Cane Sugar - 601 Reviews

If Dora the Explorer has taught me one thing, it's that "azul" means "blue". Since I took four years of Spanish, two in high school and two in college, I already knew that, so that loud brat actually taught me nothing.

This drink is certainly blue and certainly tastes tropical. Check and check. Two things that are not lies right off the bat. Good start, Cintron. Then I took a sip and there was another check; an energy drink that was not at all disgusting. It does taste "tropical" but I can't exactly pinpoint actual flavors. I'm going to say pineapple might be in there, followed by some leis and also a hula skirt and a copy of Dog the Bounty Hunter: Best of Seasons 1, 2 and 3 on DVD all liquefied into a can.

I don't drink a lot of energy drinks but I've been feeling my body crash at like six almost every day so today I felt like I needed it. If all energy drinks were this good or if this was sold by me, I would turn into one of those people that can drink them and get no boost, like those jerkwads who take so much ibuprofen that when they ask you for it and you say "How many do you want? Two?" they respond with a scoff and a number higher than five. You're a drug addict and you're also pathetic. Deal with the pain and earn your tolerance back. Stop taking medicine for everything. Pilgrims never had medicine and they turned out fine. I bet pilgrims would have loved this drink though.

I have more in the can downstairs. I hope those dogs didn't knock it off the table and are getting speed boosts.

In my book Goose Island is now four for four when it comes to quality pop. They have the ability to take fairly standard soda pop flavors and push them to a higher level. If I was taking a survey after getting off the phone with tech support and they asked me from 1 to 10 what this soda tasted like with 1 being your standard candy tasting grape soda and 10 being sparkling grape juice I would have to give this a 7. It's not totally grape juice, there's still a bit of that sticky sweet candy flavor to it, but it's very minimal. I wish this was the standard for grape pop, but alas 9 times out of 10 you're going to end up with that fake grape flavor.

When you're a kid and it's Easter time jellybeans take a backseat only to Peeps (yes I am one of those strange people that prefers stale Peeps). As you get older jellybeans lose their allure. In fact they become just a step above gross. Then you discover a little company called Jelly Belly and your interest in jellybeans is renewed. Best of all they are available all year and they are "gourmet."

When I first saw Jelly Belly sodas I thought to myself "Self that sure sounds gross, over sugary candy pop is not something we are fans of." I got some for the site though for the sake of the website. When I finally got around to drinking it I discovered that they can do the same for sugary fake fruit sodas as they did for sugary fake fruit candy. Is it sweet? You bet your butt it is, but more importantly it tastes like strawberries. This actually tastes just like a real sweet strawberry jam. I certainly can't complain about a pop that delivers exactly what it promises, and neither should you.

Remember that time when you had an undying need to get a poncho? You thought they were just the coolest and you needed one to live, well at least to live with the kids who ditched class and snuck across the street to smoke cigarettes. It was the early 90's and it was a different world than it is now. It was a world where poncho's, or drug rugs, were a sign of stature.

You begged and pleaded with your mom to take you to get one. She wouldn't give in said that you would look stupid wearing one, especially since you hated the Grateful Dead. So you waited and ended up going with the older kids in your shop class that wore leather jackets, even in the summer. Those guys must be touch. They said they were going to the "head shop" anyways, but you had to pay gas, and ride in the trunk. Whatever, anything for that sweet, sweet poncho. As you walked into the shop, still a bit woozy from the exhaust that spilled in through the holes in the trunk, you were blasted with the smell of hippies and incense. It's a smell that you would become familiar with over the next few years at parties in dimly lit basements.

When you graduated high school you thought, and hoped that smell would never be apart of your life again. It didn't until you cracked open a can of Yeo's green tea. The smell was kind of there, but Christ did it taste the way that head shop smelled. One would think that something like that should never hit your taste buds, but it's actually a little bit of alright. This is supposed to be jasmine green tea, but I've had jasmine tea before and it tastes nothing like this. The only way to describe it is to say it tastes like ill lit basements, black-light posters, and incense. It will also fill you with shame for once owning a drug rug, even if you only wore it twice. Really, what was I thinking?

It's been said that Goose Island is a part of Chicago, but I think that's just a ruse. I think they want people to believe this magical island is in the boring Midwest when in fact it resides just outside of Buffalo, NY in historic East Aurora. I know because I have seen it. It's chock full of geese and other waterfowl. It's also a perfect place to enjoy a pizza and some root beers with your ladyfriend at the end of a nice day trip.

