United States - 4098 Reviews

Spindrift has been good to me. For the past five years I have enjoyed their sparkling beverages with no added sugar. At first they proved to me that soda can exist in a delicious way without being full of sweetener. Then they were a gateway for me to start enjoying seltzer, which I drink constantly now. I thank them for helping keep me on a healthy track. I didn't always have their products available to me in Buffalo, but because of them I found other companies that filled the void. I cut a ton of soda out of my diet, and transitioned to drinking a lot of unsweetened iced tea.

Now it's summer and it's the most humid it's ever been in Buffalo (not an exaggeration, records have been broken). The heat is nearly unbearable, but I have my beverages to help me get through it, which I promptly sweat out.

I love watermelon, but I never get it for some reason. It's probably due to laziness, or maybe it's because eating it outside of a picnic/beach type scenario seems off. I was excited for this drink. It's in their sparkling water line and not the seltzer one because there is juice added to the sparkling water and that leads to a whopping 3g of sugar. This is the first time Spindrift has really left me wanting. Overall this would be great, except for one thing. The watermelon tastes more like the rind than it does the red mushy fruit part. I don't know if they just ground up the whole melon, but it's not really what I'm looking for when I think of watermelon. It's not horrible, but I wanted something different that they did not deliver. Oh well, one misstep does not ruin a company for me and I will continue to enjoy their other products.

Who doesn't love the most refreshing beverage in the universe, vinegar? You douse your French fries in it. You use it to color Easter eggs. You use it as a cleaning agent. Sometimes when you don't shower for a week you smell like a combination of it and old onions. Wait, vinegar is horrible and I never want to ingest it outside of it being used in salsa. It's actually one of my most hated flavors and many a food has been ruined by it, yet here I am consciously drinking a bottle of it. The things I do for Thirsty Dudes.
When you first take a sip of this a wonderful honey and cinnamon taste washes through your mouth. I thought, holy crap this is actually really, really good. It tastes very natural and I can't believe I'm enjoyi…€¦. Before I could finish my thought the vinegar was there, ruining the party like it always does. I had other people try this and they said it was pretty mild and they enjoyed it. Me, as a sworn enemy of vinegar couldn't do more than a couple sips. I'll let my friend's enjoyment weigh on my rating though. If you don't mind vinegar then this is probably awesome. I mean the cinnamon flavor was possibly the best I've ever had in a beverage and the honey was quite good as well. I wish I could enjoy the rest of the ingredients, but nope, it's not for me. I'm sure it's super healthy though. People drink vinegar for health, right?

Twix, a cookie not a candy bar, is a wonderful cookie not a candy bar. Carmel, crunch, caramel and chocolate. If we're talking about "The Four C's," screw diamonds, dude. Twix is where it's at. How is this though? Sweet. I don't even know after all these years if there is any coffee in iced cappuccino, or as we in Western New York like to call them, "Iced Capps," anymore. They might be but it's so overpowered by sugar and cream and now cookie crumbles that what's the point anymore. This small was more than enough. There was probably the amount of a "fun size" Twix grinded up on the top which was fun to get through the straw at the end. The rest was just a sugary blur of cookie flavors and brown. I say that like it's a bad thing. Look, if you're the type of person to buy an iced cappuccino, you know what you're getting into and you know what you're doing to yourself. I'm not going to say it, but deep down you know what you're up to.

Carl, why did you give me this fire in a bottle? What did I. What did I. What did I do to deserve this? It's like drinking citrus flavored lava. I don't know if there was orange but it was citrus. If I had a straight ginger and drank this side by side I might be able to confirm that it's orange flavored but the burn is just so intense that the flavor is lost. It's not bad at all, though. I appreciate your gratuity in burning off my taste buds but I still don't know why people drink this. Is it energizing? Is it good for my insides? Why did I just subject myself to this self-torture? Fun? Carl. Carl. Baby. Don't do that to me. I've had a long day. You know what? I do like it. Would I drink it again? We'll see if I'm given the opportunity but as much as I'd like to give your tongue an Indian burn, which might be racist at this point, I appreciate you giving this bottled up ending scene from Terminator 2.

Sparkles with a lil' bit of citrus. That's it and that's all, friends. This is the simplest seltzer that money can buy. It's got a strong lemon flavor and tastes like seltzer. You can call me an idiot for that review if you aren't doing that already but it's true. It's good in its simplicity and that will win the race if you ask me. They've got more ambitious flavors so this is the gateway drug, if you will, to more dynamic and interesting flavors. Start with the lemon wedge, go to the watermelon and end with the cilantro lime. It's a trip worth taking.

