Pure Cane Sugar - 220 Reviews

I am about to embark on an epic journey across the entire country. After 10 months living in Buffalo, I've decided to pack up and move back to Portland, OR. I would like to say it's because of the crappy season the Bills had, or that I need to take one for the team and review all the Hot Lips soda flavors and the only way to do that would be to move back out west. In reality, I just miss Portland. Plus my best friend (the one who helped name this very website you are reading) lives there and I miss her dearly.

I decided to review this soda as my last drink in Buffalo. I love all three ingredients and after the stellar reviews we've been giving Joia, I was pretty sure this was going to be a homerun. The pineapple/coconut mixture is the most prominent, but sadly the nutmeg is nowhere to be found. I would have settled for a subtle nutmeg aftertaste, but it is literally on the back of a milk carton. Just like the last Joia soda I had, the last ingredient was the one I was most excited for. But both times, I was let down.

Gilius Thunderhead was a strong dwarf who was an accomplished blacksmith. He became so strong became he was always wielding a hammer against an old fashioned anvil. He made swords, axes, railings, and everything in between. His favorite things to create were double-edged axes because he could get artistic and put all sorts of intricate filigree within the metal.

To unwind, he enjoyed drinking root beer. Sure, he's a short, tough guy, but he enjoys his sweets just like anyone. The company appreciated him buying case after case so much that they renamed their super-successful root beer to "Dwarven Draight" and Gilius was more than pleased. He liked the root beer because it was sweet, had a bit of complexity, and the taste stayed with you for a while.

The only group that he wouldn't share his root beer with was the Death Adders because they killed his brother and were generally quite mean and tactless. If you could hear the jokes they would make about minorities you wouldn't as much as share a stick of gum with them. Terrible, terrible people.

Franklin loves pancakes. He can't get enough of them. Some people have breakfast for dinner once and awhile as a treat, but Franklin has had pancakes for every meal for the past decade. You see his mother didn't approve of them. You see Franklin's father left her for the waitress who worked at the diner that would go to every week after church. Every week he would order a half-stack and silently flirt. One day he ordered a full-stack and once he polished them all off he announced that he was leaving the family, grabbed the waitress by the hand and disappeared into the summer sun. Franklin's mother never really recovered. To try and save face she blamed it all on the “devil's flapjacks” as she called them. From the time he was 7 until he left home at 18 Franklin never tasted another johnnycake. He would never let his mother know the truth, but as soon as he left home his obsession took hold and he ate battery goodness at every chance. He would drown them in maple syrup and just dig in. Sure he gained a lot of weight, but wasn't it worth it for that forbidden fruit?

Franklin eventually got a job at Tommyknocker soda brewery. He started as janitor, but slowly worked his way up to brewmaster general. It was then and only then that his genius was released on the world. Franklin put together a recipe that was sure to turn the soda world on its ear. He somehow successfully combined the nation's love of root beer with his own love of pancakes. Don't ask me how, I certainly don't know. He keeps his recipe locked tightly in the safe that is his mind. All I know is that the Tommyknocker root beer tastes like a nice vanilla and licorice heavy root beer that has been infused with liquefied pancakes that had drowned in a sea of syrup. It's strange. I'm not a fan of maple syrup myself, so I'm not a huge fan of this, but if you are this will leave you in a sticky sweet heaven.

I woke up today with a sore throat. I thought it was just one of those morning sore throats and it would eventually go away. I'm sad to say that it's not, 7 hours later and it still hurts. What does this have to do with this tea? Well I learned the hard way that drinking a sugary drink does not help a sore throat. In fact, I probably made it worse.

I wish I had waited until my throat wasn't hurting to drink this because it's pretty delicious. It has a really strong and juicy peach flavor to it. It's possibly one of the best peach tea's I've ever had. Sadly though, it hurts my throat with every sip. Now I'm trying to retrace my steps to try and figure out how I might have gotten a sore throat. Wish me luck.

Gnomes enjoy mixing fruits and creams. Reason being they live in a region that encourages growth of all fruit year round. They also work for a large creamery owned and operated by gnomes. Seriously, everyone that works or is affiliated with the creamery is a gnome.

Gnomes are partial to strawberries and they thought that it would be a good idea to mix their finest cream with their regular strawberries. This led to the creation of this pop. Problem is that the gnomes have remarkable taste buds. Think of the way dogs can hear awesomely.

Us average sized people do not have the fine tunings of a gnome and therefore the flavors of this pop is lost on us. Everything is dumbed down and it tastes sweet and then as an aftertaste you get a tiny bit of strawberry.

