Canada - 143 Reviews

Color me jealous that this is a Canadian drug stores' house brand. Why can't Walgreens, CVS or Rite Aid have products this good? I live right near a couple of stores and I would walk to them more often for a drink such as this. It's simply carbonated mineral water and juice. It's a mixture of grapefruit, grape, lemon and apple juices, but it really just tastes like someone juiced a grapefruit into some sparkling water. I'm assuming the apple juice is there to sweeten it up a tad, as while it is fairly bitter, it's not over the top face making bitter. It's great regardless, and I wish it were available in the States. Looks like I will be stocking up the next time I head up to Canada.

Kiki darling, I simply could not eat a single pancake more. Why whatever are we to do with all of these buckets of left over maple syrup? Don't give me that look. I have already eaten 37 of them, and they were all slathered with the delicious syrup you bought, but I simply could not eat another bite. To make matters worse the syrup is in open buckets for some strange reason, and we haven't a thing to cover them. The rodents that run rampant on our palatial estate will devour it for certain and I can't bear to see it go to waste in such a manner.

Wait, why don't we water it down with some…€¦well water and then we can store it in those ridiculous jugs your brother keeps bringing home. I don't care if it's buy a jug to take home down at the mead pub, those things are ridiculous, and until now useless. Hmm. Maple water is all fine and dandy, but I think we may have watered it down a bit too much. There is only the faintest tinge of maple in the flavor, but it does give it a nice sweetness. How about we add some of those blueberries you picked, but forgot to put on my pancakes? Oh well that made it a great deal better. It now tastes like a watered down lightly sweetened blueberry juice. I wish the blueberry flavor was a bit stronger, but we did have to spread it though all of these dumb jugs. I have no real complaints about it though. I bet the townfolks would love to try some. Why don't you go take a few jugs down to them? Oh and Kiki, you're the best helper monkey ever.

Would you look at that face? That is the face of a child who just opened her birthday presents and she is not happy with the results. All she wanted was a classic blonde 1972 Fender Telecaster bass and instead what she got was a brand new knock off that looks like a toy. To add insult to injury it was also fretless…€¦ick. Well at least her parents got her a case of orange and cream soda. Orange cream is her favorite soda flavors and only the sweet, sweet flavor of creamsicle soda will right this evil that has been put upon her. What the hell is this? This one is certainly not her parent's fault. It's labeled orange and cream, but this doesn't taste the way she wants it to. Neither the orange, nor the vanilla cream tastes are right, and together they taste nothing like a melted creamsicle. It's like they took garbage generic orange pop and put in the smallest hint of vanilla that is just not pulling its weight. In fact it tastes more like a generic sweet soda flavor than anything. That's it. She's just turned two and this little girl already knows this is the worst birthday that has and will ever exist. She might as well burn the house down.

I'm going to start a petition to switch the places of black and mate teas. Black tea is everywhere and let's face it, while it is delectable it is also pretty boring, and far too easy to over sweeten. Mate is a rarity. It's exotic and you can't over sweeten it without it losing its special pizzazz. I know that if they were switched for long enough mate would begin to seem commonplace and lose it's exoticness. I just want this to be for a limited time. I want to go out to eat with my family to some garbage chain restaurant and be able to order a tea and have it be special. In shirt I'm bored with everyday teas.

Kiju is a nice answer to my problem. They make a nice, lightly sweetened mate iced tea. The fruit juice carries most of the flavor, but it has the very specific mate aftertaste. It has a very strong passionfruit taste with some mango around the edges. Did I mention that they use real fruit juices in this? Maybe that is why I like mate so much. If a company cares enough to use it, then they also care enough to use primo ingredients. I've never seen a mate sweetened with HFCS. That just doesn't fly in this world. It's the world I want to be in, well at least for the time being.

O Canada!
Our home and native land!
True raspberry soda love in all thy sons command.
With carbonated hearts we see cans rise,
The True North cold and delicious!
From far and wide,
O Canada, we drink the soda for thee.
God keep our soda glorious and free!
O Canada, we drink the soda for thee.
O Canada, we drink the soda for thee.

