United States - 4098 Reviews

One of my favorite things about traveling/touring is finding and trying regional beverages. Recently I found myself in a crappy little grocery store at 2am in Kansas looking for something to satisfy my hunger. There was no “natural” section to speak of, and hardly any vegetarian selections except for crappy chips and actual vegetables that I had no means to cook. Things were looking grim, and then I stumbled across a little display of these sparkling ciders. My night started to look up, but I left the store with a bag of flavored rice cakes and this bottle of cider. Sure I went to bed hungry that night, but I had a good taste on my tongue.

This is not a spiced cider, and I can only assume that they grow a different breed of apples in the Midwest than in Buffalo, so it ended up tasting more like a sparkling cran-apple juice than sparkling cider to me. I'm okay with that. It was still delicious. Basically if you give me a bottle of any juice that is carbonated with no added sugar, I am going to love it. The cranberry juice isn't very strong, so the apples do most of the work. Apples: The backbone of America.

“And when we hit the twin cities, I didn't know that much about it. I knew Mary Tyler Moore and I knew Profane Existence.”

Dear Craig Finn, You forgot about your beloved Minnesota Twins and their beloved Harmon Killebrew. I mean you even wrote a song about them with The Baseball Project. Man, that must have been awesome to work with Peter Buck. Oh you also forgot about all of the “crust lords” that reign supreme in your city.

Well Mr. Finn I'm here to remind you with this review of Killebrew root beer. Harmon's son makes it and it's a homage to his father. First off, this is the first root beer that I have ever drunk that comes in a resealable aluminum bottle. It's weird, but I like that I can reseal it without having to deal with plastic. The root beer itself is sweetened with “pure Minnesota honey,” which is nice, but for some reason they also use HFCS, which seems unnecessary. The honey gives it a nice taste that you don't get in everyday root beer. There is something about it that tastes slightly medicinal in the way that Moxie does. It's also very dark tasting. I can't help but think that this would taste a lot better in a glass bottle. You know, the way that root beer was meant to be served.

As a final note I would like to point out that this would make a great float if you mixed it with some vanilla ice cream. Maybe that's just because I've consumed way more ice cream in the past two weeks than any human should.

Apparently the world has gotten a little lax on the meaning of the word “pure.” If someone were to offer me some pure juice, I would expect it to be straight up juice with nothing added to it at all. I would also expect it to have not gone through any sort of process. I'm looking in your direction concentration. Mr. Pure seems to think that juices from concentrate still count as being pure. I suppose they get some credit for not adding any sweetener to this juice. It's just orange and pineapple concentrate and water, which is better than most inexpensive juices. My issue with this drink is due to that they are a bit heavy handed with 1/3 of the ingredients aka water. The juice tastes watered down, which brings me back to my pure argument.
To sum this up it tastes like watered down orange juice with a slight nod to pineapple. I guess if you're looking for juice in a gas station like I was it could have been way worse, but I'm not sold.

Two facts about me: I like sour things and I like energy drinks. Put them together and theoretically I will be very happy. Aside from the mash up flavor name of "Bubbleberry", this would have been one of the first drinks I would have proposed if I got a job at Rockstar.

Other things I will do in my first week at my less-than-ideal job at Rockstar include:

• Take the star out of the logo.


• Fire anyone who played "All Star" by Smash Mouth, "Rock Superstar" by Cypress Hill, or any other song that featured some play of "rock star" heavily in the lyrics.


• Make this drink not so gross by keeping the awesome sour taste but adding a good flavor to it that didn't taste like energy drink battery acid.


• Secure a deal with Rockstar Games to trade energy drinks for free video games for all employees.


• Ensure "Bubbleberry" is never on another Rockstar can ever again.


• Taco tuesdays.