Gnomes don't quite though so this pop will be made until the creamery closes it's doors for the last time. For the gnome's sake, I don't want that to happen. I just don't want them out of work, you know? These are tough times.

We are gathered here to celebrate the unholy alliance between Elvira Mistress of the Dark and the Crypt Keeper (you know the bony guy from Tales From the Crypt). I for one would like to say it's about time these two teamed up and I am glad that they found love together. Wait, what is that? The Crypt Keeper is just a puppet and not a real thing? Well that just makes this awkward. Elvira can't marry a puppet. That won't fly in this state. That wouldn't even fly in Vermont! So we're all agreed that the wedding is off? Good. I'm sorry to waste everyone's time. Feel free to eat all the food, no reason it should all go to waste just because someone didn't do any research on whether or not her future husband is real or not. That's right Elvira, I'm looking in your direction. For shame!
Okay everyone; don't forget your wedding favors. Since this wasn't a traditional wedding, we decided to do things a bit different and had some soda made up. We came up with it fairly last minute and the brewery needed a label quick, so we just called it "Elvira-Crypt Keeper Cola." The printer messed up, as they always seem to do and it ended up saying "Elvira's Crypt Keeper Cola." I guess that makes more sense now anyways. So yeah, grab your bottle and enjoy. It's a smooth cola. We expected it to be fairly dark with some bite, but nope. As I said it's fairly smooth and simple. It actually reminds me of the cane sugar version of RC Cola. Now there's a great cola and anything that reminds me of it is something I can get behind.
Don't worry Elvira. I forgive you. This ended up being a pretty fun party. You sure know how to liven up the room. Next time just do a bit of research before you pick a potential husband.

Anyone can drink lemonade. Lemonade is old school. You drank it. Your mom drank it. Her mom drank it. Her mom drank it. That's four generations of the same thing. What about limes, dude? They're there, too. Sprite uses them so why can't anyone else? Sure, they're more bitter, less sweet, and aren't used as much, but that last thing is the reason why they should be. Be a little different. "Oh lemonade?" you say, "No thank you. I only drink limeade." Bam. You've got an instant cult following. "Limeade?! What's that?" they will all ask as you take a sip of this off-green drink, trying not to show your quivering cheeks as they begin to feel the punishment of the powerful limes within this drink.

You are now on top of the pack. Alpha. Pinnacle. Apex. You have discovered limes and have used them for good rather than just a garnish. This Calypso drink you have fallen in love with is simply described as lemonade with limes instead of lemons. It tastes like limes, looks like limeonade would, isn't called "limeonade", and is called "limeade." Congratulations friend, you have arrived.

I turned 30 one hour ago. Most people fear turning 30, but I have actually been excited for it. It's probably because I have a lot of friends who are over 30 (including our very own Jason Draper) and they are still awesome.

I decided to break out a fancy soda for my first soda of my 30's. I've been waiting to try this one for a while, and it was well worth the wait. The blackberry is the first taste that hits your tongue, and it tastes like the juice that sits in your mouth after you just ate you're 20th blackberry in a row. A tangy pomegranate comes next, but it doesn't stick around long.

The only disappointing thing about this is the ginger, or should I say lack of ginger. It's what I was most excited about and it's barely there. I wanted it to have a deep burn in the aftertaste, but it's so subtle it's barely there. It's still a great soda. I just wish the ginger had more kick to it.

When I saw the Cooper's Cave sodas in the store I bought every flavor they had. They are a quasi-local company (about 4 hours away) and the labels looked great. Seriously, look at the design on any one of their flavors. They all have a cool comic book look to them. Remember what your mother said; “Don't judge a book by its cover.” This is one of those times when that nugget of wisdom works in the opposite way of what she meant. I guess “All that glitters is not gold” is another way of putting it.

This is one bland birch beer. An average amount of birch beer flavor hits you as soon as you take a swig, and just as quick it's gone. It tricks you in much the same way that diet pop does. You're greeted with a nice flavor that quickly dissipates, but instead of the gross sting of sucralose you're left with nothing. It's strange, it's sad and it leaves me wanting more flavor.

This delicious soda has a sordid past with Franklin Mercer. As you all know, he grew up in rural Pennsylvania and this soda was in every store. At a very young age, before he even had his first sip, Franklin knew he loved soda. From ages 3-7 he would bug his parents every time they were at the corner store for a bottle of it. Like clockwork, they said not until he turned 10. This made no sense to Franklin because his older brother had been drinking root beer since the age of 4. Those Mercers were always hard to understand.

