No Sugar Added - 718 Reviews

About ten years ago soy milk became a common place thing in grocery stores. Sure it wasn't everywhere, but more than likely at least one store in your town would have it. It was a blessing for those who were lactose intolerant and those of us who just think that animal milk is absolutely disgusting by nature. Would you feed your cats breast milk? I'm assuming the thought of it completely disgusts you, so why are you drinking cow's breast milk?

Slowly it became more popular, and then almond milk hit the scene and made waves. It tasted better and was healthier. I drink unsweetened almond milk on my cereal every morning, and I love it. So do a lot of people because I keep seeing more and more of it.

My question now is will tigernut horchata be the next stage in the evolution of popular milk type beverages? This bottle is nothing but water and tigernuts and it tastes somewhere between soy and almond milk. I keep expecting there to be a banana aftertaste, but thank goodness that there is not. I've never been one to drink a glass of any sort of milk beverage, so drinking this seems a little strange. I can only say that it tastes like it would go great with my cereal though. I just wonder if it is cost effective.

If you've ever seen the world famous Thirsty Dudes t-shirt, there is a monster, a royal one named Sir Durstig who has an endless thirst and is sitting upon a large pile of empty and crushed cans of assorted drinks. I feel like I could do a pretty spot-on impression of him with these drinks because they are so tiny I could destroy a dozen without flinching. As I approached the twenty mark I might feel some regret but I would push my way to the sweet spot which is thirty. That's right, 180 ounces and 2700 calories of juice. It's not even that it's the greatest juice I've ever had but it's the fact that it's so limited that it leaves me wanting more constantly.

You read that right. No. It is not the best juice I've ever had. It is good but it's not the best. When you start adding vegetables into drinks things can get a bit hairy. You can tell that it's a quality juice however because it actually tastes like the fruit it's talking about, vegetables and all.

What's holding it back? Eh, nothing really. It's good. I could give this to anyone and they would say the same thing. There's no sugar, including fake or alternative sweeteners to speak of so everything you taste is a natural taste. Way to go, True Brew. You guys have your priorities in the right place.

Does this deserve to be in the "other/weird" category? No but it's not milk, it's not an energy drink. It's not a juice. It's not sparkling or gelatinous or really much of anything. It tastes like a watered down soy milk. Maybe an almond milk because I do get a bit of "nut" to it much like you would with an almond milk. In that case, take a ten ounce glass of almond milk and use water to stretch it out to fill a sixteen ounce glass because it's what the customer wants and the customer is always right. Well in this case, they're both "right" and "getting wronged" since they aren't getting 100% of what they asked for. Where is said customer going and asking for a horchata, by the way?

First sip and this is strange. I thought it was going to be a bit thicker but it's quite, well, thin. Second is that there is a trace amount of fruit brought to you by your good friend, the date. This is not terrible but I've had different horchata and had certain expectations. Perhaps the stuff I drank was garbage and this is closer to the real thing? I also thought there was cinnamon in there for some reason. If there was, this may have gotten a better review. For now, I guess the original is a bit beige. Perhaps a good base in which to add things to. Tofu by itself is kind of boring but add some spices and seasoning and it's a totally different animal. Ahh the elusive tofu bird. A delicious creature.

True Brew, a company we were previously familiar with due to their line of excellent juices, has expanded their grasp into the juice world. Their #true Power line is 100% juice, with no preservatives and it is jam packed with super fruits to provide the drinker with a natural boost of energy. While I think this is a wonderful (and tasty) idea, I'm afraid that in a world obsessed with modern energy drinks that these juices just don't give enough oomph to make people switch over. It's a sad truth that most people care more about results than health in this country. I fully admit that I am one of those people. If I have to pull an overnight drink, one of these juices just wouldn't cut it, and I'm going to grab a Red Bull/Monster style drink. I wish that wasn't the case, but I am weak.

