Evaporated Cane Juice - 53 Reviews

Todd, daddy asked you to make him some Tang. I don't know how to make it. No, I don't know. Mom always makes it for me. I think it's two teaspoons of powder and eight ounces of water. That sounds right. That looks a little light but it's probably right. Go give it to daddy.

What did he say? He said it was good but tasted like it was watered down? Oh, Todd. Table spoons. Table spoons. Two table spoons not teaspoons. That's what we did wrong. We were close to correct. It's a good thing daddy didn't hit you. You know how important Tang is to him. Wait a second. This isn't Tang at all. It is something called Vitamin Enriched Water. It looks like it and smells like it but...yeah, it just tastes like watered down Tang. Todd, daddy was an astronaut. I think he knows a thing or two about Tang. I can't believe he couldn't taste the difference. I guess it's a good business model, though. Buy regular Tang, use half as much, charge as much as Tang, but have twice the supply so you make twice the money. What do I know about business models, though? I'm only nine.

Let's take a moment and get serious here. What could be so important that I would interrupt the normal flow of Thirsty Dudes? The answer is that absolute incredible force of nature that the movie Purple Rain is. Prince is a great musician. He's one of the greatest guitarists of our time, and unlike most people with that skill, he knows how to show off on the guitar as well as write some of the best pop songs that have ever graced the ears of humans. Sure he may be completely insane, but I can forgive him that for the album upon album of hits he has supplied us.

The folks at Sambazon understand this. They love purple rain. They even have gone so far as to pull the Lake Minnetonka prank a couple of times. Classic. The thing is that they not only love prince, they also have a soft spot for his adversaries in the film; The Time. Did you know that Prince wrote all of the time songs? True fact. His personal career was moving in a different direction, but he still wanted to write fun party songs, so he got The Time to play and record them. Among those songs was their hit "Jungle Love". To honor The Time, and Prince by proxy, they created an energy drink to keep you up all night in the clubs on Minneapolis, like the historic First Ave that is featured in the film (I played in the small room once and I kind of freaked out that Prince owned the building). The most important thing about Morris Day and The Time is that they have passion for not only their music, but also their sweet dance moves and awesome suits. Sambazon took that into consideration and created an energy drink that has both their classic acai and passionfruit juice in it. I like it more than their original variety. It has a fruitier taste, and it's all harsh acai juice. Also, how can I not support something as awesome as The Time?

It's "Black Friday" and guess what the only things I bought all day were a couple of tacos and a smoothie. I hate shopping and I'm not about to do it on a day like today. Instead I went and hung out in the woods with two of the best dudes I know. Seeing as it's unseasonably warm for the season (over 50 degrees at the end of November, who says global warming doesn't exist?) we decided we couldn't pass up this opportunity to be outdoors one more time before the snows come and force us to never leave our homes. I'll tell you what it was nothing but good times, and I would choose it over shopping any day.

So anyways we hiked, build a bridge over a creek and made fun of each other a lot. A perfect day to me. When we got back to the car I opened this puppy up and sat back in the seat and enjoyed the ride home. I really don't have much to say about this. It's pretty much a knock off of Vitamin Water's XXX flavor. If you've had that, then you pretty much have had this. To be honest I don't know why this exists. I would understand if it was a store brand, but it seems to be it's own generic entity. With Vitamin Water being 10 for $10 pretty much everywhere I don't know what they mean to achieve with this.

I know some people who absolutely love Dr. Pepper. I'm not one of them, but I don't hate it either. I'll drink it if there isn't cola available, but it's no substitute for cola. I went to a vegan restaurant in Phoenix called Green today and they had this bottle in their cooler. Even though they had Virgil's cola, I felt the need to try this at least once.

The thing I love most about Dr. Pepper clones is the names. Dr. Thunder, Dr. Radical, and now there's Dr. Better. If it was any other company with that name, I'd highly doubt them. But Virgil's makes an amazing soda and definitely knows what they're doing. After drinking this, I totally agree with the name. This is so much better than Dr. Pepper. It has that usual bite, but the cane juice makes it really light. I love this.

Tour ended a couple of days ago. Our last show was in Boston, MA (okay Allston). We showed up a bit early and no one was at the venue, so I decided to hoof it out to the local Whole Foods. My phone told me it was a mile away, and I thought that's no big deal. Let me tell you, that was the longest mile I've ever walked. The temperature seemed to be constantly dropping. I had to cross several thruway on and off ramps, go over some decent sized bridges and the neighborhood quickly went from nice to way shady to way nice. Strange times. I'm glad I made the trip though because the store had a bunch of drinks I had never seen before. I was the most excited about this one. It's a soda with actual fruit in it, which is a total plus in my book. On top of that said fruit is blackberry, my favorite.