This all took a turn for the worst one day when he was visiting his grandparents in Kingston, PA. While they were taking their usual afternoon nap, he ventured into the kitchen for a snack. He couldn't believe his eyes when he found a bottle of this Reading Draft Creamy Red Birch Beer in the fridge. Without hesitation, he cracked it open and took his first sip of liquid heaven. He promptly drank the whole bottle and hid the evidence behind some newspapers on the counter. He didn't hide it good enough because his father found it an hour later when he came and picked it up.

As you can guess, Mr. Mercer was furious! He thought long and hard about what Franklin's punishment should be and he came up with the meanest thing he could think of. As long as Franklin still lived with his parents (which ended up being around 23 more years), an unopened bottle of this soda would be permanently affixed to his bedroom dresser. That bottle just sat there everyday, taunting Franklin. You'd think this would have turned him off from soda, but it actually increased his appetite for the sugary drink.

Franklin never had another bottle of this creamy red birch beer, which is a shame, because it's really good. I'm more partial to birch beers with a good bite to them, but this tastes like a mix of birch beer and red cream soda.

When I first bought this, I thought it was a play on Nikola Tesla's name. I had this whole review written in my head about Tesla coils, electricity, etc. Then I did some research and turns out this soda is from the 1930's and its name comes from the fact that it used to cost a nickel. Like most things, Coca-Cola bought them out in the 1950's and the soda was just a faded memory after that.

Luckily there are great companies like Orca Beverages that brings these old flavors back for us to enjoy. I especially want to thank them for this one because this cola is incredible! It's really complex and has lots of interesting ingredients like kola nut, neroli, and coriander. One of the most distinct flavors in this is cinnamon. I never though cinnamon would go well with cola, but it definitely does. It gives it a slight kick, not as much as Dr. Pepper but it really helps make this soda unique.

Nice to meet you, my name is Warren Phillips. I'm a businessman on the go, by trade. Where am I going? Oh you know, here and there doing business type things. What things? Mergers, acquisitions, layoffs, buyouts, the occasional deer wrestling, you know the usual. As long as I have my trusty hat and briefcase I'll make it through this world just fine.

Why yes my brief case is very heavy. Thank you for noticing the sag. The reason is that along with all of my contracts and other paperwork I also have several bottles of Whooppee Citrus Smash soda in there. I do get mighty parched running to and fro all of the time, and it is important for a businessman on the go to stay hydrated. A colleague of mine, Stan Levy, didn't subscribe to that train of thought and that is what led to the Boncroft-Fairfax merger going down the toity. Ever since then I always have at least two bottles of soda in my brief case.

I'm not an idiot. I know that water would be more hydrating and better for me over all. The thing is that I really like the bubbles and carbonated water just tastes wrong. I went to the soda store down on Lexington and I must say they have quite the selection. This bottle instantly jumped out at me. I mean it looks like a caricature of me on the bottle. The little guy has the hat and everything. I now down this stuff daily. Sure I've had to let out all my suits in the waist, but it's worth it. You see not only does it look like I'm on the bottle, which makes me seem more important with my clients, but it also tastes fantastic. It's an orange and lime soda, which you don't see very often. It's also fairly light tasting. Most orange sodas are very thick and heavy, but not this one. Which is perfect for me Warren Phillips, businessman on the go. Speaking of which, I need to be at the Wang Kong exchange like right now! I'm off!

This is Harry Potter. No, I did not cast a spell on him and turn him into a bottle of root beer. This is the soda that lived. Allow me to start my story from the beginning.

I was just on tour with my friends' band and we stopped at Galco's Soda Pop Stop in Los Angeles, CA. I had wanted to go there for quite some time so I was very excited to be there. I hand picked a lot of sodas we hadn't reviewed and safely put them in a box in the van. I didn't have as much time on the road to review them as I thought I would, so my plan was to bring them all back to Buffalo. They were traveling great, until we got to Saskatoon.

Saskatoon is a small city in the province of Saskatchewan in the middle of Canada. When we got there, it was zero degrees outside (around -18 Celsius) in early December. The locals told us this was mild for that time of year. Immediately, Saskatoon became a place I will never visit again in the winter. We played the show, and then went to a friend's house to sleep. No one told us of the dangers of leaving a dozen glass soda bottles in the van overnight.

The next morning, we found all of my sodas frozen and the bottles shattered. Obviously, I was really bummed. We drove to a gas station to sadly throw them out. As we were doing so, we found one that wasn't frozen: this bottle of Bedford's Root Beer. I don't know what prevented it from freezing, but I was happy to see at least one survived.

