Sugar - 840 Reviews

Greg liked tea but he needed something more. He needed that sugar on his tongue. He needed some fizz but didn't like the syrupy soda pop taste. One day when walking through the city he found what he thought to be the perfect drink. It was a sweetened, carbonated tea. Not only was it tea but it was oolong tea so it was fancier to him. He promptly paid for it and went to the park to watch the dogs chase the birds.

He took one sip and instead of being thrilled and elated, he kind of sat silently on the bench. He had been let down again. This tea was carbonated and sweetened but it was just too much. It was so sweet that it took most of the tea flavor away. The entire time he drank it, he just wanted an unsweetened tea like he was used to more and more. It had a tea aftertaste but just tasted like a strangely carbonated cola. Almost like a less bubblegum champagne cola.

He dumped half of the bottle down the drain pet some dog's heads on the way out of the park and went home to his nagging girlfriend and cruddy cat. It was not Greg's finest day.

John learned a lot of worthless stuff in high school. He learned how to sew a plush bear, historical event that won't help anyone outside of a bar league quiz night and what happens when you put vinegar and baking soda together. He always enjoyed science but mixing household events just wasn't enough. He needed something else.

He went home, put on his dad's safety goggles, you know, for safety, and started mixing. He went in the pantry grabbed iced tea mix and a whole peach. He went into the liquor cabinet using the key that he has seen his dad blatantly hide beneath the globe in the living room dozens of times and grabbed seltzer water; something that didn't need to be in the liquor cabinet in the first place and put everything on the table.

He made a glass of iced tea, regular stuff, and hand squeezed a peach in to it and then carefully and delicately poured some seltzer into it. Once combined he took one sip, for science and discovered something very sad. All he had done was recreate Lipton Sparkling Peach Iced Tea. Not a total loss. He did had a nice glass of tea to drink but he also had quite a mess to clean up. Also, he had some 'splainin' to do because when his daddy got home he noticed that some of the seltzer was gone.

I believe there is a dark magic at work in my life. Over the past couple of weeks there have been a handful of times where I have woken up feeling like complete garbage. I feel like I'm hung over, even though I haven't had a drop of alcohol. The only conclusion that I can reach is that someone is using the dark arts to pass their hangover onto me. They are out partying all night, getting trashed, and then waking up bright and early all chipper while I don't want to get out of bed to do a thing. I must find this person and break their spell so I can go back to living my productive life.

If I remember correctly dehydration is one of the big causes of a hangover. I drink plenty of water all day, so that shouldn't be an issue, but just in case it is I'm drinking this coconut water to help replace all of the precious fluids in my body. This is an interesting variety of this type of beverage. Mixing pineapple in with coconuts is nothing new, but adding tea into the mix is. I don't really understand if it has any real benefits other than taste, but I do enjoy it. The added passion fruit juice doesn't hurt either. Actually the whole thing is a bit sweet after being used to unsweetened coconut water. It seems like the sweetness from the juices would be enough, but they added sugar anyway. I could use a tad more tea flavor in here, especially since the fruit flavors are so strong. It just gets lost a bit. I appreciate where they are going with this though. Hopefully a version with no added sugar will come out and I will totally be on board.

If a lemonade and tea is an Arnold Palmer, and any blue juice and tea is my patented Laura Palmer, what would one call coconut water and tea? The only other Palmer I can think of at the moment is Amanda Palmer, but that doesn't seem to fit. Oh wait, it's a Leiland Palmer. His hair went white, coconuts are white. Send out my proclamation. While you're at it bring me the head of whoever is giving me their hangovers.

I have to say folks, snowy mountain tops do not me think of grape soda. I understand that Jackson Hole is going for a Wyoming aesthetic and even though it may be unrelated, a snowy mountain is visually more appealing than “Cheyenne Backyard BBQ” would be. Maybe a “Rock Springs Vineyard” could have worked out for them. Actually, screw it, fitting or not the Grand Tetons are great and are better than anything I can think of. I would happily drink this bottle of grape soda after trekking up a mountain. Well as long as I had time to rest and cook up some veggie dogs to accompany it.

This is a fairly standard grape soda, with the exception of it being sweetened with real sugar. It's ridiculous how a specific sweetener can make all of the difference. It brings out the flavor a big more and makes it less syrupy than you are probably used to. Why am I sitting in my office writing this review when I could be climbing a mountain in Wyoming? I think I may have made some poor life choices.

