United States - 4098 Reviews

Ah. What a lovely day out today. It seems like just yesterday I was wondering when I could stop wearing two coats and it seems as though today is the day. Today I ate two hot dogs (a summertime treat) and took a walk with my hoodie open. What a day. The sun wasn't out and I didn't have to squint. The bus was packed to the gills (even though a bus isn't a fish) with stupid teenage kids kissing each other for some reason, but I didn't care. I knew that at the end of it all, I was going to go home and get a cool bottle of root beer. I went through my pop, juice, "other", and found just what I was looking for. Just what was going to top it off? I felt like a dude who hates his job and just wants to come home and drink a low quality beer. But instead of hating his job, he's merely aggravated with it and instead of drinking a low quality beer; it's a medium to high quality root beer. Aside from those two minor details, it's basically the same thing.

This was good and it hit the spot. As advertised, it was creamy. Not too sharp and not too bold. This root beer is a safe bet with any root beer connoisseur. You can taste all of the flavors as intended and I actually thought that it got better as I got towards the bottom of the bottle.

That being said, I had to get ketchup across the street...and when I was gone, my girlfriend, soon to be ex-girlfriend, decided that she would finish my root beer. I got home disappointed to see that what I anticipated to be the best part of the root beer, much like the bottom is the best part of a sundae cone was gone. So it is.

For too long fruit punch has been run by the more tropical areas of the world. Everfresh has decided it was time to put an end to this long running era of tyranny. Although they don't refer to it as such, this drink is a fruit punch for America. Peach, Plum, and Pear can all be found locally (locally meaning in the US) in abundance. They've managed to blend them all together in a way that creates a new flavor that tastes like home. If you search them out you can detect each individual flavor, but if you blindly down a bottle, it just tastes nice and fruity.

We normally don't review beverages that aren't already prepackaged. I made an official decision to make an exception for this review.

McDonald's is gross. I think everyone over the age of 10 knows that. Yet millions of people eat there daily. I don't get it. The last time I ate food from there was in 1995. I remember my friends wanted to go there after school and I got an order of fries. I can't even remember when I last ate one of their burgers. Even though I never eat the food, I still find myself sighing once a year as I walk through their doors. The Shamrock Shake is my weakness. Since I was a kid, I've been obsessed with them. As soon as winter looks like it might end, I get excited because I know this minty milkshake will be available soon.

I decided today that it was time for my yearly visit. On my way to the mall to pick up a birthday present for my lady-friend, and some jeans for myself, I made a pit stop to get a milkshake. The restaurant still looks and smells gross and the Shamrock Shakes are still wonderful. A nice thick vanilla milkshake with just the slightest bit of mint mixed in. It shouldn't be good, but it really is dreamy. They have also switched to a classier clear cup. Also, this year it comes with whipped cream and a cherry on top. Even better. If you want one, hurry up. They will only be available for a few more days.

This bottle looks like it was taken from a fancy dinner party on the 23rd floor in Manhattan. Instead of a flavor, this has "notes of apple, cherry, and anise". All of this intrigued and also scared me.

Upon opening this, it smelled like alcohol. This is probably because it has fermented barley malt in it. While I have never tasted alcohol, it tasted exactly how it smelled, which really grossed me out. Then upon further tasting, it tasted like apple juice that has been in the fridge past it's expiration date. You know when the bottle starts to bulge a little and it lets off that strong fermented smell when you open it, and then you take a sip of it to see if it's still good? They managed to bottle that, for whatever reason. Maybe some people like that but it's not for me. This isn't necessarily bad, but it's nothing I want to drink.

Flying Bison has improved upon their Ginger Soda. This is not as sweet and has way more ginger added to it. I still think it needs some work, but they are fairly new to the game and are still messing with their recipes. In most drinks, if there is a peach flavor involved it is the main attraction. In this soda it is only faintly there. I don't know if I would have even noticed it if it wasn't labeled "peach". It was getting to the end of the batch, so that may affect the levels of peach to ginger. I still think there is great potential in the Flying Bison sodas, so I will continue to try them as they become available.

This is ginger ale. It certainly is. There's no doubt about that. Nope. No question in my head that this is ginger ale. Faygo is no dumb dummy. If you ask them to make ginger ale, that's what they'll do. I reckon, though, that this ginger ale is pretty equal to other company's ginger ale. Go into your local grocery store and grab their knock-off brand of ginger ale and you'll see what I'm getting at. This isn't bad, but it's nothing special. I feel like a job well done is a job done well. This seems like it's the bare necessity of what makes a ginger ale good. It's probably easy to make, easy to keep consistent, and possibly/probably cheaper. I know someone is looking for a generic drink for things like mixers and parties where it's not the star player.

