Sparkling - 501 Reviews

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.

The year is 1998 and cucumber melon reigns supreme. It's everywhere from lotions to candles...okay that's pretty much the only places that you would find that combo, but I had a candle in my room that smelled like that, and one of my best friends always used the lotion so in my eyes (or nose) the scent was everywhere. Then suddenly it seemed to vanish. I recently found cucumber melon hand soap, but my ladyfriend said she didn't like the way it smelled, so it remained on the store's shelf. Now here I am sitting in the "Golden Girls" hotel in Las Vegas waiting while said ladyfriend packs up her things. I'm just sitting on the bed sipping this wonderful soda. Cucumber and melon are both two of my favorite flavors, so them together is a no brainer. If it were any other flavor I would not have dropped the money on a four pack, but I just couldn't say no to these old friends. I'm glad I couldn't.

This is essentially a Mr Q Cumber soda with some honeydew thrown in the mix. I can guarantee that 99% of the people who try this soda will be surprised by how much it actually tastes like both of it's flavors. It's uncanny. I love it. I know a certain sound engineer in Buffalo who will probably love it even more. He ordered three cases of Mr Q Cumber after I introduced it to him, and I bet he'll order three of these as well.

Man, I could really go for a Vitamin Water now. It would be so totally refreshing. Unfortunately I'm stuck here out in the desert and there's not a store for at least a hundred miles. I really should have thought ahead before I went on this hike. Well I guess I tried. I did buy a bunch of granola bars, some packets of Emergen-C, and I brought some water. Hey wait! If I pour the emergency into the water it would be something like a Vitamin Water. Goddamnit! I bought the wrong water! I got sparkling water and not still. This is terrible. Here I am stuck in the desert and the only fluid I have is carbonated. This blows. Oh well, I guess I could still mix it together. At least it's the berry flavored one and not citrus. Well this isn't as bad as I would have expected it to be, but it's not very good either. It tastes a bit powdery. I guess I didn't mix it together all the way. Actually this tastes exactly like the wild berry flavored Vitamin Fizz. I didn't really like it then and I don't really like it now. Too bad I have nothing else to drink and I'm dehydrating.

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.

Do you know how coffee is produced? I certainly had no idea until about a year ago when I visited a coffee plantation. Okay, I had an inkling when we got those Bai drinks to review that are made with coffee fruit. The point is that it grows on bushes and there are these little green berries. Once the berries ripen they turn red, and are harvested. Inside the berries are the coffee seeds or beans, which are dried and roasted to brew the coffee that you drink for your get up and go.

When the coffee berries are still green they still contain a decent amount of caffeine, so Starbucks, amongst other companies, have started using them to make alternative energy drinks. These drinks aren't quite coffee and they certainly aren't traditional energy drinks, but they still give you a nice little boost without any added chemicals.

This little guy right here is quite aromatic. As soon as I cracked it open my car was greeted with the scent of strawberries. It's one of their weird two tier flavored drinks. While it's in your mouth it tastes like a nice watered down, carbonated strawberry lemonade. It's not tart at all, but it still has that lemonade flavor. Then when you swallow the slight bitterness of the coffee berry kicks in, and the berry flavor fades away. When I was at that coffee plantation I tried a green coffee berry and it was incredibly bitter on it's own. The sweetener in here takes care of that a bit, but it lingers some in the aftertaste.

I do wish this was stronger on the lemonade side of things, but for an energy drink that doesn't taste like your run of the mill toxic garbage, I can handle what they give me.

The Canadian government has recently shipped hundreds of koalas into their country. Originally they wanted to give the country a make over. People were getting tired of being associated with moose and beavers. They wanted a cuter image. Unfortunately the koalas tried to wage war on the beavers, and even though they were tired of the image, beavers are still are a sacred creature up north, so they couldn't allow the war to happen. As a result they moved the koalas to warehouse buildings where tropical fruit was grown under unnatural conditions. The koalas were trained to pick the fruit and to prepare it for juicing. This didn't work as well as the officials had hoped since the animals spend a majority of their day sleeping. There was not nearly enough fruit prepared to make a straight up juice, so a brainstorming session took place and it was decided to use the fruit they had to make flavored sparkling water.

Now I certainly would have preferred juice to flavored sparkling water, but I can't blame koalas for doing what comes natural. I can blame them for adding too much sugar and this tasting more like cheap soda than a sparkling water. It does have a guava/raspberry taste, but the added sugar takes away from it and leaves you knowing that if you spilled it all over the place you would have one hell of a sticky mess on your hands. Since this couldn't be juice I wish it had been subtler. As it stands I can't get through more than a couple of sips a sitting.