Translation: This blue raspberry soda is amazing, one of the best I've ever had. Other countries take note: Canada knows how to make delicious soda.

I just had one of those “everything I ever thought was truth is now a lie” moments. This is soda mousse aka Canadian cream soda. From the can I expected it to be red, like the Crush version of it. Instead it is clear like most cream sodas. There is nothing mind shattering there. That came when I saw that it was made with real grapes. Does cream soda normally have some sort of grape base that I have been completely ignorant of my whole life? I don't think that is does, and my tertiary search online came up with nothing. That leads me to a follow up question; why does this have grape juice in it? Until I noticed that it had grape juice in it I thought it tasted similarly to the Crush cream soda; fairly standard with a slight berry flavor to it. Now I'm second guessing that. It tastes weird to me knowing that there is grape juice involved. I feel like my taste buds are trying their hardest to search out a grape flavor. Do I actually taste it or am I imagining it? I can't say for sure, and there is no one around for me to have them try it. I can say I enjoy the pop. It's hard to go wrong with cream soda, especially one that is slightly unusual.

On the very tip top of the mountains of Toronto that are the skyscrapers there is a little bit of heaven that contains not one, but two gardens. One of those gardens is made of stones, which are moved around for the use of relaxation and meditation. The second garden grows but one thing: green tea. Did I mention that monks run the upper ten floors of this monstrous building? They are not your typical monks. They are urban monks. They wear hoodies with white zippers, raw denim and Beats by Dre cans that they listen to their chants on. It's a modern world and even the old customs are acclimating. In the early morning the monks make their way to the roof where they tinker around in the rock garden until they have reached their daily-allotted enlightenment. Then it is time to hand pick the tea leaves and take them to the 27th floor where they are dried and brewed into the products that help sustain their modern way of life.

In my first review of an Urban Zen tea I mentioned that I thought it was going to be green tea and aloe, due to the color and shape of the bottle. Guess what? That is exactly what this one is, and it's magical. It's like someone mixed a mango flavored bubble tea (hold the tapioca balls) and mixed it with an “original” flavored aloe drink (you know the kind that has the slight white grape flavor to it). Of course there are chunks of aloe in it, but they are not as plentiful as a lot of their competitors products. I'm okay with that though because the flavor more than makes up for it. It's extremely flavorful and sweet in all the right ways.

Next time you find yourself in Canada dish out the $2-3 a bottle of this cost and help the monks afford those new Samurai jeans they have had their collective eyes on. Remember enlightenment isn't everything.

We're all in agreement that root beer (and it's like brethren) is the best soda out there, right? I could drink the stuff all day long. Sure I would feel like garbage, weigh a couple hundred pounds more and my teeth would fall out of my head as I talked, but I would have a happy palate doing it.

I hope it's safe to assume that we all also think that “normal” diet pop is grozzzzzz. Some people say you just have to get used to it. I say I could also get used to drinking glasses on vinegar on a daily bases, but I'm sure as hell not going to do that.

So here we are with a flavor that is amongst the best and a version that is amongst the worst. Traditionally when these two things are combined the diet overpowers the greatness of the root beer, and it just tastes like a diet soda. They all taste more similar than they do their individual flavors. Krisda stood up and said “No world, I will not accept that! I will create a diet root beer that actually tastes more like root beer than diet and the world will love me for it!” Apparently Krisda realized that the solution was just to raise the black licorice content of the soda. This tastes so much like the good version of licorice (not the black jelly bean version) that it's ridiculous. It's more licorice that root beer. I'll tell you what though. The combo of that and using stevia as a sweetener creates the best diet root beer I have ever tasted. For a second you can tell that it's diet, but then that licorice aftertaste kicks in and erases your zero calorie memories.

I will start this review off with a quote from Editor Dan, “Holy crap it tastes as good as it smells!” Let me tell you people this is one of the most nasal cavity pleasing I have ever took a sniff of. Well that doesn't sound appealing at all. Seriously though the fruity vanilla aroma that emits from this bottle is what I imagine the perfect island paradise to smell like. It smells wonderful, but it's not too strong like those candy perfumes that your younger sister wore in the 90s. This is a classy island smell.