It was really a no-brainer choosing what root beer to accompany our delicious pizza at such a location. Sure there are brews that I prefer over Goose Island but many of them are full bodied and heavy. Those are drinks for sipping around a fire, contemplating you day. This is a light and smooth soda. It's the kind of flavorful root beer that works well with food and nature. It reminds me of What IBC or Dogs N Suds root beer would taste like if they used cane sugar as a sweetener.

So while Virginia may be for lovers, Goose Island is for root beer and greasy pizza. Watch out because those birds may try to steal your pizza after awhile. Don't let them have it though because bread is bad for waterfowl and can cause their stomachs to explode, and no one wants to have to clean up that mess.

A lot of people fear Kim Jong-Il. This probably has something to do with the fact that he keeps his country under wraps, commits horrible human rights violations, and leaves the people who live there living in fear. I once watched a documentary about the Pyongyang mass games in North Korea. Basically, they put on this huge display of athletes, dancers, and gymnasts to celebrate Kim Jong-Il's birthday. They spent months and months, day and night, training for this. In the end, he didn't even show up. He wasn't sick or had something else to do, he just didn't feel like going. What a jerk!

I don't know about other people, but I stopped thinking Kim Jong-Il was a "threat" when I found this blog: http://kimjongillookingatthings.tumblr.com . This blog is why I love the internet. How can you live in fear of a guy who looks at stuff all the time? What I would love to see is him look at a bottle of this orange cream soda. I wonder if he'd be offended or flattered. It does say it has a "terrorizing taste".

As far as taste goes, he should be really flattered. This is one of the best orange cream soda's I've ever had. It has a really strong orange flavor with a nice creamy aftertaste. It's made with cane sugar and real vanilla. I was expecting it to be a generic soda inside of a cool bottle. The people at Rocket Fizz probably made sure it tasted good in case he got mad about the label. I don't blame them. I wouldn't want to be on Kim Jong-Il's enemy list.

Today R.E.M. announced that they were no longer a band. For most people that probably means very little. I'm sure a lot of people probably thought they broke up years ago. To me it's a major upset. They are and have been my favorite band for the last 25 years or so of my life. With the exception of an album and a half, their catalog is solid. This year's Collapse Into Now is one of the best records I've heard in years. They were the best live band I've ever witnessed and at one show Michael Stipe even threw me the microphone to sing the end of "It's the End of the World." I met bassist Mike Mills a couple years ago in Athens while I was touring through. He was one of the nicest people I've ever met. I just meant to say hello and tell him he was the reason I play bass now, but he engaged me in conversation for a while. The band has been with me throughout the highs and lows of my life and I will always hold them dear.

To celebrate this band/mourn their death I decided to review a southern sweet tea. Something that the folks of Athens, GA would sip on their front porches on a hot summer day. Okay they probably brew their own, and probably never think to buy this product, but it was the only sweet tea I had on hand. It does taste fairly authentic. It's made with cane sugar and you can totally tell. It's very sweet, but it actually tastes like tea and not sugar water. Bravo on the product.

Now onto the packaging. Really? Is Larry Johnson relevant at all anymore? The grandmamma character is from
Converse commercials that came out in the early 90's. I will be the first to admit that those commercials were awesome, and this would have made sense 15 years ago, but now would people even remember it by name? A gimmick that is out of date, but a product that is great. Now I'm going to go and listen to the entire R.E.M. catalog in chronological order.

This has been sitting on the shelf in my kitchen for months. It looked like a disaster waiting to happen. First off it's an energy drink soda. While the majority of energy drinks are carbonated, I still wouldn't consider them pop for some reason. Secondly it's a cherry energy drink. Most things cherry flavored end up tasting like cough drops or cold medicine. Not a flavor that one looks forward to. To sum this up I was expecting a chemical tasting cough syrup with bubbles in it. Just thinking about that makes my stomach turn.

Lolli's were successful in not achieving that. This is a natural energy drink, so it doesn't contain the chemicals. It has ingredients like ginseng, guarana, niacin and caffeine. As far as the flavor goes there is no medicine to be tasted at all. In face it tastes like grape and apple juice mixed together with a splash of grenadine added for good measure. This was way, way better than I expected. Now someone tell that lady on the label to watch out because she is sitting on a cherry bomb and it's about to go off. I don't want her to have to be rushed to the hospital.

Back in my formative years I went to camp for a week every summer. It was for my cousin's church and it was a bit weird, but still a learning experience and fun at times. While there snacks and gum were the ultimate contraband. Of course that meant that I was going to sneak in as much as I possibly could. I mean I had a rebel image I had to uphold. Wait did I say rebel, I meant extreme nerd. There was one summer when I knew I was getting braces put on in the fall, so I was chewing as much gum as I possibly could before it would get all gunked up in my new bionic facial features. I've never been a huge fan of mint, so that summer I smuggled in well over 30 packs of Extra bubble gum. I secretly chewed gum every second that I wasn't eating, sleeping or brushing my teeth. It was seriously out of hand.