So here we are. We have finally completely the trifecta of drinks. When we first started Thirsty Dudes we stated that there were three drinks that were no longer in production that we wished we could get our hands on to review; Orbits (which we found be sold in Canada 14 years expired), Ecto Cooler (which got a re-release with the new movie being out), and now Crystal Pepsi is in our hands. Nostalgia for the 90's is high right now. I mean I snuck into an En Vogue concert last week in Michigan and alternative bands are on the rise once again. Pepsi knew that if there was ever going to be a time to bring this back it was now, and let me tell you, people are talking. Well, there is a slight murmur on the internet about it.

We shot a video of us drinking a bottle and discussing our thoughts on it. The conclusion is that is tastes like re-carbonated flat Pepsi with a hint of 7Up mixed in. It's odd, but still enjoyable. Sure the video cuts off after 5 minutes, and sure we probably kept rambling nonsense for five more without realizing it, but do you really need to hear more of us pretending we aren't awkward by pretending to be awkward?

Folks, I think this is it. I believe we have finally reached the bottom of our cache of Claire Baie beverages. I can't say it has all been enjoyable, but at least I went out with something pleasant.
It's in the mid 90's now and it's so humid that you can feel the air move when you walk through it. It's kind of disturbing, and it really, really just needs to rain to get all of the water out of the air. I wonder how much of the humidity is just from people's sweat? Ugh, that's gross. How much of the moisture you feel in the air is other human's grossness? I needed to cool off and drink something cold and refreshing. What better beverage to fight the summer miserableness than lemonade? This is made with real sugar, and it is sweet. I really want this to taste like fresh strawberries squeezed into classic lemonade, and well about half of that came true. I would say it has a “strawberry” flavor, but it doesn't taste like perfectly ripe fruit. Most people would never complain about this, but I get picky. Regardless , it helped me pretend I was dehydrated from sweating so much, and it had a decent taste. I can't really complain. I'm sure you'll love it.

Whenever someone offers me a fruit flavored soda that I have never tried before this is what I secretly hope it will be like. I'm in my late 30's and I have no need for sparkly sugar water anymore. If I drank that stuff the way I used to I would be way overweight and feel like garbage all of the time. This though, this is the dream. This is just sparkling juice with no sugar added. The base is very much apple juice, which makes me wish it was autumn, well that and I'm sick of these obscenely humid 90+ degree days. So they start off with a sparkling apple juice, which would be great on its own, then they added a bunch of straight up blueberry juice, and sent the thing through the roof. When was the last time you had a blueberry beverage that actually tastes like you had a mouth full of berries instead of a mouthful of dumb candy? Like dry land (and dry air) delicious fruit sodas are not a myth. They can be found and are produced in Florida of all places. Oh man, I just imagined how humid it must be down there right now. How are there not mass suicides? My thoughts go out to you denizens of the south.

Around two o'clock today I started sneezing. By 4 o'clock my nose was stuffy. Come 6 o'clock I started to feel really weak. My question is who gets sick in August when it's 90+ degrees out? Apparently this guy right here, and it couldn't come at a worse time. In order to combat this illness I drank one of these Ginger Shots and I will probably drink a handful more over the next 24 hours. The way the ginger in these feels makes me think that it could destroy anything unhealthy in the body. I'm probably wrong, but I'll let the placebo effect run its course.
Out of all of the ones I've tried this one has the most non-ginger flavor to it. The apple in this is very pleasant and its flavor isn't completely decimated once the ginger takes over. They interweave with each other and I absolutely love it. The ginger still has a ridiculous burn that isn't for the faint of heart, but there is more flavor to this one than the others. Dare I say that this is perfection?

Redline makes some of the most intense energy drinks I have ever some across. If I drink one it's absolutely guaranteed that I will not come anywhere near sleep for at least 12 hours. It's a blessing and a curse, just like logic. The reason I mention this is that the same creators have concocted this energy drink as well. While it may not have the same intensity it still gives you the shot to the heart that you so desperately want from energy drinks, but that so few deliver.

Bang does not use sugar in their beverages, as the spike in blood sugar that they cause is also one of the things responsible for the energy drink crash that some people experience. Nobody wants to go up, just to fall even further down later. Instead it's sweetened with sucralose; I know, not very game changing. The thing that does make Bang stand out amongst the armies of energy drinks that fill coolers in gas stations all across the planet is their energy blend. They use a mixture of Creatine, CoQ10 and branch chain amino acids as well as the usual caffeine and B vitamins. I'm not totally sure what the difference is chemically, but I can tell you I most definitely got a pick up on my drive home from MI yesterday. Of course it was just in time for traffic to come to a standstill, so I was chock full on energy in an essentially parked car on the highway. How wonderful. It just hit me that since Creatine is included these are probably intended for use when you're working out, you know…€¦not sitting in a car.

