Sparkling - 501 Reviews

Steaz has their heart in the right place, and for years they have been working at creating perfect harmony between soda and green tea. Unfortunately they are not quite there. I would never say any of their creations have been gross, and I had no problem drinking them, it's just that they never reach their potential. Tea pop should be the greatest thing ever, but they always see to fall short. The soda flavor is always far too light. I'd like to say that was because they were more concerned with the flavor of the tea, but that also gets lost most of the time. Take this drink for example; cola is one of the strongest flavors a soda pop can have, and there is no excuse for its weakness in this beverage. I want crisp, dark cola flavors. This tastes lighter than the most diet of diet bogus colas. The taste of the green tea is there, but it's muddied by the erythritol, which they used to sweeten this.

My final verdict is that while this is a completely acceptable beverage, it could be made much better if they either used cane sugar (it's a zero calorie beverage, so that won't happen) or make the cola flavoring stronger. I bet they could make it could even mask the sweetener. The tea flavor would probably be lost even more though. Let's get a team of scientists on this. I want this to be so good, and I know it can be.

Does anyone else out there get to a point where they just need to drink something carbonated? As in you feel like you're just going to explode if you don't get some bubbles in your throat. I am certainly in that camp. It's not often, but every couple of weeks or so I get a tickle in my throat, and no matter how much I cough, clear my throat or drink water, it simply will not go away. The only cure for what ails me is to drink some pop or other carbonated beverage. Now I don't always want all the sugar that comes along with soda, but I generally can't stand tonic water. Lucky for me Hint exists and they have created a line of sparkling water drinks that don't have the bitter seltzer taste. It tastes like someone took normal everyday water and added bubbles to it and it didn't change the flavor at all. They then added just a hint (well duh) of strawberry kiwi flavoring that gives it just a light flavor. It's perfect for what I need, and it has zero nutritional value, as well as zero negative connotations. It's a win for everyone, especially my scratchy throat.

Oh Sir Limonitz. What brings you to this part of town? You don't leave your castle as much as you used to. It seems that you just wave your scepter around having us peasants to do your bidding for you. Sir, if I may say so, you have become rather slovenly since you have taken this position as a proper sir. Don't think that we haven't noticed that you have begun to overflow out of your once respectfully fitting clothes. We still adore you, sir, we really do, but I thought that it would be nice if someone told you before it got out of hand.

So what brings you here to these parts? A new beverage? That's fantastic. Your last lemonade was very good and we can only hope that this one is as well. Let me see here. Ahh, strawberry. Good fruit choice, sir. Oh, it smells wonderful. It smells like a veritable bouquet of strawberries. I also appreciate the bountiful amount of pulp that is swirling around in here. Let's take a sip...wow. Sir, you have outdone yourself with this. It tastes as good as it smells and it probably bites harder than your little dog that you've got there. It's got a wonderful lemonade base but the fruitiness of the strawberries cuts through. Sir, you have outdone yourself. Now I know why you have us doing your tasks for you; so you can invent things like this drink. Keep up the good work and, Sir, please, take care of yourself.

So you don't like oxidants, huh? Do you, or 99% of the population even know what they really are? I'm pretty sure I don't. I know that they have something to do with being sick, and ingesting antioxidants helps to stave off said sickness, but that's as far as my knowledge goes. Even though I don't know the science behind it, I can tell you a lot of fruits that are high in antioxidants. It just so happens that all three fruits mentioned in the name of this beverage fall into that category. What we have here is a naturally flavored sparkling water that is rich in antioxidants and vitamins, or so the company tells us. I have to interject and say, sure there is sparkling water in here, but once you add this much flavoring and sweetener (albeit zero calorie) it ceased to be water in my eyes.

Do you want to know more about how this drink tastes? Well, it tastes like a diet Vitamin Water with bubbles in it…€¦a lot of bubbles. If this wasn't diet, I think I could get behind it more, as the flavor is fairly decent. Actually, if they had used erythritol or stevia to sweeten it I would probably enjoy it more. The sucralose just makes it unmistakably diet in a way that I can't handle as much as I try.

