Cane Sugar - 601 Reviews

The wonderful establishment Village Beer Merchant in Buffalo has put on tap another delicious soda from Flying Bison. My awesome partner surprised me with this growler and I couldn't have been happier. This is easily one of my favorite sarsaparilla's I've had so far. I wish it had a little more carbonation, but the sweetness is perfect. It has a great licorice taste, which prompted me to buy some black licorice the next day.

Good work Village Beer Merchant/Flying Bison, you've done it again. Thank you!

This is one of those drinks that is hard to classify. If you asked a kid what this was, they would say a juice. I couldn't argue with him since it's dark, fruity, and tastes like juice. When you read the labels, though, they vaguely call it a "beverage" and use sweet buzzwords like "enhanced" and "natural" and "energy" which might or might not make it an enhanced natural energy beverage but those words are borderline worthless. Also, "agua" makes me want to put it in the same category as Vitamin Water and the like but I could be wrong. For the aforementioned reasons I will never discredit a scientist for having to pick the correct genus and species of animal, bug, fruit, et cetera. Some things are drifters. That being said, a tomato is eternally a vegetable. I don't give a rip what seeds mean.

This drink is good. I don't get a lot of pomegranate but get a decent amount of cherry. It does taste like if you ate a candle and I cannot pinpoint that. I worked at a skate shop in my youth that was next door to a candle store and this drink is like someone filtered a pomegranate and cherry juice through some strategically placed candles. I say strategically because if I were performing the task, I would have candles stacked up and carefully melted as to have a seamless, waxful route of like seventeen candles to pour the drink down.

Now I want to do this. Can someone commission me to make a candle slide in which to "enhance" my otherwise average drink with additional mystery flavors? If not to make a drink, just to melt a whole bunch of candles and hook up a garden pump to have water go through a multicolored slide-o-wax? I'll let you name it, just let me take care of the actual work and don't bother me while I make art.
e art.

Sometimes you date a girl who lives across the country and you go visit every other month. Sometimes things don't work out and you end up splitting up right before you leave from a visit. Sometimes your flight gets delayed and you turn around and said person is standing there asking if you want to get food. On top of that sometimes pizza and great soda can mend the relationship (for a couple more months at least).

Portland, OR's Hot Lips is a diamond in the rough. Well, not a diamond in a sea of bad food, as that city has obscene amounts of awesome veggie food (Vita Cafè I'm looking in your direction). It's a special place because it is a place where you can get a decent slice of pizza on the west coast. For the most part I don't even tough pizza past Wisconsin and even that is really pushing it. Hot Lips was great for its pizza, but even better for it's soda. They take local fruit and add sparkling water and a little cane sugar. If you've ever read Tom Robbins' “Still Life With Woodpecker” you know that blackberries run rampant in those parts. This is so simple and so wonderful. It tastes light lightly sugared blackberries, because that is exactly what it is. Why anyone would mess with a recipe like this boggles my mind. Okay, I understand that they want to save money, but they end up with a product that is not even close to this in quality, those big dummies.

I was always under the impression that this soda was only available in Portland, but my ladyfriend (of three years, not the previous ladyfriend which I mentioned above) found it in a health food store in North Carolina. I really hope Hot Lips expands their reach and takes over the country with their quality soda.

Would you look at that bottle? Seriously, just look at it. It's a work of art. This is the type of bottle that draws me into the fancy beer section even though I don't drink. Now Mike hands me a sparkling cider (that is pumpkin flavored no less) and tells me that it's safe for consumption. Well I am one happy camper. My letters home to mom won't be full of tears this time around. The kicker is that Mike found this in the most unlikely of places: Aldi. That's right, a budget, cost effective store has the fanciest bottle of cider I have ever set my eyes on.

When I popped the top, oh and how the top popped, I took a big sniff and was concerned to note that it smelled of Worchester sauce with some spices in it. My expectations fell through the floor. I had a friend smell it as well and he said he had a similar reaction. Oh well, down the hatch it went. I felt weird drinking this from the bottle, as I felt like I should pour it into a fancy glass, but you do what you have to do, and I had to try this instantly. Luckily the scent had nothing to do with the flavor at all. It's labeled as a pumpkin cider, but it's really just a nicely spiced apple cider with a tiny bit of pumpkin flavor mixed in. It's probably for the best, as I could see too much pumpkin being over powering. The best part of the flavor is that cinnamon isn't the prime spice like it normally is in cider. It's there, but it's not the all-powerful Oz or anything like that. If I had to pick a prominent “spice” it would have to be ginger. There's no burn to it (oh god that would have been the best. Simply the best. Better than all the rest.) but the flavor of ginger is there and I love Nature's Nectar for it. I also love them because I would expect this to be around the $4/$5 mark, but I looked online and it's only $2. I'm going to have to pick a couple up before the season is over.

