Cane Sugar - 601 Reviews

Oh, so you've invited me over to this family function that you have disguised as a barbeque and you had the audacity to have neither grape or orange soda to accompany the tower of hot dogs that I fear is going to topple over and smother the children playing in the sandbox. I am completely disgusted with your lack of etiquette. Serving homemade salsa and guacamole does not make up for it. Yes, I have seen the fresh squeezed juice station. Yes, I've heard that you have hired a French chef to prepare individual desserts specifically made with the tastes of each guest in mind. You know what, none of that matters if I do not have the proper soda to accompany my grilled items.

Why yes, I will happily take a soda from your private stash that you have been saving for a rainy day. Why didn't you say something about these sodas you've been looking forward to enjoying when you can finally relax? This is actually a pretty okay grape soda. It tastes like the generic stuff at every barbeque but something about it is different and it makes it stand out. Oh there's cane sugar in it? That makes sense. Martha sure does love that Mexi-Coke. It's certainly not the best grape soda I've ever had, but it's better than most. Actually it kind of tastes a little like grape jelly. You should totally have saved this and drank it with a nice peanut butter sandwich, instead of giving it to me you're dumb neighbor who is rude and everyone hates, and you only invited in because I was complaining about the noise. You certainly chose wrong in this aspect of your life.

To get access to dragon drool, one has to read up on many resources. You have to learn how to tell long stories that don't go anywhere about delicious food that are equal parts delicious as they are boring. You learn this skill and then you try it whenever you feel the time is right.

You first have to go to the top of Gumdrop Mountain. That's where the dragons live. It seems strange, I know, but dragons love novelty sized gumdrops. If you didn't know this, you should read a book about dragons, you idiot. Travel to the top of the mountain and start telling your story telling the story that you've practiced so many times before. As soon as you see the dragon, they should already be partially groggy. Keep going because for the minute you think he's sleeping, he'll wake up and burn you to a nice golden brown and then eat you like the delectable treat you are.

If you manage to get him to sleep, you've done the first part of your job. The second is to get the stones to go right up to the dragon and put a little jar under its mouth and catch the drool. You've only got about ten minutes before he wakes up. Oh, you didn't know that dragons only took cat naps? Yep. Pesky devils, aren't they? After nine minutes, grab that jar and run down the hill. When the dragon wakes up, he's going to be hella hungry.

Now for the fun part: drinking the drool. Just take a sip. It smells stronger than it is and tastes just like licorice. You think that it will taste just like jelly beans but it's weaker than that. It doesn't linger like jelly beans because it doesn't stick in your teeth like they do. It's not too sweet but it's surprisingly sweet for being a dragon's tears.

Now that you've mastered the art of coaxing dragon tears, you can do anything. You can ride a bike. You can braid your hair. You can eat artichokes. You are the master of your domain.

Rocket Fizz sure does put out a lot of soda. Sure, they release them under different sub-brands, but all in all they have about six dozen different flavors. That is unheard of for a small company. I don't even know if Pepsi or Coke have that many flavors domestically.

This specific flavor is in honor of Joe. I'm not sure who Joe is exactly, but if the internet is to be believed he is either the owner's brother, or else it has something to do with them being on Undercover Boss. Whoever he is, he may be homeless, as proceeds go to an unnamed homeless organization, or else he really just loves the woods, because the bottle says “Enjoy the outdoors.” Perhaps he become homeless because he loved being outside so much and just wanted to commune with nature forever. The only thing I know for sure is that I have found very little concrete information about this gentleman.

I expected this to be an extremely creamy vanilla root beer. Root beer floats have a very specific taste (well depending on what brand of soda you use), and the contents of this bottle just did not meet my expectations. The root beer flavor itself is nothing special, and the something extra that would be the taste of the vanilla ice cream isn't what you would expect. It instead just tastes like a general root beer with something else mixed in. Unfortunately that something else doesn't really improve the flavor at all. If you were to go into this blind and not be told that it was supposed to be a root beer float, it would be a completely serviceable soda. Knowing how it should taste it leaves me wanting.

Like I said before, Positive Energy's lemonade line is way better than their juice line. Both have caffeine from green coffee beans added to them, but the difference is that the lemonades also have added sugar (and stevia), which is really kind of necessary to mask the taste of the caffeine.

