Organic Maple Syrup - 10 Reviews

I really appreciate when companies do things the “right” way. Nomad makes their product with very few ingredients and they are all sustainable. They are a company that cares about this world that we all share and they are taking efforts to make as little impact on it as it seemingly falls apart. The essentially turn the waste from coffee farming into caffeinated drinks. In addition to that they care about your bodies and have created an energy drink that it natural and not full of chemicals. To combine those two ideas I give it to you in their own words, “Imagine if Red Bull approached their products the way Patagonia approaches clothing. That's us.” I can get behind that and I applaud them for their effort (they were also kind enough to send us a bunch of samples).

Everything is right on track here, well except the flavor. It is not gross, but it certainly is different and that all comes down to the cascara (coffeefruit). The base tastes like a coffee/plant hybrid. I'm pretty sure it will give new comers pause when they first try it. Mix that in with some lemon, maple, and salt and things get even stranger. The good news is that the more you drink the better it becomes. As with many new things, there is a learning curve here. Each of the six ingredients are present in the flavor and it's an odd mixing, but one that I think people can grow to enjoy.

More maple syrup. It's the season, right? I thought this stuff was super expensive to extract and refine but at the price that it's being sold at your neighborhood 7-Eleven you wouldn't think so. Maybe it's made with maple water so they don't need to refine it as much.

Honestly, this isn't nearly as good as I wanted it to be. The maple syrup flavor, while good, overpowers the green tea and ginger and just kind of tastes like a vague, generic tea sweetened with maple syrup.

7-Eleven. You're cool with me. My son loves your subs. I love that your drinks are different than the rest. Bring this one back to the drawing board. She's not ready yet. Less maple and more ginger. Plenty-o-ginger.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, where do I even begin with this beverage? Is it wonderful? It is horrendous? Even though base logic show us that one thing cannot be both, this somehow is. This beverage defies logic, and perhaps other sciences. One thing that I can say for certain about this is that it is intriguing and unlike anything I have ever encountered before.

When I came across this in a Brooklyn deli, I grabbed it without a thought and put my money on the counter for it and a delicious jerk sandwich. It wasn't until I got a couple of blocks away that I realized that what I bought actually sounded terrible. Sparkling coffee is something that can be acceptable when it is done right, so more than likely no problem there. I can totally see mint in coffee. Actually it sounds like it would be delicious and it's probably something that exists in most coffee shops. So far, so good. Then we get to the grapefruit and everything gets thrown out the window. Grapefruit and coffee sounds like one of the strangest combinations I could think of, and it very much is in reality. It's unlike anything I have ever tasted before. The grapefruit isn't subtle. It's right out in the front. I would say this is 42% coffee, 42% grapefruit, and 6% mint. It's a wild ride in your mouth, and my taste buds are very confused. So much citrus and bitter coffee; I think I may be short circuiting.

With each sip, I hate it, yet a few seconds later I find myself taking another drink. By the end of this I think I may truly love it. I hate myself for it, but it's kind of fantastic in the worst possible way. It's like an ex that you know is bad for you and who you never feel good about hanging out with afterwards, but somehow in the moment things work and nothing else matters. This drink may be the best bad decision you ever make that will have zero consequences. I need to try the other flavors. Good thing Mike and I are going back to NYC in a few weeks.

This tastes more like maple than any of their other products I've tasted. The thing is that as strong as the maple taste is, the blueberry flavor is there to match it. I liked another flavor in this line to Vitamin Water, but this does not bring that company's products to mind, even if they are similar in vitamin and electrolyte content. This is a new class of "sports drink” that is more suited for those from the north. It tastes less of vitamins and sugar and more of the two ingredients it is advertised as being flavored as.

Does water not have to be put on ingredients lists anymore? The reason I ask is that it is nowhere to be found on this bottle and the first two things listed are organic maple sap concentrate and organic maple syrup. I know that when maple is tapped from a tree it is very liquidy and only acquires its sticky, syrupy state when cooked, but I didn't realize you could use it as the base for a beverage on its own. I would have assumed you needed to mix it with water. If you were to ask me I would say that I would think this would be a very viscous beverage but it really has the consistency of water.

What we have here is essentially Vitamin Water made with maple. It doesn't taste like maple syrup at all, it's just there as that watery base. It really tastes like a cranberry pomegranate Vitamin Water. It's full of antioxidants, electrolytes, and vitamins. Not what I expected, but enjoyable enough.

Green tea and mint is a nice match but something...something about mint is strange. We brush our teeth with mint and chew mint gum and eat mint candy. Mint is synonymous with dental hygiene and it's sometimes tough to disassociate it and enjoy it in a nice drink.