Because it was made with actual juice I expected this to be pretty sweet. I was actually expecting something along the lines of an Italian soda. I was shocked, but not disappointed to find out it was rather dry. It still tasted totally like blackberries, but it wasn't overly sweet. It unfortunately also did not have chunks of blackberry in it. They must have filtered them out, which is a shame. Some small pieces would have been wonderful. Even with that being the case, this is a soda I can totally get behind. I like that more companies are making sodas with less sugar. We really need to wean this country off of so much sugar.

Here are two letters:
Dear Western New York Bike Route Maps,
You make it appear as if there are bike paths everywhere. You excite me and make me want to ride to new places. Yesterday I followed your path and rode to Niagara Falls. I need to tell you something very important. Roads with no shoulders that are completely falling apart with potholes larger than the state of Delaware are not bike routes. I thought I was going to flip over and die on several occasions.

Dear Bodegas of Niagara Falls,
Please step up your drink game. I went to several of you and you offered me nothing exciting. Just your everyday chain gas station drinks and generic overpriced soda. I was excited to find something new. I mean you didn't even carry Johnnie Ryan, which is literally made in your back yard. For shame. I ended up picking up a Modjo Life at a 711 in a small town outside of the city. I had rode my bike over 25 miles on a "bike path" that was in complete disrepair with nothing to quench my thirst. I was frazzled, exhausted and parched. This really hit the spot. It was like a grape Gatorade if it were made with real grape juice. So a juice/sports drink hybrid. At first I thought I couldn't taste the pomegranate, but then I remembered that it just tastes like concentrated grape juice to me, and all was well with the universe. This drink helped me to finish my ride home, and it did it in a tasty way.

I've said it before and I'll say it again 2011 is the summer of lemonade. The amount I have consumed it absolutely ridiculous. I can't believe it has taken me so long to try the Bolthouse Farms version, as I am a huge fan of their beverages. Wrap your brain grapes around that.

This is thicker than most lemonades. It doesn't have the consistency of a smoothie, but it's way denser than your average glass of lemon water. The thickness is due to the mango puree they use to flavor it. It really is a perfect blend of lemon and mango. It's more of a breakfast drink. I can see waking up making a nice large breakfast and settling down on my nonexistent back porch to enjoy it with a glass of this lemonade.

John Lennon informed the world that, "Happiness is a Warm Gun." According to the Be Happy company he got it all wrong. Happiness is in fact a cherry cordial, or at least a weird chemical facsimile. That is exactly what this little 2oz shot tastes like. At first I thought it was kind of gross, but then I thought about the candy and it made it go down much smoother.

I can't relax when there are things that need to be done. My new apartment is almost totally put together now, but there is still a handful of things to do, so I'm still on edge. I had a busy day Friday and when I got home instead of relaxing I just started working again and getting annoyed. I decided I needed to calm down and relax and enjoy myself. I drank this and I have to say it worked. I felt much better. I decided I should watch a feel good movie, but instead put on the remake of I Spit on Your Grave. While it may not have been the family blockbuster I was looking for, movies like that prove to me that I am not completely desensitized, and I appreciate that.

All three of us have reviewed a guava drink today; so let it be known that July 6th, 2011 will now be known as Guava Day. I, for one, welcome our new guava overlords. I'd like to remind them that as a trusted blog personality, I could be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground sugar caves.

They have bestowed onto me a bottle of guava nectar to sample. I don't think I've ever had a guava nectar drink and I must say it's quite good. It's not as thick as other nectars I have had, but that's a good thing. I often find nectar to be way too thick and hard to drink. This is the consistency of a juice/nectar mix and it's perfect.

**Disclaimer: this review was in no way influenced, edited, or forced by the almighty guava overlords.**

When most people think of the word passion their minds are automatically filled with the ideas of love and sexual lust. It's a positive thing that can lead to joy and fun. What people forget is that passion can also go the other way. You can also hate someone with a deep passion. It's any extreme emotion. So my question is were passion fruits names for love or hate?

I'd like to think that it was such a delicious fruit that it caused two ancient tribes to go to war. Both wanted control of the passion fruit orchards (they grow on trees right?) and were willing to go to extremes to gain said control. So I guess it would work both ways. Their absolute love of the fruit resulted in extreme hatred for the other tribe. I totally understand that. This juice smells and tastes wonderfully. It's only 14% passion fruit juice and if someone tried to take it from me I would probably slap them involuntarily. Imagine what I would do for the actual fruit. Did that just blow your mind? If so you should probably put down the bong because it really wasn't that deep of a thought.