It does seem odd to me to add caffeine to lemonade, since in my mind it's a relaxing, refreshing beverage. I never think of lemonade when I'm being active, or need an extra boost of energy. Actually the only time I really think of lemonade is when it's blistering hot out and I've been in the sun (and probably resemble a lobster as a result). Maybe I'm just not as big of a lemonade enthusiast at others.

This has a really strong peach and mango flavor to it, with the lemonade aspect f it coming mostly as an aftertaste. Again, it's not what I think of when I think of lemonade, but that doesn't make it a bad thing. I actually really like the non-lemon fruit flavor that's in here. It covers up the caffeine even more than the sugar, and the stevia taste is all but nonexistent. This is certainly my favorite product that Positive Energy has put out. I wish the others were this good as well.

Unfortunately, I have not been a fan of Positive Energy's line of energy juices. The taste of the caffeine from the green coffee is just too strong to my palate, and it takes me away from my enjoyment of the juice itself. Luckily for everyone involved this half and half is a whole different story. The cane sugar they use to sweeten it masks the taste of the caffeine nicely. One top of that the tea taste in here is fantastic. It tastes like tea that was brewed from a bag and not the garbage sugar water that a lot of companies pass off as tea. It's always nice when a beverage tastes real, like it should. The strange thing about this is that it contains orange juice as well as the lemon juice, and it really takes this “classic” drink to a whole new level. I want more orange juice and tea combinations now. I bet they would be fantastic, just like this bottle of liquid refreshment.

Flavor-wise, this is nice. It's pretty smooth and I personally like the Stevia taste mixed with the coffee extract. It's a welcome bitterness to a sweet and fruity lemonade. What I don't like, and this just me and not at all affecting my rating, is the intense jitters I'm getting from the caffeine. It turns you into a masochist because I'm enjoying the flavor but not the after effects of it. As I said, not affecting the review.

Flavor? Yeah. Chocked full. Nice genuine strawberry flavor with a little sweet and sour from the lemonade. It's actually pretty good and would be really good in itself. I wonder why Stevia is in there at all; probably to cut down on calories. Yeah, that's probably why. I could start a juice company. I'm like a detective. Or an assumptive moron who should keep his mouth shut if he knows what's good for him.

The world of half and half is a populated place and somehow, it's a pretty good place to be. There aren't a lot of bad ones out there. Look, there are bad ones out there but all things considered, it's still a nice place to hang out.

This tea has a little secret, though and that secret is mint. If I may break it down for you for a second here; the tea is fine, just fine. The lemonade is pretty good. Pulpless but good. You can taste that lemon but the mint. Dat mint, tho. It's a really nice change for the generally consistent half and halves out there. Changing it up on us, gents. Now I want to try your other drinks. We'll see what we can do about that.

Before Shepard Fairey hit the streets with his Obey signs/graffiti those signs belonged to one of the greatest movies this world has ever known; They Live. It is John Carpenter's tale of a civilization in which the ruling class is actually aliens in disguise, and they use subliminal messages everywhere to control the populace. Not only it's it ridiculously entertaining, but it also may contain the longest fight scene of all times. The film stars former professional wrestler “Rowdy” Roddy Piper as a drifter who, with the help of a pair of sunglasses, discovers the true nature of the ruling class.

The most memorable line from the movie is “I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass... and I'm all out of bubblegum.” Now you know the origin story of this soda. Someone at Rocket Fizz has great taste in movies, and somehow their legal team cleared the product and now we have it to enjoy. You know what? This might be the only bubblegum tasting soda that I have ever actually enjoyed, and that includes people's precious champagne colas, which are just gross. The flavor of this pop doesn't punch you in the face, like other sodas of this flavor, or say Mr. Piper might if you declined to wear the special sunglasses. Instead it mainly has a general soda flavor with a light, but nice bubblegum flavor. It actually just tastes like you're drinking a flavorless soda while chewing a big hunk of gum. I don't know if that sounds appealing, but if you keep looking at all those signs around you, I'm sure their hidden messages will get you drinking this by the case in no time. They live. We sleep.