I was expecting it to taste like the best root beer ever. I figured any drink that can withstand those extreme temperatures must be magical. Sadly, it wasn't that awesome. It was a good middle of the road root beer. But if you want a root beer that can withstand freezing temperatures, this is the one.

This is the FUBU of the beverage world. You could say that this is "for us, by us" but only if you were an athlete. Unless the great congregation of sports aficionados accepts air hockey as a true sport, this drink was not made for me. I don't care I'm going to drink it anyways. What are they going to do, send the sports police after me?

This is one of the best sports drinks I've ever had. It's all-natural and it shows in the flavor. I tend to enjoy sports drinks, but I believe this may be the first one that I've ever tasted that actually has real fruit juice in it. They claim it's for color, but I've never had another drink taste so much like grapes (slightly watered down mind you) that wasn't actual grape juice. The flavor is strong, but only to a point. It still distinctly tastes like a sports drink, but in a fruitier way.

I really hope this catches on and they get a better distribution deal. I would love to be able to pick these up at gas stations instead of their competitors.

I don't know Bob Marley. I mean, come on, I'm a 29 year old, Jewish, white kid from Buffalo. The only thing I know about Bob Marley is that he's probably rolling in his grave because of the fact that every time you think of him, you think of weed, or how you have a tapestry at home with his face on it, or just tie die. It's unfortunate. I am not going to pretend to know anything about him because pretending to do so will do his life a great injustice. I'm not against him or whatever he believed in and I would like to watch a documentary because I feel that at one point, he was so influential to a people, that he's still as great as he was today. Also, I don't read so a video is the only way that I'm going to take it in. Even Wikipedia is going to be too much to read. That man grew those dreads so we could all see them.

I don't know who's putting out all these Marley drinks, because we all know it's not Bob. He's not signing his name on the dotted line saying, "Yeah, mon. I would love to put me name on dis tea das gonna put ya ta sleep." Someone is forging his name and he keeps pushing out products and the dead Bob Marley is just pulled into it. So "Bob" wants me to drink this coffee drink that he makes and I'll do it.

It's good. It's smooth and doesn't have as strong a coffee taste as many other coffee drinks like a Starbucks. It's not too sweet, and it gives me this coffee stuck to my tongue type deal so that makes it seem genuine and like the coffee you know and love.

Bob, may you rest in peace. If you were here when I was drinking this, you'd better believe that I'd share it. 80/20, advantage you. You win, brother.

I'm pretty sure that Bruce Cost is a television detective. No, I don't think he does sleuth work for or about television. That would be ridiculous, even for me. I simply meant that with a name like that he has to be a dark mysterious detective from some drama that aired in the late 80's or early 90's. He always gets his man in the end. The ladies fall for him every time, but like Short Round and Indy he simply has no time for love. He is a man with a clear view of his future and that is to solve crimes in 30-minute increments. That and to produce some of the finest ginger ale's this world has ever seen. What did you think he solely spent his life fighting crime? Everyone needs hobbies and his just happens to be crafting sodas. He's grown quite good at it as well.

While he was wrapping up the case of the Albuquerque Exsanguinater he dreamed up this little fella. The murderer always scouted out his victims at a fancy Chinese restaurant. It always smelled of jasmine tea in there and the smell haunted Cost. He knew he needed to fuse it with his beloved ginger ale. Sure he may have cut some corners on the case so he could get to his "soda lab" quickly, but he gets results and isn't that all that really matters when a killer is on the loose?

Mixing soda pop and teas is a tricky game that can easily turn to garbage. I'd say about 1/4 of the ones I've tried are actually decent. The rest, well they can rest on the trash heap for all I care. Cost went through an ridiculous amount of recipes before he hit pay dirt. He finally figured out the correct formula to make a jasmine ginger ale that comes through on every front. It has a distinct ginger taste, due to the tiny pieces of ginger that he realized just should not be filtered out. It also has a faint burn, but not nearly enough to consider it a ginger beer. Finally he had to get the proper flowery flavor without tasting too much like soap. Unlike in his cases he cut no corners with this soda. Everything it contains is a top notch ingredient and it shows in the flavor. My ladyfriend said it did taste like soap, but she only had a tiny sip. I could see where she was coming from at first, but after another sip that flavor was completely gone. The ginger had neutralized it. If you like a little kick of a treat at the end of your soda, make sure to drink the last sip that has the remaining remnants of ginger. It will give you a nice little parting gift of a burn, like the burn Bruce Cost feels in his heart when he knows their are crimes left unsolved and ginger ale left unbrewed.

