United States - 4098 Reviews

Hello, my name is Jason and I am an addict. I spent years of my life chasing the dragon, trying to grasp the unbeatable fix. I went from sketchy place to sketchy place looking for the best that the world could offer. I knew I had reached a low point when I found myself eating plants to get a fix. I was literally poisoning myself, and for what a taste of the good life. I realize now that I could never find a high sweet enough, or a chunk big enough. You see I am addicted to aloe drinks. I have kicked the habit, but I know that I will always be an addict. Actually that's not true…€¦I had kicked the habit, but I'm ashamed to admit that I have had a relapse. I just couldn't help myself. When a company like Alo released a drink that is watermelon and peach flavored, I feel like I have no choice but to submit to my urges. I mean it's made with real juice for crying out loud.

I am shamed, and going back to the …€˜lo wasn't even as sweet as I wanted it to be. I was a fool. I knew watermelon drinks tended to end up tasting like Jolly Ranchers, but the use of real fruit gave me hope. In a cruel twist of fate, I was correct that it did taste like watermelon, but I had forgotten how light and nearly unflavored the juice that comes from a watermelon could be. This tastes like the great seeded fruit, but it was so darn light. Peaches are a much stronger fruit, but for some reason in this it was light as well. In some sips it came out stronger than others, but ultimately I must admit this was a very light drink. That can be fine and actually preferably in some beverages, but when it comes to aloe one wants bold flavors.

As far as chunks go, they are not as plentiful in Alo drinks as with other companies, but when you do get them, they are much larger than normal. It's a trade off you must make sure you are okay with. At my moment of weakness I would have accepted any chunks the Alo gods offered up.

I was weak, and my confidence was shattered. I came here to this group in search of help and strength. I hope that you fine people will allow me to lean on you as you fight your own demons. Wait…€¦what do you mean this has nothing to do with aloe? This is AA, right? Aloholics Anonymous? Oh…€¦well it looks like I'm in the wrong place. Thank you for your time anyway.

I did some research, because I wanted to make sure, and I was correct; the origin story of this soda has nothing to do with Native Americans. It's just name and image appropriation for the purpose of branding. Someone years ago thought they were clever in naming their cherry soda “Cherikee Red.”

To add to the offensiveness of it all, the soda is less than average. It's on the low side of store brand soda. It's cherry, but the flavor is not bold, it's just kind of there. It's certainly no Cheerwine.

Normally I would say that a rebranding was in order, but since the taste is nothing to write home about perhaps this soda should fade away into the racist history of our wonderful country.

Sudz, Spuds MacKensie's little known brother, loved root beer. He was up for the beer commercials himself but in the interview process, drank so much that he gained too much weight to be suitable for the part. Depressed but still in need of something more in his life, he decided to start his own pop company.

They made fairly average pop that wasn't bad at all. The root beer, Sudz favorite and pride and joy, was good. It was safe but still good. It didn't have any of the licorice or anise that a high end one would have but it has everything a basic root beer would have. It's pretty comparable to other "store brand" root beers.

Sudz now has a long lasting legacy of pop where as his brother was just a temporary staple of a beer company. They fight at family reunions but who doesn't.

We got some green teas. We got some blueberries. We got some cane juice crystals. We got some stevias. We got a whole bunch of other stuff too. Mix them all together and that that makes a good meal. That is if you are on a strict liquid diet. If not then it makes for a good beverage. Is it fair to say that I want to punch people in the throat who talk like that? I mean I would never actually hit them, but I find it infuriating. When I get to my boiling point, all I need to do is reach for one of these delicious iced teas and let the aggravation melt away. It's not a nice mild blueberry taste that accents the green tea. The stevia keeps to the peripheries. You can tell that it is there, but it's not right in your face. So it makes it an acceptable way to cut down on calories, as it doesn't detract from the taste of the beverage much at all. I mean I could still do without it, and have minimal to no sugar in here, but other people have different tastes, and I damn them everyday for it. Looks like I'm going to need another bottle.