If you combined all of the gum I chewed in that week and make a soda out of it, this would be it. Okay not really, but the flavor made me think of all that jaw work I did. This tastes like candy bubblegum, but it's more in the aftertaste than in the actual flavor. While it's in your mouth, it just tastes like sugary soda water. It's when you swallow and then breath through your mouth that the bubble gum flavor pops up and says "ello."

To be honest this is way too sugary for me. It has 48 grams of sugar per serving, which seems pretty insane. I really don't think this was made for adults, and I don't blame them. If someone handed this to me when I was a kid I'd be all over it. Now I could only get down about 1/3 of the bottle before going into a sugar coma.

Stop your complaining Mark. You drew the short straw so you have to go to the store for snacks. You're not going to be able to go to the corner store either. We have some needs and they must be filled. You're going to have to go to the Co-Op for this. I need 20lbs of raw almonds. Don't get that roasted garbage. I need them raw. Also pick up a few things of cane sugar. Yes by things I mean canes. "Canes of cane sugar" just sounds dumb. Okay fine. Canes of sugar. There, are you happy? Oh yeah and get a couple of bottles of seltzer water. I'm going to make you guys the best almond soda you've ever had. What's that Mark it's going to cost over $100 for all of that stuff? I thought you were a master thief? Can't you just lift it for us? Oh you got caught last week at Coldstone Creamery? What were you stealing there, wait, I don't want to know. Fine be a party pooper, just pick us up a sixer of Red Ribbon's Almond Cream. It probably tastes better than what I was going to make anyways. Their soda tastes extremely almondy, but without tasting like almond extract. That should be like $5. Oh and you can pay for it too. Deal with it.

You! Hey you there! Look at me when I'm talking to you. I'm not only talking to you, but I'm pointing directly at you. There you go you big oaf. Yes I'm on the bottle label. You're a quick one aren't ya? I need you to do something for me. Why should you help me? Well how often do you find yourself being spoken to by a drawing of a effeminate man on the label of a bottle of soda? That should be reason enough. No I won't tell you my back-story of how I ended up on this label. I've told it to a thousand people at least and I'm tired of telling it.

You see the thing is I'm here on this label telling you to "Drink Moxie" and normally that's not a problem, but this time I have an issue because I have no idea what Blue Cream tastes like. How can I go around telling people to drink this when I've never tasted it? The thing is I'm contractually bound. No I still won't tell you the rest. Just describe the darn soda to me!

Okay, so you're telling me it tastes like a candied cream soda. Not like the classy brewed ones that taste super creamy and have a super strong vanilla taste. So this still taste like vanilla, but with a bunch of sugar in it. What else? Oh it has a slight berry flavor to it. Well golly how would I ever have guessed that. You must have went to one of those fancy learnin' schools. I would have never guessed that in a million years! Get out of here! You're worthless to me!

I've been blindfolded in a basement for three days. It's not a nice basement either. It's one of those dirt floor basements from the days of old and someone got the floor wet. Perhaps it rained and the foundation leaked and it mudded up the floors. Ugh, why am I here? Why am I doing this? Is pledging to this fraternity that great? What?! What's happening? Why are we in this van? Someone take this blindfold off me! I'm so hungry. I could eat a whole horse. I feel like horsemeat would make good tacos. Listen to me...I've got cabin fever. I'm filled with crazy talk. Horsemeat. Man, what's wrong with me.

Finally, we're out of the van. It was hot and they had the heat turned up all the way. What's that smell? I love it and it's so familiar. Oh, my blindfold is off and what is that?!?!?! The holy grail! Burger King! I'm going to get a dozen double Whoppers. What? Really? We can get whatever we want and as much as we want? Heavens to Betsy! I am going to be a little responsible and get a double Whopper, large french-fry, and regular hamburger, chicken tenders, and a cheeseburger. What? We can't get a drink? Oh, you brought drinks? That's cool. Thanks a lot, brother. I'll take the root beer. Oh, the cane root beer. Nice. I like it. It's a pretty standard root beer taste. A little bit of vanilla and perhaps a little bit of licorice. I like it. Oh, you've got another one for me? Awesome. Oh, a three liter? Really? I can't drink this whole...I have to? It will make me sick. I just ate everything I bought and now you want me to drink three liters of root beer? I can't do it. I have to?! Fine, I'll do it, for brotherhood. No, not the New Order record, although in retrospect, I would have rather have that than the inevitable barf that will happen and here it comes....