Deep in the mountains of Pennsylvania there once was a group of hill people who lacked intelligence to such a great degree that they couldn't even make moonshine properly. They were the laughingstock of the yokel world. All these pour saps wanted to do was make some cheap hooch that could potentially make them blind, and they failed at every turn. No one really knows what they were thinking when they were trying to make it, but what resulted was a world-class birch beer. You know the kind that you would buy out of a tin mug at a county fair. When they presented it to some of their neighbors, it took awhile for the laughing to subside, but then one of them said something along the line of "how do you expect to make booze without some sort of fruits or vegetables. Since they were in season the family added a butt load of blueberries to their next batch. They still failed to make anything that would get them drunk, but what they did make was truly magical. It was a fine birch beer to start with, but the addition of the blueberries made it astronomical. It was incredibly fruity and sweet and chock full of classic olde time birch beer flavor. To top it all off it somehow went from a healthy dark brown to a bright blue.

The word soon spread about how dumb this family was, but how they had somehow managed to create a tasty treat. The tale soon reached the ears of a wealthy railroad family who moved to PA and hired the family on the spot to continue production of their soda. As a salary they would be paid in low-end whiskey (the gave them nice whiskey at first, but the hill people made fun of it saying it was too hoity toity, so they switched to swill). And that is the story of how Reading Railroad got put on the Monopoly board.


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As I drink more of this I realized that Reading Draft has done to birch beer what Voltage did to Mountain Dew, except normal birch beer is great where as regular Mountain Dew is garbage. It just has a slightly similar taste to the Voltage, which is the only Mountain Dew flavor worth putting into your body.

Jay is back from tour and that means that we are in the market for Sum Poosie. Poor, lonely Jay. On the road with two dudes. Yeah, they're good dudes, but dudes none-the-less. So now it's time for Jay and myself to get Sum Poosie. Normally, we aren't the type of guys interested in this type of thing, but sometimes you just need Sum Poosie. Along with the powers of ginseng, our minds will stay intact as we go to town with the ladies. There is also the need for methyl sulfonyl, which is methane. We don't know what it really does, but we crave it every time Jay gets back from tour and its step towards the debauchery that will take place is the never-to-near future.

By now you should know that I am talking about the drink called Sum Poosie. It's an energy drink that loves the ladies and encourages you in every way, shape, and form about trying to get some or see nude girls. As a drink, it's not bad. As an energy drink, it's better than most energy drinks. It doesn't have an energy drink taste and actually tastes a little like cherries, or cherry bubble gum, or cherry lemonade. If I didn't know this was an energy drink, I wouldn't know that this was an energy drink.

If you love the ladies, don't want to stop partying, and just want to spend all of the day at a strip club eating low price, lower quality lobster and shrimp scampi, this is the drink to you. If you like energy drinks and don't mind looking at false stats about one particular women who is on the side of the bottle while you get energized, this is the drink for you. If you are a stuck up women hater who wants to sleep and would never step foot in a strip club and hate the taste of cherries, this is not the drink for you.

I thought I knew what Mud Pie was but to make sure, I had to Wiki it. It was just what I thought it was. Chocolate with crispy chocolate. One place said that it had whipped cream in it, so I thought it would be like a chocolate cream pop. My mom said that she used to make it by putting chocolate pudding in a piecrust. All of these options sounded great and I had to get this pop in me.

First sip was a bit awkward because it tastes like there is a coffee taste to the pop, and two other people agreed. The chocolate is a good chocolate taste, and that in itself, although not technically "mud pie", would have been good. This tasted like a chocolate, coffee drink. It was good, but I wanted a bit more chocolate, no coffee, and maybe some cream. I wouldn't have been mad if there was cream in there. Much like in real life, if there is whipped cream on a dessert; I'm not going to get mad at you.

In an attempt to appease me with my request for non-colored drinks, Bot has come out with this concord grape water that isn't at all purple. That's a good way to differentiate between a cherry, lemon, grape, chocolate drink; just change the labels.

In all honesty, this drink came out way before I mentioned that novel idea to save companies money and save people's tongues from becoming blue when they drank/ate anything blue raspberry.

If you've never had Bot water, it's good, low calorie, and pretty flavorful. This grape is no different. No, it's not as good as that Blue Plum one I had a while back, but it's good. It does taste like concord grape, but I would say smells more like it than it tastes. They're all about light flavoring and optimum refreshment so this drink is right on par with their little schtick that they're running with. Water that tastes like concord grapes. You want it? Here it is.