Bad breath aside, this is good. It's a very subtle mint and if it was more overpowering, I couldn't get past it. The green tea isn't bitter at all and it's lightly sweetened. The illustrious Maple Guild does a good job of sweetened but not over-sweetening these drinks and for that I am appreciative. Personally I don't know if I would be a repeat customer for this but the dude I split it with said it was better than the lemon. Different strokes, I guess.

This is a nice guy. The maple syrup actually rounds out the taste and allows it to be a bit smoother than even a cane sugar pop and somehow, sweetens it enough while somehow keeping the calorie count in half. This whole bottle is 90 calories while a Snapple lemon black tea, for instance is 150. Snapple uses real sugar and tacks on an additional 60 calories and that might not seem like much, but for those who are counting calories, it might make or break your decision.

The whole drink is really just a delight. I shared it with a buddy at work and he thought the same thing. It was decently sweetened. This isn't "a tad sweet" to use the Lipton sweetening verbiage. It's between that and the teeth disintegrating sweetness of a Southern style sweet tea. Not to make a pun but "the sweet spot." I have yet to see this on shelves and they sent it to us so that leads me to believe this is a new line. If you see it, I'd put down what you're used to and trying something new. They know what's going on inside the confines of this bottle and they're letting us in on the secrets of maple sugars.

Let me start this off by telling you all that I am a goddamn weirdo. Not only do I not put syrup on my pancakes and waffles, but I also don't put butter on them. 99% of the time I eat them plain with no added condiment (do they count as condiments?). Occasionally if I'm eating out and it comes with it I will eat them with some sort of fruit and whipped cream. I get weird looks by anyone who has never eaten breakfast food with me. I am by no means a maple man. My maple intake is limited to one day of year at the fair I go to the maple stand and try some super dark syrup and maybe have a maple donut or some popcorn. I like maple, but I like it sparingly, because it all too easily can become an overpowering taste.

This tea could get me to consume maple more often. It uses just enough of it to sweeten the tea (10g of sugar) and give it a light maple flavor. There is nothing heavy handed about it. It is not thick and syrupy and the flavor doesn't overpower the taste of the tea. I would say that the peach and maple ratio are about dead even in the flavor category. The result is that this is also a very smooth tea. It just glides right down your throat.

I want to drink this out in the woods while I am camping. Everyone else can get their pancakes sopping wet with cheap syrup and I will eat mine dry, but wash them down with this tea. It will be magnificent. Also, who makes pancakes while camping? It seems like a needless amount of extra things to bring. I suppose I am a minimalist though, who lives slim and goes often of tangents often.

Ugh. Every time I take a sip it's like punishment. Not that "I know it's good for me so I'll do it" type of punishment. Not that "Oh this mouthwash burns, but I know it's killing germs and preventing me from getting gingivitis" type punishment. It's the "Who crushed all these Sweet Tarts and put them in this already disgusting juice?" type punishment. That's what it tastes like. 15 thousand Sweet Tarts, powderized and thrown into juice. It's supposed to detoxify, but I'd much rather just eat a bunch of celery, or maybe just perform an enema. Seriously, I can't imagine drinking this entire thing.

Here's the sweet thing about this review. Sure, it's gold already, but here's where I step up my own game. Who doesn't love math? This drink was $2.50. It's on the high side, but I figured, how can you mess this up? It's juice. So $2.50. On the label, it states that in order to achieve your intended weight loss goal of upwards of an estimated 15 pounds, you have to drink four drinks per day. Now we're up to $10 per day. Oh honey, don't let it stop there. You are supposed to drink 4 per day for a week. That's seven days. Bringing our grand total up to $70. $70 in juice.

I didn't need to detoxify. What do I have to clean out? Tacos? Please, leave them in there. I love them. Your drink on the other hand...

A couple of years ago there was all the hoopla around fasting diets/cleanses. The one that I heard the most about was the Master Cleanse. It was basically people drinking nothing but lemon juice and maple syrup for a week. Everyone I knew who did it said that it was completely horrible. They felt like hell, their skin broke out and they suffered from bouts of diahaha (which is what my one friend calls diarrhea, because she claims poop is hysterical). The Master Cleanse did not seem appealing at all. This drink is like an updated version of it. It's lemon juice, maple syrup and a few other added ingredients for vitamins and taste. They should have spent more time on the taste. The vague strawberry flavor is hidden behind a wave of lemon juice. It's kind of gross. Not even in a artificial sweetener kind of grossness, just not good.

The instructions on the bottle say to drink four of these a day for a week. That's right, four. You're not supposed to consume anything else except water and tiny amounts of fresh fruit. That's 28 bottles of this with little else to upset the flavor. I can barely get through one. I didn't but into it originally, and I'm not going to now. I say good day to you Simplifast.