Ladies and gentlemen, steal them from seafood restaurants or from your children, but do whatever you can to get yourself a bib, because we're in for a wild ride. Welcome to the 4th annual Westminster Chug-A-Thon, where literally dozens of people come to compete to see who is the national chugging champion. Due to legal issues, we can no longer use beer as our chugging liquid of choice, so this year we have a treat for everyone with some nice Blackberry Lime soda from the appropriately named Bibb company. We have a tanker truck full of the stuff, and that is about 8,000 gallons people. That's a whole lot of liquid, which means there is a good chance we're going to need the paramedics that we have on hand. It's also guaranteed that our contestants are going to be hurling the contents of their stomachs all over themselves, hence the bibs. There's only so much liquid the human stomach can hold, and they are going to need to empty their "tanks" several times if they are serious about winning. It's really a shame though, as the soda we're using is quite delicious. Actually, I feel odd calling it a soda, as it's more of a sparkling juice than soda pop. It's just blackberry and limejuice mixed with carbonated water and a little sweetener. With only 13g of sugar per serving, it looks like no one will be getting diabetes during this contest, which is good because we can't afford another lawsuit. Seriously though Bibbs has a great blackberry base with a strong lime flavor added to it that is nice and present without making you think that it should be called lime blackberry instead. It really is a shame that such a tasty drink is going to flood the streets in the form of regurgitation. With 8,000 gallons in the trunk there is sure to be enough leftover for everyone in the audience to enjoy a glass or two as well. So you're welcome and enjoy the event. Please put on your nose plugs though as we don't want another Stand By Me scenario this year.

I'm not wonderful with energy drinks, usually because I run myself on "E" a lot of the time. It's how I keep my slender figure. One thing you don't do is drink one on an empty stomach, which I idiotically did, and go and get the shakes like an idiot. I feel like my fingers typing this review are going faster than my brain wants to send down the commands for the words. It's probably bottlenecking in my stomach where the fantastic taco I just ate is residing temporarily.

Shakes aside, and let's be honest, that was my fault. This isn't a bad drink at all. It's fruity and is defiantly more "berry" than "lemonade" but I'm not really complaining. If you are on the "hater" side of the fence when it comes to Stevia and friends, you might and probably won't like this drink. It's not as bad as it could be but there is a prompt and abrupt interruption when you are enjoying the berry lemonade of it. The sparkling bit of it is a nice touch.

Vegetable based juices can be fickle things. If they are made fresh it is wonderful. All of the subtle nuances of the vegetables pop out at you, and it just feels like you are doing something healthy and nothing can change that. On the other side of the coin, if they are prepackaged and mass produced to have a longer shelf life the glitter in their eyes fades away and you end up with something that tastes more like soup than juice.

With this product Odwalla is walking a tightrope between the two. It certainly doesn't taste like it was freshly juiced, but it's not quite in soup territory yet. It tastes mostly of carrots and beets, with the carrots giving it that slightly dirty taste, as they are prone to do. There is a slight hint of ginger flavoring, but there is no burn to speak of. Drinking juice that isn't very sweet will probably be a shock for a decent amount of people, and I can't really see this going over too well with the general populace, but there are people out there like myself who will enjoy it, and they should give it a chance.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I am about to propose something so radical that it may literally make your heads spin, so before I tell you please sign the waivers that you will find underneath your seats that will ensure that you cannot sue us in the case of death or dismemberment. Everyone sign? Good.

For decades the world has been plagued with garbage “green apple” flavoring. Nothing about that flavor tastes anything like the juice that would fill your mouth if you plucked a nice green apple from a tree and took a big bite. No instead it tastes like fake sour garbage. Everfresh is dedicated to putting an end to that tyranny, so we proudly present you with our newest product: Granny Smith juice. It is made with actual Granny Smith apples (albeit from concentrate) and nothing chemical or foreign. This is what green apple juice should taste like. Call your congressperson and demand that this be put in place of any juice that bears the fake green apple name. We are no longer children with candy on the brain and we deserve a serious juice. I fully expect a small parade for our efforts. Thank you and goodnight.

For some reason when Monster adds juice to their energy drinks they give them some sort of destructive name. Their tangerine/pineapple one is called Khaos and this one, which is more tropical, is called M-80. I don't know what juice has to do with causing trouble, but Monster has embraced it. Apparently their marketing department thinks that kids go to the grocery store, chug a few gallons of juice and then go out and blow up frogs and mailboxes. I'm all for blowing stuff up (well not frogs), but I don't need juice to do it. Any beverage will do. I mean, you have to stay hydrated.