This is Brazil Gourmet's version of mango juice that they add sugar to. It's really sweet, but it tastes so much like biting into a perfectly ripe mango. I can just imagine the juice spilling over my chin as the stringiness of it ends up between my teeth. The label says there are 1.5 mangos in every bottle. That, my friends, is a lot of fruit.

I really hope that the image of a toucan on the label is really a drawing of their pet bird that sits on the president of Brazil Gourmet's shoulder. There's a board meeting going on and everyone is sitting around a big table. The president gives a speech about quarterly sales and the quality of the latest mango crop. All the while the bird caws to accent certain points. All of the employees are intimidated by the toucan. If it caws while they are being addressed they know they soon will be in need of a new line of work. The bird's word is final! If this is not true, it really should be made a reality.

Recently I got to tour a coffee plantation. After trying Bai I was pumped to see (and try) coffee fruit. Unfortunately it wasn't the season for the fruit, so they weren't ripe yet. Of course that didn't stop me from picking what was available from the plants and the ground. Here is what I discovered: A) Not ripe coffee fruit just tastes like your run of the mill plant you would pull out of the ground. B) The dried out fruit on the ground tastes like old wood. Both were gross.

Bai apparently knows the proper time to harvest their coffee fruit because this does not taste anything like a poinsettia or some old Amish furniture. It's sweet, fruity and the stuff dreams are made out of. This really tastes like I mashed up a whole mess of blueberries and filtered out all the seeds and chunks. Do you realize how many blueberries that would take? I bet at least a five-gallon bucket of them would be needed to fill this bottle. Bai means business. Don't forget that. Ever.

2.7 ounces. That's it. One serving. Gone. It's like what I think a double shot is if I drank alcohol. Before I get to the drink review, I've got to talk about the packaging. You get 4 of these lil' guys in a carton. Pull one out and it's got a peel off top and the hole at the top is a smiley face. Every sip you get a smile from the cup. Adorable. You can then peel off the aluminum foil bottom and the whole thing is recyclable. Cool. Smart. Good work.

I had my choice and I picked this one. This was a very bold flavor and has an intense Acai flavor. Blueberry is there, but is quickly masked by the superfruit that it lives with in this small, studio apartment with a sweet skylight. You get the blueberry first and then your tongue kind of gets...strange because of the lasting taste/flavor/whatever. It's not bad, though. I'm not on Acai's fan club. No, not because I didn't have any extra stamps to send a self addressed stamp envelope to him, just because the flavor isn't something that my mouth agrees with. Sometimes it's alright, here it's alright at best.

I would say that they did an excellent job, though. Packaging, flavor, ingredients. Everyone is served justice, 2.7 ounces at a time. This could easily earn a higher rating with a different flavor. Acai ruined it for me. I just want to point blame where it belongs.

Of all the alt-milks out there, almond milk is by far my favorite. It's smooth and doesn't taste watery or chalky. As far as vegan chocolate milk goes, this is the best. It's super rich and delicious and makes me wish I had Oreos to dip into it. I don't know why I only buy this every few months. When I have it in the fridge it rarely lasts longer than a few days.

Did you know that when coffee is harvested it's a fruit? I certainly had no idea. Apparently it's a fruit and coffee companies discard the skin and the fruit, only keeping the center bean to make the caffeinated drink that billions of people are obsessed with. This may be the most interesting thing that I've learned thus far while being involved with Thirsty Dudes. I personally think coffee is swill. When chocolate is introduced into the mix it's not so bad, but regular coffee is grossville station. This made me very wary of this line of drinks. Coffee and fruit? Ick.

I decided to try this one on for size during dinner tonight. I twisted off the cap and took my customary sniff. Surprisingly it smelled like sweet fruit with no coffee smell to note. For the record I do think that coffee smells incredible, I just can't get down with the taste. I took my first sip and learned some even more interesting facts. The fruit of the coffee plant does not taste a damn thing like what the masses know as coffee. It was as if there was a parade in my mouth. I let the taste linger on my tongue for a bit, so it was a fairly long parade. I'm sure there were people on both sides (getting more and more annoyed by the second) waiting for the parade to end so they could get to their destinations.

The bottle says it's mango flavored, but the label lists both mango and pineapple as ingredients. It really tastes like a perfect blend of those two fruits. My brain wants me to think that the drink is gritty for some reason, but it definitely is not. I think I'm just imagining stray coffee grounds in my juice.

The added bonus of this great tasting drink is that coffee fruit is apparently the ultimate super-fruit. Pomegranate has 65 ORAC units of antioxidants. Acai has 100. Coffee fruit has a shocking 4,000 ORAC units of antioxidants. Any oxidants that were in my body prior to ingesting this have surely been banished to the depths of coffee hell. By coffee hell, I mean some terribly artsy coffee shop where all of the patrons and employees are the most pretentious group of people to ever be assembled. The walls are adorned with terrible art that they think is the deepest thing ever. In their minds they are about to turn the art world on their ear. Really they are just rebelling against their parents, since they still live in their basement, even though they are in their mid forties.