I hate to always bring reviews of drink such as this back to this company, but this tastes like a diet Vitamin Water. Sure there are dozens of other companies I could compare it too, but I think most people are more familiar with Vitamin Water than those other companies, so it gives them a better base for comparison. Well that was completely unnecessary and boring.

I will say that while this is a fruit punch, it's not the type of drink I think of when I hear the words fruit punch. I think companies should avoid that phrase because it makes me think of Hawiian Punch and the like, which no one really needs to drink. This is not just a bog bottle of red syrup. This is pretty light and has a more adult fruit punch flavor. I think it's interesting that they still sweeten this with cane sugar, just not as much. They make up the difference with sucralose. The mixture doesn't give it that deadly 80's diet flavor that I dread. It tastes diet, but not like poison.

The thing that differentiates Agua Enerviva from Vitamin Water is that their drinks have guarana in them, which is a natural source of caffeine. There's not enough in here to make you crazy and jittery, but it's a nice slight push to get you through your day.

In my travels to the wonderful town of Austin, Texas, I found this bottle left in a co-op by Saint Arnold himself. It was an unexpected gift, but it was much appreciated for I hadn't had a new root beer in quite some time. Given that it is "old fashioned", I expected it to have a strong bite and rooty taste to it. On the contrary, it had a nice smooth vanilla taste to it. Saint Arnold brews a hell of a root beer and maybe some day he will leave a bottle somewhere else I'll be traveling.

First things first with a name like Chin Chin this makes me think that monkeys either make it or they serve it. I don't think I've ever watched or read anything with a monkey names Chin Chin, so I have no idea where this thought is coming from, but I just can't shake it.

If there is a monkey that makes this juice, he/she needs to step up their game. This is a decent enough juice, but most guava juices are through the roof good. This is just decent. It's just a bit more watered down than others and there is a tad too much sugar added for my liking. I urge someone who knows sign language to tell this chimp to fix these issues or else they will be shot into space. No one wants to be shot into space. It's scary there.

We recently realized that a handful of our friends haven't really hung out in awhile. As a result Saturday afternoon was a dudes hang of gluttony. We started it off with the dirt mall aka flea market where we sifted through piles of people's garbage looking for a clock for Mike whilst eating soft pretzels, hot dogs, cinnamon rolls and a single cannoli. From there we went to look for a coat for Mike deep in the bowels of hell and come up empty handed. Then we went to another circle of hell that is more commonly known as Guitar Center so I could try out an amp that I thought (correctly) that I wanted. The important part came next. We hit up a few Asian markets for groceries and new drinks. I bought such a variety of weird tofu that I couldn't be happier. Our main market also got a new shipment of drinks and this was one of them.

I have no idea what “common selfheal fruit-spike drink” is, but it sounded more interesting than I could handle. As soon as we walked out I ripped this bad boy open and we all shared it. We all decided that it was okay, but that is had a decent licorice aftertaste, and I'm not talking about Twizzler. Along with never hearing of the fruit that is the namesake of this beverage it also contains grosvenor momordica fruit, that I'm sure 99.54% of American have never heard of as well. Along with that there are dates in here. When mixed together these ingredients have a taste that is something between a sweet tea and a flat herbal root beer (minus the wintergreen). At first I thought this was great, but with each sip my interest wanes. BY the end I really had lost all interest in it. From the name I'm assuming that there is some medicinal properties to this drink, but who knows since the label is in Chinese.

After our shopping spree we decided it was time for a yearly trip to the only sit down chain restaurant that is worth a damn: Chilis. Their real food is nothing to write home about, but they have incredible unsweetened blackberry and mango teas. Also the endless chips and salsa are enough for us to go gaga. You should have seen how many baskets of chips we housed. Mama would have been proud.

Nature, I just can't get enough of it. Well, I can't get enough of the awesome woods aspect of nature. I can do without the frozen tundra side of things. Sometimes I need to go out into the woods, like deep down need it to an extent that I know I won't be able to relax and settle down until I surrounded by the green (okay I'm reading Swamp Thing now, so that's a nod to classic Alan Moore with the phrasing). I have no doubt that when I get old I will live out in the country, preferably in the woods. The city is a young man's game and while I love it now, I know I won't want to be here in twenty years. So to the country I shall go.

