Raw Cane Sugar - 12 Reviews

What we have here is soda for royalty. Do you really think that they would let a common peasant drink something with such a crest on it? One needs to be a blueblood for sure in imbibe such a treat, and what a treat it is. If you've ever spent a long day at the jousting arena, just to be let down by the low quantity of vanilla flavor in the soda you purchased to clear the dust out of your head holes, then may I suggest trying this? Well, if you have the proper lineage that is. This soda is very, very heavy on the vanilla, but remains ridiculously creamy and smooth. This isn't your blacksmith's cream soda. If you see him drinking it make sure to alert one of the guards walking around so that he can be properly beheaded in the public square.

People over the age of 50 and those in their 20s and 30s have very different prospective on Brooklyn. The place has changed through the decades, as has much of New York. It's been cleaned up. It's been gentrified. It's had most of its seediness removed. I don't know if that's a good or a bad thing. Sure you can feel safer walking down the street to buy a slice and a soda, but wasn't the danger part of the adventure? Actually, I have no idea. The first time I went to Brooklyn was 1997 and things were well on their way to becoming what it is today. I'm sure if I lived there I would want it to fall somewhere in the middle. I don't have to step over dope fiends on my way home, but I also can afford to live here and don't have to annoyed by all the trendy youngsters. I am officially an old man.

I will say that if the taste of this soda was any indication of the old days, I would take them. This is a really solid birch beer, that's a tad on the sweeter side of things. It's important to note that it is a red birch beer, and there is an almost fruity hint to it. It's also got a nice amount of wintergreen in the mix. I would love to be hanging out on a stoop with a “ghetto blaster” eating a slice and washing it down with a bottle of this soda. Oh man, I'm an old man that really wants pizza.

The UK has some crazy rest stops. I know there's one in Delaware here that is supposed to be all fancy, but the one where I purchased this was beyond anything I could ever anticipate in the states. There was a nice duck pond and a fancy restaurant. Heck even the cafeteria style section looked like a rich persons version of Old Country Buffet with everything being served to you by people in chef outfits. I can only imagine that they spoke French while doing so as I saw a multitude of people eating fancy croissants.

With all of the lavishness around me, and a cooler full of “artisanal sodas,” I thought this ginger beer would blow my socks off. I cracked open the bottle cap and prepared to enter the station at flavor town, all the while preparing myself for one hell of a burn. What I got was not what I wanted or expected at all. There was a decent ginger flavor, but the proper burn just wasn't there. There was something happening, but it wasn't what normally comes with a ginger beer. It was like the soda was trying to match it's ornate surroundings and just couldn't pull it off. This soda is a classic movie where a down and out character from the wrong side of the tracks gets a make over and tries to live like the other half. It never works out in the movies and it didn't work out for the soda. In the film everyone would end up accepting it for what it was, but you know what this is real life and I'm not going to accept an inferior soda just because it came clean to me.

I might have too high of a standard for ginger beer, but it's what I love and I will not accept anything less than greatness. The company also makes a “Cool Ginger Beer” that I can only assume tastes like ginger ale, that I would like to try. This would have been decent if it wasn't for the weirdness of the burn.

I found this in a bar in Boston a couple weeks ago. I went along with my friends as they bar-hopped around Cambridge, drinking nothing but water and Diet Pepsi. Finally, at our last stop they had this fine beverage on the menu so I obviously ordered it. There's only so much Diet Pepsi I can consume in one night.

I am a fan of Squirt, so whenever I find a different grapefruit soda I have to try it. I have never been disappointed with a bottle/can and this was no exception. It was very sweet, which surprised me since a lot of sparkling drinks are lightly sweetened. It also had little chunks of grapefruit, which was pretty awesome, and a great surprise.

I apologize for the crappy photo. Bars aren't known for their stellar lighting as you might know.

Somewhere in a dark dungeon of a laboratory a scientist, possibly a mad one, is wringing his hands together in celebration of his victory. In the light of one of those things that is just two poles that shoot electric waves between them he is one happy little monkey. What are those things called anyway, and why does every evil scientist have them in their lab? Are they a way of turning evil into electricity? These are questions the public has, and which we demand answers! Back to our scientist: He is so pleased with himself because he has created an unholy abomination of water and antioxidants, and to top that he has added flavor to it. Somewhere deep in the pages of the bible god proclaimed that man would not mix water with those who fought against the mighty oxidants, but that did not stop our evil friend. He will certainly go to hell for these acts, but he has created water that will fight free radicals that tastes like a nice peach-mango combination, and that is certainly worth eternal damnation. Even if he does have to “face his maker” his plan is to claim that in reality it is no longer water because it's so sweetened and flavored, albeit lightly. You see he simply made an antioxidant ridden drink. That would fool god right?

A list of some things that are interesting:
- A goldfish has a memory span of three seconds.
- A man named Charles Osborne had the hiccups for 6 years.
- Butterflies taste with their feet.
- It is possible to lead a cow upstairs...but not downstairs.
- The Main Library at Indiana University sinks over an inch every year because when it was built, engineers failed to take into account the weight of all the books that would occupy the building.;
- The electric chair was invented by a dentist.
- If Barbie were life-size, her measurements would be 39-23-33. She would stand seven feet, two inches tall.
- Hippo milk is pink.
- If you rearrange the letters in Vin Diesel it reveals his credo: "I End Lives."
- Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team his sophomore year.