A good thing about this juice is that you don't have to be looking for an energy boost to enjoy it. It just so happens that it is a fantastic tasting beverage on its own, and there is no guilt associated with drinking it. You don't have to worry about consuming added sugar, or it giving you the jitters that keep you from sleeping. It has a light pineapple taste, with a heavier cherry one pulling it along. It's one of those rare beverages that actually tastes like cherries, and not just “red.” In this case they are the super fruit acerola cherries, which I've never had in its natural form, but I've had enough juices made with them that I know I would really enjoy the fruit. It's mellow, flavorful and makes me feel like a glutton, because after this 12oz bottle I was left wanting about 40 more ounces.

This is the kind of drink that you should be using to replace the dozens of cups of coffee you possibly down throughout your work day. It will give you just enough push for times like those. I wouldn't rely on them for times where you simply cannot fall asleep; you know when Freddie will get you, or when a pod person will replace you. For those times go with a serious stimulant.

Well, consider me schooled. I first encountered horchata about ten years ago in a Mexican restaurant in Chicago. A friend heavily recommended that I get a glass, and I fell in love. It was a wonderfully sweet cinnamon rice drink. Since then I have always gotten a glass of it when it was available in restaurants. When I heard about Tigernut I was very pleased with the possibility of purchasing ready to drink versions of it outside of restaurants. The company was nice enough to send us some samples for review, and I couldn't help but go for the chai flavored one first. Horchata and chai are two flavors that I absolutely love, and I knew they would complement each other in the best possible way.

When I took my first sip I was a bit confused. You see there is no rice in this drink at all. The ingredient list says it contains water, tigernuts (actually a tuber and not a nut at all), dates, spices, and well…€¦love. It's nut, dairy and gluten free, but it also being void of rice had me questioning the company. I then did some research and discovered that what I am used to is the Latin American version of the drink. This is the version from Spain. Learning that helped to quell my disappointment. Now that I knew this was a completely different beverage I could enjoy it more, since I wasn't expecting ingredients that did not exist.

There is no dairy in here, but it's very milky. It really tastes like an ices chai latte. The spices taste real and not just a bunch of stuff jammed together. Essentially this tastes like a nice high end chai beverage. I'd be lying if I said I didn't wish it had some rice in it, but knowing what it is supposed to be, it has achieved exactly that in a tasty manner.

Shane, let's take a trip. You and I have been working hard and deserve a trip. Why do we work and save if we can't enjoy our savings? What inspired this? I drank some of this coconut water and now I've got a taste for the tropics. I want the sun. I want the sand. I want it all. I know it's not going to be a cheap trip but what's the fun of saving all that money and never spending it. I know you like to be cautious but there comes a time where you have to give in a little bit. Here, try some of this see if you can see where I'm coming from.

Can't you just taste the sunshine? It's great. Look. It's coconut water but that's all it is and I'm giving credit where credit's due. No preservatives. No sugar. No...I don't know…€¦enriched vitamins and minerals? I bet if I plucked a coconut off a tree and put it in the fridge and came back later, cracked it open and drank it, this is what it would taste like. It's a good coconut flavor with no bells and whistles.

What do you say? Should we book the trip? I think we should. No, not Florida, something sandier. More palm trees. Hawaii. Yeah. That's right. Let's go to all the scenes from Andy Sidaris movies.

Sometimes you just have those days where you just need to get out of the city. You feel like you've been indoors too much, and even when you're not it just doesn't feel like the outdoors. You get antsy and start to go insane, and you need to be in the green. Actually, maybe that doesn't happen to normal people, but I most definitely am not normal and yesterday I was just losing my mind. As a result I jumped in my car with some good music and just drove an hour out into the forest. There was no sign of civilization around me for miles. I breathed in deep and took it all in. it was exactly what I needed to even myself out. I ended up hiking for about ten miles and it was glorious, I even saw a bald eagle. Stupidly I only brought one bottle of water, a Cliff Bar and an apple. By the time I was done I was exhausted and dehydrated. There was only one beverage that would give me the refreshment that I so desperately craved and that was a can of coconut water.

