Cane Sugar - 601 Reviews

If I know anything about the Greek alphabet, which in actuality is very little, then this is the end drink. The drink that will either bring about the end of humanity, or else it will be the only drink that survives the impending apocalypse. Hopefully it's the second option, because besides the fact that it has a very nice light berry flavor, it also has a lot of health benefits that would prove to be beneficial in an end of the world type scenario. It's chock full of omega 3, fiber, calcium and antioxidants, and we all know that the lack of antioxidants is what is going to bring on the decimation of our planet.

This is the first chia drink I have tried that does not have whole chia seeds in it. This is nothing but liquid, so I've you're concerned about chunks or texture, this won't be an issue for you. It also has salvia in it. I think you have to smoke it for it to have hallucinatory effects, so don't go wasting the world's last source of fluid trying to get high. It just won't work kids, and then you'll dehydrate and die…€¦a dried out husk.

I don't hate the idea of working out but there are one hundred things I would rather be doing or have to do before I go work out. Therefore I never drink protein drinks because drinking them with no need for additional protein doesn't make much sense. No one is going to prefer the taste of a protein drink to a regular drink. No one. People that drink them have an understanding of the way they taste and that's fine. It's what they expect. This though, this kind of holds hands with both parties. It's not a bad drink as far as drinks go and although it has a lot of protein in it, it's only slightly dense. The flavors are good. There is a little bit of bitterness from the pomegranate and sweetness from both. It's got a bit of a tangy aftertaste that I am going to attribute to the protein but hey, 80% isn't that bad. It passed its math final. Now if it can only make sense of pro-nouns, adjectives, subjects, and predicates it can pass the language final.

While I love pineapples and all the juice they contain, it is sometimes nice to have it cut with another juice. If it's not a mixture of general tropical flavors, the go to for most companies is orange. It's a good choice. Oranges are great, but they are so common that people take them for granted. Mixed with pineapple they help cut down on the acidity that can make it painful to drink a lot of pineapple juice, and the oranges benefit from the pineapple flavor to make it stand out more amongst it's peers. I wonder how apple would work mixed it. I mean sure it would look silly on the packaging written out, but I bet if they used quality apples it would taste like liquid gold. Apple Pineapple or Pineapple Apple? They both sound ridiculous.

Unfortunately for all involved there isn't any actual juice in this bottle of Spartos, unless it's trace amounts under the banner of “natural flavors.” Actually no, small on the label it is written “no fruit juice.” It's a shame because while this is a decent drink (an even more decent drink considering that it is a fruity protein drink), but flavor-wise it falls close to Tang with a slight dairy edge. A citrus based tropical flavor, that is not quite orange or pineapple. The use of fruit juice would have solved that problem. Then again this is a water beverage and not juice, so that obviously wasn't what they were going for. It's just what I wish they had done. Don't get me wrong. I would rather drink this over 90% of the protein shakes on the market. Sometimes you just need to take the rough with the smooth.

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.

We've all licked an old woman before, right? Whether it be on a dare of for pleasure, we know what old women taste like. Whenever we, the Thirsty Dudes, drink anything lychee, it brings us to horrid nights where we used to spend time with old ladies. Dancing, swooning, and kissing on the cheek. Lucky for us, this drink was a little bit different.

Right off the bat, the cane sugar is apparent as can be and actually tastes very good. It's like it almost has a bite like it was freshly made with real cane. I do not doubt that it's real, but it's the freshness of it that took me off guard. The chunks are as lovable as always; multisized and incredibly prominent. You can't get a sip in without getting a mouthful of those little gummy buggers. If you were scared of them and you tried to skim through your teeth, you would be left with a mass of gummy chunks on your teeth, which might be worse for you.

The flavor was actually pretty good. It was strong and very floral but it wasn't too much like many of the other lychee drinks that we've done in the past. All together it was a pretty good mix of sweet, chunky, interesting, and fruity. It was surprising.