I don't know a thing about this beverage. The only words I can read on the label are “Fizzy Drink.” From the picture on the front I would assume that “Uzum” means grape, but when I tasted it I wasn't so sure. You see it tastes more like blueberries to me than grapes. I kind of get a little grape, but there's something in there that reminds me of blueberries. Dear folks of Turkey you make strange drinks that are strange, but decent. They are also almost candy like, but yet still like real fruit. I don't get it. I'm not sure I'm supposed to get it, and I'm okay with that. I'll just sit back and enjoy the ride. It's a tiny bottle, but it encapsulates a big flavor.

If I think that people would appreciate one thing more about drinks is innovation and interaction. I love cool bottles and stuff like Ramune where it's a process to open it and it's something I really enjoy: clever packaging, ingredients, and so on and so forth. Sodastream is awesome. I got it for my birthday and I've been making stuff all weekend. This was the first go at it. You fill it with water, load it into the machine and press a button until you hear a terribly frightening series of clicks. It's basically the system quite literally blowing off steam and it tells you that it's coming and that's when to stop but man...every time it gets me.

I had just got done with some light gardening and yard work and didn't really want any pop so I decided that my maiden voyage into the DIY carbonated drink territory would be the MyFlavor line. I chose raspberry because...well...why not? It was good. It was a seltzer or soda water like you would get at a restaurant with light raspberry flavor. It was actually very refreshing and I drank the entire liter myself before the end of the night. That says a lot.

I look forward to using this in the future and I've got plenty of these MyWater flavors left to get me through the summer. A great summer treat and something fun to do. Rats off to you, SodaStream.

You know how in old movies whenever someone would get trapped up in a snowstorm somewhere in the arctic or some such thing a giant Saint Bernard would come out of nowhere with a barrel full of brandy strapped to its neck? Apparently the brandy would slow down the effects of frostbite. Is there a more adorable way to be saved from a frozen death? Okay koalas dragging you to safety would be pretty cute.

Well the Saint Bernard's day in the sun is over. There's a new pup on the block and he's a coonhound named Boozer. He will never save you from an avalanche, but he just may save you from a killer hangover. While many people may be bummed out that he doesn't carry around a barrel of alcohol, he does carry around a can of hangover remedy that you will thank him for in the morning. It's a mixture of vitamins and herbs that help to rejuvenate your body and fight the dehydration that alcohol can cause. It has a mild citrus flavor that combats the taste of the vitamins. The fight is kind of in a stalemate. You can taste the citrus, but it isn't strong enough to fully cover up the tastes of the vitamins. It's not horrible, but it's not something you would drink recreationally, which you shouldn't anyways as it's a beverage with a specific purpose. As an added bonus once you take the can from our friend the dog, he's free to tear it up for the night. He can get tanked and rip it up on the dance floor.

It has taken us over a year to review this from when Boozer sent it to us. Sorry guys, we messed up.

Okay, this is an all-natural drink, with no sugar added, yet it still kind of tastes like that fake candy green apple flavor. I don't get it, there is nothing in here that should give it that taste. It's a mixture of apple, white grape and acerola juices. Could it be that there is a variety of green apple that actually tastes this way that I'm just not aware of? I'm from an area where there are apple orchards all over and I've never tasted such a thing. The green apples that I've had are actually my favorite type of apple.

Actually…€¦.

The more I drink of this, the less candy-like it actually tastes and the more I feel like I'm eating one of my tasty green apples. Now I'm done with the can and I could certainly enjoy another instantly. It's juice and sparkling water combined in a wonderful way without the need for sugar. Thanks Izze.

Wait, I thought that Fandango was that service where you could order movie tickets? Oh, it is. I'm not crazy. When I asked you to bring up Fandango, I meant for you to bring it up on the computer, not bring me a glass of sparkling juice. Yes, I know we have plans tonight to go to your niece's stupid recital. Oh good we get to go listen to four year olds pretend they know how to sing and play instruments. I just wanted to try and pre-order tickets for Batman. Yes, I know that it doesn't come out until mid June, but I want to make sure that I get tickets for the midnight showing. I mean it's Batman, he's the greatest “super hero” of all time and he's fighting Bane. Have you even watched the preview yet? I told you to about a million times. Obviously you haven't though, or you wouldn't be questioning me.

