United States - 4098 Reviews

Here we have the last of the Kill Cliff recovery drinks that we were sent. The can only states that the name of the flavor is “Tasty,” but I can assure you that it is orange (blood orange according to the website), and while this is completely drinkable, it is my least favorite of the four flavors. It tastes like a diet orange soda with a little something extra in it. It just happens that that is nowhere close to my favorite flavor. I would choose this over any orange soda I've ever tasted before, especially since this has functional properties for when I work out. I don't really get any blood orange out of this, but it's also not painfully diet (even though it's sweetened with sucralose). I'll take that tradeoff.

While climbing the Rocky Mountains, Jack heard about a legend of a mysterious cooler on the top of the tallest mountain. For as long as he was a kid, he always wanted to climb the mountain and find out what was in the cooler. Some people said it was a head of a mob boss that terrorized the city during the 1920's. Some said that it was a secret recipe for a really good pie. Jack needed to find out for sure.

He packed a bag and climbed a couple of the smaller mountains for years to prepare himself for the big climb. Then, one nice summer day, he took his first step up the mountain. Minute after minute, Hour after hour he diligently climbed until he finally made it and there it was, a cooler. A standard issue, blue, plastic insulated Coleman cooler with root beer in it. Not just any root beer but Rocky Mountain root beer.

Sure, it wasn't the finest root beer but it was special because it was made from the Rocky Mountain area. It's a nice, dark root beer that's not too sweet and is actually sweetened from beet sugar. Jack was psyched. He just took the one bottle and left the rest. There was a note on the top of the cooler that said, "Take one and tell no one. Safe travels." He obeyed the rules.

This is my favorite of the Purps line. It is an energy drink that doesn't taste like a typical energy drink because it doesn't have all of the chemical garbage in it. Sure it doesn't give you an unnatural rush, but at least you don't feel like you are being poisoned while you drink it. Instead of taurine and other artificial garbage the energy boost in this can comes from yerba mate, green tea, guarana and panax ginseng root. It's all vitamins and caffeine that is found naturally. If that wasn't enough to sell you the taste is great as well. It is a carbonated yerba mate tea with mangosteen, maqui berry, blueberry, grape, blackberry and acai berry mixed in. It tastes dark and heavy like the purple hue of all of those fruits. At first sip it tastes a bit weird, but once you become acclimated to it, you just want to keep drinking it, even when the can is empty. At least that was my experience with it. It's been an off day and this beverage is helping me work my way through the haze.

Gazpacho, right? Never eaten the stuff. You know what I have done, though? I've drank it. You know what else I've done? I really liked it. I would eat this and I would drink it. I would use this as a meal replacement. This is more of a bisque than a tomato soup which I like because tomato soup is a vile, revolting putrid food. This, though, this is good. It's got a good texture and you can taste everything. Tomato, onions, cucumbers and everything.

I half expected this to be gross. It's soup in a bottle. Who drinks soup? Crazy people. That's who. Whom? Who cares? Whom cares?

Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury, I am here today to prove to you beyond the shadow of a doubt that grapefruit and honey are a perfect flavor combination. I know what you're thinking; grapefruit is too tart and it's what grandmothers eat for breakfast. While that may be true, it is still a delicious fruit when consumed in moderation. On the other side of the coin I have never heard a single person utter a complaint about honey. Everyone loves honey. Even bees understand that people love honey and don't put up too much of a fuss about humans collecting it for consumption. Mike tells me that someone in his family is beekeeper and that he can get me fresh honey comb. I've yet to see this come to fruition. Sorry, I've gone off on tangent there folks, but as you can see I am a passionate man, and this is a passionate flavor.