For the majority of my life I was under the impression that all colas tasted like Coke or Pepsi. As a result, I never really liked cola all that much. There was also a weird phase of my life where I wouldn't drink brown sodas. I really have no idea why. It was just something I did. Man, I can't believe I didn't drink root beer. It's one of the best things ever. It wasn't until relatively recently that I discovered a world of specialty colas. They taste nothing like the mainstream brands. They are to Pepsi and Coke what fancy root beers are to Mug and A&W. So many herbs and spices that take you on a wild ride of flavor. If you haven't had the Fentiman's Curiosity Cola or the Taylor's Tonics' Chai Cola put down your Coca Cola Classic and make a run for the store. It's a whole new world.

Natural Brew stepped up the cola game with their Chai Cola, and they have proved that it wasn't a fluke with this Ginseng Cola. It has an earthy taste, but it's in a good way and not in the way that tastes like it was filtered through worm ridden soil. A cola made with herbs and vanilla is a cola that I will certainly drink again and again.

I bought this because I had never heard of calamansi. The back of the can says it's a Philippine lemon, but a quick Google search brought up that it was more like a lime. Either way, it's some sort of citrus fruit. I was hoping this was going to be really tart and sour, but sadly it wasn't. It's good, but it tastes like a boring citrus drink. There's nothing special to this. Although, I just realized this is the first time I've had juice in a long time. Maybe I should drink less soda and more juice? I doubt that will happen.

You know that kid in school that seemingly was good at everything? Man, who wasn't annoyed by that kid? They could do, literally, everything. They were awesome at sports, got great grades, had a killer jaw line for a 4th grader, and had a way with teachers and ladies alike. Worst part is that they were awesome kids and you couldn't be mad at them because they were so nice. They just had everything going for them. Well imagine if that kid put his skills to good use and started a juice company. Yeah, that's the epitome of smarts in this scenario. That juice company would be called Purity Organics. Why? Because this company seems to have the Midas touch when it comes to drinks. They're all good, all of them.

Now, here at work, I work hard. At home, I play hard. I cover all bases. Something that doesn't work so hard here at the shop is the refrigerator because that joint is broke. Everything smells and I don't even know if anything is perishable in there. It looks like a college kid's fridge because there is nothing but drinks and condiments. No actual food. My drink was lukewarm and it still was good. Obviously it would be better iced, but what do I look like? A fridgeman? A man that fixes fridges? No, sir/ma'am.


This drink tastes like a strawberry lemonade. Kind of like the Made strawberry lemonade if you've had that. It's got a great lemon kick and leaves you with a nice natural strawberry taste. Nothing about this drink is bad unlike our work fridge where somehow even the mustard has gone bad.

It's a hot summer day, it's like ten million degrees out, and there is just sweat pouring down your face. It just so happens your stuck at your dad's work picnic. Your friend's dads have their work picnics at awesome amusement parks, where the kids just ride the ride all day. Your dad's place of employment of course rents out a section of the local park....booooooorrrrriiiiinnng. You got excited earlier because you discovered there was a giant fruit salad (that didn't have bananas in it, because they are the devil's fruit). You went to get a giant bowl full and were then told by some random secretary that it was for adults only. Confusion takes over; your parents always lectured you about eating a lot of fruit, so how could this be adult only. That goes against everything you've ever learned. You are then told that some jag-off dumped two bottled of vodka into that delicious fruit. Damn adults! Oh wait what is this? There is a watermelon that has been untainted? Yes! You grab the biggest wedge and just dive right into it, spitting seeds everywhere while the juice dribbles down your chin. This is what summer is about. Now remember that flavor, and then pour a little of your drink on the sidewalk for your fallen friend. As we all know there is a curse that has been put upon watermelon. It tastes so delicious in it's natural form. Unfortunately, no one has been able to make a proper juice. Every time someone tries it either tastes too watery, or it tastes like a watermelon Jolly Rancher (and no one wants to drink that).
Now on to the review. This really should have been called "Wild Berries & Watermelon," because it's the berry flavor that really runs this show. It's a nice blackberry taste. Unfortunately there is a little hint of that Jolly Rancher flavor sneaking around in the aftertaste. When will someone get it right?

This has to be one of the most complex root beers I've ever tasted. At first it tastes like any other root beer, but then a wave of flavors hit you. Some of the ingredients include: bourbon vanilla extract, anise, sarsaparilla, licorice root, birch oil, and wintergreen oil. There is a slight hint of the anise, but I wish it were more prominent. Natural Brew really knows how to make an interesting soda.