When we were in San Diego recently I woke up early, as I am prone to do, and our friend Jay who we were staying with asked me if I wanted to go surfing. Being that I am not a fool I instantly shouted yes and we loaded the boards in his van and made for the beach. I didn't do nearly as well as I had in the past, riding the waves, but it was still ridiculously fun, especially knowing that back home the temperature was in the negatives while I was worrying about a sunburn.

After beach fun, we headed to get tacos and I went next door to grab a beverage. How could I say no to a beverage called Beach Day after just spending the morning on the sand and in the surf? The answer is I probably should have found a way, because this was pretty ehh. It tastes like a watered down juice. It has apple and mango juices from concentrate in it, but there is no real passion fruit in here, unless it's hidden under another category. It has a generic fruit flavor that is kind of tropical. If anything I would have to say that it tasted the most like mango out of any fruit. I didn't let the so-soness of this get me down though. I mean I had just surfed all morning and very few things are cooler than that.

Sometimes you have to drive from LA to Salt Lake City in a day. In every case of that instance you end up stopping in the filth hole that is Las Vegas and spending way more time than you meant to. In such cases you may find yourself stopping at a hotel on the Utah border. For some reason the hotel has propane grills outside of the rooms, so you put the sodas you purchased earlier in the day at Galcos into the fridge to chill as you run across the street to pick up some veggie burgers from the grocery store. When you return you realize that the fridge isn't doing anything, so you get a bucket of ice and chill some of them and leave the rest in the fridge. After a night a hanging out and relaxing poolside with some quality sodas and grilled food, so retire to bed so you can get up early and finish the drive. As you're exiting the room in the morning you remember that you left some sodas in the fridge, when you go to grab them you discover that apparently the fridge did work, but more like a freezer and that the sodas have frozen and the caps blew right off the bottles due to the pressure. If it were a nice warm day you could have eaten it like a freezie pop, but it's fairly cold and it's also 8am and who wants a freezie that early in the morning, so into the trash it goes. You're sad that you lost an un-reviewed soda, but while you're in SLC you hit up a grocery store that just happens to have the exact soda you lost earlier in the day and you squeak with glee and return to your day with soda in hand.

Don't tell me you haven't had that exact same thing happen to you at least once in the past three months. It's the American tale as old as this country of ours. It's a rite of passage for children in our culture, and I am an idiot and should just stop writing this and just talk about the way this soda tastes. It's made with real peach juice, but it has a nice taste that rides the border of fruit and gummy candy. For other flavors I might find that gross, but it somehow works for peach. The usual quasi-alcoholic taste that Bundaberg sodas generally have isn't very strong in this flavor. Maybe it's just because the peach taste is so strong that it hides it. Australia is still killing it with their sodas.

Whenever I come across a company that is making a spiced apple soda I just want to tell them they needn't bother. Such a thing already exists in a fairly perfect form and it is made by Reeds. Even though I am an authority on such things, the companies would never listen, and their output always leaves something to be desired.

Natrona Bottling Company through their hat in the ring, and the results of course could not match up. This is a spiced apple soda, but it doesn't have the classic cider flavor to it that I had expected. Actually it's more spice than apple that that is just plain unfortunate. I want a nice mouthful of sweet, sparkling apple juice/cider and instead my taste buds are overrun with cinnamon and nutmeg with every swig. I have to admit that the amount of swigs wasn't very high, because there was so much spice that it wasn't all that enjoyable. I will now refer you to the first paragraph I wrote. Needn't have bothered.

Now I am a person who lives a sober life. I haven't touched a drop of alcohol in twenty years, and I don't partake in any drugs. I understand the allure and I know they are fun, but they just aren't for me. That being said, when I was just in Denver I went to a weed dispensary, or a “Weedery” as I like to call it. It was amazing watching my friends in there. It was like watching them in a THC filled candy store. Actually, that's exactly what it was as they bought gummies suckers and all sorts of treats. I like seeing people genuinely excited and happy, even if it's not my thing. A couple of days later I came across this energy drink and I thought it was my turn to get in on the fun, as we had a dumb overnight drive, and that is where I shine.

I really hope for everyone else's sake that their candies tasted better than this beverage, because it was pretty gross. Other hemp drinks I have tried tasted like rope, but this just tasted like candied poison, in a very different way than most energy drinks do. It had this horrible aftertaste that almost tasted like Vemma, if it had spoiled. I couldn't even make it through the can, even though it was 4am and I was driving from Portland to San Francisco. Now that's bad.

