No Sugar Added - 718 Reviews

Ladies and Gentlemen, I think I am finally getting old. I get creaks. I get aches. I fall asleep on the couch while watching movies at night. All of the telltale signs are there. On top of all that I have mentioned it seems to happen with increasing regularity that I need some sort of boost to get me moving in the morning at work. I always assumed that when people talked about needing their morning coffee it was due to their bodies getting used to ingesting caffeine. Now I am realizing that sometimes you just need the push, even if your body is not used to it. I try to not make it a regular thing, but at least once a week I find myself drinking something caffeinated in the morning (usually tea). This is a great alternative though. It's a mixture of guayusa tea and fruit juice that tastes amazing even without added sugar.

In this beverage the fruit juice sits pretty evenly with the tea flavor and that is exactly where I want it to be. It's not sweet, but it's also not bitter. Everything about this falls right in the middle. All of the energy in it comes from the caffeine derived from the guayusa leaf, so it doesn't leave you feeling insane. It's just a gentle push to help you get through the morning. It's just a bonus that it won't leave you with gross coffee breath or unwanted calories from sugar. It's simple, it's delicious and it's just what I want in the morning.

What is that, a raccoon? Hyper, those raccoons. Them washing all that cotton candy in the stream. Calm down, raccoon. Man. Stop eating all that sugar and drink some of this tea. It's good, subtle and calming. Like chamomile but less on-the-nose. This dude who works here has been sweet enough to let me drink some of his tea and drink it I did. Sure, he's not breaking the bank buying a box of tea from Trader Joe's but who's bringing money into this? No one. He's generous. Let him be.

That raccoon had the right idea with this. Sure he's tangled up in Christmas lights probably doing something he shouldn't be doing but he's at least chilling with a nice, hot cup of tea. The cinnamon is subtle and the vanilla rounds it out. Think of this like the biggest dandelion. You could lift it without even thinking about it. This is like that, as strong as it is, it's still calm and smooth.

Also, for those of you not "in the know," this is the video I am referring to:


Sad, right?

What a nice man, Craig is. He always holds the door for people, even if they're half a parking lot away. He's thoughtful. He cares. He's a caring, thoughtful man. Everyone loves Craig. One time he went to a kid's school and they didn't like him. Why? He brought in a case of melon grapefruit sparkling water. Problem is that kids do not love grapefruit. Every kid there was either crying because it was too "spicy" or they didn't like the taste of grapefruit. Craig meant well. Melon. Kids love melon. So it had grapefruit in it. It didn't have the bitterness of grapefruit, just the flavor. It's sparkling water. What did the kids expect? The kids didn't like Craig and now, Craig didn't like kids. The streak of Craig being nice to everyone had ended all because of a couple snot nosed brats. Great job, kids. You broke Craig.

One of the few good things about the seasons changing and winter being upon us is the release of the new seasonal Polar flavors. They are a nice change of pace for a limited time. As the first snow starts to fall outside my window a cranberry cider seltzer sounded like a dream. While it may not have lived up to my hopes it is still a unique flavor. I've been hitting the cranberry and lime hard lately and I was excited to mix it up. My first thought upon taking a sip was “Maybe cider and seltzer shouldn't be combined.” Then I thought, “Well maybe I'm just a cider snob because I grew up with an amazing cider mill in my home town.” I settled on “cider without sweetness is just weird. That is what feels off about this.” The more I drank the more I got used to this strangeness on my palate. The cranberry isn't as strong as it is in the cranberry lime, but it does mingle well. I wouldn't drink this all the time, but for a seasonal treat it is quite nice.

Sparkling mango water. My wife might have just found her mecca. She loves La Croix and rightfully so. I mean, it's just sparkling water but it's good stuff. Polar is more than readily available and we buy a fair amount of that. They have some cooler, experimental flavors but she's been hard into this lately.

This is an accurate mango flavor, too. They really nailed it. I'd like to know what sorcery they used to do that. Are sorcery and magic the same thing? Sorcery might involve more potions. I wouldn't say that a witch performs magic. Stirring cauldrons is sorcery. Wizards perform sorcery. Is magic just another word for "illusions?"