To sum up this soda I give you The Decemberists' Valenica. It tells the tale of two star-crossed lovers, a man and his citrus of choice. The world couldn't accept their love, and it all ended it tears. What is not told in the song is that after the untimely death of his beloved orange, the protagonist of the tale collected her remains and used the juice they contained to create a soda that was worthy of praise.

He always found his love to have a wonderful dry humor, so he kept true to her memory, by not adding much sugar to ensure the soda would also be dry. The result fell somewhere between a sparkling water and soda pop as the world knows it. It was light yet still flavorful. With each sip our hero shed a tear for the love that he had lost, but yet regained in some form as a beverage.

Depending on what word you put the emphasis on this drink could have a unsavory name. I guess it all boils down to saying it as if it were a question. “THAT Indian drink?” makes it seem like the person can't believe that you would choose that drink above others, and is slightly disgusted by it. “That INDIAN drink?” just makes you sound racist, as if you want nothing to do with all things Indian. “That Indian DRINK?” just makes you seem like a moron and that you don't know what drinks are.

I would choose “THAT INDIAN DRINK!” because this is pretty darn good. It also acts as more of a dessert than a beverage, like a Indian milkshake if you will. For those of you who are uncultured buffoons who don't own a monocle, a lassi is a sweetened yogurt drink. So it's essentially raspberry yogurt, but thinned out, with a splash of cinnamon in it. I shook this a great deal, as the bottle recommended, but I didn't get much cinnamon flavor until I got to the bottom 1/3 of the bottle. When I got there it was all worth it though. It's thick and it's exotic. I'm glad it only comes in an 8oz bottle though, because I don't think I could handle much more than that.

Summer time drinks are as follows: water, iced coffee (or cold brew), lemonade, and iced tea. Any other drink is not recommended to drink during this time. Naturally, if you can combine any of these they will make a super drink. I've never tried iced lemonade coffee, but I'm sure it's amazing.

Today we will be talking about half and half, a beverage near and dear to our hearts. Half and half (also known as an Arnold Palmer) is half lemonade, half iced tea. This particular jug is Turkey Hill's new "sun brew" line. Can I taste the difference in the brewing? Not really but I appreciate there is real sugar in this instead of HFCS. Personal taste I would prefer a stronger lemonade, but this is good for your average half and half fan.

There's concentrated orange juice in this? Whatever, i'll still take the crab juice.

So as you probably don't know, Coca Cola no longer works with Nestea. They don't bottle it, they don't' distribute it, it's as if their partnership never existed. I wonder who plays the role of the jilted lover in this scenario? Coke needed to fill their iced tea slot, so they are now working with Fuze.

The thing is that I think there was some vats of Nestea's green tea and honey in some factory and they just slapped the Fuze label on it. As my ladyfriend pointed out, it tastes basically the same. It has that quasi bubble tea taste from the honey and the…€¦well green tea. It's really sweet, and if a true tea smith who used monkeys to gather their tea from the side of mountains tasted it they would sip and weep for how much of a bastardization it is from what green tea traditionally is. I say let them cry. I love real deal green tea, but this is gas station fodder and you can't hold it up to the same standards.

For some reason, I don't know if I've had any of the original Pom drinks. I really like pomegranates, too. There is no reason why I haven't done it. Now, though, I'm almost to the point of saying, "Who cares?" because I bet it isn't as good as this. As presented plainly on the bottle, this is 50% pomegranate and 30% pineapple. "What is the other 20%?" you ask? Apple juice. No sugar was added to this to make it as wonderful as it is.

Now somehow this drink clocks in at 210 calories but I get a feeling here is where the age old debate of "good calories versus bad calories" comes in because there is nothing in this but fruit. I understand there is sugar in fruit but I feel like it would break down a little differently than, say, a Whopper.