It's late Fall now and it's getting cold and it's raining all the time. That means I'm going to be stuck inside for a few months without my precious green. I'll burn cut grass candles and pretend it's nice out but it simply won't work. This drink might help a bit though. It's a slightly sweetened yerba mate with the faintest hint of lemon in it. If you're not familiar with yerba mate it's a pseudo tea that has a bunch of caffeine in it. It tastes like everything in the woods was boiled down into a wonderful drink. If I ever had to describe what I think nature would taste like, I would hand the person a bottle of this. It's strong, herbal and wonderful. It's a Brazilian tradition by way of Canada. How does that even make sense? Oh well, here's to hoping we get a few more nice days in so I can go engulf myself in the forest. Then, hibernation.

I don't know how the Power Coco company will feel about this, but I think they make coconut water for kids. I don't mean that is any sort of negative way though. Let's face it, coconut water is generally an adult drink. It's flavors are usually subtle and I just can't see many children drinking it. This company on the other hand flavors their coconut water in bold ways. This is way more of a grape drink than coconut water, even though it still has all the benefits of it. It even only has 5g of sugar per serving. That is way low in this day and age, especially in a drink that is this flavorful. It has a very dark grape flavor, some sips seem a bit too dark, but I'm okay with it.

If you want some sort of hydration for your kids during sports practice, but don't want to give them obscene sugar, try one of these. It will more than likely seem exotic and fun to them, and they can brag to their little dirty friends.

Deep in the not so frozen tundra of Worcester, MA there is a factory where the locals have imprisoned a team of polar bears and they force them to make soda pop. They originally made their own beverages, but they realized that they weren't quite up to snuff. So traps and snares were laid and polar bears were transported to the north east of America. Hence he Polar premium line was born. Those bears worked tirelessly on different formulas and recipes until they had created a surprisingly dark root beer with a huge head on it (due to the addition of quiaia extract). It has a nice vanilla flavor, and you can taste bits of caramel in the aftertaste. The problem wasn't making the soda. It was getting people to give it a try. You see, their old line was seen by people as more or less on par with store brand. It was cheap and available everywhere. They knew it would take some time and some marketing, but once people tried the soda they would be hooked, or so the bears told them. As we all know, bears know best. They whispered in my ear what to write in this review. It probably just comes off as the ramblings of a mad man, but who am I to argue with some gigantic polar bears?

One of Mike's boss' once proposed the idea of him doing a Thirsty Dudes spin off based on hot sauce. You know to join the great spin offs such as Joanie Love Chachi, The Ropers, Just the Ten of Us, A Different World, Empty Nest, Daria, and to bring it back to the beginning: Laverne and Shirley. Knowing how Mike stores his drinks all over the floor at work I can only assume Kevin would store his hot sauce the same way. One would think that there would be no way that the two would ever be confused, that is until this bottle of Organic Thinkers Sorrel Root drink would enter the mix. At that point either Kevin is going to get a floral, herbal splash on his hot dogs or Mike is going to get a mouthful of some crazy hot sauce. I really hope it would be Mike's mistake, but only if it was videotaped. Something like that is just too funny to not be immortalized in a digital format. Lucky for one of them that “Hot Sauce Dudes” or whatever it was going to be called never got off the ground, because seriously this bottle looks exactly like it should contain liquid fire.

This bottle expressly says there is no alcohol added. If it didn't have that statement there is no way in hell I would have tried this as it smells like some sort of cocktail a grandfather would drink. I took the world's tiniest sip, and I think there is no alcohol added because the drink itself is alcoholic. Actually it wasn't even a sip I dabbed some on my finger and tasted it. Good-bye edge. This has to be alcohol. It smells like it, it has a slight burn (that could be from the ginger, and it tastes what I remember vodka or something like that tasting like, but with added sweetness. A drop on my finger is all I'm going to try and it was no good in my book. I'm sure it's great for you health wise, but it's not a flavor I can get down with at all, especially if it really does contain a substantial amount of alcohol from fermentation. Seriously I would rather take a shot of hot sauce than dump this on my food any day.