I was recently out on tour working for Beach Slang on their tour with Cursive. My responsibilities run the gambit, and one of them is selling merch. Now most bands have tip jars at the merch table that allude to the fact that the tips will be used for drugs and alcohol At our table I have a jar with a sign that reads “Tips for (Root) Beer.” It makes people laugh, and in the instance of our Salt Lake City show it struck up a conversation with a local who hipped me to the fact that Wasatch, a local brewery, made a fantastic root beer. I was told that a nearby grocery store sold it, so as soon as the show was over I hoofed it over to the store and purchased two bottles.

Now it's a well-known fact that Utah has a high Mormon population. It's also pretty widely known that there is a cap to the percentage of alcohol that can be in beer. The people I was on tour with all agreed that it was a terrible thing; the beer tasted different and you just got overly full and felt gross drinking it. Due to these facts I am surprised that there aren't more sodas coming out of the area. Also, speaking of Mormons, this root beer is named after Brigham Young, the second prophet of the religion. That's a whole bunch of weirdness to me. That would be like having a Jesus cola. Actually, I would drink that all day long. Someone get on that. I'm looking in your direction Danny and Real Soda.

Now the laws may forbid the sale of beer that people actually like, but they say nothing about delicious root beer and this is the result. The flavor is full and creamy. The use of honey is always celebrated in my book, and it's inclusion is duly noted by me. I wish it were a bit stronger, but my rule is if you're using honey, go big. Most people probably don't think the same way. Overall the ingredients blend together nicely and the notes of vanilla and wintergreen are distinguishable, and not lost as they are in a generic root beer mix.

At the end of the day two bottles, simply wasn't enough, especially since I was sharing in the van. It's a wonder none of us got sick with all the soda bottles we were passing around all tour. That little box on wheels must have been a germ factory.

Tim Kasher is the front-man for both Cursive and The Good Life, as well as a solo artist. Jason was recently on tour with Cursive and Tim was kind enough to review Fitz's Coffee Cola for us.

Cursive just reissued a 10-year anniversary edition of their album "The Ugly Organ."
The Good Life has a new full length coming out this spring.
Tim also has a split 7" coming out with Chris Farren.

Did you know that every superhero is assigned a fruit, and their powers rub off on that fruit causing it to become a super fruit? It's a total scientific fact. I read it on the internet and next to television is the closest thing to gospel that this world has ever seen. The way I hear it Superman was paired with goji berries, Spiderman works with mangosteen, Flash is the keeper of all things pomegranate, Jean Grey runs the acai camp and Wolverine is in charge of blueberries. Sure there are others that work with lesser fruits, but these are fruits major champions and Steaz has decided to honor them by collecting all of their fruit and mixing it in with some green tea.

For such a strong selection of flavors you would be shocked by how mild the flavor is. Steaz could have easily gone overboard with this but they kept everything light. I think that they got the fruit flavors in their perfect, but the tea flavor is a bit light for my tastes. I like a nice strong bitter tea taste, and it's a bit water heavy in here. It doesn't ruin the drink by any means, but it does make me drink it all that much faster.

Keep your eyes open folks because the internet is all a buzz about a new pairing of the Green Lantern and an undisclosed fruit. You won't believe how the other superheroes have reacted. Click this non-existent link to find out!

Due to a label that reads “New & Improved” and a flavor name that is similar enough to “Perfectly Protein Vanilla Chai Tea” I was pretty sure this was just a rebranding of one of their classic flavors. I mean even the image on the front is very similar.

The sad truth is that this is not the case. While the Vanilla Chai Tea flavor had a wonderful borderline soynog taste to it, this is more along the lines of a traditional protein drink. It has a very strong vanilla flavor, which is nice, but it also has a perhaps even heavier dairy flavor that I could do without. It's also very thick in a weird kind of way. It makes me think that I'm drinking something I shouldn't be for the sake of healing muscles, you know like when people eat raw eggs. This may not be as gross as that, but it's still a weird drink, especially for someone who doesn't consume much dairy.

Another weird note about this is that there are 40g of sugar in this bottle (mostly from cane sugar). That just seems counterintuitive for a protein drink to me.