This tastes like pomegranate juice first, nicely fruity and bitter. Then you are whisked away to a tropical land where it is raining pineapples for some reason. If you are safely sheltered, you should be fine. It happens once a week without notice so you should always remember to wear your hard hat when you are walking in the open. You don't taste the apple juice and it's used as a way to stretch out the other two cool cats.

I want to go to this tropical town. I'll wear a hard hat if I get to drink this all of the day. It would be worth it.

This may be the best that health has ever tasted. I've enjoyed many a juice in my day, but I'm pretty sure I could drink gallons of this without batting an eye. There are only three ingredients here and they are all listed in the flavor. Two of those three can be a little much when they are abused, but BluePrint knows exactly what they are doing. The pineapple has a nice strong, fresh taste, but it's not overly acidic in the way that some pineapple juices make you think of bile. In the same regard, they held back on the mint, making it more of an accent then a prime player. So many beverages overdo it with their mint, and it ends up tasting like you're sipping something whilst chewing gum. Here that is not even close to being the case. On this ride you get apple, pineapple, apple again and then mint leads you out. I personally love a juice where you can pinpoint each individual flavor instead of them all mixing together into some sort of amalgamation.

My birthday is in about a week, so I would like everyone to chip in and get me a year's supply of this juice. It may cost about a half million dollars, but my taste buds will thank you.

I want to hire a sweet MC and have him say, "This is a 7-11 exclusive" in that voice that they do on mixtapes. You know the one. The arbitrarily placed, out of time, over lyrics, poorly recorded, mostly yelled tagline that someone like Don Cannon would do so you know you can't get it anywhere else and more importantly, partially ruins it so you can't get a decent recording of it without some dude yelling over top of it.

Now that my mixtape fantasies are looming through my head, we can get down to brass tacks. You know what Gatorade tastes like, right? You know what lemonade tastes like, right? You know what strawberries taste like, right? Well, if you can draw a line through all of them, you get this. It's good, not too sweet, but no Gatorade is really too sweet now, is it? It didn't have a sting that one might expect either. It was actually, probably due to the Gatorade core, a pretty smooth drink that I will come to again and again until it's gone.

Since I can't drink for pleasure and I don't play sports, I probably won't get another bottle, but it will certainly make me wish that I could shoot some hoops, toss around the pigskin, slap some pucks, or play soccer. "You forgot Baseball, you stupid idiot!" you say? No. I did not. Most baseball players could smoke and drink and it wouldn't change the game one iota. Only the runners on base deserve Gatorade and since, at max, four people at a time can drink it, it's not really fair to the rest of the players so no one in baseball can drink Gatorade unless it's pre or post game.

So a lemon, blueberry, and bag of green tea walk into a bar. The bartender says, "What will you have?" And they say, "We'll just have each other." and proceed to get really handsy on the bar. The patrons of the bar collectively agree that they have no time for that public display of affection and since they weren't buying anything, the doorman threw them out of the bar.

Green tea is wonderful. Blueberries, eh, fine. They're good. Lemons, good in things. No one really eats lemons. Together they are a pretty good team. I will say that the green tea lets it's stronger friends take the helm because you cannot really taste it too much. It might be a little bitter at the end but it could be the Stevia deceiving you. The blueberry and lemon work together more as a juice than...well I guess what else would it be? It's two fruits coming together. It has to be a juice. Sorry for the black or white guys, but you're a juice.

Whenever I see that green, it usually means two things. Thing number one is that it is green apple. Thing number two is that it is going to be way too sweet and downright suck-filled. Was this any different? Eh, 75%. It was green apple but it lacked the uber-sweetness that other green apple pop has. In doing so, you can actually taste the drink itself, which, in and of itself, was not too spectacular.