The tagline on this bottle is: unique, subtle, refreshing, natural. I like making lists so I'm going to break down each bullet point.

1. Unique- This is not the first mint soda I have had. In 2003 I was at the Toronto zoo and came across Sprite Ice. I ended up drinking 3 bottles of it over the course of the day. It was great! Sadly it never was distributed in the US.

2. Subtle- This is the word I was looking for to describe the mint taste in this. It has a really subtle mint taste. I've had some mint drinks that taste like a blizzard in your mouth. Not this one. This is more like a cool breeze sneaking into a doorway as you close it.

3. Refreshing- It's rare that a soda is refreshing, but this one really is. There isn't much to it, but that makes it really light and delicious.

4. Natural- Carbonated water, cane sugar, peppermint (and other natural flavors), and malic acid are the only ingredients. I'd say that's pretty natural.

A little known fact about Franklin Mercer is he used to own a robot. He tends to buy into all the latest gadgets, which is how he came into owning cinTRON. You see, in the late 80's helper robots became all the rage. When Franklin found out there was a robot that could bring him drinks from the fridge, he imported one from Japan. It took almost 2 months to arrive at the doorstep of his rural Pennsylvania house. Judging by his reaction when the large crate was coming off the truck, you would have thought he was setting sight on his first child. In fact, he was more excited for the arrival of cinTRON than his first kid.

The first couple weeks with cinTRON were great. Franklin was happier than ever with his new robot helper around. That was until March 13th, 1991. That is the day that will live in infamy in the Mercer-Clarion house. It was a typical Wednesday and Franklin asked cinTRON to get him a bottle of root beer. His calibration must have been off because when he placed it on the table, the bottle shattered and a piece went into Franklin's arm. He got so mad that he picked up the once helpful robot and threw it through the living room window onto the front lawn. He later asked his wife to hire some neighborhood kids to take cinTRON away because he never wanted to see his once loyal robot again.

If Franklin ever saw the name of this drink, he would probably flip out. CinTRON is not a word that is allowed to be said around him. It's too bad he will never try this because it's a good energy drink. It has that usual energy drink "melted candy" taste, which happens to be sweet tarts in this can. As far as Red Bull-esque drinks, this one is one of the better ones out there.

You kind of know what this is going to taste like. Need I make the comparison? Alright, if you need me to. This tastes like Arizona Green Tea. There, I did it. I sank down to your level and just came out and did it. I don't like that I had to do that, but it's true.

Here's the thing, though; it's better than Arizona because it uses real cane sugar. It's a matter of ingredients. If you have one that uses corn syrup and one that uses all natural ingredients you would be completely stupid to not choose the natural one. They are that similar that after all the drinks that I've drank, the two taste the same.

You are not stupid, and you are not beneath me, I feel that I must address that, but I might say that if you have a side-by-side and they are only fifty cents difference and you choose Arizona over this, you might want to get your head inspected.

As much as I would like to make up a story, this drink deserves a legitimate review. I don't know what a pomelo is but I know what green tea tastes like and subtracting that out pomelo is something else. Think of green tea and then think of adding both oranges and cantaloupe and some sort of floral essence to this drink and there you have it. It's all-natural and it is actually a wonderful drink.

I got this in a tiny Asian market 'round the corner from my house and I have never seen it anywhere else. I guess that's handy for me, but for you, it might be tricky to track down. If you find it, I think it was a dollar and it was a dollar well spent.

It's everything you love about green tea and everything you would love about a citric juice combined into a simple and delicious drink. I wish I hadn't waited this long to drink it because I have unknowingly been holding back on myself.

There is a common misconception in this world that the life of a hula girl is an easy one. The truth is nothing could be further from the truth. They are required to wake up an hour before dawn in order to get a proper workout before the brutal sun rises. Said work out included power lifting crates of pineapples and running four miles barefoot over a trail of discarded pineapple "shells" as wild boars chase them. They do this in order to keep up their stamina. After a three-minute rest period, each hula girl must then eat 1/4 of her weight of a mixture of pork and poi in order to keep up her "plump" body type. There is a fine line that they must walk between being healthy and in shape and not becoming skinny. After gorging themselves the girls go out to their first jobs of the day on tourist boats. After the first eight hours they are allowed 30 minutes of personal time before they must report to the luau for the nights festivities. After several more hours of grueling dancing they are allowed to pass out for a few short hours before they must rise and begin it all again.