We drank this on air for the sixty-third installment of the Buffalo Eats podcast. They seemed to like it and we all agree that it was not as bad as we thought that it would be which made it more than acceptable. Listen to our other podcast and the rest of Donnie's podcasts. He's a great dude and easily gets sidetracked by talks of music, video games, and other odds and ends just like us.

Before I tried this beverage I had a phone call with Kirk from Spartos and he gave me the low down on his company. To sum up the conversation he wanted to create an all natural product that was heavy on protein, but wasn't marketed specifically to the gym rat crowd. You see protein is a necessity in life and it can do a ton of wondrous things for you, but people generally only think about it when they think about working out. Sure, it is especially great for you at that time, but it can also be greatly beneficial at other times in your life. He went on to tell me what I already know; nearly all protein drinks on the market are created for working out in mind and therefore do not pay much attention to the flavor, or the thickness of the whey protein they typically use. Seriously, how often do you see one that isn't vanilla or chocolate? Spartos went out and made a line of fruit based flavors that people could drink as readily as they drink Vitamin Water.

I have to say, they definitely got the consistency down. There is still a faint hint of the whey protein flavor, but it is not overpowering and it's certainly not present with the thickness of the drink.

I generally like it when companies use out of the ordinary (well at least in the US) fruits in their drinks. In this I do have to question the use of Yuzu. For those not in the know is like a cross between a grapefruit and a mandarin. Sounds great, right? Unfortunately not in this drink. It's got a very distracting tart flavor that over shines the blackberry 3 to 1. It made it kind of hard to get through this bottle.

I really wanted to like this a lot as I can get behind what the company is going for 100%. Unfortunately this one is not for me. Had it been solely blackberry I think I would have loved it. Hopefully the other flavors will be better.

This ain't your grandma's loganberry. This, my friends, is the first carbonated loganberry drink. It was hard to avoid loganberry as a kid growing up in Western New York. It seemed like every corner store and restaurant had one of those continuously flowing glass loganberry dispensers next to the soda fountains. I know I would drink a tall glass of the insanely sugary drink easily as a kid, but I wouldn't even dare to do so now. I recently came across some in a fountain and found the flavor nostalgic, but the drink to be too thick with sweetener.

When I heard the news of a sparkling loganberry drink hitting the shelves at Tops this past weekend, I was expecting it to be a loganberry soda. To my surprise when I picked up the 4-pack, I noticed they used pure cane sugar as a sweetener instead of high fructose corn syrup that is usually in loganberry. I wanted to drink a bottle on the way home but I resisted so we could all try it together when we recorded a podcast with Buffalo Eats later that evening.

Was it worth the wait? Most definitely! While this is a sparkling drink, it's very lightly carbonated which is really nice. The cane sugar also makes it very light and lets the loganberry flavor shine through. All my life I've been drinking loganberry that was drowning in corn syrup, so it's nice to finally be able to taste loganberry for what it is. The light and fruity taste reminds me a lot of Izze drinks, or HotLips soda.

I think this drink has a little something for everyone. If you grew up on loganberry, you need to try this. If you've never liked loganberry because it was too sweet, pick up a bottle and see if you like this because it's much different that any loganberry you've ever tasted.

It's been quite some time since I've come across a new Boylan's flavor. Luckily I came across this one waiting at my front door for me. Gifts are always nice, especially when they are a limited release pop. I don't know what exactly makes a Shirley Temple a seasonal release. I mean you can go bowling any time of the year and while beer may be the official drink of most bowlers, those of us who do not drink alcohol know that there is no other choice on the lanes than a Shirley Temple.

I just looked it up and I was shocked to discover that the actress Shirley Temple is still alive. I had always assumed that she had passed on…€¦crazy. I also discovered that her birthday is April 23rd, so perhaps this soda will be seasonal in celebration of her birth. I can accept that.

