Hawaiian OLA - 6 Reviews

Bitter. Sweet. Sour. Fizzy. This is a complex drink. It also has a bit of a learning curve. If you take baby sips. It sucks. I'll say it. No gray area there. It is all bitter between the yerba mate and the Stevia. If you take a bigger drink, you can actually get the lemon lime. Unfortunately the honey doesn't get a chance to shine through because between the bitterness of the yerba mate and the sweetness of the lemon lime, that kind of fills up your palate dance card.

I think, so far, that my one complaint with this line is that I don't know what their yerba mate tastes like in itself. I don't know what the starting point is to base the flavors off of. It's very strong. You can taste it for a while as an aftertaste. I feel like it might be good but I think that it's always masked by whatever the "flavor" of the drink is and you can't take in and appreciate the taste of the base drink. This is a good lemon lime flavor. Honestly it is. The drink isn't bad but I think that the mix has to be reconfigured to allow all the flavors to shine in. I can tell that there are good things going on in here but the mix is off.

Well this sucks.

I've recently reviewed a lot of really good turmeric drinks but this is not one of them. It's spicy. Not spicy "hot spicy" but spicy like "contains a lot of spices" spicy. Spiceful. I tried hard to like this. It's different but it's not fantastic. It gets more punishing with every sip. The more lukewarm it gets, the more thick and gritty it gets, like everything settles into a sandy mess at the bottom at when you let it sit next to you for a half hour, it just settles and gets downright thick and gross. It's now been on my desk for an hour because I cannot finish it. It's almost come full circle and gotten spicy and gritty at the same time. I feel like someone swapped out my drink with something you would order at an Indian restaurant. Ginger turmeric sounds like a great chicken dish. Ginger turmeric is a terrible, terrible drink.

If you were a pre-teen in early 90's you know doubt know that the greatest fictional band of all time is The Beets, from the show Doug. While they might have been meant to be a play on The Beatles, but in reality they ended up sounding like a British version of Men at Work…€¦ weird. Their hit single was called “Killer Tofu” and was about how it's better than junk food. As a child I don't think I had ever tried tofu. As an adult I fully concur with them. The most important thing that the show taught us was that beets are in fact nature's candy; a statement that led me to want to try beets whenever they were available.

While I may not eat beets very often these days, I do enjoy a good beet juice. It has a sweet yet earthy taste that is refreshing. It also has one of those flavors that you just know it's good for you. This company took that wonderful juice and mixed it with yerba mate, my current favorite form of tea. Everything about it is great. It's two earthy flavors that have been mixed together to create something that is not entirely new, but still interesting. Both flavors are very distinct, but somehow the earthiness does not run rampant. That is probably mostly due to the fact that it is sweetened with Hawaiian honey. On top of all of that there is the Hawaiian fruit noni in here. I'm still not exactly sure what it tastes like, but it certainly doesn't distract from the greatness of this beverage.

I've mentioned my brief time spent in Hawaii many times on this website. I tend to romanticize that time of my life, well, because it was magical. I went off to a tropical paradise with all expectations of not enjoying it, because I simply am not a beach person, but my friends who planned the trip were no dummies and they made sure we stayed in the “natural” part of Hawaii. There were no cities. I think I saw two chain stores the entire time I was there. Everything else was local little shops and nature and it was exactly what I needed. Any troubles I had did not matter for those 8 days. Anything that takes me back to that time makes me smile and I appreciate it in the low times.

While only the pineapple in here takes me back with the taste sense, just knowing it was from Hawaii was enough tonight. I'm imagining I'm walking through some lush jungle type area, or that I'm sitting on a beach at dusk watching the waves and truly relaxing for one of the first times in my life. There is caffeine and niacin in this beverage, so it shouldn't be relaxing me, but it's giving me energy while the thoughts keep me calm. On top of the wonder that is pineapple juice this can also contains mostly yerba mate tea, which may be my favorite type of tea. It tastes earthy and slightly bitter, the way nature does. Actually that pineapple I mentioned it's not even a secondary player in here. It's yerba mate, then noni and then pineapple. It's refreshing. It's tropical. It's just the push I need on a spring day like today where there is still snow on the ground, but the temperate has finally hit 50 degrees. There is a light in the darkness of winter and it is here and everything will be warm and new.

Ladies and Gentlemen, a few days ago brought in the summer of 2013. I am pleased, but what I want to know is how the hell did I get a cold in the summer? I'm stuffy, my nose is runny and I feel like garbage. I should be outside frolicking and running through sprinklers or some such thing, instead I'm inside napping and reading.

I know this is more of a precautionary shot, but I'm willing to try anything I have on hand to kick this as soon as possible. This little guy contains noni, mango, pear, apple, lilikoi, goji, pineapple, and acai juice, as well date puree. We got a bunch of these sent to us to review. I had one a couple of days ago, and I just downed it. It tasted like the most concentrated form of a handful of super fruits that I have ever tasted. It was harsh and you could certainly taste the dates. Now as I sit here about to drink another I discover that they suggest mixing it into a glass of water. Well, that makes a lot of sense. When I mix it with water it's much easier to drink and the flavors spread out a bit now that they have room to flourish. It becomes more refreshing and not something you are glad comes in a shot bottle so you can down it nice and quick. It now tastes like something that should be drunk in Hawaii. Perhaps I will get to do that some time.

Update:
Hawiian Ola has updated their formula a bit by adding some pineapple juice in to the mix and it makes a world of a difference. Say “So long” to the harsh bitterness and cuddle up with some tropical fruit flavors. It's a shot, but I would have no problem drinking a full glass of this, well minus the dumb amount of energy I would receive with no outlet for it. Even though I'm sure it's not in any way true I will choose to believe that Mike's review of the original formulation, which can be read below, was directly responsible for the update. We have that kind of pull here at Thirsty Dudes, right?

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Jeez Louise. I have drunk some strong drinks in my day but this might push some unlucky contender out of the top five. Note to the weak tongued, this is one bitter drink. It's like a concentrate of yerba mate and green tea but tastes between a really bitter tea and, for reasons unbeknownst to me, an old coffee taste.

After a while when your amazement and tears subside, you get a little bit of a concentrated fruit taste. There is nothing you want in this drink but because it's a shot, it's like they just want to make it easier for you to get everything you need. I think if you took this tiny bottle and poured it into a proper pint glass and just filled it with water, this might be a pretty good drink. Alone it's pretty gnarly. Not bad, just overpowering of all good things.

To those who say "You can't have too much of a good thing." should drink this and will presumably say, "You know what? Fruit is good but they could have cut back a little bit. These good things were properly too much'd."