Okay, you've gotten me sidetracked. Back to the question at hand: What is this drink? Oh, it's a spritzer that is names “mango fandango.” I guess that makes sense that you brought me it. I mean it's not bringing me any closer to seeing Batman, but it is tasty. I appreciate that there are no added sweeteners, just the glory of fruit. It seems like a lot of companies use apple juice as a base for everything, and I understand that. Pure mango juice would be way more expensive. Luckily the addition of mango and passionfruit juice to the apple juice gives it a great flavor that stands out. It tastes tropical in a completely non-citrus way. I like citrus, it's helped me out many times in my life, but I would choose this type of tropical any day. This is actually very sweet for not having sugar added to it. We should bring a case of it to the after recital party tonight. Those youngsters these days eat/drink way too much garbage and they all seem to be getting overweight. If we turned them on to this instead of regular soda they will thank us in twenty years. Oh man in twenty years I bet there will be at least 3 new Batman franchises. I can't wait.

Whenever I drink one of these sodas I always think of rap/hip hop. I know that the champagne spells their name differently, but I still always think of it. This also led me to think that there better be a hip hop song that has the line, “Bottles poppin. Booties droppin.” Thanks to a quick Google search I know that the hip-hop community has not let me down. Like they ever would?

You know who else would never let me down? Kristall. Sparkling water, apple juice and sugar make for one great combo, that's a no brainer. Kristall takes things in a slightly different direction by using a different type of apple. I don't know what type of apples are typically used to make apple juice, but there is certainly some standard. Kristall doesn't use that type. I wish I were more of an apple connoisseur so that I could tell you specifically what it is, but my palate is not that refined. I can tell you that it is a dryer apple, and the flavor of the skin is still intact in this drink.

Get yourself a nice “dry” apple and a bottle of sweetened sparkling water. Take a nice huge bite of the apple, chew it for a second and then let your mouth over run with the water. That will give you a homemade version of this beverage and a big wet, sticky mess. Now clean up that mess and yourself, we're in the middle of the grocery store.

Folks, let's just face the facts. The chances of anyone out there actually making a watermelon flavored drink that tastes like watermelons are slim to none. Most things that are supposed to be watermelon end up tasting like Jolly Ranchers. They only get the credit because there zero amount of research I will claim them as the first company to try and harness the essence of watermelon. It's not a bad flavor, but it certainly tastes absolutely nothing like the fruit. There is so much water in watermelon that it would probably take 50 full grown melons to get enough essence juice to make an 8oz beverage. It's just not cost effective, especially since I don't think there are any real health benefits to that specific fruit. Rant over.

While this doesn't actually taste like watermelon, it does have a decent blueberry flavor to it. It's also the strongest tasting Cascade Ice that I have tried. Sure it's sweetened with sucralose and is essentially flavored seltzer water (a losing combination in my book) it is still remotely enjoyable for me. I keep thinking “I'm really not into this,” but as soon as the flavor leaves my mouth I find myself taking another sip. I can only assume that those of you out there who are into diet drinks, and who are not grossed out by the taste of sucralose, would really enjoy this. With zero calories you could drink an entire case of this and not feel terrible about yourself, well except for the fact that you peed your pants.

If there was one thing that Izze was great at when she was young it was remedial art. Actually it was just the mixing of primary colors that she excelled at. She absolutely loved the concept that mixing two separate colors could result in a completely different color. If she mixed blue in with red, she got purple, blue and yellow got her green, and red and yellow brought her orange. It was simple, it was science and it was wonderful. She would spend her days mixing different proportions to see what shades she would achieve. She never tried mixing more than two colors though. That would just cause unimaginable chaos.

When Izze got older she found herself a part of the soda game. She was sick of the everyday sodas that that no redeeming values other than taste. She watched the world around her grow fat from ingesting far too much of it. She decided to take a stand and offer the world a soda that was mostly fruit juice. She added no sweeteners and let the fruit do its job. Things were going well, but then the bills for the fruit started to add up. She wanted to make some out of the ordinary flavors, but purchasing the fruit to make those juices was expensive. That is when the light bulb of genius lit above Izze's head. She would use her old knowledge of color mixture to simulate the flavors that were too expensive. She would start with the blueberry. After doing a little math in her head, she deduced that the blueberry flavor was simply nothing more than grape and apple juice mixed together. She whipped up a batch and threw in a little bit of actual blueberry juice in the mix, so that she wouldn't feel like so much of a liar to her customers. When she took a sip she instantly realized two things: Apple, grape and blueberry juice mixed together is pretty delicious and also that she was a complete moron for thinking that color theory had anything to do with the flavors of fruit juice. Apple and grape juice mixed together, while tasty, tastes nothing like blueberries. It tasted more like a light grape juice than anything. There was a hint of some sort of berry flavor hidden in it, but you really had to look for it. What Izze should have done at that moment was change the name of the flavor, because it was tasty and she was on to something, but it just wasn't blueberry. Unfortunately she had already ordered all of the bottles for the soda, and there was no way she was going to waste money on new ones. Screw her customers.