The best part of this soda is that Boylan got it correct. They used the proper base of ginger ale and not lemon lime and some people who like to cheap out use. Everyone knows that ginger ale is a superior soda, and it is what belongs in a Shirley Temple. You take that superior soda and put a splash of grenadine in it and bam there you go, a tasty beverage. This tastes exactly like it should. The only thing more I could ask for is for there to be a cherry floating in the bottle. Now that would be true magic. Well, that and me bowling a 300 tonight.

When we were at the Asian market, Jay asked if I wanted this pandan leaf drink. I heard "panda meat" and although I knew that wasn't true, I wanted it nonetheless. I'm not surprised they don't have meat-flavored drinks but they're close with Clamato and I had a Goya with clam in it that wasn't half bad. It was like a briny V8. This, on the other hand, was not as good as the other grass jelly drinks I have had. It smelled and tasted like corn cereal. I don't know what pandan leaf is. The crude illustration on the can makes me believe that it looks like an aloe leaf but this didn't taste like aloe at all. There is cornstarch in this drink, which seems odd to me. What business does cornstarch have in a drink? I can't think of one.

Flavor aside, I missed the chunks. This had aloe-esque chunks in it rather than the generous chunks that I wanted and expected and expected my intern to drink. He got off easy today. Better luck next time, malicious me.

What's the perfect drink while you're holed up in your house during a snowstorm? If you said hot chocolate you are wrong. Today my vote goes for this iced tea. It's already warm inside my house so I needed something cool and refreshing that reminds me that spring is only a couple months away.

I'm pretty sure this is my first green tea/coconut half and half and I really hope it's not my last. It's really good and crisp and refreshing and probably a bunch of other positive adjectives.

You know how I like my coconut drinks? When they don't taste like coconut. {pause for laughter} I like coconut just fine in small amounts shaven atop an iced cream but in drinks, unless they are ice friggin' cold, as far away as possible. They're typically just dusty, chalky messes of liquid that should have never been made in the first place. Yeah, I know it's harsh but I don't give a rip. Drink like a normal person and tell me you haven't had to refrigerate a drink to refresh it or just flat out thrown it in the filth can. Come on. Be honest. I don't care. I've dumped plenty of drinks because of those reasons. Sure, I drink more than the normal person, but in ratio, aren't we all the same?

This drink held on to its decency for longer than most. It had an "orange drink" taste more than an actual fruit but it wasn't a bad taste. The entire time it did taste like coconut but they don't make coconut drinks to completely disguise the core flavor. That's just stupid. It was almost like you watered down juice with some coconut water. Neither flavors are bold and in your face but rather subtle and, dare I say, nice.

Coconut, you're getting better. I now have the power to go into the blistering cold and get my little buddy from day care. Without you, I might have just left him there to fend for himself in the snow to take the bus home and be a friggin' man. You're almost two. Get a job and take the bus.

Look. Everyone knows that one of my favorite pops is Hansen's Cherry Vanilla Cream. Hansen's owns Blue Sky. This is cherry vanilla cream and that is cherry vanilla cream. So why isn't this as good? I don't know. This is great. No doubt about it. It doesn't have as many calories, still has a great taste, and is actually pretty easy for me to find. I think that the one thing that is different is that this is less smooth, probably less cream or creme depending on where you live. French? Creme. American? Cream.

It's odd. They had it. It also seems strange that a subsidiary company would make such an iconic, specific drink as their parent, but they did. It's not far off and it's definitely not a failure, it's just not my baby.

I've had enough of the winter and I don't think it's even halfway done. We haven't even had that much snow, but the cold has kept me indoors and everything is grey and it's just killing me. What I'm going to do is get myself a white noise machine that is just the sounds of the ocean; you know waves, birds, an occasional foghorn an of course the soothing sounds of pirates. With those noises gracing my ears, I will jack up the heat in my house as high as it will go, set up some photo shoot lamps facing me, dump a few pounds of sand on my floor and sit in a lawn chair. I will then close my eyes and dream that I am sitting in the doorway of my oceanside cabana. I'm there just thinking about it. Since I'm pretending I'm in the blazing sun I should really be drinking lemonade. Since I am going to be in a mind cabana then this is the lemonade I will choose. In addition to having an appropriate name, this drink is summer in a bottle. It's made from real lemon juice and that gives it a nice homemade taste. The strawberry flavor falls under “natural flavors” on the ingredients list, but it is enough to taste like someone smashed a couple of berries into a glass of chilled lemon bliss. The real kicker in this is that Cabana uses both cane sugar and stevia, so the sugar content is less than one would expect. Somehow they worked it out so that you can't taste the stevia at all. I didn't even realize it was there until I checked to see how much sugar was in here and I got a pleasant surprise.