The end.

I'm not one to complain when a yerba mate is put in front of me. I will happily drink each and every one that is placed into my hands. This is simple and it is also delicious. It is simply brewed organic free trade yerba mate and hibiscus with a pinch of salt added. There is no sweetener added, because there is no need for one. It is a beverage that is wonderful just the way it is. It's slightly bitter and a bit woody, just like a proper mate should be. The hibiscus gives it just a hint of floral taste. I could drink this stuff by the gallon if it were an option. If someone wants to make that a real option for me, please do.

It's easy to be nostalgic for other eras in human history. There were a lot of great things that happened and through forgetfulness things seemed like they were perfect. I often find myself wishing I was living in various decades from the past century when life seemed great and the internet hadn't ruined everything. At this point pretty much all of the “secret” spots my friends and I knew about and enjoyed when we were younger have been posted all over the internet and they have either been closed off, or there are now far too many people there for it to have that special allure anymore. Also, don't get me started on how self-important people are now. So I think back to times that I'd like to think were simpler. Then I remember that racism, sexism, homophobia and the like ran rampant during a lot of those times and things weren't perfect then either. I can say if this truly is a facsimile of vintage and what beverages were like in another era I think I could look past the horribleness and just bliss out, can after can.

Somehow seltzer has become a cool thing in our current times. I never saw that coming. I found my way to it because I was looking to lower my sugar intake, but still wanted bubbly drinks and diet soda is just awful. I don't know if that's the route most people take or if it's just a hot item now so they are flocking to it. I will say that I will reap the rewards because the flavors available have expanded greatly.

If you know me, you probably know that I love all things cucumber flavored. I think I may have even been attracted to my girlfriend in high school because she used cucumber melon lotion that was all the rage back then. It's delicious and it's refreshing. I feel like it sounds like I'm building this up for a letdown, but that is not the case. This is wonderful and it's what I wanted out of it. It tastes mostly like cucumber with a faint melon flavor. It's refreshing with no calories. This is guilt free enjoyment here and I could drink a case in a day without blinking an eye, although I would have to make a lot of trips to the bathroom. Everyone who's on a seltzer kick buy this. I'm afraid I may be the only one who will buy it and they will stop production and then I will go in a deep depression and live alone with my riches. When I die my final words won't be about a sled, but about a beverage I truly loved.

Back from a long time off on a thing called a "honeymoon" but I'm back and what do I start off with? A sparkling pomegranate joint. It's good, too. I didn't get a lot of apple but the pomegranate was nice and honest and sparkly. It wasn't too sweet and, according to the promises of the company, all that is in this lil' bottle is sweetening this is the fruit juice itself. There are some natural colors from fruit and vegetable and some preservatives but it's good. I would give this to a child. I think that's pretty telling. Sure, I gave my 9 month old half a sugar cookie which he promptly dropped half on the sidewalk and some mini marshmallows yesterday but he was being good and good kids deserve little treats. I might not be the world's best dad but my kids would like me because I gave them sweet treats.

This, this was a pleasant surprise. I've been sitting on it awhile and I thought it was a boring old lemon soda. You know, the kind that only vaguely tastes like lemon and mainly tastes like sugar. At best I was hoping it would taste like a carbonated lemonade, since it's 4% real lemon juice. It was none of those things. Instead what I got was a boring seltzer water with lemon juice in it, which as it turns out isn't all that boring and rather tasty.

I find lemon water unnecessary. I'm the jerk that requests no lemon in my water when I go out to eat. I prefer plain old water. I love water; I don't need to spice it up with a fruit that has generally been ruined by household cleaners. Something about this is quite nice though. It thankfully doesn't taste like something I used to polish my furniture. It tastes like go ordered a plain seltzer and then instead of squeezing a single slice of lemon that was cut four hours ago into it, you grabbed one of those squeeze bottles that looks like the fruit and pressed it for longer than you are recommended to. Sometimes I look back on what I've been drinking lately and I don't recognize that man reflected in my glass anymore.