I must implore everyone who tries this beverage to not give up after one sip. I completely understand why you would want to. Something about that first sip seems like the drink had gone bad. It tastes like the beginning stages of fermentation, and it's not very pleasant. The thing is that if you can make it past the first introduction of tea to tongue, you will be rewarded. With each sip this drink gets better and better until you get to the last drop and you are completely bummed out that it is gone. That's right, this went from gross to “when can I get another bottle?” in 12 small ounces.

With a name like Classic Gold I expected this to be straight up yerba mate and carbonated water, with a little sugar mixed in. To be fair, that was delivered but along with it came some spice as well as prune, lime, tamarind and ginger juice (I don't know how you juice ginger). The culmination of all of this is extremely interesting on ones taste buds. You can swish it around your mouth and actually make out the different flavors. That's exactly how I like my beverages. It has the classic yerba mate flavor, with just the right amount of sweetness and additional flavors.

I'm telling you, work past that first sip and you will find that you are in for a true treat.

If you drink this fast enough, you can actually drink "through" the diet. It's true. Using our inherent ability to chug, you can actually ingest this drink so fast and with so much speed and disregard to your esophagus that you can out-run the diet.

Why would you do that? Well because if you sip it, it's pretty gross. It's just a super carbonated raspberry drink. It is strange that you can bypass the worst part of the drink. Like skipping the worst track on a record, or not eating dinner and going straight to dessert.

The taste, diet aside, isn't bad. It's like a less "dark," less syrupy black raspberry pop that has zero calories and isn't vile. Is that a win? It's got to be better than some of the black raspberry pop's I've had. Some of those blow. Trust me.

People know that I am straight edge but many of them don't know why. I will give you the short reason why.

My friends growing up didn't really drink so it was fine to almost have a beer here and there. My entire lifetime, I might have drank two beers, one glass of champagne and a glass of wine. Total. People I know drink more than that in one night. That is not why I don't drink.

I don't drink because I went away to college and saw people on their own for the first time drinking so much that before the fifth of vodka hit their system, they knew what was about to happen and asked people to punch them in the stomach to make them puke. I saved female friends in parks from being felt up because everyone was drunk and no one wants to hear the next day that ten creeps touched your boobs. I saw people abandoned on park benches because they were too drunk to deal with. That's why I don't drink. I have fun doing a lot of dumb stuff and don't need to get any dumber. I'm not saying that you can't drink responsibly and have a good time, I'm just saying that I don't need it in my life and I don't feel that it will enhance anything and I don't feel like I'm missing anything.

That being said, this champagne strawberry seltzer is pretty good and pretty close to what I remember champagne to taste like. It's still got that "seltzer" taste, sure, but it actually has a good, faint strawberry taste, and a frighteningly accurate "alcohol" aftertaste. It's good enough that I probably drank thirty ounces of it. Alcohol taste and all. Something about these Polar bottles keep me coming back for more every time I drink them.

Now the season is about us where people drink a lot. Maybe calm down a little this season and drink some of this. It tastes like what you're drinking anyhow and you can drink and drive with this all day. If you like it, maybe kick in the New Year with the resolution of not pretending you're still nineteen. Unless, of course you are nineteen, which in that case you probably drank when you were reading this. Keep up the good work, nineteen year old. Better study for that Math 101 final next week. Start by multiplying the amount of empty Genny Cream Ale cans you have scattered throughout your apartment by five to find out how you're going to afford pizza tonight.

Does "naturally flavored" mean anything at all when you are not naturally sweetening something? I mean, "all natural" has weight but natural flavors kind of only covers some of your bases. I mean, it's a good try but it's really a pathetic effort and calling out the fact that you haven't completed your whole job. With a fake sweetener, you're kind of taking a theoretical dump on your efforts at keeping the flavors tasting natural. You wouldn't do that now, would you? Take a dump on your science project? No. You wouldn't do that. You're better than that.