Now I don't claim to be a fancy man. I didn't attend a fancy learning school, I got my degree from a SUNY school, just like most of you. The fact of the matter if that you don't need to have a piece of paper from an Ivy League school to be able to proclaim with certainty that this is one delicious beverage. I'm guessing that you folks in the jury booth are like myself and have never drizzled honey on a grapefruit. Perhaps, just perhaps we have been wrong all of these years not to have done that. For you see the two pair perfectly, especially if the presentation vehicle is a lightly sweetened green tea. The results are smooth, delicious and refreshing. The tea, the grapefruit and the honey are all quite distinct in the flavor, but they also mingle together to create something new and wonderful.

Ladies and Gentleman, before you banish this beverage to the shelves of the Big Lots of the world I urge you to just give it a chance and I assure you that you will want it to appear in the coolers of every gas station this great country of ours has to offer.

Oh man, I really feel like a fool. I'm supposed to bring these five watermelons to a party, and my car won't start. It's close enough to ride my bike, but there's no way I could carry all of these melons. Sure I could probably do one, possibly even two, but five? No way. Wait, I know, my roommate just got a juicer. I'll mash these things down into a functional size and I'm sure it will be ridiculously refreshing and the hit of the party. I can carry two gallon jugs, no problem.

Wow, this juicer is great, that took maybe five minutes. Sure It would take me about 20 to clean the juicer, but I'm sure no one will think I'm a bad roommate if I just left it dripping on the counter (here's a secret, I would be a terrible person if I did that). This made way less juice than I expected. Five melons gave me less than one gallon. Oh well, at least it will be easy to carry on my bike. I should round it out with this white grape juice and pomegranate juice just to make it a full gallon. I should also taste it to make sure it's okay. Wow, adding those juices didn't really do much flavor-wise. This tastes exactly like concentrated down watermelon, and it even has a little bit of texture to it. It's way less watery than I had expected. I guess those other juices did add a sweetness to this, that is borderline harsh, but this is going to blow everyone's mind at the party. This is the perfect drink for sitting in the blazing sun with people that you don't really want to talk to, but feel obligated to. I think I reinvented summer.

I'll tell you what's good right now for the low price of reading what I have to write to you. This is good. What's good about it? Well, this tastes like all the ingredients and all the ingredients taste good. That's a pretty dumb way to describe how something tastes, right? Well, I say it because we get stuff all the time where flavors are disguised or hidden or masked by something else. This you can taste the tea, lemonade and mango all at the same time and respectfully. It's just the right amount of sweetness and sourness and everything. This is a great tea. Just in time for summertime to come to its peak heatness. This will cool many of you down rather successfully.

There is a phrase in my industry that is awful called "it is what it is." It's basically a way of saying, "It sucks but we're fine with it." This, though. This truly and sadly "is what it is."

This is pickle juice. This is only pickle juice. This is exclusively pickle juice. I don't know what I expected. I thought that it might be...different. It's not. It's just pickle juice. What did I give it such an average rating? Well because I love pickles. I don't know if this brine would make a high quality pickle. I've been living with an increasingly pregnant girlfriend who has been stereotypically craving pickles which I'm more than cool with. I mean, they're a wonderful food that you can do wonders with. This seems like it would make pretty average pickles. Hence, an average rating.

There have been scientific studies that have shown that pickle juice helps with muscle cramping, so this at least serves a purpose. I expect to see all of those pro athletes out there downing pickle juice instead of Gatorade. Just imagine how the coach would smell after the team dumped a cooler of pickle juice on him when they won the big game. I hope someone brings plain chips to go along with it.

This is one strange beverage. That doesn't mean that it's bad by any means, it just means that it's strange. It is a healthy hydration drink. Think of it as an all-natural concoction that combines coconut water and something like Gatorade. There are other products on the market that do the same thing, so this isn't anything new in that regard, but there is something different about it. The thing that is special about Purps is their Purple Life Formula, which is six different purple superfruits mixed together (mangosteen, maqui berry, açaí berry, blueberry, grape and blackberry). Using so many purple fruits isn't even the weird part. The thing that is strange about this is that it is so chock full of fruits, yet it has a very distinctive vegetable taste, even though black carrots are the only vegetable listed in the ingredients. It tastes way more like sweetened vegetable juice mixed with coconut water than it does fruit juice. The fruit is there, but the vegetables have taken over the aftertaste. I like it, but it's still strange. I wonder what is causing that flavor. It also tastes more like a juice drink than coconut water, which gets no complaints from me either. So much purple in one little bottle with so much flavor. I would definitely choose this over a Gatorade or Powerade any day. Those chumps don't stand a chance in the hydration game.