I want someone to pull a prank on me. I want to order a nice cold lemonade and have one of my friends slip this shot into the mix. They will smile as they hand me the glass, stifling a giggle, but the joke will actually be on them because this could do nothing but improve any lemonade. Normally I'm not a huge fan of lemon (well except in perfect lemonade), it just seems like a boring flavor, but it always pairs perfectly with ginger, and boy oh boy is this some ginger. This is the most intense of the shots that we were sent. The sourness of the lemon somehow enhances the burn and I can't take a sip without making a ridiculous face, and I love every second of it. It is so, so sour. I'm making that cartoon puckered lip face that you see on lemon products that don't actually do that to you. This does it. This makes you pucker. I want to give this to Mike's soon and see how he responds. He'll probably hate me. Eh You win some you lose some.

If your company makes an apple soda, it's more than likely that you are doing it all wrong. Chances are you have loaded it with sugar, or even worse, tried to make it sour apple. You needn't bother my friends. There are only two ingredients needed for an apple soda and they are apple juice and sparkling water. I mean you could probably directly carbonate the juice and it would turn out just as good. The people at Apple Rush are smart folks. They know that sometimes people crave carbonation, but at the same time they don't need loads of added sugar (there are 36g of sugar in this bottle, but it's all from the fruit directly).

This is fantastic. It tastes like high quality apple juice with bubbles in it. Why would anyone need anything else out of an apple soda? I mean sure maybe you want to throw some other fruit in there, or perhaps some spices, but if you're looking for straight up apple pop, look no further. I'm going to come close to guaranteeing that you won't find a company who does it better.

Spindrift has been good to me. For the past five years I have enjoyed their sparkling beverages with no added sugar. At first they proved to me that soda can exist in a delicious way without being full of sweetener. Then they were a gateway for me to start enjoying seltzer, which I drink constantly now. I thank them for helping keep me on a healthy track. I didn't always have their products available to me in Buffalo, but because of them I found other companies that filled the void. I cut a ton of soda out of my diet, and transitioned to drinking a lot of unsweetened iced tea.

Now it's summer and it's the most humid it's ever been in Buffalo (not an exaggeration, records have been broken). The heat is nearly unbearable, but I have my beverages to help me get through it, which I promptly sweat out.

I love watermelon, but I never get it for some reason. It's probably due to laziness, or maybe it's because eating it outside of a picnic/beach type scenario seems off. I was excited for this drink. It's in their sparkling water line and not the seltzer one because there is juice added to the sparkling water and that leads to a whopping 3g of sugar. This is the first time Spindrift has really left me wanting. Overall this would be great, except for one thing. The watermelon tastes more like the rind than it does the red mushy fruit part. I don't know if they just ground up the whole melon, but it's not really what I'm looking for when I think of watermelon. It's not horrible, but I wanted something different that they did not deliver. Oh well, one misstep does not ruin a company for me and I will continue to enjoy their other products.

Carl, why did you give me this fire in a bottle? What did I. What did I. What did I do to deserve this? It's like drinking citrus flavored lava. I don't know if there was orange but it was citrus. If I had a straight ginger and drank this side by side I might be able to confirm that it's orange flavored but the burn is just so intense that the flavor is lost. It's not bad at all, though. I appreciate your gratuity in burning off my taste buds but I still don't know why people drink this. Is it energizing? Is it good for my insides? Why did I just subject myself to this self-torture? Fun? Carl. Carl. Baby. Don't do that to me. I've had a long day. You know what? I do like it. Would I drink it again? We'll see if I'm given the opportunity but as much as I'd like to give your tongue an Indian burn, which might be racist at this point, I appreciate you giving this bottled up ending scene from Terminator 2.

Sparkles with a lil' bit of citrus. That's it and that's all, friends. This is the simplest seltzer that money can buy. It's got a strong lemon flavor and tastes like seltzer. You can call me an idiot for that review if you aren't doing that already but it's true. It's good in its simplicity and that will win the race if you ask me. They've got more ambitious flavors so this is the gateway drug, if you will, to more dynamic and interesting flavors. Start with the lemon wedge, go to the watermelon and end with the cilantro lime. It's a trip worth taking.