This experiment will also hopefully lead to a pleasant surprise, when my cats hopefully don't decided that the living room is now one big litter box. I need the sun and warmth in my life, not a house full of cat turds.

I'll tell you something. I have never seen a mangosteen and if you ask me if it's a "real fruit," I couldn't tell you. Sure there is a convincing picture of it on the front of this can but it kind of looks like someone took an orange, colored it pink, and opened it from the top like an idiot. No one talks about it as "their favorite fruit" but I can at least see why it's called "mangosteen" because someone is terribly unoriginal and decided to integrate the word "mango" with a possibly made up fruit that tastes like a mango. Darwinian theory makes me wonder how this fruit exists. We have mangoes and they are pretty good but then this guy comes along and tastes like it but do we really need more of the same thing? One or the other friends and scientists and scientist friends. You make a drink like this which is possibly at it's core of what this tastes like as the ingredients are what you would hope and expect; water, mangosteen puree, and cane sugar. How much better could it get? Oh, I don't know. Use a real fruit? I'm skeptical of this guy and I have my eyes on it. Don't lie to me fruit.

Ahh Germany: lovers of everything industrial and Hasselhoff. You have a soft side, too, and it's this lemonade. You make wonderful lemonade with orange in it and I feel like it's your attempt to look a bit tamer. You are known by the world as precise, perfectionists and although this is nothing less, it's lemonade with orange pop in it. It doesn't need to be so intense. You don't need to buckle down and hit the book, get out a micrometer, measure and calculate. You can kick up your shoes and enjoy a lightly flavored, carbonated, orange drink with a touch of lemonade. It's different than what you would be thinking because the flavors are a bit calmer than you would expect.

Germans, you're great. I would love to one day own a BMW. This pop is good and you did a good job. Congrats.

On the very tip top of the mountains of Toronto that are the skyscrapers there is a little bit of heaven that contains not one, but two gardens. One of those gardens is made of stones, which are moved around for the use of relaxation and meditation. The second garden grows but one thing: green tea. Did I mention that monks run the upper ten floors of this monstrous building? They are not your typical monks. They are urban monks. They wear hoodies with white zippers, raw denim and Beats by Dre cans that they listen to their chants on. It's a modern world and even the old customs are acclimating. In the early morning the monks make their way to the roof where they tinker around in the rock garden until they have reached their daily-allotted enlightenment. Then it is time to hand pick the tea leaves and take them to the 27th floor where they are dried and brewed into the products that help sustain their modern way of life.

In my first review of an Urban Zen tea I mentioned that I thought it was going to be green tea and aloe, due to the color and shape of the bottle. Guess what? That is exactly what this one is, and it's magical. It's like someone mixed a mango flavored bubble tea (hold the tapioca balls) and mixed it with an “original” flavored aloe drink (you know the kind that has the slight white grape flavor to it). Of course there are chunks of aloe in it, but they are not as plentiful as a lot of their competitors products. I'm okay with that though because the flavor more than makes up for it. It's extremely flavorful and sweet in all the right ways.

Next time you find yourself in Canada dish out the $2-3 a bottle of this cost and help the monks afford those new Samurai jeans they have had their collective eyes on. Remember enlightenment isn't everything.