Why aren't ginger ales more popular in bars? I mean you occasionally come across some bottled root beers in watering holes, and the west coast drinkers seem to have a love for ginger beer, but I've never come across bottled ginger ale when I'm awkwardly in a bar because it's where my friends wanted to hang out. I would really like to, and that may be solely because it has the word “ale” in its name. truth be told I would take a root or ginger beer over a ginger ale any day of the week, but sometimes it's nice to have choices, and my brain tells me that it should be served.

Bedford's makes a ginger ale that would be perfect for such a scenario. It's much better than any ginger ale that has ever come from a dispenser gun, and anyone who says that bartenders “mix” ginger ale is really good, is a crazy person. This soda has a nice label that would fit in perfectly with those of real brews, and it really does taste great. It has a different sweetness than your Canada Dry or Schweppes. It tastes like it had the same general taste that those sodas do, but that they slowly swapped out ingredients one by one with those of a higher quality. The result is a very slightly new twist on an old favorite.

If you need me I'll be nursing a bottle of this against the wall, not talking to anyone and pretending that I am enjoying myself.

The story of this beverage is great. You've probably never heard of him, but Buck O'Hairen was a notorious creator of moonshine in the Appalachian Mountains. At the height of his operations he was producing 60 gallons of whiskey a day. Do you know that that equals? There are several answers, but the one we're looking for is “A whole mess of hangovers.” Sick of feeling like garbage after sampling his wares (and his still blowing up causing wildfires), Buck developed a recovery beverage that he called Sunshine. He claimed it would “It'll fix yer mornin' right.”

This is in celebration of the beverage that Buck was making when he mysteriously disappeared. Just like back in the 1800's this recovery beverage is made from ginger root, blackberries and soda water. I don't know how the original tasted, but this current version is fantastic. If it were a regular soda it would be one of the best I've ever had, and more than likely the best fruit soda that has ever crossed my lips. It has a strong berry taste with hints of ginger, but with no burn. It flat out tastes refreshing.

This is not your typical energy drink. It's not going to make you feel crazy and give you an insane boost of energy that will lead to jitters. It does pack enough of a punch to make you feel more wake and alert in a natural way. You don't feel like you've been given an artificial kick in the butt. It makes you feel like you've woken up from a perfect nap and are ready to take on the day. I know it's got me ready to hop on my bike and just ride.

Yo man, I really need your help. I took...some stuff...and need to detox. I didn't take a lot but my boss is making me take a pee test and I'm afraid they're going to find it in my system and I'm going to get canned. Do you have anything like cranberry juice or something? You do have cranberry juice? That's awesome.

Oh wow. This is great. It's totally different than Ocean Spray. It's a lot of a lighter taste. I don't know if it's more water or less sugar but it's not. It's not so intense. Sometimes I cut my Ocean Spray with water because it's really strong. This is great as is, though.

Can I be honest with you, man? I didn't really do drugs. When you went into the bathroom, I went into your fridge and saw that you had the cranberry juice and didn't know if you would have just given it to me if I had asked. Yeah, I don't mind if you take that phone call.

Who was on the phone? Your boss? On a Saturday? What did he want? Oh, he's having drug tests on Monday and you took some stuff? What? I drank your last cranberry juice? Welp, I think I hear my mom calling me. I've got to go.