I think that this flavor as a whole should go by the wayside. I've never had a green apple pop that I could finish an entire bottle of and I've never had one that I've wanted to take more than a couple sips. Kids probably love the stuff but as we all know, kids are dumb and will like anything that has sugar in it because they are mindless idiots. Yeah, I said it. You have been thinking it and I'm the only one who stood up and said it. I'm not afraid of a cavity ridden, hyperactive, pre-pubescent, pre-teen. Bring it on. I've been grizzled by life and am way smarter, wittier, and worldly than you. Enjoy your impending teens, suckers. They're going to suck.

It's been sad times out on the old horse farm. You see horse thieves have come by and done what they do and now the farm is horseless. I know horse thieves in this day and age? It's a sad but true reality in the world that we live in. Without the ridiculous amounts of money that the owners pulled in from all of those 4H shows at county fairs, they don't know how they are going to make ends meet. The mortgage is due, the electricity is in fear of being shut off and everyone's bellies are rumbling. One would think that a farm would have some sort of food growing, but you would be wrong. The only edible things on the entire farm are the bins of oats that were once used to feed the horses before they were thieved in the night.

They have been staving off hunger with a steady diet of oatmeal, but Teddy decided to use the oats to add a little something-something to his beverage. To begin with his drink was really nothing more that water, stevia and some natural peach flavoring (aka the ruminants of a can of peaches that he has been stretching for weeks. He was getting no nutritional value out of the drink, so he pureed a bunch of oats and mixed them in for fiber. As we all know fiber is a very important thing when your life is on a farm.

The results of his experiment were shocking. He had expected it to be a thick drink, with chunks of oats in it, kind of like the milk at the end of a bowl of granola. Apparently the house had a super blender, because it was pure liquid; there was not a single chunk to be found. The oat flavor was to a minimum as well; perhaps it was because it had been drying out in the bins for so long. It really just tasted like peaches and stevia albeit lightly. There was a slight oat flavor that could have been turned up a little bit more. It would have been nice for it to taste a little bit like oatmeal. Even though it was not what he expected Teddy proclaimed it to be “Oatstanding!,” to which all of the rest of the farms hands just shook their head and continues to bale hay for the ghost of horses past.

I do believe the trickster has been at it again. He certainly must have come in the dead of night and drank my Odwalla orange juice and then replaced it with a lesser juice. That is the only conclusion I can come to since there is nothing spectacular about the contents of this bottle of juice. It's not bad, in fact it's on the higher side of average, but for the cost of it, and the power behind the brand I expected more. In fact I could buy a half-gallon of comparable orange juice for the same price.

When I go out and get one of these “special” juices from companies like Odwalla, Naked or Bolthouse I expect a little pizzazz. I know there are more, better companies, but these are the big names for people to have a point of reference. I expected this to taste like I was biting into a perfectly ripe orange on a warm summer morning. Instead it tastes like every other 100% juice orange juice. Give me more or give me death! Wait, I take it back, I would rather drink this instead of death, because like I said, it's pretty good, just not over the top good like I had wanted/expected.

Sparkling waters are generally not my thing. The carbon dioxide in the bubbles does something to the flavor that does not work well with my palate. It just makes the water dry and I want to say bitter, even though I know that is not the right word.

Knowing what my body does and does not like I went into this expecting to drink a few sips and then discarding the rest. The actuality of it is that I ended up drinking the entire bottle and really enjoying it. This is not your normal sparkling water. It has a nice light black currant flavor that is a little more than a hint, but nothing close to overbearing. I've had flavored sparkling water before and it still always has that distinct flavor that I can't get down with. Since that flavor is very underplayed in this beverage I have to attribute it to the Buchu Oil. Of course you've never heard of it before, neither had I. It's an extract from a South African Herb that is packed with antioxidants. It works wonders.

For those of you out there like myself who's body craves carbonation to scratch their throat at times, and don't want all of the sugar from soda, yet have a distaste for seltzer and tonic waters, this is the solution you've been looking for.

