Sugar - 840 Reviews

This is strange. There, I said it. It's lemonade and tea, but the sparkles and the sugar are super distracting. It almost gives the entire drink a bitter taste. The tea...what tea? It is sweetened with real sugar and has black tea and lemonade. There are a couple preservatives but not many. There is nothing in it to give it this wonky taste. Lemon juice, actual lemon juice, and black tea are the ingredients. Legitimate. Something is going on in here. It's not good.

This little guy proved to be a minor conundrum for me. You see I generally drink the protein shakes we are sent after I work out. That is what I was originally told to do when I first started going to the gym, so it's what I always followed. With this it seemed like I should drink it beforehand. Who needs an energy boost after a workout? Get that in there beforehand to give yourself a little extra push and stretch your limits a bit. Being that this is the terrifying modern age, I took this question to Google and found out that there is actually an argument amongst professionals as to when is the best time to consume protein in the work out world. Some say after because it helps repair muscles, while others say before because it will give you extra strength during the workout. You know what? I'm not that serious about this whole thing. I go to the gym so that I don't become a fat, lazy slob like so many Americans who are approaching middle age. I'm not looking to get ripped, I just want to stay remotely healthy and work off some of these unnecessary Thirsty Dudes calories. Since there was no definitive answer I chose to go with before the gym for this round. Let me tell you I certainly got an energy rush from it. I worked out longer and harder than I normally do, and now I'm a gross sweaty mess in desperate need of a shower, but I forced myself to write this review first.

A lot of protein drinks are chalky, due to the whey protein, but this is nothing if not creamy. It's also thick, as if a milkshake was halfway thawed and you pounded it. Luckily no brain freeze accompanied this ingestion. I think the greatest thing that Monster pulled off with these is that it's incredibly chocolaty and it doesn't taste a thing like an energy drink. I think this may be the only beverage that includes taurine that I have tasted that doesn't make me question if I'm being poisoned or not with chemicals. Sure the use of sucralose along with the sugar gives it a bit of a diet taste, but that is something you come to expect and accept with protein drinks. If they were laden with sugar they would kind of defeat the purpose of the workout. The 16g of sugar in here is pushing it a bit as it is.

At the end of it all, this tasted fantastic and I'm still buzzing with energy after a fairly intense workout by my standards. Who'd have known that Monster had this in them?

The way that some people talk about Tiki parties makes me think that there are some weird undertones at said parties. You know the kind that might involve a bowl of keys and swapping of some sort. Now I'm 99.9% sure that's not the case, but man do people get excited to dress up like they are in Hawaii and drink tropical tasting alcoholic concoctions. I personally have no place at these gatherings and will continue to keep my distance. They can continue to do what they do an if I ever get the urge to drink something that might remind me of palm trees and a warm ocean breeze I'll grab a bottle of Tiky pineapple. Actually, wait…€¦no this is just your standard pineapple pop and it's only the name that puts me in that state of mind. There are many other more deserving beverages to send my mind to paradise. Give me a glass of guava juice and I'm all set.

This is pretty much the same as their US pineapple soda except they use real sugar and it's made in Guatemala. Oh, and don't forget it has a much cooler bottle. It's made with artificial pineapple flavor that does well enough to imitate the real thing. It tastes closer to fruit than just sugar water.

Get out your grass skirts, your Hawaiian shirts and your rum if you so choose people. This winter isn't going to be going anywhere for quite some time, and anything that helps you keep sane I'm okay with. I will continue to hide under a large pile of blankets in read because your fun is not my fun.

Billboards and most advertisements don't really sell anything to me. I don't want to sell my house fast or get a loan on a 1995 Ford Winstar. I don't want to go to the casino and I don't want to sue anyone for that time I slipped on ice. I don't have a DWI and I know that Geico can save 15% or more on my car insurance.