Now that I've got that out of the way, we can talk about this for what it really is. What is it? It's a sparkling lemon lime drink. It's not a juice and it certainly is sparkling. It's highly carbonated and I am going to have to subtly burp all the way through the day. Lemon lime? Yes. It really just tastes like a less sweet Sierra Mist. Is the sweetener offensive? No. Does it taste diet? A little but not too bad.

What is the difference between this, Sparkling Ice or Cascade Ice? Not much. This might be less diet. That's a pretty win when it comes to the fact that most people drink things for the taste. If you drink those, you know what you're in for.

Pastrami and hot mustard is a wonderful sandwich. It wasn't until I was an adult that I enjoyed the more "fancy" lunchmeats. All growing up I was filled to the brim with white bread and either bologna or salami. Now, as an adult, I can get "nicer" things like hot mustards, multi-grain bread, and the most erotic of all the salted meats.

One problem with this super mature sandwich is that it is pretty violent on your breath. What better way to combat the unfortunate effect of dangerously pungent sandwiches than to drink a pop that tastes like candy canes? Lucky for me, Jay bought me a bottle of this probably not knowing that I would use it as a temporary, mid-day toothpaste.

I was surprised that this tasted like a candy cane seltzer and when I read the ingredients, it was made with "sparkling water" and not whatever regular pop is made out of. You can taste that seltzery taste. The drink itself tastes like a candy cane but I didn't get much "shake" out of it. I thought it was going to taste like a peppermint cream soda, which would have been fine but Taylor's doesn't cop out like that. There is erythritol in the bottle, too, but you don't get any of the associated taste that accompanies it.

This was a smooth transition into Christmastime. A much smoother transition than every time I take my headphones off for the past two weeks the kid that works next to me is listening to Christmas music. He loves the stuff. We could never be gay lovers because I would straight murder him over it. Great dude. I would murder him.

Much like Dan Aykroyd's Crystal Skull vodka Klarbrunn filters all of its sparkling waters through diamonds. It is essential to reach the full potential of the beverage and enhance the life fueling vitamins it contains. Get it, life diamonds…€¦Vita Ice? Okay that was dumb, really dumb. Dumb enough to make me think about deleting what I've written and start anew, but not dumb enough for me to actually do that, just think about it. You see I have now spent more time writing about how I kind of sort of want to rewrite this than it would actually take for me to rewrite it. So I will plunge forward with this review and tell you that this drink taste really cold. No seriously, it's like those Polar Pop fountain drinks that are always way colder than any other brand. I don't know why. This has been sitting on my desk for a good ten minutes and it still tastes like it's ice-cold even though it's only slightly colder than room temperature. There is some science going on here that I don't understand. In addition to that coldness this also tastes fairly diet, because well...it is diet and full of sucralose, which is not my favorite. Any drink carbonated, vitamin enhanced drink that is sweetened with this particular sweetener always tastes like it was made with some sort of powder mix. This is no exception. This one specifically tastes like I dumped a orange mango Emergen C packet into some carbonated water and then added some garbage diet sweetener to it, because in this scenario I am a glutton for punishment. Why do I do this to myself in these made up scenarios. Everything about this tastes very crisp and cold. I can only assume that's what they are going for with a name like Vita Ice. Man I should have led with that instead of the worst (still amazing) Ghostbuster (yes Winston and Louis are better than Ray).