This flavor is Star Blast and that may mean that it's supposed to be star fruit flavored, or it may just be a catchy name. Either way it tastes like a slightly diet version of some random Hubba Bubba or Bubblicious gums from the 80s/early 90s. It's very sweet in the fake sugar way, but it's not gross. It really tastes like kind of fruity gum to me, and that's fairly pleasant.

I have no qualms with Bang. In fact I quite enjoyed this. I do have a problem with the way people were driving in Canada yesterday though. There were no accidents. There was no construction. Why were you stopping and starting so much then?

While I was drinking this I kept thinking about the Red Rose tea my grandmother used to drink. Then I thought, wait I've drunk a tea that reminded me of that before, and I did a quick search and saw that I had reviewed Snapple Straight Up Tea, but nowhere did it mention that it was sorta sweet. The thing is that everything I was going to say about this, I said in that old review. I don't know if it's the same product just relabeled, or if it does have less sugar, but my review stands.

I think it might be a stone cold fact that every American elderly woman who was a grandmother in the late 80's/early 90's drank Red Rose tea. Mine certainly did and everyone I've questioned about it came back with an affirmative response. Red Rose ruled the tea world at that time, and as an added bonus, the boxes came with little animal (Wade) figurines, which were nice for the grandchildren; everyone was a winner.

As I drank this tea all I could think of was Red Rose. This tastes exactly like how my grandmother's tea would taste cold. It's a nice black tea with a bit of sugar in it. It's actually probably about a spoonful. This is a nice genuine tea. It's not particularly fancy, but it's just black tea and sugar with a little citric acid in it. I've had many a cup of tea in my life from all sorts of companies, and this has the very specific Red Rose taste. I had other try this to confirm my thoughts and we all agreed. So where…€˜s my little figurine?

Seeing as neither of us at Thirsty Dudes drink at all, let alone enough to give us a hangover, we had our friend Paul Morin (from the band Orations and famed impersonator) drink this and give us his thoughts. Here are the jumbled notes that he sent us:

Smells like grass.
Greenish color.
Tastes like smarties/ lemon-lime Gatorade.
Pasty chalky texture.
Tastes like artificially sweetened "Limeade."
My friend who is a chemist said after looking at the ingredients it was basically like taking a Tylenol before drinking.
Vaguely smells like dirty socks. "Limey sock water."

I did not wake up with a hangover however I did have to make several to the bathroom. Not sure whether to blame the alcohol, something I ate, or the product for that.

This is from a man who went to college to be a librarian. I guess you can't blame him since he started sober and kept writing as he got progressively drunker.

I can't really argue with most of his thoughts though. This tastes like a diet lime Gatorade if it had the concentration of an unfrozen Freeze-E-Pop.

On a hot day, you should be drinking water. We in Western New York have been suffering drought-like conditions. It rains for a half hour and doesn't rain for two weeks. It's bad. Combined with 85+ degree days day after day, it's getting pretty tiring to go outside. On this hot day and on my way to band practice, I needed something. I drink water at my desk all day but I needed something and this hit the spot. I wish it was twice as large but you can't get everything you want.

It was very lightly sweetened and flavored. It was just a nice, cool lemon honey tea that was instantly refreshing. I wish I had one here. Two. One went down too quickly. It was low in calories, too. I think seventy for the bottle which was quite a bit healthier than the tallboy of Arizona that I wanted to feel nostalgic. I can feel nostalgic another time because now I've got a nice "go to" when I go to 7 Eleven which is rare regardless of their omnipresence.

This tastes like nothing, for that is what it is. It's just water with tiny bubbles. It doesn't taste bitter. It doesn't taste much of anything and that is a wonderful thing at times.

I travel a lot. Be it touring with bands, or just for leisure I like to leave Buffalo a lot. I love it here, but I appreciate it more when I'm able to take a break and then come back to it. When I'm out in the world I don't often do touristy things. I prefer to go on adventures and find the weird, cool things cities have to offer. Recently I was in Boston for the probably two dozenth time in my life and my friends who I was with really wanted to check out Cheers. They love the show and it we had some time to kill, so we walked across some park or another and checked it out. I must admit it was pretty neat to stop in for a few minutes. I really had no interest in eating there, or having a drink because…€¦yeah I'm not a fan of bars. The television nostalgia was nice though. They each picked up some souvenirs and I grabbed this bottle of root beer.