One thing that I didn't know is that this little guy exists. Custard shake. Sounds good right? Sounds rich. Let me tell you friend, your imagination isn't lying. This is good and it is rich. I can also very simply review this for you. Ready? This chocolate custard shake tastes like if you went to Wendy's, bought a Frosty, left it in the car so you could run into a store to buy a new pair of shoes, ran into that dude that you don't like that talks to you even though you get the feeling that he gets the feeling that you don't like him, returned to your car only to forget that you had a Frosty in it and it melted. You shrug because at the end of the day, it's still fantastic and drank it all the same. It's that good. Melted Frosty. Nailed it.

Is everything nicer and classier in Italy? That was my experience in my brief time there. I have very little interest in coffee, and I extremely enjoyed my cups there. The baked goods were some of the best I've ever had and the people were all wonderful.

The picture on this label makes me wish I was in a little corner diner, or better yet a soda shop in Italy and a nice cold glass of Paoletti was being placed in front of me by a friendly waiter/ress. I would smile and nod politely, because I only know how to say excuse me and thank you in Italian, and as they walked away I would take a nice refreshing sip and all would be right in the world.

This is an exquisite grapefruit soda that borders on being dry. I don't understand how it has a dry flavor when there is 30g of sugar in it, but here we are. I mean it's definitely sweet, but I guess it's just not over the top like most other grapefruit sodas are.

I'm just going to sit in this cafè, slowly sipping on this soda, soaking in the atmosphere until the last drop passes my lips. Then I will get up with a smile, leave my money on the table and go get lost in a city I've never been to before and then none of you will have to read my ramblings anymore because I was too trusting of people and I was brutally murdered.

It's not often that we come across beverages from Poland. So far it's been a handful of juices and one energy drink, which I bought in Germany. I have Polish heritage, so I would like to taste some more drinks that they produce. That might be as far as my interest in my heritage goes. I just want interesting beverages.

This comes in a misleading bottle. I have found that when something comes in a bottle this shape it is a carbonated soda, but this lacks any sort of bubbles. True to its name it tastes like someone mixed peach and orange juice and added a bunch of sugar making it fairly syrupy. It has a decent enough flavor to it, but because of the bottle my mind keeps thinking that it is flat soda, which removes some of my enjoyment. It's an okay juice drink, but if Tymbark were to simply add some carbonation I think it could have been an exceptional soda, but hey, that's not what they were going for. The world doesn't revolve around my whim.

I missed this review by two days. Two days ago was "Eat a Cranberry Day." Not exactly the most "high holiday" of holidays but it's something. If you have to have a special day, you sign a couple papers and you make it official. You walk door to door with your little clipboard and have people sign it commemorating November 23rd as "Eat a Cranberry Day." Why wouldn't you sign it? It's not religious. It has nothing to do with race. It's not sad. You don't have to buy a card. Why not just sign it?

It's probably just "Eat a Cranberry Day" and not "Eat Cranberries Day" because cranberries are pretty gnarly fruits in themselves. They are bitter and you have to add a bit of sugar to make it taste "good." This drink went right in the middle. What they didn't add in sugar they filled in with bubbles. It's a little bitter and actually tastes pretty close to what a raw cranberry tastes like. It's lightly sweetened and lightly fizzy and it's probably not a drink for kids. I don't know anything about alcohol but I feel like this would be good as a mixer.

Happy belated Eat a Cranberry Day to you all. Maybe next year we won't overlook it like we always do to Physicians Assistant Day or National Cheeseburger Day.

My ladyfriend, who is a coffee snob, and a great hater of all things that contain zero calorie sweeteners said, “That's not bad at all.” That is some serious high praise from someone such as her. Me, I'm not so impressed. I can't help but concentrate on the taste of the stevia, and the weird aftertaste it leaves. The coffee taste itself is more than decent, but honestly the caramel flavor gets lost in the stevia for me. I know it's there with its little scuba gear on just swimming around in a pool of sweetener. It wants to come out. It wants to shine. Why won't you let it stevia?

While I'm sure the food served at a Guatemalan BBQ would be fantastic to those who feasted on flesh, I'm gonna say that I would be a bit let down if this is the quality of soda they were serving. Grape and Orange pop are the staples of any good backyard shindig, so at least they got the right flavor. They even went as far as to use real sugar. It's just too bad they didn't follow through with the taste. Grape is normally a bold flavor in the soda world, but in here it's almost an afterthought. It has generic sweet soda taste to it and it just seems like not enough of the grape was added. I would politely drink it if it was served to me, but this is nothing I would ever pick on my own. Instead I would be the guy in the corner downing all of the tamales that weren't made with meat.