This is pretty standard pure coconut water. There is nothing in it but the water and some pulp. By some pulp I mean a lot pulp. More than there probably needed to be, but I can't see anyone buys coconut water with pulp unless they loved the stuff, so in that case it's probably just perfect. The can did just what I needed it to do, and it did so with a pleasant taste. Man, for someone who has such an intense hatred for toasted coconut, I sure have come to enjoy these drinks.

Coconut water; I don't know what I like and I'm not sure what I don't like about you. I think the stuff I like might have some sugar in it. This is a little sweet but you can tell that it's "naturally" sweet and not sweetened with anything. No, I am not just reading the ingredients. I am tasting it and making an evaluation. You think I base everything off the ingredients? Sometimes I don't even read them. I just go by the seat of my pants and hope for the best.

Coconut water. This is naturally sweetened but it's also, I feel, very strong. If you are on the fence about coconut water, this might not be the place to start. There are weaker coconut waters out there which I needn't name. If you love coconut, which a lot of you do, this is going to be a fantastic treat for you. I suppose I just need to put everyone in buckets. Call me a racist, but if categorizing people by the way they like their coconut, then I'm a regular David Duke.

Next to plain water, this might be the simplest drink ever. Also, it's pretty fantastic. Lastly, this drink single handedly lets me know why real maple syrup is like eight dollars an ounce. This is just maple water. If you tapped a tree, this is what would come out. Nothing else is in this, it's just one ingredient. "Maple sap" and that's it. It also tastes faintly of maple syrup. "Essence" if you will. Therefore, the fact that you have to boil this down to get dark, sweet maple syrup blows my mind. This I would absolutely drink again because it's nothing like what you would think. Like I said, it's only a hint of that delicious syrup. It holds back like a nice, Catholic girl with a killer body. You know she could kill you with one flutter of her eye but she decides to hide behind the book. That's why we have prostitutes and pure maple syrup, so we can get our fix immediately for a price.

I would like to propose to all of the collegiate institutions out there that you offer a class about beverages. I don't know if every college is like this, but where I attended every student, no matter what their major needed to take at least three science classes. For most of the student body science had nothing to do with their major, so they (I) would take the easiest classes I could. I think a course named something like The Discipline of Beverages would attract a decent amount of students and be a nice break for everyone involved. The class could be all about how different beverages/sweeteners/flavors are created and the like.

A sample class would go something like this:
Hello class today we will be talking about the science behind maple drinks. You see there are a handful of companies out there nowadays that have maple flavored beverages. Perhaps it's to go along side of the bacon craze our country currently finds itself in. Most of these companies waste a lot of time and energy with their process. They take maple syrup and add water to it in order to put it into a liquid form. I know that sounds simple enough, but that is more steps than need to be taken. You see, in order to create maple syrup, one would put a tap into a maple tree, in order to procure the maple sap that is inside. Due to the improper nomenclature many people believe that this sap is actually pure maple syrup, those people are wrong. You see the “sap” is actually pretty thin, and not the sticky mess one would believe. That liquid that is removed is boiled down to create maple syrup. Now why would someone take the time to remove the water from something just to add it back again? The answer is because those people don't understand science. Work smarter, not harder my friends.

Now Better Sweet is a company that uses their brain. The only ingredient they have in their product is organic maple sap. They tap trees, and what comes out is what you get; pure organic maple water straight from the trees of Vermont. Due to their process they are also the only company of this type that is certified organic at this time.

I don't mean to turn my lecture into an advert, but if you love breakfast foods and all things maple, this is a drink you should try. It tastes like watered down pure maple syrup, because that is exactly what it is. If you don't have a taste for that sticky topping then why on earth would you ever want to try this? You know you're not going to like it.

Now I know that would need to be flushed out a bit more, but you get what I'm going for. It's science. It's learning. It's lazy. It's what college is all about to kids these days. Oh and I would fact check everything I said above before you teach it to students. I'm just passing along information that was fed to me.

Oh the essence is small with this on, friends, I can't feel it. I can't feel you. Your aura just isn't speaking to me. You tell me that you're injected with the spirit of the exotic pomegranate but you saying that is like saying seeing Lynyrd Skynyrd now is the same as seeing Lynyrd Skynyrd in the seventies. It's not the same thing and you know it and you are just lying to yourself.