Faygo, I'm not dissing you. I am not in the position to dis, or give props, but I did rate your root beer pretty highly. I have nothing against you or the city of Detroit. Keep up the good work. Just step up your ginger ale game. Second to that would be to make your cane sugar versions easily accessible.

Do you know what I hate? Straight up V8. I blame the tomatoes. Tomatoes are strange things. On their own they are the devil in food form. Seriously disgusting. I can't get over it. The thing is, salsa is one of my favorite things ever and the tomatoes in that don't bother me at all. I also like red sauce. I think ketchup is a crime against humanity, though. The smell alone makes me want to hurl. V8 didn't really stand a chance in its original form when it went to war against my palate.

V8 eventually saw that they were never going to be able to please me with their old business model (I mean I am who the company is always trying to please). They stepped up their game with the Splash and V-Fusion lines. They realized that if they mixed a bunch of fruits and vegetables together (yes tomatoes are still in the mix) it actually tasted decent...and not like something Beelzebub would be sipping on in the sixth circle of hell.

This is one of the best that V8 has to offer. Each 8oz glass contains a serving of both fruits and vegetables. In doing so it performs some sort of sorcery that makes the drink still taste like raspberry iced tea. This has sweet potatoes, carrots, and tomatoes in it. You would never know unless someone spilled the beans. Apparently they still keep Satan on the payroll.

The label for this bottle screams "we're trying to be cute and retro, but really just bottled a mediocre root beer and called it olde time". I'm glad that this was not the case because I was excited to try this local soda (it's made in Seaside, Oregon).

The taste of this is really different than most root beers. To say this has a vanilla taste is an understatement. This reminds me of a root beer float with vanilla ice cream. Yup, that's it! And I love root beer floats. But sadly, this is no substitute for a root beer float.

Now I am really craving a root beer float. Why does it have to be 1am?

Dear Olde Brooklyn,
I marked this correspondence as private and personal, so I hope you took the proper precautions before opening it. I don't know how to tell you this without shocking your system, so I'll just come out with it. You have a spy in your product line. No, I don't mean a pointy nosed fella wearing all black or white. I'm talking about real deal espionage here. I would have called you, but I fear our phones may be tapped. This is serious business. Who knows how far their plants go into your company.

I blame the youth culture that has taken over the once fair neighborhood of "Billysburg." I believe they may have used their terrible sense of irony and love of PBR to work their way into your company. As far as I can tell, once they gained access to your factory, they found the barrels that you store your root beer in (Root beer is always stored in barrels right? Candy wouldn't lie to me!). They dumped out your supply of precious root beer and replaced it with root beer scented cola. While it may be a decent enough cola, and the little root beer that was left in the barrels flavored it slightly, it still clearly tastes like cola.

I can hear the sound of fixed gear bikes closing in on my office. I fear they may be on to me. I don't know what end these spies are working towards, but please use the knowledge I have passed onto you in whatever manner you see fit.

Sincerely,
I. M. Fletcher


ps. This message will self destruct in five seconds.

In the 80's there was nothing cooler than skateboarding. It's all my friends did and talked about. Somewhere along the lines skate videos came out. Companies took video of their best skaters, put it to music, and made magic for kids everywhere. My friends and I all had Powell Peralta decks, so we were obsessed with the "Bones Brigade" series. My favorite out of them all was "The Search for Animal Chin." The plot of the video was that the skaters were looking for a wise man named Won Ton "Animal" Chin. They searched everywhere for him and skated everything in their path. It led to some pretty intense sessions. At the end they find a half pipe in the desert with a Chinese symbol on it. The message is that "As long as skaters keep searching for Chin, they've already found him." I feel the same way about iced tea. We search high and low for the perfect tea and we come across a ton of incredible stuff in our adventures. This may not be the ultimate tea that we're searching for, but it's good. It's a blend of a bunch of different teas mixed together. It's "barely sweetened", so it's nice and bitter with a slight peach flavoring. This may not be Chin, but it's certainly a tea he would drink.

For the first time in a long time, I can taste pomegranate as pomegranate when it's mixed with something. Assume for a minute that pomegranates are people and there is a king. No, not king. Boss. Yes. Pomegranates are a company and they named their company "Pomegranates", you know, like how the band New Kids On The Block had a song called "New Kids On The Block" off of the album "New Kids On The Block". Pretty original. At least don't give it a title so it inherently becomes "Self Titled" or "S/T". Anyhow, the boss has all these people making sales. Selling themselves as contractors to juice companies. For example, Juice Co. is making an orange pomegranate drink and they need pomegranate, obviously. So these pomegranate workers go to Juice Co. in order to flavor their drinks with their own skilled labor. Here's the thing, though. Pomegranates are crappy workers. They aren't good at getting their distinct flavor into anything and it reflects poorly on Pomegranate (the company) and therefore, reflects poorly on the boss.