What better time to drink lemonade than the tail end of December where it's snowing and cold and wet? You've endured summer. You've conquered fall. Now you've got the cold slapping you if the face like you fell asleep in church and the priest comes over and wakes you up. How do they get away with that? If I had a kid and sent him to a Catholic school, an action I would never do, and a nun hit him, I might push her up against a wall like one of those tough guys in movies where they shove nerds or geeks up against a locker, make a loud noise, and take lunch money. Don't touch my kid, nuns, you jerks.

I'm reviewing lemonade and talking about abusing nuns. Fantastic. Happy holidays. Nun, I'm not sorry that I pushed you up against a locker and made all the kids stop in their tracks, but who do you think you are? Have a lemonade, you old coot. It's good because it's not made with any artificial ingredients and tastes like the lemonade you make at home, not like the lemonade that you make your slave kids sell to not buy new bibles and invest in getting Father Whatshisface a new Lexus RX330, which, by the way, is a woman's car. It's not too sweet, something I already know you can relate to, and not undersweetened which you are.

If nuns are teachers from God? Then are public school teachers "teachers from Satan?" If so, you can expect to see my son bowing down along with Anton LaVey all the while not taking religion class and, in exchange, taking legitimate science classes. I say good day to you, nun.

I will start this review off with a quote from Editor Dan, “Holy crap it tastes as good as it smells!” Let me tell you people this is one of the most nasal cavity pleasing I have ever took a sniff of. Well that doesn't sound appealing at all. Seriously though the fruity vanilla aroma that emits from this bottle is what I imagine the perfect island paradise to smell like. It smells wonderful, but it's not too strong like those candy perfumes that your younger sister wore in the 90s. This is a classy island smell.

It also tastes like it smells: classy. The secret here is that this is not your everyday black or green tea in this bottle. It is an “herbal extract” that is a combination of hibiscus, rosehips, vanilla beans, raspberry leaves and lemon peel. To be honest Good Drink could have stopped right there, and I would have a drink that I loved. The folks at the company had a larger vision though. Theirs was a vision of a national takeover of the teas of Canada (to be fair, not a large take over at all) and they did the unthinkable, they added mango to an already stellar drink. The result: magic in a bottle, well almost. Everything about this beverage would be absolutely perfect if they slightly changed but one thing. There is a tad too much vanilla in this tea. It smoothes it out more than a tea should be and it pushes it almost to the dangerous level of potpourri taste. Luckily it doesn't reach that line and it still tastes delectable. This tea will easy run the tea empire of Canada, but if the vanilla were a little less, I'm thinking Good Drink could take on the world. Think about it George, you could be a global power. Doesn't that sound appealing?

I don't know where to start with this. It tastes...funny. Right off the bat, there is a strange bitterness that I can only attribute to my arch nemesis Acai while teamed up with that other guy I'm increasingly not too hot on, Reb-A. Oh, it's way down on the list but it's still there, crapping up the joint. The mixed berry doesn't even get a chance to shine through because those two hams are in the spotlight telling bad jokes that are borderline racist and making everyone in the crowd feel uncomfortable. You get a little bit of the mixed berry here and there. If I can continue my comedy show analogy, it's like the mixed berry is the MC who is better than all the acts. Perfect. That's the perfect analogy. I did it. Done. Peace. I'm out.

Get yourself a quart of fresh red raspberries, put them in a cheese cloth (one with a small rip in it) and just smash the hell out of them. Gather the juice and the few chunks that found their way through the hole into a cup. Fill the cup up the rest of the way with bubbly water and mix in a bit of sugar. What you will have created is essentially what is in this bottle. It's strange how much it tastes like raspberries. I know it's supposed to taste like them, but normally any fruit flavored pop doesn't actually taste like the fruit, and if it does you usually have to concentrate to find the flavor. This tastes exactly like you're eating raspberries, and the little mushy chunks do nothing but help it.

This is the first time I have ever said this about a soda, but I think it could do with a little bit more sugar. There is something about it that is just the tiniest bit off from making it absolutely perfect. I think a bit more sugar would balance things out and give it the little boost it needs to stand tall at the top of the soda pop pyramid.