I really hope they haven't discontinued the flavor I thought this was, because now that I think about it I don't think I've come across it in a while. That was one delicious flavor, and this just seems like a functional beverage that you would drink out of necessity and not out of want.

You know...black cherry typically sucks. Jay hates it. I don't really like it but I'll drink it. This is different, though. I don't know what's going on in here that's different but it's good. It could be that it's not as thick and/or syrupy but it actually tastes pretty good. In comparison to the rest of the black cherry pops out there, it's definitely the better of the bunch. It's got a good cherry taste brought to by dark sweet cherry extract as one of the primary ingredients so that sure helps. The part about good drinks that makes them good is that they include good ingredients and enough of them to set themselves apart from the otherwise garbage. This is not garbage. This is good. It's almost good enough for me to want another bottle but still...black cherry. You got a "4." Don't complain.

Well now I want to go to a hotel because I never drink grape juice. Why would I? I'm not eight. It's never been bad but you just grow out of it. Now, in my thirties, I'm sitting at my computer drinking a grape juice and I want to be in a hotel. Why do I want to be in a hotel? Well because they serve grape juice like this and I would get it there. I would get it to accompany my continental breakfast of eggs, bacon, cereal, tiny doughnuts, muffin, sausage, bagel and everything else under the sun. When you're in a hotel, you eat like a king. A king that eats like a king and a king that drinks like a tiny prince that would drink grape juice.

Is it good? Yeah, it's fine. It's dark grape juice. It's not too sweet and not terrible for you considering it's probably mostly fruit juice and sugar but it's natural sugar and doesn't have any strange bite.

Be a king. Be a prince. Be a queen. Be a princess. I don't care. Drink grape juice and feel young again. Or go to a hotel and gorge yourself on awkwardly small food that makes you feel awful on your way out of Cleveland. You just had to visit the USS COD Memorial, didn't you. Those troops fought so you could eat all that food.

Welcome to Old town folks. We have our world renowned gunfight shows at the top of every hour from noon until 8pm. If seeing men in white hats shoot at men in black hats is what your heart desires, then there is no better place to you to be every sixty minutes. Don't be alarmed when the man falls from the roof after being shot. It's all an act and he lands on some hay bales that break most of his fall. Sure you hear a rib snap every once in a while, but he knows the danger he puts himself in for $10 an hour.

There's really not much around here other than the show. Our town is pretty small and you can see it all in fewer than 15 minutes. Might I suggest that you check out the shooting range while you wait for the show? For a quarter you can shoot our guns that make cans flip and someone play the piano. I'm not sure if they work with lasers, or just shots of air, but it's quite fun for about 3 minutes. The rest of your time you might as well saunter over to the saloon and get a nice cold one. I of course mean sarsaparilla, since this is a family establishment and we don't have a liquor license. I know all of you out there are hoping to drink a nice Sioux City sarsaparilla, but it's my duty to inform you that we only serve the Old Town Root Beer Company's version. I know it's not as good, but our owners are trying to scrape every nickel they can out of this “amusement park,” so they made their own soda. It's not too bad. It's not as strong as I like my sarsaparilla, then again they spell it “sarsparilla.” I don't know what's up with that. It tastes like someone took some of the good stuff and mixed it with an equal amount of standard root beer, then added a bit more vanilla. The result is that it's the creamiest sarsaparilla I've ever tasted. It's a nice change up, but the harshness and boldness is what I love about this flavor, and it's absent in here. Oh well, it's all we serve, so it's what you're going to get. Better nurse it for a while, we still have 34 more minutes until the next show.

The Pop Shoppe is a classic Canadian soda company that has had a bit of a resurgence in recent times. They tend to put out pretty standard flavors that taste, well like the standard. That unfortunately is not the case with their orange soda. Generally orange pop has a strong crisp flavor to it that doesn't really taste like oranges, but has still managed to enchant the Western world's taste buds. Sometimes companies use actual orange juice, but that's a whole other ballpark of wonder. This soda tastes like neither of those things. It's like the company got the ratio wrong of flavor to sweetened carbonated water. The orange flavor is much weaker than one would come to expect in a soda such as this. There is a flavor very much there, but the part that makes it anything similar to the fruit is in low quantity. How am I supposed to enjoy my veggie dogs now?