Sure, this might have some essence of pomegranate but as far as the rest of your siblings in the line, you are the weakest link. It's so much like what you don't want, which is someone filling up a nearly empty glass of juice with water and calling it a "drink." Don't lie to me. Don't lie to mama. There are things that pomegranate do that this drink doesn't do. It might contain the essence but it doesn't contain the spirit.

Sometimes you stay out in Brooklyn until 5am watching bands and hanging out with friends, all while stealing their tickets for free personal pizzas that they got for ordering drinks at Lulus in Greenpoint. The next morning you wake up at 9am like clockwork feeling like garbage, yet unable to fall back asleep. You get a minimal breakfast and realize what you really need is some nice fresh-ish juice. Lucky for you juicing is all the rage in this particular city to an extent that even delis (aka convenient stores) make their own juice. You go to a natural market down the street and are presented with a treasure trove of liquefied fruits and vegetables. Even though there is a bunch that you haven't reviewed for your dumb website about drinks, you decide to go with the store brand because you just can't pass up pineapple cucumber juice of any sort.

With your first sip you know you messed up. You should have spent the extra dollar and gone with the passionfruit juice that caught your eye. It's not that what you chose is bad, in fact if this would have been somewhere in Middle America you would have been stoked on it. But at one of the hubs of the world, with so many choices, you just expected more. The juice isn't as strong as you hoped it would be. It tastes like a watered down pineapple juice with some cucumber skin ground up in it. When you drop $5 on a juice when you're feeling like garbage with the sun blaring you want something that is crisp and refreshing, not a weak juice that is borderline boring.

The promise of a wonderful cucumber juice was nothing but a lie. You continue to sip away though. After all you did pay a somewhat hefty price for this bottle, and it is making you feel a little bit better. Up next I suggest downing that coconut water you also purchased. Eating more pizzas than you can count on one hand sure puts a toll on your body.

Darren, what are you doing? I don't think that's how it works, man. You can't just not eat vegetables for a month and drink a green juice to try and facilitate your body's lack of proper vitamins and minerals. Can I have a sip? Bleh! I would rather eat vegetables every day like a normal person than drink a bottle of this. It just tastes like someone juiced up vegetables and is making you drink that. Do you remember when Sally had her jaw wired shut because of some jaw alignment issues and she didn't have anything to eat or drink for like two weeks? This would be perfect for her but you are an able bodied man and have the ability to actually eat food. Yeah, I know they claim there is an apple and lemon in there but they also claim to have seventeen kale leaves, one whole pound of spinach, and a handful of other stuff in there so one apple isn't quite cutting it.

Is something wrong with eating peas? You're in your late twenties and although you don't like to be reminded, you have to eat your vegetables, dude. There really isn't any way around that. This is not a solution to anyone's problem. Anyone who would drink this would already be eating vegetables and doesn't need to be binging on them anymore. Strange demographic Trader Joe's. Terrible choice Darren. Terrible choice.

You know how you've been waiting for what feels like your whole life to taste a beverage that tastes like the guarana that is used as an energy boosting ingredient in nearly every energy drink? Remember how you spent many a sleepless night thinking away the dark hours hoping and praying that this reality would see the light of day? Oh, you haven't? You never even contemplated such a beverage, mainly because you've never heard of guarana and didn't realize it was in all those slender cans you slug back? Well, you my friend should crack a food book sometimes. I don't know what a food book is; maybe a catalog of food, maybe a cook book, perhaps it`s even just an ad from the grocer, but one thing is for certain is that there is a whole world of food stuffs that you are completely ignorant of.

Now it's time to describe the juice of your dreams that I have imposed upon you. This is mostly a mango juice that has a handful of guarana seeds mixed in to give this tropical drink even more of a twist. Apple juice serves as the bass for its natural sweetness, but it's hardly noticeable in the flavor.