Did Popeye ever ingest anything other than spinach? I mean I know he was always smoking a pipe, which I'm sure smelled amazing, but in any of the comics, cartoons or the movie (where Shelley Duvall played the role she was born for) did they ever show the character of Popeye ever eating or drinking anything else? To be honest I haven't watched/read any of them in probably 15-20 years, but I will assume he only eats spinach. By that logic one would assume that his personal energy drink would contain some spinach. That is not the case. In fact, not only does this energy drink not have spinach, but it also has no taurine, or any of that other fake garbage that is in 99% of energy drinks. This is solely carbonated juice (white grape, apple and clementines) with some caffeine and vitamins added to it. There isn't even any added sugar. The result is my new favorite energy drink. Sure for those of you out there that drink a keg of coffee a day this will probably have no effect, but for those like myself that don't consume much caffeine, it's working just fine. This is the healthier side of energy drinks and I support it whole-heartedly. The clementines taste is very strong, so if you like a more bitter orange, get on this train. The aftertaste is more of the grape and apple juice, but when you first take a sip you get a nice punch in the tonsils with some tiny oranges.

Oh a side note, after watching some videos on Youtube I am convinced that if Shelley Duvall was younger now, she could be an indie darling. The young kids would eat these vocals up, check it out.

Even though we have reviewed several other Solixir products my brain was convinced that the “No Sugar Added” tag meant that this thing was going to be chock full of stevia. I keep finding myself reviewing drinks that contain stevia, and I've had my fill for a while. It seems like everyone is using it, either on it's own or in conjuncture with cane sugar. I understand it is healthier, but can everyone admit that it has a very distinguishable taste that can be overpowering? It seems like companies are acting like it is completely tasteless…€¦it's not.

I grabbed this, and braced myself for a cool “new-diet” sting that never came. It seems that when Solixer says no sugar added, they mean it. The only sweetener of any kind that can be found in this can is the kind that comes naturally in fruit juice (13g worth for those keeping track at home). I was overjoyed. This was a drink that I wasn't looking forward to at all, and it turns out that I truly enjoy it. It's simply carbonated water, white grape juice, pomegranate juice and a botanical extract blend that contains ginger root, European elderflower, European elderberry, stinging nettle leaf, dandelion root and honeysuckle stem. That is a lot of “unusual” ingredients yet the drink comes off as a very light, slightly fruity ginger ale. It has a slight botanical aftertaste, but it's in a good way, not in a “someone shot me in the mouth with perfume” sort of way. Yes, it tastes a bit watered down, but again it's in a pleasant way. Americans always seem to need strong flavor crammed down their throat, even when that flavor is a pale comparison of what it could taste like. This may have a light flavor, but the flavor that is there is of quality, and I would rather have it than some garbage artificially flavored soda any day.

I would love to try a cane sugar sweetened version of this, but I'm afraid that the sweetness would overpower the botanical flavors and all of it's greatness would be lost.

What is a mojito with lemon instead of lime? Wrong? Is that it? I've had mock mojitos and they're good. I assume a "real" mojito is close enough. Mint and lime. This is mint and lemon. It's close, right. Same fruit but a different color. I know, I know. Lemons are sour and limes are bitter. Are you here to call me, a time honored professional, a dumb dummy? I certainly hope not.

This tastes like a sweeter, less bitter mojito. Didn't see that review coming, did you. Honestly, the mint is pretty faint and if they just said this was sparkling lemonade with mint in it, I would say, "Oh, cool. They put mint in it." To declare, in big, bold, caps "MINT" you're making a statement. This is a great lemonade. Compare it to a non-gingered Bruce Cost. It's got pulp, which is always a win, but the lemon is so sour, in a good way, that it out flavors the mint. Fights is fights is fights and lemon just beat mint. It's not the first time and it won't be the last. I'm hoping I can say the same for this drink because it's one of the best lemonades I've had.

For the everyday man family friendly BBQs and children's parties mean coolers full of soda. I'm going to say that for at least 70% of the population that means coolers filled with generic, store brand pop, mostly grape and orange. Some might splurge and spend the extra money and fill those coffers with name brand soda. In my experiences if that is the case, there is going to be one hell of a fruit salad there as well. Who doesn't love fruit salad?

Then there are the other people, the select few whose incomes eclipse our humble earnings. At their parties mini fridges probably replace the coolers, and they aren't filled with normal soda, but healthier, natural versions, such as what I hold in my hands here. The people who have tennis courts in their backyards, and weird exotic animals are a little choosier with what they will serve their guests. Think of the upset in high society if it was discovered that someone was serving Kroger brand cola to their colleague's kids.