Whenever someone offers me a fruit flavored soda that I have never tried before this is what I secretly hope it will be like. I'm in my late 30's and I have no need for sparkly sugar water anymore. If I drank that stuff the way I used to I would be way overweight and feel like garbage all of the time. This though, this is the dream. This is just sparkling juice with no sugar added. The base is very much apple juice, which makes me wish it was autumn, well that and I'm sick of these obscenely humid 90+ degree days. So they start off with a sparkling apple juice, which would be great on its own, then they added a bunch of straight up blueberry juice, and sent the thing through the roof. When was the last time you had a blueberry beverage that actually tastes like you had a mouth full of berries instead of a mouthful of dumb candy? Like dry land (and dry air) delicious fruit sodas are not a myth. They can be found and are produced in Florida of all places. Oh man, I just imagined how humid it must be down there right now. How are there not mass suicides? My thoughts go out to you denizens of the south.

Around two o'clock today I started sneezing. By 4 o'clock my nose was stuffy. Come 6 o'clock I started to feel really weak. My question is who gets sick in August when it's 90+ degrees out? Apparently this guy right here, and it couldn't come at a worse time. In order to combat this illness I drank one of these Ginger Shots and I will probably drink a handful more over the next 24 hours. The way the ginger in these feels makes me think that it could destroy anything unhealthy in the body. I'm probably wrong, but I'll let the placebo effect run its course.
Out of all of the ones I've tried this one has the most non-ginger flavor to it. The apple in this is very pleasant and its flavor isn't completely decimated once the ginger takes over. They interweave with each other and I absolutely love it. The ginger still has a ridiculous burn that isn't for the faint of heart, but there is more flavor to this one than the others. Dare I say that this is perfection?

This tastes like nothing, for that is what it is. It's just water with tiny bubbles. It doesn't taste bitter. It doesn't taste much of anything and that is a wonderful thing at times.

Let's face the facts. There is no one out there who is going to think that these shots are “just okay.” People are either going to love them or hate them and the decisive element is the intense burn from the ginger. Oh, that wonderful burn. It places me clearly on the “love it” side of the coin.

To be fair the additional flavors make up at best 10% of what is going on in these tiny bottles. The vast majority of the flavor is the ginger. With this one you get a little sweet pomegranate taste up front but it is quickly decimated by that ginger that I love and cherish. It makes me feel as if there is any illness lingering in my body that it doesn't stand a chance against this beverage. If live were a videogame this would be the elixir that returned some of your hearts so you could keep adventuring.

I think this might be the last straw. If a quality company such as Four Point Zero can't make a green apple beverage that I truly enjoy, I don't think there is any hope for the flavor. The odd thing is that green apples are my go-to apple. Granny Smith all the way, all day. Green apple…€¦well anything other than actual apples, never taste like that to me. A lot of the time they taste like candy, which this does only vaguely. There must be a different breed of apple that the green apple flavor is based off of. I bet I wouldn't really like this in apple form either. This is all personal taste though. If you like the “sour” green apple flavor, but want it sugar free then this seltzer is calling your name. It's really not bad, even for me, but I just want a Granny Smith seltzer.

Last week was my birthday and I am now officially in my late 30s. I can no longer deny it, I am an adult. Sure I still act like a teenager tour the world in vans, ditch work to go walk around the woods and run a website where I review non-alcoholic beverages, but I am still an adult. Proof of that is that I really enjoy this drink. It is sparkling water with tonic bitters mixed in and I find it wonderful. Look, I know in every one of these companies reviews we mentioned them being for adults. Sure, kids can drink them, but I don't know a single child who would enjoy this. I've given them normal seltzer water and they hate it. The bitterness in this would probably make any child hate me for life. It's a risk I'm not willing to take. Also, I want to keep it all for myself. If pears had rinds this is what they would taste like, well with a healthy dose of ginger. Actually the pear flavor is very light, but the ginger is heavy. I want more unsweetened, sparkling beverages that are ginger flavored in my life.