review a drink that tasted like medicine. Sadly, the time for that is not now. It's really hard to identify the flavor of this. It kind of tastes like cream soda, mixed with a little weak ginger ale. It's not necessarily bad, but it's not phenomenal or memorable. As Monet says, it's strange enough to keep on drinking it. This is so true, but the more I drink it the less I'm able to identify a true taste to this.

This soda intrigued me because I had no idea what it was going to taste like. I have never drunk a soda with guarana in it before. I know it's a common ingredient in energy drinks, but I've never seen a guarana flavored drink before. Even though the good folks at Real Soda make this in the USA, they make it with the same ingredients as the traditional Brazil soda.

My thoughts? It's alright. I don't think it's anything special. It tastes like ginger ale without any ginger, or maybe a bland lemon-lime soda. It's not bad. It just has no personality to it at all. This is the Ann Veal of sodas. If I could add a caption under the photo, it would say, "not pictured".

Simpson Spring makes a good soda. They have yet to disappoint me. This orange soda was no exception. It's good, but not great. It reminds me a lot of San Pellegrino Aranciata, but with more sugar. It's a good simple orange soda that is definitely better than Crush and Sunkist. Also, I love the shade of orange this had. If I could, I'd give this a 5-bottle rating in the color category.

It's been a hard day is New Jersey. Your wife has been nagging you to quit your job at the pizza place, your kids have been getting in trouble at school and your Honda CRX needs new tires. I know!! Sure they're $30 a piece and you know a guy who can get them cheaper than that because they fell off a truck. Honestly, that guy must just drive behind trucks all day, ready to jump out at a moment's notice in case something falls off. I've never been behind a truck that dropped anything. My friend Ian once drove behind a truck and a rocking chair came out of the back and within a week, a sheet a drywall fell out and he said that it exploded. That must have been awesome. So you've had a hard day. You come home and...oh seriously...the cable is out? You thought you paid it? Yeah, they probably messed up, not you. So what's a boy to do? Open up that fridge baby and grab out some officially licensed product from your and my dad's favorite show, The Sopranos. It hits so close to home. You drove the same streets as those glorious gangsters. They've got family and you've got a family. You love the movie "The Godfather" and they do, too. Same wavelength.

This HBO created show which has won so many awards has created an equally award winning drink, and I wouldn't use that phrase lightly. Myself, not being one who drinks, doesn't know what actual Chianti tastes like, really enjoyed it. It's a light, fruity flavor and actually has less bite than most Italian soda. It was calm and cool, just like you when your spinning those pies. That's when you're at your best. Throwing pizza in the air with the greatest of ease is what makes you happy. You're good at it and you know it. Don't let your nagging wife or dumb kids let you forget it.

Given that the company who makes this soda is based out of Wyoming, they're really going after that "olde time western" feel. Judging by the label, I feel like I should be watching an old Clint Eastwood movie as I drink this. Sadly, I don't have a copy of The Outlaw Josey Wales (which is my favorite western of all time) so I'll have to do without it for this bottle.

By now, I've tried enough different ginger beers to be able to smell it and know how spicy it's going to be. This has a light ginger smell, so I knew it wasn't going to be too intense. With little sips, there's barely any burn. Big sips you get a nice burn, but it's not overwhelming. This would be a perfect entry-level ginger beer for someone who doesn't want to burn their throat just yet. What makes this ginger beer unique is the sweet after taste. It's not in the ingredients, but a brown sugar sweetness lingers a little after some sips. It's a really nice contrast to the ginger.

Dear Self,
I hate to be the one to break this to us, but we really just don't like the way ginseng tastes. Sure it's fine as a minor player in some drinks, but as soon as it steps into the limelight it all goes downhill. I know you're going to say it's not its fault. It's a root; of course it tastes like dirt. Then what about ginger? It's also a root and it's completely delicious. Ginseng is just a bad seed and I don't think we should hang out with it anymore.

Look what it did to this drink. It took a completely mediocre raspberry ginger ale and it made is associate (aka less than). It tastes like a run of the mill 2 liter of fruity ginger ale was strained through some dirt. What were they using it to pan for gold? Good luck with that.

Since Buffalo has apparently skipped three seasons and gone directly back into winter I thought it would be fitting to review a Xmas themed beverage. When I showed people this soda I was surprised that no one mentioned anything about it causing the drinker to go on a kissing spree. For that I'd like to thank my friends for not being as idiotic as myself, or at least to have the restraint to not say stupid things aloud.

Due to it being a season drink I expected this to have a bunch of spices in it, or to be minty for some reason (I blame the leaves on the label). Neither of those things were true at all. In fact it tastes more like it should be a summer beverage. It has a flavor that is similar to lemonade. It's like someone made a lemon lime soda but actually used lemonade and limeade. Then they decided to put in just a dash of berry for good measure. It's not bad by any means. In fact it's a damn good alternative to 7Up or Sprite. I just don't understand why it's marketed the way it is.

Hosmer Mountain has two different cola's, red and blue. The red is their take on Coca-Cola and the blue is supposed to be like Pepsi. Seeing as I am a bigger fan of Pepsi than Coca-Cola, I opted for the Cola-Blue.

Imagine Pepsi, without the harsh bite and less syrupy. That's pretty close to what this taste like. It's really a no-frills cola. I don't know if I like it better or worse than Pepsi, but it's definitely different. I don't think they were aiming to clone the Pepsi flavor, but use that as a starting point to make this cola.

If you like basic colas, this is a really good one. I think this would be really great with some spices in it like nutmeg or anise.