This...this tastes weird. I don't know what it is. It's definitely full of healthy ingredients because something that was "bad" for you would taste different. Not better. Just different. This drink tastes a lot like acai which is a primary ingredient. It's a little bitter which could be from the acai or the Stevia. I'm drinking it over and over and I can't tell whether or not I like it. It didn't mix well so I'm getting chunks of mix every once in a while. I'm not counting that against them because I might have mixed it wrong. I'm pretty sure I put mix and water together correctly. At my age, I'm pretty sure that I know how to do that.

I don't know. It's fruity but you get a little bit of a "Flintstone vitamin." You can take that how you want it. I'm still looking forward to the other stuff that they sent us. It should also be known that they have some of the best packaging we've received. Credit where credit's due.

The older my son gets, the more I understand why people hide vegetables in food. I could give this to him all day and he would never guess that there are carrots and stuff in here. Is that right? I don't know. He eats some vegetables. Not all vegetables but some. This he would love. This I like. It's tangy like a natural fruit would be. The vegetables don't even rear their ugly head at all.

The fact that I bought this from Big Lots for thirty-three cents makes me wonder if it's still something that V8 sells anymore. It would be one of those things you don't know exists until it's too late. Like me with Bad Brains. I hate myself for waiting until I was in my thirties to hear Banned In D.C.

The people at Mansi are very proud of their beverage, and they should be because it is tastier than I ever could have envisioned. They are also very adamant that we try it three different ways; cold and refreshing, warm like tea, and with your favorite liquor of choice. They have mentioned it numerous times. It's to the extent that I think they have to trick someone into doing these three things in order to break a curse that is on their business. Or maybe it will cause a portal to open up so that they can return to their home world. Or maybe it's like a Beetlejuice type of scenario. I really have no idea, and since neither Mike nor I drink alcohol it looks like we'll never find out. Sorry to let you down Mansi folks. I hope it doesn't make life to painful for you.

Ice Cold:
This is a perfect summer drink in its chilled state. It most closely resembles lemonade made with a slightly different citrus fruit, well because that is exactly what it is. It's made of water, calamansi juice (a fruit that has been described as a mixture of a mandarin orange and kumquats), cane sugar and honey. It's simple. It's easy. It's delicious. It tastes exactly like what it is, a superior “lemonade.” Take note kids if you sold this I would actually stop by your dumb little stands and buy you out of your product. Then you can go and blow all of your profits on candy or whatever it is you're trying to save up for.

Warm:
I have to first off say that it is strange to drink a hot beverage in 90 degree weather, but you do what you must do in the name of progress and beverage reviews. My first reaction is that I should really be drinking this in the autumn. It would fit in perfectly with hot apple cider. All of the similarities to lemonade are out the window once its temperature increases. It tastes almost like an intense citrus tea, but I might only be thinking that because tea is really the only hot beverage I drink on any sort of regular basis. It's a different beast warmed up. It's still enjoyable, but I don't think I could drink an entire carton hot. I also can't drink more than a couple of sips of hot cider either, so if you're into that sort of thing you'd probably like this.

With Liquor:
Sorry again that we couldn't break your curse.

What a fancy drink this is. Everything is unpronounceable which means science. One of this drink's primary ingredient is mushrooms. Mushrooms! You would think that it tastes like an old shoe or something but you would be wrong. You would be dead wrong. Additionally, there are carrots and beets which would make it taste like the canning area in your grandma's basement.

This is surprisingly good. It's sweet enough from the apple juice and lemon juice concentrate that you can get away with some sneaky vegetables. You can trick me all you want if this is the outcome.

This tastes like there are some sneaky ingredients but somehow knowing what they are make it better. You're drinking mushrooms, dude and you like it. You are drinking something they put on pizza and having the time of your life. You should be shaking their hands in wonderment. Scientists and wizards. Same thing, right?