I admit that this bottle is a big part of what makes this drink feel so fancy. Who can argue with blue glass, especially with such classy looking print on it? The contents aren't half bad either. It's carbonated water that is lightly flavored. The added taste of fruit exists as more of an aftertaste than it does while your sipping it, but it does a good enough job of combating the seltzer flavor. There is a small amount of cane sugar in here as well as stevia, but the diet taste isn't very strong.

This is basically a “dry” soda that makes you feel like a big timer when you drink it. Everything about it screams money and sophistication, except the price. At the $1.50 that this cost me I can pretend I'm better off than I am while remaining the slack jawed yokel that I will always be.

Sir, I'm sorry to interrupt your meal at this $1000 a plate benefit, but I must ask you a very important question, are you crazy? No, huh? Well would you say that you are crazy about berries? You guess. Let's just pretend you said that you are. In fact let's say that you are very crazy about berries. Some might say that you are “berry loco.” Huh, Huh, see what I did there?

So since you are so loco for these berries and I can't seem to get you to shut up about them, how about you try some of this new Aquafina Flavorsplash? It's a berry flavored sparkling water with B vitamins added to it. Sounds great, right? Well what if I told you that we sweetened the deal, literally, and added sucralose? You would say that you have no interest in artificial sweeteners, wouldn't you? I'm right there with you, and I have no idea why they did it. Okay I'm lying I know; this is a diet drink aimed to help people who like soda pop drink something a little healthier. While I'm not a fan of sucralose, I must say that underneath that fake sweetness hides a nice tasting sparkling berry drink. It tastes like the Kool Aid I imagine you rich folks drink would taste like. I know you're Kool Aid tastes better than the version they sell us poor folks, you can't like to me! Fine, I'll leave! I bet you would have had no problem with this drink had I served it in a champagne flute. Snobby McSnobSnob!

You thought that Popeye was getting his strength from spinach but there was a dirty little secret behind that. Sure, he loved the green stuff but when you weren't looking and the camera changed angles, he would slam a can of his own proprietary blend of energy drink. He was very ahead of his time. Drinking this allowed him to bend large steel beams and lift cars with ease. It was just a plot from the vegetable industry to push more spinach to kids. He made out big time; enough to start his own energy drink line.

Now Popeye knew a thing or two about healthy stuff since he did manage to learn a thing or two about his vegetables. He didn't add sugar to his energy drink and let the natural flavors of the blackberry to flavor and sweeten this drink. He even snuck in some vegetables, possibly due to contracts, to color his drink. He did manage to make a drink that tastes more like something unique rather than your cookie cutter energy drink. The blackberry taste is pretty spot on and it's even got some bitterness from the blackberry left that didn't get cut out of the mix.

With Wimpy as his terrible accountant, they are slowly taking the energy drink world by storm with the phrase, "You'll gladly pay today for a Popeye's energy drink today."

I like that Arizona has been associating their new products with various “celebrities.” I have to be honest, I'm not a big art guy by any means, and I had no idea who Richard Prince was. The can (and Wikipedia) inform me that he was a photographer and painter who created pop culture-inspired art for decades. Apparently he is mostly known for “rephotographing.” If you want to know what that is; you're on a computer and Google is but a click away.

Prince also did a series of nurse paintings, which used the covers of pulp romance novels. This is where I tie in with the artist. Sonic Youth used one of these paintings for the cover of their Sonic Nurse album. It's ridiculous that learning that fact made me feel like I had a connection with the artist. It's not even a record that I like terribly much, but it is from a band that I once held very dearly.

Whatever. This isn't about an artist this is about a beverage. Apparently Prince approached Arizona with a soda he wanted to collaborate with them on, and ended up being apart of the Lemon Fizz release. The artist designed the can himself, so you're essentially buying a Richard Prince print for only 99 cents. What a steal.