It also tastes like it smells: classy. The secret here is that this is not your everyday black or green tea in this bottle. It is an “herbal extract” that is a combination of hibiscus, rosehips, vanilla beans, raspberry leaves and lemon peel. To be honest Good Drink could have stopped right there, and I would have a drink that I loved. The folks at the company had a larger vision though. Theirs was a vision of a national takeover of the teas of Canada (to be fair, not a large take over at all) and they did the unthinkable, they added mango to an already stellar drink. The result: magic in a bottle, well almost. Everything about this beverage would be absolutely perfect if they slightly changed but one thing. There is a tad too much vanilla in this tea. It smoothes it out more than a tea should be and it pushes it almost to the dangerous level of potpourri taste. Luckily it doesn't reach that line and it still tastes delectable. This tea will easy run the tea empire of Canada, but if the vanilla were a little less, I'm thinking Good Drink could take on the world. Think about it George, you could be a global power. Doesn't that sound appealing?

Black cherry; the most goth of all fruits. You want to meet up with them? They sleep until noon, work at a bookstore that sells nothing but books on murder, cats, and unlicensed Robert Smith biographies, and go to clubs that are in locations you thought were closed down for a decade. They don't get along with people because they feel they are on the outside looking in. Looking in on all the squares, sellouts, poseurs, conformists, and zealots making fools of themselves on a day-to-day basis. Black cherry listens to Skinny Puppy, KMFDM, and My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult and scoffs at your record collection regardless of how much you like it. Black cherry is one with the dark arts.

Recently, black cherry has put on a little weight and needs to slim down a bit. Torrid is fine and essential to black cherry but some things are stretching a bit and it's becoming a health issue that your mom is getting concerned about. So you add a little sucralose to the mix. It's alright. Sure, it "diet's" you up a little bit and makes you feel like you are trying to be one of those blonde bimbos that swarm the schools like bees to a hive. There is a big difference between anorexia and teenage obesity. You still taste good, like you are supposed to, but there's just you can just tell that you are trying to lose a little weight and use artificial sweeteners. It's fine. You are beautiful no matter what the "cool kids" say. Now head on over to your black Volkswagon Jetta, pop in that old Bauhaus record, and think about what sweet kick moves you are going to do at the club tonight in front of yourself in the mirrors.

Lemon Lime: The illegitimate child of sodas. Everyone pretends to love it, but in reality it's normally the only soda left over after the family get together. I've never met a single person in my life that had lemon lime as a go to pop. Sure it mixes well with other drinks, alcoholic for some and for others such as myself it works well with cranberry juice, when out at bars. On it's own it's just a bland soda by nature. I mean how can it not when one of its key ingredients is lemon, the most meaningless of all fruit. Lemonade is amazing, but in all other forms I could do without the golden citrus king. I wonder if lime will forever feel cheated in this arrangement. A straight up lime soda aka a Lime Rickey is a thing of beauty. It's just too bad that on most days it's held back by its cousin the lime.

Now that I've expressed in detail the mediocrity of lemon lime pop, I will say that Jones has made a version that is better than most. It's no surprise that the reason for it's spender is that it tastes more of lime than lemon. The use of cane sugar helps a lot as well, but it's the lime that makes this pop worthwhile. If this is what this flavor of soda always tasted like, I feel like there wouldn't be anything left in the coolers at the end of the party and that everyone would finally come to accept and truly love this soda made out of wedlock

I don't think that I've eaten a grapefruit in well over two decades. I just remember them being super tart and/or bitter. I've had things that are grapefruit flavored with no additional sugar that are quite awful. People eat it with tons of sugar on top. If you have to put sugar on your fruit, you're defeating the point of fruit. "Nature's candy", right? Isn't that what they say? "Nature's candy." You don't add sugar to candy. You're not supposed to. If you do, you don't really understand how candy works. If you add it to fruit, you don't understand how fruit works.