Now Khaos is one of my favorite energy drinks. It tastes more like juice than anything else, but something went wrong when they were developing M-80. It has apple, passion fruit, pineapple and guava juice in it. It should be a home run. I was fully expecting it to be the best energy drink I've ever tasted, but as I said something got mixed up. It has more of a general Monster flavor with a bit a generic tropical mixed in than it does any of the individual fruit juices that are combined to make it. None of the individual juices are distinguishable. The more I drank, the less I liked it. I would have preferred an original Monster with it's generic energy drink flavor over this. You can't win them all.

Even though Welchs has a large array of juices on the market, my first thought when I hear their name is always “jelly.” I don't even eat jelly. I mean I have no moral objection to it, I just think that it's unnecessary. I generally eat my bread products dry, and if anything they get a little dab of peanut butter. There is no need to get fruit involved. Still, I hear Welchs and my mind goes to jelly.

This bottle only contains 10% juice. I wonder what percentage of their jelly is actually fruit? 10% is a joke in the juice world. If it's less than 40% juice I say it's not worth my time, and I have a hard time actually calling it juice and not “drink.” So to me this is not a juice, but at least the pittance of juice they used was actually partly mango and passionfruit. It was probably 1% each, with the other 8% going to that generic base, apple juice. So what we have is low levels of juice, which is only concentrate mixed with overly sweetened sugar water, yet somehow it ends up tasting great. I mean really, really good. You can very blatantly taste the mango, passion fruit and apple juice. It's the passion fruit that really shines through though. I had such low expectations for this, and I was pleasantly surprised. Well played Welchs.

A couple weeks ago I went to PAX East aka Penny Arcade Expo in Boston, MA. It's basically a giant gaming convention stemming from a long running webcomic about video games. It was my first time attending and I had a lot of fun.

In addition to all the new and upcoming games, there was a 5-Hour Energy booth set up in the front lobby all weekend. Normally I would avoid these little bottles of death like the plague, but the line for the coffee shop in the hotel was always way too long and I didn't want to get my ass handed to me when I was playing Halo 4 against some 6 year old. Over the weekend, I lost count at 4 or 5 of these consumed. I'm afraid to know the actual number, but I did manage to bring an additional 5 home with me somehow.

Does this taste like "berry"? Sure. Could it be mistaken for another flavor? Most likely. Did I barely notice the flavor due to consuming this in one sip due to over-exhaustion and wanting to just "wake up"? You betcha! Did it work? Indeed it did.

Like most teenagers in the 90's who didn't drink I spent many a weekend night at parties downing soda. There was no better way to do that than drinking IBC 40s. Okay they really weren't 40oz, they were only 32, but they had the same look. Many of the drinkers out there thought that we drank them to be “cool” and try to fit in. In reality they simply tasted delicious, and more importantly they did trick the drunkards into thinking you were also drinking, which led to way less questions as to why you weren't drinking, which led to way less taunts, which led to way less altercations. There the secret is out. I drank IBC “40s” so I didn't have to deal with idiots who thought they should give me crap because I chose not to drink alcohol.

As I got older, I started going to fewer parties, and started buying less IBC. It's just as well, as it seems they no longer make the large bottles. The dream died. In fact this is the first time I've had IBC cream soda in 10-15 years. Even though I've become a bit of a soda snob in that time, I can honestly say that this is still pretty great. I don't know if it's just because of nostalgia, but I really loved this. To me this is what cream soda should be. It sweet, and has a nice vanilla flavor without tasting like extract. It's also on the lower end of syrupy for being sweetened with high fructose corn syrup. Now I want to go out in the fields with a couple of bottles of this and sit around a small fire watching as kids try very unsuccessfully to hook up with each other. It's the American dream.

There has been a birth in the royal family. The child was created out of wedlock, so the family kept the pregnancy quiet. That was all good and well until the birth occurred and they knew there was no way the secret could be kept, for with gazing upon the can brought nothing but love to the royal family. The union of cola and cherry was complete and cherry cola was born. The family felt to shame so they proudly shared their love with the world (well at least the Midwestern states, as I haven't seen this anywhere else).

While this may not be the world's greatest cherry cola (it is a bit on the syrupy side), it is still better than most. It has a stronger cherry flavor than I had expected. It's more along he lines of cherry Pepsi than it is Coke, which makes it strange that I like it so much, as I have always been on the Coke side of the great cola wars. I would still choose this over its big cola competitors.