If I were stuck in a forest, I would forage for berries. I was never a Boy Scout, although I enjoy their fundraising chocolate, caramel popcorn. I don't know what's poisonous and what is not. I would probably be dead in four days if I was stuck out in a forest. I like to think about it, though. I would eventually have to kill something to make a sweet but necessary jacket/sleeping blanket to keep warm. I wouldn't want to do it, and I have never killed anything before and don't ever want to but it's a necessary and I'm cold.

I think that I would know what raspberries look like enough that I could sustain off those. I haven't seen enough episodes of Man versus Wild enough to really learn the intricacies of "bug eating," so once I get to that protein-deprived state I'm probably eat any bug. Wrong, but I'll eat it.

I would eventually get very grizzled and start hallucinating. I'm grizzled now, but I would get worse. I think when you are in the forest, you grow beards faster and due to the immense amount of thorns and stuff, you rip your clothes very quickly. If I would somehow find a bottle of carbonated water, I could make this drink. I would find a nice, round stone, another round stone, and squish the berries on a leaf or something and pour the juice into the carbonated water. It would be a little bitter because it's natural but everything is natural in the forest, you dunce. That's all it would take to refresh myself. Seriously, though, the odds of me finding an unscathed bottle of anything, let alone carbonated water or something useful, is pretty slim. My luck I would find something like crab juice in a can and with that it would almost be essential to put raspberry juice in it to mask the, you know, crabbiness of it.

I would like to congratulate Johnson on his promotion. To thank him for his twenty-five years of great service, I am hereby awarding him with this four pack of Welch's Fruit Fizz. I'm sorry, Sally. What did you say? What do you mean "A jip?" Have you ever had this, Sally? Look, most guys celebrate with a bottle of champagne, but here at Cornucopia Inc., we don't drink on the job. This is like four little cans of non-alcoholic champagne that he can enjoy for almost a full workweek. That means that for almost every lunch he eats at the Cornucopia Lounge, our cafeteria, he can taste a rather delicious non-alcoholic champagne and celebrate his quarter century dedication to putting things in a wicker basket, thing. Do you know how many oranges he had to put in that wicker horn to get to where he is today? Do you know how much non-racist Indian corn he had to put in that thing to make it as far as he did? No, Sally. You don't. Now, he can go on his merry way and drink a low-calorie, celebratory drink twice a day for two days.

Oh, it was that I only got him that which you are upset about? Sally, I'm no savage. I got him a $25 gift card to Applebee's, too. One dollar for every year, like I always do for all my employees. Play your cards right and you'll be getting your $3 gift card this July.

Tina had had enough of her restless nights. She was a busy woman and she needed to be at the top of her game. You see she was in the middle of a big job at work that required her to be at the lab at 6am and she was sometimes there as late as 11pm. Whenever her friends complained about working too much, or being tired, all she had to do was shoot them a look and they would shut up immediately. Originally she had drunk coffee to help her stay alert, but her body became accustomed to it, and it stopped working well. She then moved onto your everyday energy drinks, but she really was never comfortable with all of the artificial garbage in them. On top of that they gave her the jitters and they also kept her up during the few hours that she actually had for sleeping. She was a mess and her research was suffering because of it. Then one day on one of her brief and rare breaks she wandered into a health food store and saw this little bottle of Guayaki. The bold pink letters of “Yerba Mate” stood out to her like the bat signal in the night sky. An all natural, organic drink that would work the way an energy drink should without advertising as being one. On top of all of that it was grapefruit and ginger flavored. It tasted like a typical yerba mate tea, you know earthy and bitter with a coating of agave and Stevia laden grapefruit juice to mix things up a bit. It was a bit more diety than she had hoped, but for an all natural energy drink that wouldn't make her feel crazy, she was happy to deal with it. She had also hoped that there would be a little kick from the ginger, but alas there was not. It only appeared in the faintest form of flavor. That day the gods looked down upon Tina and bestowed their grace upon her for her excellent work in the field of hotdog milkshakes. Her research would soon propel the world into a utopia where hotdogs and ice cream were properly fused into one glorious dessert drink.