In the olden days the girls would often collapse from exhaustion. Then energy drinks came onto the scene. Many of the girls refused to drink them because they tasted foreign and did not fit in with the tastes of their culture. Now that Cintron has released this Pineapple Passion energy drink 99.4% of all hula girls are on board. When you first pull it out of the fridge and drink it while it's nice and cold it doesn't taste like an energy drink at all. It actually tastes like a nice pineapple pop. As it warms up the chemical flavor raises it's head more and more. If you drink this over a half hour, by the end it will be kind of gross, and the pineapple flavoring will become nothing more than an afterthought. I suggest you drink it ice cold and bask in its glory that way. Celebrate the salvation of the hula girl!

M - Oh my god Jenny like what are you doing?
J - I'm like totally talking to Brad on the other line. He's such a hunk!
M - As if! He doesn't even have a convertible! You should like totally hang up on him and pick me up so we can go to the mall.
J - But Mindy we were just at the mall yesterday. Actually we've been to the mall everyday for the past 8 months. We even went on Xmas.
M - I know aren't we like totally hardcore! So just shut up. You know you love the mall as much as I do, so get your skinny little butt in your Mustang and drive over here. I hear that the mall diner totally has a new root beer.
J - OH MY GOD! I was totally just talking to Brad about that! He told me that it doesn't taste so much like a root beer. He said it's more like a cola that was brewed with some of the ingredients that were left over from a batch of high quality root beer. He said he didn't even realize that it was a root beer until he was halfway done and read the label! Can you believe that! What a dreamboat! He also said that it has a decent amount of vanilla in it and something else that might be a total butt load of wintergreen or maybe some cloves. He just kept going on and on about how awesome it was though.
M - Jenny, what the hell just happened there? You totally sounded like you were from the Midwest or something.
J - Mindy we live in rural Iowa, we do live in the Midwest, we just like totally love the mall.
M - Whatever girl. Just come pick me up. That food court is calling our names.

Herbert is a simple man. He goes to work every day and is always five minutes early. He's never been in trouble with the police and has never as much as received a speeding ticket. He pays his taxes on time and never complains about the weather. Herbert is the ideal citizen. Herbert went into work one day and in the cubicle next to him was a new hire. A young man called Bartholomew or, as the nameplate on his desk said, Bart.

Bart came into work fifteen minutes late almost every day, wore sneakers with a wrinkled suit, and wore headphones blasting metal at unsafe volumes. Herbert didn't mind because the partition between them did a good job of blocking the sound. Bart wasn't a bad kid, just young. One day, Bart brought in a case of something and Herbert curiously asked him what it was. Bart told him it was Cintron Cranberry Splash and offered one to him. Who was Herbert to refuse a gift? "Such a nice gesture. Sure I'll have one,” said Herbert. Herbert drank it and thought it was very good. Slightly carbonated with a nice cranberry taste. Herbert thought that it tastes like a sweeter carbonated version of Ocean Spray's basic cranberry juice. All of a sudden, something happened. Herbert switched his radio involuntarily from Daryl Hall's I'm In A Philly Mood to a local, independent hard rock station. His hand grabbed a black marker and drew a barbed wire tattoo on his bicep. "What's going on!?" exclaimed Herbert. Bart looked over the partition and said, "Hey, dude. Did you like that energy drink I gave you? They're pretty rad. I drank two today." Herbert was shocked. He didn't even know it was an energy drink. "It didn't taste like an energy drink. I didn't know. I don't drink stuff like that." Bart noticed his new barbed wire tattoo and said, "Woah, dude! We've got the same tattoo." Bart lifted up his shirt to show the exact tattoo on his arm.

Hebert used his first sick day of his life that day to go home, sleep off his caffeine high, and scrub his magic marker tattoo off his arm. "Never again", he promised.

Dear Red Ribbon,
Where do you come off? Your name might as well have a self appointed crown on top of it. Also, on your label it says "The Taste Test Winner". What taste test? THE taste test? Were there any other entries in this taste test? I demand a recount! Don't get me wrong; your root beer is good. It has a great smell to it, but the taste isn't anything special. It is definitely nothing to write home about, let alone deserve to win a taste testing. The only taste test I can see this possibly winning is "The Annual Newbridge Mediocre Root Beer Competition".

Sincerely,
Derek


**********************EDIT**********************
We got an email from Vito who has recently taken over the Natrona Bottling Company which makes this soda. When he took over he revamped the companies labels and agreed that the taste test winner claim was well...dumb. I changed the picture to the new label. He also asked if we would have another go with the root beer. Here I am doing just that, and unfortunately I'm not too impressed. It's not bad by any means, but it doesn't stick out. Like Derek said, it has a nice strong smell, but the flavor isn't quite there. It reminds me of store brand root beer, except it's made with real sugar, so it's a bit better.
-Jason