Snapple has hired only the best Pomegranate workers and, for once, they've done their job well. You can taste the raspberry and the pomegranate together in a harmonious blend. Harmonious is a strong word, but I wanted to be complimentary. It's a bit strong. It's good, but it's pretty sweet. Fruity yes. Cardboard no. I mean...my favorite, no.

Did you know that when coffee is harvested it's a fruit? I certainly had no idea. Apparently it's a fruit and coffee companies discard the skin and the fruit, only keeping the center bean to make the caffeinated drink that billions of people are obsessed with. This may be the most interesting thing that I've learned thus far while being involved with Thirsty Dudes. I personally think coffee is swill. When chocolate is introduced into the mix it's not so bad, but regular coffee is grossville station. This made me very wary of this line of drinks. Coffee and fruit? Ick.

I decided to try this one on for size during dinner tonight. I twisted off the cap and took my customary sniff. Surprisingly it smelled like sweet fruit with no coffee smell to note. For the record I do think that coffee smells incredible, I just can't get down with the taste. I took my first sip and learned some even more interesting facts. The fruit of the coffee plant does not taste a damn thing like what the masses know as coffee. It was as if there was a parade in my mouth. I let the taste linger on my tongue for a bit, so it was a fairly long parade. I'm sure there were people on both sides (getting more and more annoyed by the second) waiting for the parade to end so they could get to their destinations.

The bottle says it's mango flavored, but the label lists both mango and pineapple as ingredients. It really tastes like a perfect blend of those two fruits. My brain wants me to think that the drink is gritty for some reason, but it definitely is not. I think I'm just imagining stray coffee grounds in my juice.

The added bonus of this great tasting drink is that coffee fruit is apparently the ultimate super-fruit. Pomegranate has 65 ORAC units of antioxidants. Acai has 100. Coffee fruit has a shocking 4,000 ORAC units of antioxidants. Any oxidants that were in my body prior to ingesting this have surely been banished to the depths of coffee hell. By coffee hell, I mean some terribly artsy coffee shop where all of the patrons and employees are the most pretentious group of people to ever be assembled. The walls are adorned with terrible art that they think is the deepest thing ever. In their minds they are about to turn the art world on their ear. Really they are just rebelling against their parents, since they still live in their basement, even though they are in their mid forties.

Before I even opened this drink the packaging made me fall in love with it. It's so bright and vibrant in a very classy way. The shape of the bottle is also pretty great. I obviously would have preferred a glass bottle, but at least they had the decency to use recycled plastic.

For starters, Pitaya is another name for Dragon Fruit. I learned from the label that the flower of the Dragon Fruit only blooms at night. That's a pretty sweet little nugget of knowledge. I will admit that I was a bit skeptical of this drink because I'm not a fan of coconut water. Every other flavored coconut water I've had tasted like the flavoring fruit had curdled the coconut milk. Pitaya + does not taste like that at all. It reminds me of a juice box I used to drink when I was a kid. Which is strange because those "juice" boxes were filled with so much artificial junk that they were labeled "juice drink." This on the other hand is the picture of healthiness. It's made to keep your digestive system healthy and to cleanse your body of toxins. I strongly believe that they should manufacture these in juice box form for parents to buy their children. I bet the kids would never know the difference, and you would have to keep them away from those school lunches. No matter how delicious those mounds of mashed potatoes and turkey smothered in gravy are, there is no way they are ever remotely healthy for you.

On top of producing a very healthy drink that is also very tasty, Pitaya is also a socially conscious company. The fruit is harvested from farms in Central America where they only hire single mothers from the community (Who they pay well, I might add) to help them care for their families. They are committed to sustainable farming and run one of the only solar powered facilities in Central America. For these things you get two thumbs up from Thirsty Dudes.

People always say it's the simple things in life that bring the most pleasure. Wandering in the woods. Riding your bike around aimlessly. Watching Wet Hot American Summer for the 937th time. Arguing whether Sugar songs are too long. These are all wonderful things. Sometimes life gets complicated, so you deal with it and hope for the simpler times to return. Rob's Really Good understands that. They know that sometimes all you need is water, agave nectar, and hibiscus. Three simple things that are wonderful together. Sweet. Flowery. Delicious.