I doubt the day will come when the world hears, “The king is dead. Long live the king” as RC Cherry takes over the throne, but as a prince or a duke, it does a fine job.

I just found out that his flavor was introduced in the 80s. How I have never seen it until now is beyond me. I guess that is what I get for living in the northeast.

There are a decent amount of breweries out that that make sodas along with their line of beers. I always wonder what prompts them to do so. I'm not complaining, but to be honest, I can't see there being nearly as big of a market for pop as there is for alcoholic beverages. Maybe they do it out of nostalgia, or perhaps they do it because being around so much consumable liquid all day every day makes for some thirsty employees. They certainly can't sit around drinking the beer all day, or things would most definitely get messy around the brewery. Whatever their reasons I thank them for following through. The soda that comes from breweries is generally of a higher quality than your everyday pops that you find at the corner store. They take more time in making their beverages and it shows in the flavor.

I recently met up with Night Birds to do a mid-west tour. I took a bus to meet them in Cleveland, which caused me to get to town a couple of hours before they were to arrive. When you're in that town with some time to kill and an empty stomach they only viable option is to make your way to Melt. It's a gourmet grilled cheese bar/restaurant with a ton of vegetarian/vegan options and a soda list that rivals a lot of bars beer list. After a public transportation mishap and a two mile walk, I found myself sitting at the bar eating one of the largest sandwiches I have ever handled and drinking this wonderful bottle of ginger beer. At first I thought it was really tame, but the more sips I took the greater the ginger burn. I wasn't disappointed in that department. Actually, I wasn't disappointed at all. It had a nice natural ginger flavor with a slight burst of lemon. It had more lemon than any other ginger beer I have tried, but it worked ridiculously well with the ginger. It's also on the sweeter side of most sodas of this flavor, but you know what? I'm totally okay with that.

Someday I will actually make my way to Ithaca. It's in NY only a couple of hours from where I live, but for some reason I've never been there, even though it sounds like a place I would totally love. When I go I shall drown my non-existent sorrows in bottle after bottle of their ginger brew.

My history of sports is as follows; I grew up with friends who loved sports. We lived on a cul-de-sac and played football, hockey, and did it all the time. I was never good but loved playing with my friends. The older I got, the more I accepted the fact that I don't care about sports. Not that I didn't enjoy playing, but there were other things that I liked doing, like music. I started playing music in between plays on a drum machine that I still have. So from that point on, I felt that sports drinks just weren't for me. I would never get as much out of them as the rest of my friends did. Yeah, anyone can drink Gatorade but it's not made for me.

Fast-forward to fifteen years later and I still don't play sports but I work on a drink review site where I drink all sorts of drinks that "aren't for me." This drink would be enough to make most couch potatoes want to pick up a racket and sweat it out on the court. The mix between the cherry and the pomegranate are totally fantastic and I wish I had more. It's a water type drink that has a dark fruit taste. I've often got an issue with cherry where it tastes a bit medicinal but this has none of that. This drink is sixteen ounces of pleasure.

I don't hate sports. I don't play sports. I don't pay attention to sports. I was disappointed when our city's hockey team's goalie dropped his limited edition ice cream flavor. That's as passionate as I get with sports. I am missing out on the bond people have where they sit together and talk about this guy and that team and all that other stuff. I would rather sit down and play video games with friends and talk about bands no one cares about. I think I can say the same for Jay and Derek.

I found this in a bar in Boston a couple weeks ago. I went along with my friends as they bar-hopped around Cambridge, drinking nothing but water and Diet Pepsi. Finally, at our last stop they had this fine beverage on the menu so I obviously ordered it. There's only so much Diet Pepsi I can consume in one night.

I am a fan of Squirt, so whenever I find a different grapefruit soda I have to try it. I have never been disappointed with a bottle/can and this was no exception. It was very sweet, which surprised me since a lot of sparkling drinks are lightly sweetened. It also had little chunks of grapefruit, which was pretty awesome, and a great surprise.

I apologize for the crappy photo. Bars aren't known for their stellar lighting as you might know.