When things are in different languages, I no longer fear the contents of the container. Why? Because I drank that Korean "Essence of Chicken" drink that tasted like pee and I don't think that anything will be as bad as that. This little green gem is quite nice. Why? Well it's tarragon flavored. "Ewww. That's a spice or an herb and I don't want to drink something that's off a spice rack." Well that's a lame response. Open your mind up then travel to around Turkey where this drink was made, shell out like $2 or 1.57120 Azerbaijani New Manat and enjoy a nice, anise-like drink.

I, for one, enjoy anise. I can never have enough. Black licorice, those little red anise candies in the dark red wrapper, or black jellybeans and I'm set, dude. This drink can be added to the list. I liked it. If you've ever had Ouzon then you know what this is all about. This might be stronger, if you're an adult when it comes to your flavors, it's great.

I wonder where I can get it around here. I'm sure there is some dusty old Eastern European bodega somewhere around here that would have this. You know the one. It's the place with all sorts of unpronounceable cuts of meat and cured fish that you have never seen and everything has a light dusting of dust on it. You've never seen anyone in there but they have somehow been open for like fifty years. It's got to be a front, right? I mean, you can't stay in business legitimately. They're probably fighting hens in the stockroom for a cut of the profits.

I'm going to start putting tarragon in everything I make from now on. What a delicious start to my culinary career.

Impatience. We've learned to treat this as anything but a virtue. Like that time that Mitch Hedberg told the wino who he saw eating grapes “Dude, you have to wait!” Apparently the folks at Starbucks never got that memo and they harvested their coffee beans too early. You see the little buggers were still green. They were in no shape to be roasted and eventually brewed into a $4 cup of coffee at one of their stores. The thing is that unlike everydayman the Starbucks head honchos are an industrious type. They knew that the green coffee still has high caffeine content. They didn't want their crop to go to waste, so armed with this knowledge they decided to make a chilled energy drink. They took some sparkling water, mixed in some orange, apple, grape and watermelon juice, and then put in the extract from the green coffee and some other ingredients to help create energy (physicists be damned). For an afterthought due to impatience it is crazy how good these drinks ended up tasting. It almost tastes like a mellow Orangina, with a little bit of a watermelon kick. Unlike almost every other energy drink in the world, this one tastes like you're really just drinking some sparkling juice. It also has a low calorie sweetener in it, but the taste of it is nicely hidden. It's only really noticeable slightly in the aftertaste. Well played Starbucks. It's shocking that a drink in one of your shops costs about as much as three of these did in the supermarket, and these taste way better.

The fine folks of Azerbaijan have dreams, big dreams. In case you didn't know it Azerbaijan is a country in Eurasia that borders Armenia. If you didn't know that you certainly did not know of the countries collective love of all things bubblegum. The people of Azerbaijan dream of a world where all things have a bubblegum flavored equivalent: ice cream, steak, asparagus and even sugar. They have come close to their goal. In fact just recently that have perfected a bubblegum flavored pickle that I'm told will knock your socks off.

Now that their goal is nearly achieved they have decided to up the ante a bit. They now want different flavors mixed with the classic bubblegum flavor to give people options. You know that classic Azerbaijan saying, “Life is all about options. Without them people are no better than a tortoise.” Well they take that very serious, so their scientists have been hard at work at splicing flavors. So far they have perfected the coupling of bubblegum with mint, cantaloupe, cardamom and the often sought after artichoke. Rumors have it that recently the scientists have set their sights on the flavor of pear, you know apple's bastard cousin. I believe what I hold in my hand here is a concentrate of the pear bubblegum flavoring. I say that because the flavor is so strong and sweet that to think it was an actual beverage blows my mind grapes. I hadn't even twisted the cap off all the way before the entire room I was sitting in suddenly smelled incredibly strongly of pears. It is strange because once you get the cap off and smell the liquid directly it smells more of bubblegum than pear, but it's still detectable. The flavor is that of the strongest cola champagne I have ever tasted with slight undertones of pear. I guess it's true what people say that the people of Azerbaijan love their bubblegum flavor, but sometimes like a pinch of something else. Had I not known the history of this fine country I would have not expected this beverage to taste like this at all. I would have expected simply nothing but sparkling pear juice. That is why you must learn the history of the world, so that bubblegum flavored drinks don't sneak up on you.