PREVIOUSLY ON THIRSTY DUDES: (Insert montage of how I thought the green tea Chai Elixir. It's highly dramatized and leaves you on a cliffhanger).

Now that we're all brought up to speed I wonder what excitement this week will bring us. Oh this time around it is white tea with a little bit of white peach nectar thrown into the mix like some quasi interesting secondary character. I have to say that yet again Chai Elixir has delivered something interesting. The chai isn't as strong in this variety, but I'm okay with that. It's mostly white tea with hints of peach around the edges. There's some extra spices in there, but they are more subtle notes than a full on flavor. I don't think a higher level of chai would really have worked well with the peach so a wise choice was made.

I must warn people that these drinks are not your everyday soda. They are unique and are made for sipping and pondering, not just mindlessly gulping them down. So go in with an open mind and you can go on an interesting little trip. Speaking of trips I hear they are going to Asia next week to work with oolong tea.

Well it turns out this has just been a carbonated tea weekend. On top of that they have both been pleasant to the taste. That's a phrase right? “Oh darling, I truly loved the fancy dinner you took me to. It was just pleasant to the taste.” That sounds like something that somebody who is not me would say. I don't think I've been to a fancy dinner since I won the Pepsi Challenge bowling tournament when I was like 11, so I don't know how people talk when they are at nice meals. I'll assume they say things like that.

While this is pleasant to the taste it is, as Mike said about the lemon variety, strange. It's a lightly sweetened raspberry tea that tastes like it is the stuff they use in their PureLeaf line, but the carbonation just does something weird to it. I do like it, but it somehow takes the tea-ness out of it a bit. This is a nice change of pace from regular soda, and the reduced sugar helps. It's just going to take some time to get acclimated before I can truly enjoy it.

If you were a child of the 80's you probably remember the dumb Reese's Peanut Butter Cup commercial with the tag line “Two great tastes that taste great together.' You could switch that up a little bit and it would also be fitting for this beverage: “Two great tastes that taste wrong when prepared in this way, but somehow taste magical together.” First off if you've ever tried to ice some chai tea you probably know that it tastes very strange. Something about it just doesn't translate correctly and the wrong spices tend to stick out and it can get a bit intense. On the other side of the spectrum for te most part when people try to carbonate tea and it just tastes weird. Perhaps they are adding too much sugar or something, but I never truly enjoy it.

The folks at Chai Elixir are either very gifted scientists, or just plain lucky and stumbled upon a formula that overcomes all of the obstacles that would normally be in its way. The base of this is a great carbonated somewhat sweetened green tea. It doesn't fall into any of the traps that other tea sodas do. Then they mix in the chai and it becomes wondrous. It's a very distinct chai taste, but the spices aren't being rammed down your throat. It's just a general flavor that pairs perfectly with the green tea into something unusual and enjoyable. I'm guessing it's the addition of the orange juice concentrate that melds everything together. Orange juice, the beverage that is pretty boring on it's own but makes other things better.

I've been to Mexico a couple times. I didn't do many indigenous things but I would like to think that there are Mexican kids running around drinking this stuff like crazy. Maybe they do and maybe they don't. I don't know. My imagination is telling me that there are bottles of the stuff everywhere. I hope that people are taking them and making cool art from it as a social message about littering. Full circle.

How is it as an adult-ish Caucasian American male? It's alright. It's fruit pop. It's a strange lemon if it's only lemon. It's lemon, don't get me wrong but there is something else in there. Lime? Probably. I mean, I don't care but don't poop in my hand and tell me it a BLT. Is that how the phrase goes?

I don't know about all of you folks, but when I think of “hard rock” the first thing I think of is a Flying V guitar. I mean it's the only tool to get the job done when you're looking to rock, and you mean to do it hard. Wait…€¦.no…€¦that's not right. Actually, now that I think about it never once in my life did I think that a Flying V looked cool. I've actually passed negative judgement on bands in the past before I even heard note one, because they were playing these monstrosities of instruments. Just say no to tacky guitars.

I'm not even sure if I've ever stepped foot in a Hard Rock Cafe. I may have once, but it also could have been a Planet Hollywood. I remember an ex's family took me and it was cheesy, the food was bad and it was in Niagara Falls. Am I wrong? Are they cool? Should I start collecting shirts/hats from their locations all over the world? By this beverage I'm guessing no. It's been awhile since I've had a “classic” tasting energy drink. This tastes like a generic Red Bull with a little bit of a berry taste to it. It's got that chemical taste that you love to hate, and the flavor is nothing new.