Being a novelty item I had low expectations for this soda and it ended up sitting in my fridge for a while. Obviously they went to some bottling plant and just had them slap a Cheers label on it. Normally in those situations the soda is completely uninspiring and more sugar water than anything. This was more robust than I had expected. It was better than store brand, which is the barometer that I use for root beer quality. It's a little dark, and fairly sweet. It did its job and I found it quite refreshing on this hot, anxiety ridden day. And no, I do not want to go where everybody knows my name. I want to hide out in the woods where I will come in contact with very few people. At what point do I need to admit that I have a problem? Oh, probably when I run out of drinks to review.

This was…€¦weird. No matter how many times I reminded myself that this was kiwi flavored, every time I took a sip my brain/taste buds colluded and made me expect lime. This is not lime. It was never supposed to be lime. Red Bull does not want me to think lime. The problem is the green can makes me think lime, and that is my problem, not theirs. I mean it's not a huge problem, but it is weird when you expect tangy citrus and you are greeted with a sweet fruit flavor.
To be fair this is probably the most accurate kiwi flavored drink that I have ever tasted. They really nail that quick aftertaste that kiwi gives you. I could actually believe that this was just a kiwi soda and not an energy drink, because the chemical taste is not very strong. I kind of want it there. How strange is that? I complain about that flavor so much, yet when it comes to a Red Bull product, I want it there. Something is clearly wrong with me.

No matter how many flavors of Jelly Belly soda I try I am continuously surprised at how they don't taste like carbonated garbage water. Confectionary companies making soda has rarely, if ever, turned out well until now. So here I am with a bottle of soda that I don't really enjoy, but I can't say that it's bad by any means. I just am not a big fan of pears. They are at the lower levels of the fruit chain for me. I mean they come nowhere near the atrocity that is bananas, but they are still not even close to my favorite. Let me take an aside here and ask if we can hold whoever it was that created bananas responsible for war crimes? I think they would be getting off light.

Back to the subject at hand; this tastes like someone took a pear at the peak of ripeness, juiced it and mixed it in with some sweetened sparkling water. It only tastes vaguely candied, and that is shocking. I can't believe how much it actually tastes like pears since it says there is 0% juice in here.

I may not be a fan of this, but I can certainly respect it. I also know a bunch of people who would love this. It's a shame they aren't here to drink the rest of it, because I more than likely will not.

Let's face the facts. There is no one out there who is going to think that these shots are “just okay.” People are either going to love them or hate them and the decisive element is the intense burn from the ginger. Oh, that wonderful burn. It places me clearly on the “love it” side of the coin.

To be fair the additional flavors make up at best 10% of what is going on in these tiny bottles. The vast majority of the flavor is the ginger. With this one you get a little sweet pomegranate taste up front but it is quickly decimated by that ginger that I love and cherish. It makes me feel as if there is any illness lingering in my body that it doesn't stand a chance against this beverage. If live were a videogame this would be the elixir that returned some of your hearts so you could keep adventuring.

I think this might be the last straw. If a quality company such as Four Point Zero can't make a green apple beverage that I truly enjoy, I don't think there is any hope for the flavor. The odd thing is that green apples are my go-to apple. Granny Smith all the way, all day. Green apple…€¦well anything other than actual apples, never taste like that to me. A lot of the time they taste like candy, which this does only vaguely. There must be a different breed of apple that the green apple flavor is based off of. I bet I wouldn't really like this in apple form either. This is all personal taste though. If you like the “sour” green apple flavor, but want it sugar free then this seltzer is calling your name. It's really not bad, even for me, but I just want a Granny Smith seltzer.

I was worried about this. Vinegar? As a drink? That's a strange one, right? Who drinks vinegar? I do, apparently. How is this vinegar, though? It's good. The turmeric and lemon and ginger are a great trio. Good burn and the vinegar is there but mild. I was worried that it would be like drinking straight vinegar or better/worse fruit flavored pickle juice. It was not. You could taste a little lemon but the turmeric and ginger was prominent and a flavorful team.

I think I have another one of these in the basement, where vinegar/pickling belongs. I no longer worry about what they will taste like and welcome with open, pickle loving arms, vinegar drinks. I say that now until I buy something like a Bragg's and it's going blow the lid off my mouth like that one time I thought it would be a good idea to take a shot of chicken marinade not knowing it was mostly vinegar and my eyes watered up like that time that I saw Homeward Bound for the first time.