I've been watching too much Mad Men and it's obviously affecting my reviews. This reads like I'm writing copy.

We here at Thirsty Dudes love root beer. It's possibly our favorite beverage, and that is saying a lot. I've maybe tried a hundred different types of root beer and I've enjoyed almost all of them. I found this in a local specialty shop today. I was pretty pumped because their Puma Cola is fairly spectacular. On top of that, look at that combination of the crow and monkey creature on the label. It kind of reminds me of the racist crows from the old Loony Tunes cartoons. I'm going to assume it was not meant to be an homage.

So we've talked enough about the label, let's discuss the taste. I'm really not into it. When it first hits your taste buds it has a great classic root beer taste, then suddenly everything changes. Mike says it tastes like oak and that it's woody tasting. To me it tastes like someone spilled some cleaning solution into the vat of root beer. I kept on drinking, but I just can't get over that secondary flavor. Sorry Sprecher, you didn't do it for me this time.

You know when you drink something and it has a very distinct taste, but when you look at the ingredients it's not there? That happened with this bottle. My first sip I got a really strong pancake syrup flavor mixed with the root beer. Thinking it was a fluke, I took another sip and it was more of a brown sugar taste. Turning the bottle to see the ingredients, i was shocked to not find brown sugar. There is honey and "real vanilla" in this bottle. The honey isn't overpowering, but it's a nice and subtle aftertaste. The vanilla helps this be one of the sweetest and smoothest root beer's I've ever had. While it's a nice and smooth root beer, I wish it had a little more bite to it.

Oh white tea you are so...what's the right word...dry(?) tasting. Whenever I have white tea it always feels like the moisture is getting sucked out of my tongue. I mean I don't feel like Ned Nederlander, but neither am I feeling like Dusty Bottoms in the desert canteen scene from Three Amigos. Seriously how great is that scene? Okay, entire movie? I would really like to shake John Landis' hand for casting those three fellas together. It's comedic gold!

Okay, so here I am slightly drying out my tongue as I drink this tea, trying not to get carried away on a childhood favorite of mine. Like the label says this is "Just a tad sweet." It's also just a tad flavored. You can taste the pomegranate, but it's the white tea that is the prominent flavor. I'm okay with that. I enjoy a tea that is more tea than fruit juice.

The trifecta combination of the white tea, pomegranate, and acai gives this beverage a crazy antioxidant property. Drink it for health, drink it for refreshment, drink it for taste, or drink it because you're in the desert and your canteen turns out to be full of sand. Just make sure you give it a try.

"Lip balm?"

I usually avoid drinks marketed to little kids. They are usually full of artificial flavors, high fructose corn syrup, and involve a straw or a spout to limit the amount of juice spilled onto Sponge Bob shirts. I found this drink at a store that specialized in interesting sodas. Normally I would have passed over the bottle in the corner store, but since it was among bottles of soda's not found in a normal store I decided to give it a try. Plus, I got a deal if I bought 24 drinks.

First surprising thing about this drink (besides the awesome shade of green): it has pure cane sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup. But further down the list there's also aspartame in it, which confuses me.

Second surprising thing: it actually tastes like lime. It's a tart lime. But in the end, it still tastes like a drink for kids. And I hate drinking out of spouts.

What a relief. After the dark chocolate debacle from a few weeks ago, I was anxious to find some redeeming product from Cell-Nique. This did it. Not a hard competition to have something better than "the worst" rating you can get but all the same, this isn't bad.

Let it be known, that this is probably a health food drink over a standard juice or whatever. It's sludgy, gritty, bold, and flavorful. It's pretty good, though. It's like an orange juice with vanilla in it, for some reason, and then some jerk threw a handful of (edible) sand in it. Cell-nique claims that it's like "A farmer's market in every bottle" and I might give it to him. I really feel like this is good for you and the thickness and color don't convince me otherwise.

This drink makes me happier to try the other flavors we have in stock. I'm finding it kind of fun and strange simultaneously to not have anything in my mouth, take a drink, swallow, and be left picking stuff out of my teeth with my tongue. It's an experience, I can tell you that much.

Beware cheap beverages with the price tag built into the design of the label. That is one thing I have learned from Thirsty Dudes. The only exception to this rule so far has been Arizona Iced Tea, but even most of them are on the low side of the tea spectrum. For the most part a cheap tea is still fairly decent. That same rule does not apply for soda. Cheap pop is just the pits. Towne Club Grape is a little better than most cheap soda, but not by much. It tastes like a syrupy version of melted grape freezie pops with a butt load of sugar added. I don't know who decided that this is what grapes taste like; because I can assure them they certainly do not.