Now I know what I said before, but I am a man who enjoys the beverages of many cultures and I in fact have had several guarana flavored sodas before. They have been less than stellar. They almost always taste like a fruitier kola champagne aka fruity bubble gum. It's lucky for us that this isn't processed to hell, and it has some semblance of freshness, so that gross flavor that is only acceptable in gum form is nowhere to be seen. In here the guarana just tastes fruity and exotic. There are also some pineapple and lemon juice in the mix, and while they are more notable than the apple juice, they stick to the fringes of the flavor and serve to round everything out a little bit.

This tastes nothing like the classic energy drink taste that most of us have begrudgingly grown to love. Nor does it have the kola champagne taste that guarana sodas tend to have. What this is far surpasses those garbage drink and gives you something you can really enjoy without feeling bad about.

I have a confession to make. I never understood these flavored waters. The extreme lightness of the flavoring always left me feeling like I was drinking a bottle of water after eating whatever fruit it was flavored with. As a result I let Mike write 7 out of the 8 Hint waters we have reviewed. Something has happened though and I now understand the allure. Perhaps my wishes have been granted and I am now a real boy, or a grown up with a fully working set of taste buds. Whatever the case this makes sense to me now.

This is simply water, mango and grapefruit. I can only assume the company has huge vats of water that they soak fruit in. They don't squeeze the juice out of the fruit; they just let the soaking extract a tiny bit of flavor. The result is nice and refreshing without any overbearance or intense sweetness. It does have a slight sweetness from the mango, but it's very subtle. Even though the flavor is minimal, the mango is definitely stronger than the grapefruit. Actually if a competitor wanted to create a similar beverage line I would suggest they use that as their name, Subtle. The Cola wars were so 80s. This is the decade for the minimally flavored water wars.

You know something is all the rage when grocery stores start selling their own version of it. Cold pressed juice has been on a steady climb in the world of popularity and now we have Trader Joes with three juices of their very own. I admit they are not your average grocery store, but this is still a big step. They have released onto the world a veritable Ethiopian flag of juice with their red, green, and yellow flavors.

This juice smells strongly of apples and yellow bell peppers. It's a weird combination of scents, but it lets you know exactly what you're in for. I took a sip and thought, “Wow this is amazing!” As I kept drinking I realized that while this is a good juice, I had gotten caught up in the cold pressed craze. I certainly enjoy this, but it's not over the top good. It's nothing that is going to make me salivate just thinking about. That exact response should be a requirement for beverages that get 5-Bottles on Thirsty Dudes. I mean if it were served to me I could pound bottle after bottle of this, but at the same time I could walk away after a couple of sips and not think about it again once the aftertaste faded away.

The contents of this juice are: 2 large apples, ¼ pineapple, 1 medium yellow pepper, 1/5 of a cucumber, 2 limes, and 3 mint leaves. For having so many ingredients that normally have such potent flavor, a bunch of them are very faint in the mix. The mint is only there as a coolness, and not as a flavor. I can't believe that two whole limes were squeezed to make this, because their flavor is so much in the background. In regards to flavor this is basically a hyped up apple juice. I want so badly for the pineapple to be stronger, but it doesn't quite get there. That yellow pepper is certainly there though. It's strange at first, but once you get used to it being mixed with the sweetness of the apples, it's quite nice.

I really have nothing bad to say about this at all, I just wanted more from it. It has all the health benefits you could ever want from a juice, along with a nice flavor. I'm just so hard to please these days.

Essentia sounds like the name of some sort of elixir from a fantasy realm. You defeat an enemy and pick up the satchel of Essentia that your vanquished foe has on his/her person. I guess that could be accurate. Water had to be like gold for those traveling across the lands in fantasy, and in the olden days. H2O is a heavy material, and there is only so much you can carry, or pack on your horse. Relying on finding lakes and streams had to be nerve wracking. Water is essential to life, and it is the true elixir in this world as well as any fantasy realm.