This drink knows how grapefruit pop should work. It's not terribly sweet and not wildly punchy like a lot of other ones. Squirt is good, right, but it's really sweet. This drink is more grapefruit and less pop. It could be the real sugar versus the corn syrup, which can kind of wipe out a lot of flavors. It's got a good smell and is not as strong as, say, Ting, but it's still good. If this is how they do grapefruit on the islands, as their moniker of "Island Soda," then I might have to frequent these islands. Maybe get a coconut so that I can drink this pop out of. It's how they do it. I hate feeling like I'm not a local.

Ahh flowers. They look great. They bring color to this otherwise depressing world. When I lived in Boston for a few months, I didn't know that I would miss foliage and color. I spent six week not really seeing trees or grass too much and then someone told me about Boston Commons and I felt I needed to go. It was like I had never seen flowers before. I spent the whole time just not caring but really my body craved those little guys.

So, I self-admittedly enjoy a flower every not and then. It's fine. This drink was floral. It was like if you had a red tea that wasn't too bitter, infused a flower, and then added a little sugar to it. I will also admit that I clearly have no idea what hibiscus tastes like because sometimes it's the greatest thing I've ever had and then other times it's just...there. I'm not hating on it, but I wish that I could taste it in it's truest form so that I know which side of the fence I'm on; like or love. I guess either side is pretty non-confrontational, but still, I don't like this floral purgatory I'm in. It's terrible but the smell is relaxing and the sights from up here are quite scenic and well pruned.

You know what's stopping this drink from being a good drink? The fact that it sucks. This drink tastes like sour apple plastic. If you had a book for kids that every page had a different smell and one of the pages smelled like sour apple, and then you ate it, this is what it would taste like: your child's book. Why are you eating your kids books? Why are you making drinks that taste like fruity flavored plastic? Why did this drink make it to production? Not every non-diet pop is still drinkable when you exchange real sugar for artificial sweeteners. Not everything we drink is a gem. This should be more acceptable than it is but surprise! We just found the reason why we found it for seventy cents.

I have to admit that my knowledge of Rio is solely that there is a giant statue of what I believe is Jesus and little tidbits that I picked up from reading Carioca Fletch. That's right, I so cultured that I've read a bunch of the books that spawned two of the funniest movies ever, and yes I did hear Chevy Chase in my head as I read them. Oh yeah, I also have some friends who have a cat named Rio. Does that count for anything? No? I didn't think so.

Okay, so I'm going into this with limited knowledge, but that knowledge has expanded now that I know that yerba mate is grown there. That alone gives the city a thumbs up from me. I love yerba mate. It has such a distinctive unique taste in the world of teas.

As Mike likes to point out in every review he does of a lemon flavored beverage, I am not a huge fan of the fruit. Sure I love lemonade, but just adding it to another beverage that is not solely lemon just doesn't do much for me. I'd have to say the same goes for this drink. I would have preferred it to be straight up tea, but I cannot deny that it tastes pleasant. I also know that there is a world of people out there who love the lemon flavor, so I won't hold it against this drink. It tastes exactly as it's advertised; just like you brewed a pot of yerba mate, mixed in some lemon juice (not too much) and put it in the fridge to cool down for an hour. If you are a fan of lemon iced teas, and are looking for something a bit different, look no further. The future awaits you.

Diet cola. It's a rough game. Murderous. Competitive. Mostly kind of gross. This drink has potential. It's a brave venture into a dangerous game filled with tree hugging hippies. Filled with strange middle-aged women with distinctive salt and pepper hair that carry around canvas bags all times in case they come across a killer farmers market with rutabagas they just can't leave behind. Filled with young dudes who will stab you if you as much as mention chicken nuggets and loves the band Crass and has black pants that appear to be painted on his tiny, malnourished frame.

This drink, with all its promise, falls short. It's got a decent cola taste but is quickly replaced with a semi-bitter, sweetness that is known to many as "that Stevia" taste but is really Erythritol. Who cares? Right? Who cares? When a drink isn't that great, who cares what sucks about it? Well it's actually the Erythritol that eats it. It cruds up a potentially good drink. I don't know what would make it better. I don't even know if regular diet pop wins or loses. I don't know what's going on anymore.