Ben, look at those annuals over there. Can we get a couple of those hanging baskets? No, the yellow ones and the blue ones. Yeah those will look nice in the front. Should we do mulch? I know it's a lot of work but you only need to do it once. I know you need to kick the mulch in every once in a while but those are the things you need to do to keep a nice looking yard. No, roses are too much work. They look great for about three weeks out of the year and then they just get wily. Do you want to do any vegetables in the back? We've got the space and it's not like we are not going to eat them. It's fun to go back there and say, "Oh hello tomato."

I love it back here in the garden department, Ben. I wish that I could just bottle it up and keep it with me. The smell of soil, dirt, flowers, trees, mulch and so on. I love it. I want it. What Ben? You have heard of a drink that is like that? Wait, a drink? You drink it? When I said, "bottle it up" I meant just so I could open it up and it smells like this garden center. I don't want to drink the smell. That implies that I am drinking molecules of manure, dirt, and thistles. I don't think that I want that. Is that what it tastes like? Oh, thank God. What does it taste like? Lemon lime? Eh, I don't know if I would have gone that route. Now that we are talking about this I want to try it. You have it in the car? Oh, great. Let's get those hanging baskets, some of these packs of vegetable seeds, and cash out.

This is the drink? It's in a nice bottle. I'll try some. Ooooh man...that smell. Remember when I said that I wanted to bottle up the garden center, I might have just immediately regretted saying that. The garden center should be a treat unto itself. You shouldn't be able to harness the smell of anything because there is a time and a place and that time and place is exclusively limited to the time you are inside of the garden center. The taste isn't so bad but it's thicker than regular juice or any of those waters. It's probably the chia seeds all ground up and hidden. Really, Ben? This is a chia seed drink? They really must have ground them up good because I don't taste any of them. All I taste is lemon lime genericness and the smell of a plastic garden center. Ben, I like you, I like our future garden. I do not like this drink. Let's go get our hands dirty and do some mulch.

I like good chocolate milk. Who doesn't? It's chocolate milk. It's kid stuff that just follows you through the years that wonderfully never leaves. You reach adulthood and then you realize there is a world of different products out there including the beloved chocolate milk. Some of them are good and some of them are bad and some of them are the same products that have been out for twenty years that are just fine as they are. This falls into the "bad" category. It's a "natural chocolate shake" but it is more like a protein drink that tastes like a diet protein drink because it's filled with an array of different sweeteners that just makes it feel like chalk and low grade chocolate. What else is there to say? No thanks. If you're on a diet and can't find any other chocolate milk, fine, go with it, but if you can find even a local gas station chocolate milk, steer towards that. Just don't do it with your car. Buffalo is becoming synonymous with people driving through stores and restaurants.

Carrots? Really rabbits? Just carrots? You're not very civilized now, are you? Bugs Bunny can dress up in all the fancy suits and dresses he wants. All the wigs and all the hats and all the lipstick in the world won't bring him up to the caliber needed for this drink. Four ingredients; carrots, apple, ginger, and lemon. Done. Bugs, you are a legend, but you stick to carrots. You can't handle the subtle heat that the ginger brings and aren't ready for the subtle sweet and sour of the apple and lemon. You could only handle twenty five percent of this drink and it simply doesn't warrant buying it.

I grew up on you and your hijinks. Your friends and foes got me through a lot of hard times but this carrot just is, as Madness said, one step beyond.

I think that the chronology of it happens like this:

1. Thirsty Dudes is created.


2. Some dudes read the reviews and decide they know the key to our hearts.


3. Joia is created solely to please us.


4. We find Joia drinks and review them all highly.

All of these drinks are wonderfully handcrafted and include a fantastic blend of ingredients that no other companies let happen. Allspice in a drink? That's crazy. Well, lame drink companies, it's not crazy. It's fantastic. Even if it is crazy, it's done with a logical base and really delivers. You get a little ginger, more flavor that spice, but it's there. The apricot really blasts through but the allspice hangs out with you like the faithful friend. Beginning to end the drink keeps on delivering.

Joia, we know that you used us as a cheat sheet to make "the perfect drinks" but we don't care. Keep up the good work. If this was math class, we would lean over and let you cheat off our paper and sorry about our poor penmanship. If all else fails, answer "C."