You know what, Stuart, I LIKE YOU. You're not like the other people, here, in the trailer park. Oh, don't go get me wrong. They're fine people, they're good Americans. But they're content to sit back, maybe
watch a little Mork and Mindy on channel 57, maybe kick back a cool, Coors 16-ouncer. They're good, fine people, Stuart. But they don't know ... Wait, this isn't a Dead Milkmen song. The titular character doesn't even spell his name the same as this soda company. They really have nothing to do with each other, and to be frank, I am a bit disappointed. I wanted to tie in some humorous music from my high school years into a review about a soda from Sarasota Springs, NY.

If I'm going to continue to be honest with you I have to admit that I think the song that is currently playing in my head is better than the soda. It has humor and wit (and a bit of homophobia, but it's from a character and not the author). The soda is only delivering me a very syrupy, bubbly vanilla flavor. It tastes like too much caramel got put into the mix and it made it even thicker than the corn syrup did on its own. It's a serviceable soda, but it's not something I would ever crave, or even purchase myself. I have a certain standard for cream soda and this simply does not reach it.

In other news remember in Stuart when he references the “Johnny Wurster boy?” Yeah, it's that John Wurster of Superchunk, Best Show, Bob Mould, and Mountain Goats fame. Life is strange sometimes.

Normally when you get a flavored tea the ratio is along the lines of 85% tea 15% fruit flavor. That is unless it's some artificial garbage, then the ratio can be all over the place. This beverage is closer to an Arnold Palmer 50/50 split. It tastes like it's equal parts juice to tea. It's not what I'm used to, but it's pretty great. To be fair this is far from a sweet tea. In my world that is a very specific way of preparing iced tea. This is actually not abusively sweet. It's not overly tart, but it's not the cavity promoting wonderful swill that is sweet tea. Also, they actually use somewhat fancy tea in this as well. It's a blend of Orange Pekoe and Pekoe Cut Black Tea. That's higher up the tea chain than the normal every day black that is generally used in sweet tea. In summation it's not really sweet tea, and it's more juice than most teas, but neither of those are necessarily bad things and this is great.

Oh man. I forgot I've got an Unreal Tournament later and I ain't got m' Dew. I can't get headshots if I ain't got m' dew. No. I can't drink Sprite, man. I need Mountain Dew. Wait wuuuuutt? It's clear. It's not Dew. Dewshine? Hmm. I'm skeptical of that, buddy. I'll try it because I need my fix.

Hey. This is good. I don't want to say it's better than Dew but it is. It's not as sweet. Look. I'm forty. I can't be drinking Mountain Dew all day like I used to. This is more like a lemon-lime pop than Mountain Dew. Look, you know as well as I that Mountain Dew is awful for you. A guilty pleasure, sure but it's got to be eating me from the inside out.

This is good. You are right. And you know what? I'll cut back on Mountain Dew. I might drink more of this. It's not going to be an even switch. I know I've got to switch but like I said, I need m' Dew.

Can we pretend for a minute that the US Army includes cans of lemon-lime Kill Cliff in the rations of all soldiers in active duty? A can of this would fit in an MRE, right? You get your pasta, your crackers, and a can of recovery drink. Let's be honest those soldiers need a beverage of this type way more than most civilians do. I mean how many essential vitamins and minerals are those fighting folks going to really get from preservative laden meals? Not much by my calculations. I think this actually be a reality because why else would this can be camouflaged? Sure it's not the right colored camo for the current war(s) we're in, but I'm sure we'll get back to these colors in no time at all.

I do hope the soldiers like diet lemon lime soda, because that is what this tastes like. Okay, maybe that's not giving it it's proper due. This tastes like the best diet lemon lime soda I've ever tasted. Sure, that's not really saying much, but it's an important distinction. It has a decent lemon lime flavor which is stronger and more flavorful than say a Sprite or 7Up. Also the use of erythritol and stevia as sweeteners destroys all of that sucralose filled garbage on the market. This is definitely not a flavor that I would choose out of a batch, but if I were in enemy territory and this was handed to me with my meal I would be one excited soldier.