My real question is why is a restaurant expanding into beverages like this? I found it in a local grocery store and it just doesn't make sense to me. It's not like they are famous for them or anything. It's just completely random.

If someone were to tell me that I needed to try a cherry/cranberry juice I would think, “That sounds delicious, but I bet it's super harsh.” Both fruits are known to be a bit overwhelming in their pure form, so I was fairly shocked at how smooth this juice was. It had no hard edges, and the taste was just ridiculously good. I know this isn't pure juice, as it's part of their Refresh line, but I absolutely loved this. Both flavors are very present but complement each other in a way that I never would have expected. Cheribundi has never been a company to slouch on their quality, but someone must have taken great pride in concocting this mixture.

I saw cherries for the first time at the grocery store this weekend. That means that it's starting: Summertime. I'm not wearing any socks. The only thing that's left is to find someone selling lemonade on a street corner.

This is summer wrapped in a bottle and it's good. Everything is properly portioned and well represented, too. The cherries are tart and fruity and the limeade is slightly tart and sweet. Man. Look, I shared this with a fellow developer and in hindsight, I selfishly wish I hadn't because it's good. Is anything bad? Nope. Not in here. This is all good things. Positive. H.R. from Bad Brains would approve of the PMA of this drink.

A Schneider's beverage in a can just seems wrong to me. Actually any of the Pennsylvania tea company's products in cans just doesn't sit well with me. I am so used to them coming in plastic bottles/jugs or cartons and that is how I like them. Those packaging give them an air of cheapness that I find oddly charming. I mean I still drank the contents of this can, but the entire time I wish the packaging was different. I can imagine that anyone not from the area would probably think I was being insane, but I am a fan of tradition and the way things used to be.

This is a very sweet beverage. There are 72g of sugar in this 23.5oz can. Actually I take that back, I just did the math and 24oz of Coke would have 78g of sugar. 72 is still a lot, but not as obscene as I previously though. You probably shouldn't drink all of this in one sitting though. This claims to be 50/50, but in reality it tastes more like 75/25 with lemonade taking up most of the flavor, but neither it nor the tea taste very authentic. It's like they took their lemon tea and just added more lemon to it. I know that shouldn't be much different than a lemonade tea, but there is something different about it, and I'm not a huge fan. It's a perfectly serviceable drink that I'm sure most people would love, but it just wasn't sitting right with me.

Beach Slang are a punk/indie band from Philadelphia, PA. Jason recently went on tour with them and at their show at Sister in Albuquerque James, JP, Ed and Ruben did a guest review for Rocket Fizz's Peanut Butter Soda. Their first full length will be out on Polyvinyl this fall.

There's nothing like a big can of milk to make you want to go and work out. There may be a lot of other ingredients in here, but flavor/consistency wise what it boils down to is that is tastes like you're drinking vanilla milk. Yes, I am aware that the protein in these shakes usually comes from whey, but I also normally drink them after going to the gym, not before, which is how this beverage was intended to be enjoyed. The main ingredient in here is skim milk, and that really shows through. It's probably mostly psychological, but it makes me feel logy, even with the taurine and other energy producing ingredients present.

Is there anyone on this planet who before heading out for a run heads to the fridge and pours themselves a nice tall glass of milk? The thought of it just sitting in your stomach makes me think about the inevitable amount of vomit that would spew forth within the first ¼ mile.

I appreciate what they are going for with this, and I enjoyed the chocolate version, but as a pre-workout drink this simply does not work for me. Afterwards I could see, but surely not before.

Last summer at the Pride parade I stopped into a little shop that was on the route that I knew had an ever changing, but always decent soda selection. When I saw they had Cock …€˜n Bull ginger beer I instantly thought they had missed a great opportunity to move some product to the people celebrating right outside their doors. Seriously, just a small sign with the brands name and I bet they could have sold a few cases worth. They didn't realize what they had, and that was the last time I thought about Cock …€˜n Bull until I came across this new variety in a grocery store on the west coast. It's not often you come across a flavored ginger beer, so when you do, you take notice.

Cock …€˜n Bull may not be the craziest, strongest ginger beer on the market, but what they lack in heat they make up with flavor. It's more like an old fashioned ginger ale with a little burn to it that hits in the after taste. It's got a nice afterburner to it, like your favorite bowling alley arcade game. The cherry is nice and subtle, but it still adds a lot to the drink. It's like someone mixed a cherry Slurpee with a ginger beer, and that may sound gross to you, but I mean it in the most endearing way.