The modern Essentia is purified by reverse osmosis, infused with electrolytes, and restructured using Ionic Separation Technology in order to achieve a perfect 9.5pH that perfectly hydrates. I used to be one of the people who claimed that all bottled waters were the same, and why not just drink filtered tap water (you gotta avoid the junk that's in the tap if you can). That is before I was introduced to water with a higher pH. For those not in the know, normal bottled water is at 7, and this is at 9.5. The result is water that somehow tastes smoother and more pure. I don't really understand how this works, but the proof is in the pudding, or the aqua in this case.

I still don't buy bottled water, unless I'm out and I forgot my metal water bottle that I normally carry, but if I were I would definitely go for something like this. It blows the other generic garbage out of the water. Yes, pun intended.

I've finally made it to the end of my journey. I send two and a half weeks in Europe, where I drank 45 beverages that I wrote review notes for. I didn't expect it to take me three weeks to actually get around to writing all of said reviews, but here I am writing the last one of the bunch. I started this by writing about a bottle of Feel Good, so it seems only fitting that my last review would be for the same company.

One thing I have learned from my adventure is that people in the United Kingdom love their lemonade. On top of that they like adding bubbles to their bitter-sweet treat. Feel Good decided to take their beverage in a little bit of a different direction than the classic version by not adding sugar to it. Instead they have embraced the natural sweetness of apple juice and added that to the mix.

There is also a little bit of lime juice in here. You would think that the lemon and lime combo would make it taste like 7Up of Sprite, but this is far from those forgettable sodas. You see this actually tastes like real fruit and not generic fake flavoring. It's like neighborhood kids made some lemonade to sell at the corner, but the plumber was over so their water was shut off and they used their mother's bubbly water as a substitute. Those dumb kids also thought that the lime was a lemon that wasn't quite ripe so it got thrown into the pile. It's great. Their mistake is your gain as the lime gives it just the right twist.

Europe, you were good to me and I can't wait to return and drink far too many of your beverages in such a short span of time.

Feeling good is something I think everyone can get behind. I mean unless you're a masochist, no one is sitting around thinking of things they can ingest in order to make themselves feel terrible. Who out there has said something along the line of “Oh man I can't wait to get home and eat that deep fried pizza that has been dipped in hot chocolate and covered in powdered sugar. It's going to make me feel like such garbage, it's going to be great!”

This company makes beverages that you can feel good about drinking. There is no added sugar, or artificial garbage to make you feel run down and gross. They are simply juice and sparkling water. This one in particular is mango, orange, passionfruit, apple and lemon juice all melded together into a perfectly unique flavor. It has just the perfect amount of carbonation and it's lightly sweetened due to the natural sugar in the fruit. I could drink this constantly and not feel a bit of regret. It's near perfect. American companies take note. If you don't want to see that dystopian future that is in all those movies, start making juices like this. It could in fact save mankind.

This is a stupendous idea that I can't believe hasn't been thought up before. With companies constantly reaching to find new pairings of flavors, this is a great way to group them together. I've never met a stone fruit that I haven't liked: peaches, plums, apricots, nectarines, and cherries. Heck, you can even through avocados into that mix, since they are technically a fruit (Bolthouse chose not to though). All of those are excellent fruits that I could eat all day long. Why not mix them all together?

This ended up being a good juice, but it didn't live up to the expectations that were swimming around in my brain fluids. The cause of this is the inclusion of other fruit juices. I understand that some fruits are more costly than others, and Bolthouse likes to keep their juice slightly lower priced than its competitors, so they use “filler fruit.” Pear, apple, and banana are used to round things out and make the drink a little sweeter while keeping it 100% juice. I would much rather this then adding sugar, or other ingredients to fill the juice out, but it does take away from the flavor a bit, making the whole thing a bit mellow.

I had expected the main flavor in the juice to be peach. It's a strongly flavored fruit, with a low price point. As it turns out the peach is there, but the apricot is carrying most of the flavor weight. One forgets how prominent apricots can be, the rest of the fruits kind of blend together. You can make them out if you concentrate, but it's mostly a general flavor. There is also some “finely ground chia” in here, but I don't think they effected the flavor at all, and you certainly can't feel them in the texture.

I enjoyed this, but I was hoping for something a bit more formidable with such heavy hitters of the fruit world.