Miller High Life is the self-appointed "champagne of beers." While I don't know much about beer, I doubt this is true and think that it's kind of a tongue-in-cheek thing, this could be the champagne of kola champagnes with one single caveat. Pre-caveat, right out of the fridge this is great. It's not as bubble-gummy as a lot of other kola champagnes I've had. It did have a nice, unexpected bit, like some of the ginger juice from their wonderful ginger beer got stuck in the machine, no one cared, and it bled into this drink leaving a little bit of a bite. I always want a little bit of a bite when it comes to food and drink. Spice almost always beats no spice.

Great, right? Awesome. But wait! I said there was one thing to worry about. That one thing is that you either have to keep this cold or drink it fast because once it lukewarms, it gets perfumey. I drank half, went and got a sandwich, came back, bad. Ten minutes or so killed this drink.

Don't let this happen to your kola champagne. Drink it fast or keep it on ice. Do the right thing.

When I purchased this yesterday it was the first time I had ever been confronted about taking a picture of a drink in a store. I was up in Toronto playing a show and I stopped in a little variety store because I had been up since 7, it was late, it was cold and dreary and I needed a little pick me up. I grabbed this can, set it on a shelf, snapped a picture, and took it up to the counter for purchase. The proprietor grilled me as to why I was taking pictures in his store. I told him it was just of the drink, and he wasn't satisfied until I showed him the picture to the left that showed none of his store and only a can of energy drink. I don't really understand why he was so upset. It wasn't like there was anything revolutionary going on in that store, it was just your every day corner store. Maybe there are sketchy things going on that I just didn't pick up on. Oh well, I got my drink and went out in the blustering cold.

The drink did its job in helping me to stay awake, and it did it in a delicious way. It didn't have a crazy mango flavor, as if you were drinking mango nectar, but more of an overall tropical flavor with high notes of mango. It was a nice change of pace from the usual suspects of the energy drink kingdom. It still had the underlying chemical taste of chemicals that you expect from drinks of this ilk, but instead of tasting like some sort of sugar candy it tasted like a sugared juice drink. You've done well yet again Canada.

Something you may or may not know about my fellow Thirsty Dude Derek Raymond Neuland is that he was one of the founders of the Buffalo punk house 99 Custer, aka The Last Stand. If you didn't know that you almost certainly don't know that during his time there a list was made of over a hundred nicknames for him. They included names such as Neuliana Hatfield, Neulia Styles, The Neuliana Theory, Neulia Roberts, Neulia Child, Downtown Neulie Brown, Neulie Neulmar, and one of my personal favorites: Turbo. Now I should have let Turbo here drink this beverage and write a review, but if I had done that, I'm pretty sure he never would have mentioned the nicknames and you would have been robbed of knowing that at one point someone called him Neulia Louis Dreyfus. How could I deny you of that?

Now I will tell you basically what author of Twenty Thousand Leagues under the sea Neuls Verne would about this drink. It has that general energy drink taste that will more than likely make you think of Red Bull, but with a little more citrus to it. It's no better or worse than your average energy drink, so don't let the terrible tribal heart logo throw you off. I mean it's a product made by a drug store (Shoppers Drug Mart) so I guess we should cut them a little slack.

ps. This is not to be confused with the American product of the same name that is the fake Red Bull that comes out of the gun at most bars. Although they taste eerily similar.

pps. He was also known as Gary Gas Hands, due to the fact that he looks like his name should be Gary (according to our friend Pat) and he worked at Mobil.

Deep in the heart of the rainforests of Canada the Black River flows. It is an anomaly of the country. Every fruit ever imaginable grows on the banks of this river. Who knew that tropical fruit could grow just north of Moosejaw, Saskatchewan? On the southern banks of the river is where the guava orchard exists. Unfortunately the ground isn't very suitable for this plant, so the fruit it bears is not as wonderful from that that grows in reality. The Canadians aren't ones to waste anything so they still decided to bottle the mediocre juice.

I wish that were the actual case, but the downfall of this juice is that it is more of a mixture of grape and apple juice than it is guava puree. The other juices take away from the exquisiteness that is guava. It's a shame for sure.