I'm fairly certain there was a mix up with shipping at the plant where 989 is made. You see each week they normally get a shipment in of the oddly tasty Flintstone chewable children's vitamins. They then dump them into this gigantic electronic pestle and mortar that they have in the back and it turns them into a nice fine powder to which they add their personal blend of ionic minerals and electrolytes. From the smell/taste of this I think someone screwed up in the shipping department and ordered a bunch of old people vitamins instead. You know, the kind that always smells stale, and you don't want their taste on your tongue at all. Whoever accepted the shipment must have just shrugged and loaded them in anyways.

The rest of this line has ranged from acceptable to tasty, with very few real complaints from us. This grape unfortunately does not cut it. It smells like a mixture of white grape juice and Centrum. Actually that's pretty much how it tastes as well, except there is also a more than heaping serving of stevia in there as well, so you have a cooling adult vitamin flavor. It's not something that I can say I enjoy.

I would also like to point out that I was with a three year old when I drank this, and they were so completely excited about it. The twisting of the cap so that the vitamin powder mixed it elicited cheering and clapping. She could not get this drink to her lips fat enough to drink it down. Then as soon as mouth contact was made, she immediately stopped, handed the bottle back to me, whilst making a grossed out looking face and simply said, “I don't like that.” Even kids can tell there is something wrong here.

I saw a twelve pack of these at a barbecue I was at today and decided I would drink it to review it. I normally don't mix the two, social drinking and reviewing, but I couldn't possibly drink any more Arizona Sweet Tea. I had one glass and it was just one glass too much. I cracked it open and wanted to enjoy the ride but the only place it took me was right on down to the crappy gates of Dietburg, a town that, for reasons unbeknownst to me, is guarded by gates. I looked at the ingredients and there it was: the dreaded Aspartame.

I thought we were done with that one. This with a slew of other diet sweeteners both artificial and natural could have potentially saved this drink. I mean, cherry and grapefruit could have been a wonderful match but instead it tasted like cherry and tart diet generic citrus. Aspartame really took a dump all over this drink. Wegman's, I thought you were better than that. I was wrong. Now I know what a disappointed dad feels like twice today because my son threw a handful of rocks at another kid with simultaneously disobeying me as I cried out "Don't throw those rocks." Giant bags of sadness and disgusting drinks for all!

Seeing as Derek is vegan and Mike doesn't believe in strenuous activity I have become the de facto protein shake reviewer here at the offices of Thirsty Dudes. Of course by offices I mean my computer room in my apartment, Mike's desk at his day job and wherever it is what Derek does his writing. We live the glamorous lives of the beverage reviewer and there is no one that can take that away from us.

I got done with my work for the day early, but no one else was around, so I decided to go on a bike ride. I meant to just ride around for an hour or so, and maybe check out some neighborhoods that I've never been to around my house. That led to a much longer ride that took me over nearly 30 miles of road. Did I mention it was ridiculously hot and humid as well? I don't know if I have ever sweat so much in my life. I was literally able to ring sweat out of my clothes after I got home. After bringing my bike into the house I dragged myself to the kitchen and grabbed this out of the fridge, because of course what you want when you're ridiculously dehydrated and are so tired that you don't think you'll be able to move much more is a nice milkshake that has bananas in it aka the worst fruit ever.

The protein gods were shining down upon me as this is the first beverage that I have ever had that contains banana that didn't taste exactly like the grossest of all fruit. This has more of a creamy base with a nice strawberry flavor added to it. It's light in flavor, but for some reason the banana flavor is hardly there. I certainly wish it would have been just strawberry in flavor, but I can't complain about the minimum banana that I was presented with. It's also sweetened with stevia, so perhaps it was that natural zero calorie sweetener that hid the banana for me. It also didn't end up tasting very diet at all. This was actually down right enjoyable for a protein drink. I'm sure I would have liked it even more had I had more moisture in my body.

Of course as soon as I was done with this I downed a gigantic coconut water to rehydrate. It took about a half hour after that for my muscles to work again and then I was ready for new adventures.