Back to the beverage: This is carbonated lemonade, and it is great. I had such low expectations for this, as I expected a lemon lime soda (the most boring of all the pops) minus the lime (making it infinitely more boring). Arizona succeeded in creating a soda that actually tastes like lemonade with bubbles, and what harsh bubbles they are. It's very strong, so unlike most Arizona drinks it's a sipping drink and not a gulper. I don't think it really needs to be in such a large can, but hey that's Arizona's thing, so I'll let them have it.

Deep in the Hollywood Hills children need to step up their game with roadside stands. Kids grow up fast these days, and growing up and being popular requires money that they don't have. The days of the standard lemonade stand are long gone; the profits just weren't enough. These days the kids need to up the ante, or they will just have to kiss those new premium apps goodbye. As a result a new wave of suburban roadside beverages has risen.

It all started when some daring eight year old used her mother's seltzer water instead of the Evian that was customarily used (hey this is Hollywood, land of the yuppies). People were abuzz about this new development and there was a line around the block. From that point the children kept trying to outdo each other. They would flavor their lemonades in various ways to lure customers away from other stands. Some say there were a lot of backroom dealing and sabotage going on during this time, but there is no definitive documentation.

Then came the day that the Earth stood still. One little dreamer changed everything. That day a 100% Organic sparkling lemonade hit the streets. Since then the street stand game has never been the same. People came from miles just to sample this child's creation, and to feel good about themselves whilst doing so.

Limonitz attempts to recreate that greatness with their products. They use filtered sparkling water, organic lemon juice concentrate and organic sugar to make the finest carbonated lemonades this world has ever seen. On it's own it would be quite a product, but the company took it a step further with this drink and added organic ginger extract. The results are mind blowing. Here we have a sparkling lemonade, that not only tastes like real lemons without a hint of cleaning fluid, but also that actually has a real ginger flavor to it. It has a mind ginger burn to it, it's very mild to me, but my ladyfriend said that it had a decent bearable burn. Every ingredient is present in the taste, and there for a specific reason. It's simple, it's organic, and it's delicious. Needless to say this is going to put all of those dumb kids stands out of business before they can buy whatever it is kids “need” to have these days.

Who really likes white chocolate and if you were the crazy person who does, would you choose that over regular chocolate? Would you rather have some sort of dumb, super sweet chocolate or some fantastic, handcrafted dark chocolate? What is white chocolate anyhow? Vanilla? Sorry to be the one to tell you, but vanilla already exists. You lost the race.

This, though, whatever it is...she's good. I polished off all one liter of it in one sitting and if it was larger, it would be inside of me. It's got a good taste and yes I did wish it were milk or dark chocolate the entire time. What flavor is it? Honestly, I don't know what white chocolate tastes like. I've had it but it's just kind of it's own dumb flavor. We don't need it. This we could do with. It's got whatever chocolate has but filled with seltzer. I like it. I don't like white chocolate. I'm torn.

For some reason these Mash drinks are one of the most visually appealing beverages on the market. Whenever I come across then in a bodega my eyes are instantly drawn to them. I don't know what it is. They just look like someone took a crappy one liter soda bottle and squished it down. Perhaps it's just the simplicity of the label. I love clean design work.

Besides for the look of this I am also drawn to it because it has ginger in it. I will always gravitate towards the ginger based beverages. I knew it wasn't going to be very strong in this, but it was even weaker than I anticipated. It tastes like someone took the weakest ginger ale ever produced and added lemon soda to it. I know I haven't painted the greatest picture of this, but it is enjoyable to drink. I just always want more, and apparently like to complain about things that are perfectly fine the way they are.

This is sweetened with both crystalline fructose and sucralose, but luckily the diet flavor is nowhere to be found. There is so much lemon flavor in here. I think it covers up all the other flavors. Luckily it doesn't taste like lemon rind, which could have easily been the case with a name like lemon peel. We dodged a bullet with that one.