Look folks, Mike and I are born and raised in Buffalo, NY. Even though I haven't eaten meat in 18 years wing sauce still runs through my veins. I've eaten my fair share of vegetarian chicken wings all across this country of ours, and yes they are chicken wings, not Buffalo wings, and I am highly critical of the sauce places use. There is a very specific recipe here in Buffalo and if it's not right it can ruin the wings for me. I was fully expecting to be disappointed in this, but not to this extent. This tastes nothing like chicken wing sauce at all. It just tastes like a citrus soda that has some spice to it. It's almost orange. It's almost grapefruit. It tastes like there is a healthy scoop of capsicum in there as well. If you took all that unappealing mixture and then watered it down you would have this soda.

I was afraid that maybe I was being too critical of it, so I had my friend Ruben try it and all he said was “I absolutely hate this” and then walked out of the room. The verdict is in, this is gross, and not appropriately flavored at all.

Is this cola? I don't think so. Is it sparkling? Yeah. Is it sweet? Kind of. You know what it is? Bitter. Those Italians, they love their bitter drinks. I'm not "America versus Italy-ing” this thing but they love their bitter drinks that we filthy American's love sweet. Does it mean there is more sugar? I can pretty safely say that is the case. Is this good, though? Hey, that's the million dollar question, right? Well, aside from the fact that I expected this to be sweet, it's not bad I guess. Reading the word "traditional" means that it's pretty assimilated to people's taste buds and it also means that the people who enjoy this have been enjoying it for years and don't want anyone messing around with their things.

So, back to the question at hand; is this good? It's not for me. It's probably going to break people's hearts to hear that. A global apology to those that love this drink. I just can't get over it. I need some sugar on my teeth. I know it's not a sweet drink but the flavor just isn't for me.

"Here. Come try this," my boss says to me. Since I am rarely on the other side of that statement, I had no choice but to accept the request. I thought it was going to be a bad invitation but it was actually a "Here. Come try this. It's good." not "Here. Come try this. It's gross." which is the route I enjoy taking.

Did it taste like smores? Yes, sir or ma'am. Well, I should say that it tasted like the ingredients of smores. Think of a deconstructed smore. You initially get the coffee from the Frappuccino itself followed by a split second of chocolate, then a lot of marshmallow and then some graham cracker. They're all there but at different times. It's fine by me. It was a nice jolt of flavor to wake up my day and feed my recent childish addiction to smores. Never lose your inner child. Smores are a gift and a treat and a treasure.

Mocha is as close to coffee as I can get. You can call me what you want but I'll say it myself; I'm a weakling. I'm a shell of a man. I can't handle it. Your eighty year old grandma is more of a man than me. Cool. Now that that's out of the way, this is good. It's not only good but it's diet and good. Strange, right? It is, as advertised, sweet and creamy and pretty rich as well.

I think that it's getting pretty easy to eat and drink well. This is probably half the calories that a non-diet version would be and only tastes mildly more diet. We're getting there. Disguising diet stuff. That's the future. Not space. Not time travel. Things that are diet but don't taste diet. Screw you moon mining.

Unlike Jay, I eat meat. That being said, if I can eat an animal that was treated fairly before he was, let's face it, murdered, that's better. Morrissey, while wildly militant about it, is right in that respect. He's right about a lot. He's Morrissey. This milk is advertised as being produced humanly and who can't appreciate that? Sure, there are probably some people out there talking about how they don't care how the animals are being treated as long as they have a hamburger on their plate at the end of a day.

Does this chocolate milk taste happier? Not really. I'm not saying that it tastes sadder. If anything, it tastes thicker. It's creamy chocolate milk, more so than anything you make at home and probably thicker than a Nesquik. Yes, there is sucralose in it and yes you can taste it but it doesn't come off as a super diet chocolate milk. It's better for you in terms of calories, protein and calcium than "regular chocolate milk." You wouldn't guess it because it's pretty rich and if you didn't know better, tastes like it is not at all better for you than "the other guys" chocolate milk.


Our buddy Marvo over The Impulsive Buy reviewed this drink, too which reminded me that I had it in my queue. Now, all thanks to him, I really want another glass of it. You've done it again, Marvo.