More interesting than all of those is the taste of this drink. It tastes like winter holidays and tropical locations at the same time. I can only assume that children in the Caribbean leave bottles of this out for Santa on Xmas Eve. Somehow this tastes nothing like I expected it to, yet as an afterthought it tastes exactly like it should. I anticipated a heavy clove flavor, but in fact in this drink lime reigns supreme. The hibiscus rounds out the lime so it's not very tart and it makes it taste fancy. If it were just those two things I'm pretty sure I would love this drink. When you factor in just the faintest hint of clove it puts it through the roof. The clove is the secret to the craziness of this drink. There is nothing harsh about it, but it's there and it's exotic. It's cold here in Buffalo, but while I'm drinking this I'm lounging on a beach with the sun beating down on me and I have a plate of freshly cut mango on the table next to me. Life is good.

So you've finally made it to the coastline. You've been out in California for the past four days and all you have to show for it are awkward meals and events with family that you don't really know. It has been a dumb trip that your parents talked you into. They finally convinced you by pointing out that it wouldn't be all family stuff; there would still be fun in the sun. Well four days later and this is the first moment you've had to yourself, and you're heading back to Oklahoma first thing in the morning. At least you finally made it out to the beach at the end of your last day. It's quite a sight to behold. The sun is shining at the waves are crashing onto the rocks. The only thing that could make this more perfect is the nice crisp root beer you have in your bag. You reach in and pull it out...what the!? You had packed a nice Virgils, but in your hand you know hold a bottle of Monterey Bay with a note from your aunt that reads "Thought you might like some local flavor." Well I guess that's nice of her. I mean it's still root beer, and it's a company you've never tried. You twist off the cap, lean back against a rock and take a sip. That sip is nearly "spit-taked" everywhere. There is definitely something amiss with this root beer. You take another hesitant sip. Yup, something is wrong. It tastes like someone started to brew a batch of nice old-fashioned cowboy root beer and then forgot to put in 80% of the ingredients. You can't quite place what exactly it is that it tastes like, but it definitely is an incomplete root beer. You try to make the best of it and work through the bottle, but it's just not happening. Your stupid family has gone and ruined the only good thing about your vacation by swapping out your time test root beer for this bottle of liquid garbage. It truly is the worst "root beer" you have ever tasted. Now you have no choice but to go back and start a small fire in their garbage can.

For a while now I've seen these little guys sitting on the shelf of Wegman's natural drink aisle. They used to have a different design with robot animals on them. It looked like a kids drink, and I'm not a huge fan of flavored water so I always passed it by. I can only imagine that there was a meeting at the company where they decided to change their image in order to reach a wider market. I keep picturing the Paul F Tompkins bit about peanut brittle. Someone surely must have yelled "I want five modern fonts on my desk by five o'clock! That's right five by five!" I think the decision they made was a wise one. The new look of Bot looks "new" and "fresh," but at the same time it could still be alluring to children. Bright colors will do that.

On to my other concern: do you remember in the 90's when flavored water was all the rage? I certainly do. I can also tell you that every one that I tried was terrible. The water would be flavored, but for some reason the companies felt compelled to add artificial sweetener. It's water people. It doesn't need to be sweetened. A little fruit flavor in there and you should be all set. The powers that be and I did not see eye to eye. As a result I avoided flavored waters.

About ten years ago or so Vitamin Water popped up. For the longest time I didn't try it because of my previously mentioned reasons. When I finally did I was shocked to see that I actually enjoyed it. It was a gross between the gross flavored waters of the 90's and Gatorade. Similar companies started popping up. Bot is going for something along those lines as well. The thing is that their water drinks are a lot thinner than their counterparts. This has more of the consistency of water than other ones I've tried. The flavor is also lighter, but it's definitely there and enjoyable.

Does this taste like a bottle of water with a lemon in it? No. Does it taste like a syrupy mess? Also, no. It's in the middle ground right where I like it to be.

Much like Jay's fears over the red cream, the large plastic bottle this came in also turned me off. It screams "cheap soda for under a dollar". Sadly, my instincts were right. There is barely any cream flavor so I would hardly call this an orange cream. As far as orange soda goes, it has a good smell and tastes better than big name orange sodas like Sunkist. But that's as far as it goes. There's nothing special about this pop.

Whenever I see the word "cream" in a soda, the vegan instincts in me kick in and I have to check to make sure it's safe to drink. The fine folks at Sioux City decided to add "non-dairy" to the label, which is much appreciated.

This is a damn good bottle of orange cream soda. As I proclaimed this, my friends Adam and Cory were intrigued so i passed the bottle around. They agreed with my sentiment. It's not as creamy as other orange cream soda's I've had. It has a mild cream after taste. The cane sugar lets the orange flavor flourish without the sharp after taste HFCS gives you.

This is fairly strange. It's a ginger ale made with real ginger, so it has a very mild burn. You may be saying, "Well that's not strange." Well let me finish Captain Impatience. The weird part is that it's kind of fruity. It has lemon and lime in it. The fruit that stands out most is pineapple. It has an initial ginger flavor that fades into a fairly strong pineapple aftertaste. The fruitiness and honey in it make it way sweeter than I'm used to ginger ale being. It's not horrible, but it's just not what I'm looking for in this type of beverage.

This is a soda I try at least once a year because I keep hoping I'll like it more than I do. It's not a bad cola. In fact it lacks the bite that most cola's have which is nice. The aftertaste is what I'm not crazy about. The bottle says it has herbs and spices in it, and that is what is probably contributing the interesting aftertaste. It sort of reminds me of that holiday Pepsi Spice that was available a few years ago that had a nutmeg aftertaste. Although, I loved Pepsi Spice and I'm not a huge fan of China Cola.