You've got a great thing. Imagine, if you will, a pristine Pontiac Fiero. Gorgeous, right? Red with those strange but lovable cloth seats with the speakers in the headrest. Manual transmission, stock everything, fastback, and unaltered in every way. You love it, much like Cameron's dad's Ferrari in Ferris Bueler's Day Off, you wipe you car with a diaper. You reach a point in your life, though, where you've got a kid and you can no longer see yourself driving such a cherry roadster so you have to sell it. An eighteen year old in a beat up Neon comes to your house, hands you cash, and you sadly give him the keys and the title.

A year later you see the car around your work. It's got a dent in the hood, a plastic bag taped to the passenger window because of an apparent break-in attempt, bigger tires, and a different color passenger rear view mirror. You feel like all your hard work preserving the best of 1988 was for naught and shed the saddest single tear your eyes have ever shed. This drink is that.

You've got one great second of strawberry and kiwi that you wish never ended followed by a diet massacre. The final ingredient is sucralose, which ruins this entire drink turning it into the abomination of what it once was. It truly starts out very promising but then promptly takes a turn for the worse.

Both drinking this and writing that intro made me sad.

I like dry sodas. They are a nice alternative when you don't want to drink a lot of sugar. The flavors generally aren't overly strong, but I can get over it for the trade off. Fruit flavors generally make the best dry sodas. Unfortunately root beer does not. Root beer is meant to be robust and full bodied, two things you just can't get with a dry soda. In essence this is some seltzer water with some root beer flavoring added to it (plus the tiniest amount of cane sugar). To be fair it does have birch oil and vanilla in it, so it is all natural. It's unfortunate that it doesn't really work for root beer, as the flavor isn't very apparent and it tastes like watered down root beer.

The Fonz, and for that matter, his predecessor and inspiration, the Gorch, are the epitome of smooth. They were classy, rude, inspirational, rebellion, and kind all at the same time. Well, the Fonz moreso than the Gorch. That chain kind of keeps him out of everything "kind." They never overdid it but they did master the art of being a cool guy. No one has ever complained about something or someone being too smooth...until now.

This drink did not offend me by being decaf. I should start off with that. It's got a lot of ingredients that you wouldn't expect. Namely, chamomile, passionfruit flower, and lemon balm leaf, extracts. Unfortunately all of those flavors were masked with what I can only explain as something similar to the creamer you would put in your coffee to make it taste like what this drink tastes like. Nothing really shines through and it's all just kind of a mass of creamy coffee tasting liquid. It's fine, but it's fine at best.

I like a little bite to my coffee drink and if I may bring it back to the age old fight between the Fonz and the Gorch, this drink is the Fonz because it doesn't have any hard edges and is pretty smooth throughout. I have to say that I like my drinks a bit more like the Gorch with some pep and pizzazz. Yeah, I said pizzazz. The Gorch would hit me with his chain if he heard me say that, I'm sure.

To me lemon lime is a throwaway flavor. Sodas like Sprite or 7Up are always a last resort if that is all there is around. I don't think I have ever actually purchased anything lemon lime flavored if it wasn't for Thirsty Dudes. The flavor is boring in soda, and when it's the flavor of any other type of beverage it never tastes natural. Take this coconut water for instance. Everything in here is all natural, yet the lemon lime (specifically the lime, since that is what it is heavy on) reminds me of a freezie pop, without the harshness. It's surely not the flavor you should get if you mix a lemon and a lime together, even if you do add a lot of sugar. At least this is way more flavorful than lemon lime soda. The flavor keeps the taste of the coconut water to an aftertaste, even when it starts to warm up a little.

I just don't understand the science behind this flavor. Maybe I should just hang up my lab coat for good.

Hey buddy. You look down in the dumps. I've got something that might help out. Oh me? I'm just a helpful homeless man but a very wise homeless man. In my hay day, I used to run a holistic healing center. Ever since that Curves ran me out of business, I've been on the streets making things the old world, Eastern type of way. I've got something and before you scoff at the fact that it's in a used McDonald's cup, consider the source, alright? I don't have the resources to a proper bottling plant. It smells a little funny, I know, but it'll get you up in your seat feeling like a young pup again.

What do you mean it tastes like perfume and dirt? Although I can't say that I'm offended because I didn't make it, that's a rough comparison. I actually stole this from an Asian market down the street. Dirt, huh? Well now that you mention it, it does taste a little bit like plant runoff water. Being homeless, water is water. Plants filter the water and get rid of toxins but they haven't exactly figured out how to stop giving me so much dirt. I can deal with it. It's iron, you know what I mean?

Well buddy? I hope I helped and thank you for taking the time to talk to a man who is optimistically down on his luck. Oh, two dollars. Thank you very much sir. I greatly appreciate your gratitude. Tell your friends.

Ahh, the never-ending box of iced tea. When Mike and I lived together years ago, we were well acquainted with the Gregory's line. We had taco parties at our house fairly regularly and always had a box of box to quench our guest's thirsts. The first time we got two boxes and that was a mistake. We had gotten two separate flavors, so both were opened, but neither was finished. We had two huge boxes of iced tea in our fridge for what felt like months.

I purchased this box here two weeks ago for a party we were having at a friend's cabin. There was a decent amount of people going, so I was sure this would go fast. Of course I was wrong. Everyone seemed to be drinking it, and I have had some every day since then, yet here I sit two weeks later and this still feels fairly full. I don't know what kind of magic Gregory has cast over his products, but I am okay with it. The box says that it contains 150oz of tea. Let's face it that is an absurd amount of tea. It's just lucky for everyone involved that it is a tasty beverage. It's actually brewed black tea, and not a tea mix, which is kind of surprising for such a large quantity. You can taste that it is real black tea though. The lemon flavor is present, but it's not overwhelming like it can be with other companies. My only real complaint is that it is a tad sweeter than I would like it to be. I sometimes cut it with a little water to even it out a bit. To sum things up this really tastes like you made an obscene amount of sun tea and added a cubic butt ton of sugar and some squirts of natural lemon juice to it.

As an added bonus, you can pretend to be one of those turds that takes their wine out of the box and just carries around the metallic bag and calls it their “space bag.” With this it's clear, so it doesn't look very futuristic, but when you get it down a bit, it helps with saving room in your fridge.

"Go green!" everyone says. "It's good for the environment!" they add, rather snobbish. Teas' Tea just couldn't hear it anymore. All day, green, green, green. "Enough!" the CEO said. "We're going to go so green you're going to puke!" When that dude gets mad, he will do whatever it takes to stop. He went into the Teas' Tea workshop alone for an entire weekend. He shut off his phone and told no one to come down until he said it was alright.

Saturday came and went. Sunday came and went. Monday came and went and people were getting worried. No one dared knock on the door for fear of near execution. Tuesday he emerged from the workshop with bottles in his arm exclaiming, "I've done it!" to an empty office. Everyone had gone out for tacos. He took his bottles and put them on everyone's desk so when they returned they had something to drink. They all came back and the intern who was rather thoughtful brought a taco back just in case he was done working. The intern gave him the burrito and the CEO gave him the lowdown on what he was working on.

What he manufactured for almost four days was a green apple and green tea drink that embodied all that was green and delicious. Initially it tastes like a green apple then it kicks in to green tea gear, whatever that gear is. It's not overly sweet and tastes like it gets all its sweetness from the apple even though both cane sugar and Stevia sweeten it. The intern loved it and everyone who tried it came in one by one to agree that it was all the same.

The CEO pushed that product to the people ASAP and people agree; Teas' Tea went green and did it swimmingly.

I took the day off of work so that I could fulfill my longtime interest in getting acupuncture. It was a weird/interesting experience. First of all it was one of the most relaxing things I've ever done. Secondly you don't feel the needles at all. I laid there for about an hour with a bunch of needles in my back and arms, and I had no problem with it. Afterwards the woman did cupping on me. If you're not familiar, basically they create a vacuum with cups on your back and it's supposed to suck out bad energy. It was pretty much like a reverse massage as it just pulls on your back skin. My back looks like it's covered in huge hickies from it. It was slightly uncomfortable at parts because the cups really pull a lot. Afterwards I was in a slight daze. I was told to drink a lot of water. No problem, I drink tons of water all day. Well apparently not enough. I felt dehydrated a few hours later, so I turned to the magical power of coconut water, and it did wonders.

This tastes like someone mixed a normal sports drink with coconut water, which I guess is what it is, so that's a good thing. This thing will hydrate you like no one's business. Plants will have all the electrolytes they could ever possibly crave. The tropical berry flavor tastes a bit heavy on the acai side of things. I don't even know if there's any in here, but it tastes like a bunch of berries and acai mixed together with a coconut aftertaste. I would have preferred it to just be your normal berries, but it's not a deal breaker.

Seriously though, if you have any interest in acupuncture, I say make the plunge. After one session my arm/shoulder feels worlds better. It'll cure what ails you. Then drink one of these puppies afterwards so you don't crash.