Here's a question; if someone, such as myself, is not a fan of coffee, but enjoys a coffee beverage, what does that say about said beverage? Is it an exceptional coffee that has changed my mind, or has it gone off route from its coffee roots and in turn actual coffee fans won't like it? I'm going to guess somewhere in the middle. This is cold brewed coffee, milk and sugar. From the name I'm going to assume that the coffee involved equals a double shot of espresso. I think most coffee drinkers would embrace this drink. I could totally see my mom drinking this, but at the same time she is by no means a coffee connoisseur. My ladyfriend on the other hand would probably think this is gross. She is a barista, and thus is a coffee snob.

This tastes like coffee to me, but it's not very bitter. There's not too much sugar in here (7g) and the color is more brown than tan, so I'm going to assume the milk quantity is low as well. It's most definitely not black coffee, but you already knew that's not what you were getting yourself into. I think the enjoyablility rating of this is going to vary from person to person, so give it a try. At least they didn't use stevia like they did in their flavored versions.

What better way to ring in the day after a wedding than to drink a crisp, refreshing Bellini? This drink, according to people that drink and people that do not drink, was faithful to its name. It was very sharp. I think the carbonation mixed with the sweetness of the peach juice made it such but it was good. There were little bits of peach in it and it was supposedly made with 25% peach juice. This is also to be used as a mix but honestly, I don't know why you would want to ruin this otherwise very good drink with alcohol. I guess that is why I don't drink because "I just don't get it."

I hope that this company follows their own path and uses this same model to create other drinks using the same formula because I think they would all be this good.

Good. Good. Good. Good. Bitter. Bitter. Cold. That's the roller coaster that this drink takes. It's good for a while. It's got a good coffee taste. In hindsight I don't really taste any vanilla but the fact that it's not super coffee tasting I can only assume that it's partially due to the vanilla smoothing the edges like the nice router collecting dust in your late grandpa's basement. The bitter comes from the coffee. It's good. It tastes like a good, sweet, iced coffee. Where the cold comes from is the Stevia. It is quite dastardly in this drink. It somehow overpowers vanilla and coffee. It leaves you with a distracting cold that takes away from the otherwise good flavor of its brethren. How dare you. Show your elders some respect.

Let's be honest with ourselves, when you drink coffee out of a can you can't really expect a brew of very high quality. It's never going to be as good as getting something made at your local coffee shop, well unless that shop is run by a bunch of yokels who have no idea what they are doing. I've drunk a decent amount of these canned mochas and they range from horrible to decent. I've never been blown away by one before, until now...Oh wait, no this one didn't get me there either, although I really thought it would. It has a nice coffee flavor, and an exceptional chocolate taste to it. The problem is that they used a blend of sugar and stevia and that just throws the whole thing out of the window. I'm all for lowering the sugar intake of humans, but there are times when just using less sugar would be the better choice over using a zero calorie sweetener, natural or not. It almost always takes a nice, natural flavor and makes it feel wrong.

I don't want to dwell on the negative here though. If it wasn't for the inclusion of stevia, this would be the best canned coffee drink I have ever tasted. The chocolate would have been the secret of this drinks success. It actually tastes like a quality dark chocolate bar was melted down, and not like some garbage powder that most companies use. The fact that the coffee was cold brewed is also a nice touch. It's just too bad that one ingredient can knock down an otherwise really nice product.

This may be made from a concentrate with added sugar, but I'm going to give this little guy a break from my dumb rules because it's great. It's largely a sweetened orange juice, but it has these wonderful sunbeams of pineapple an guava that shine through the cloudiness and light up your taste buds.
Obviously I wish there was more of a guava flavor to it, as I am a guava junky. I could be handed a freshly squeezed glass of juice that was wholly guava and I would still wish I had more of that particular flavor. I will take what I am given though and I will happily drink it again and again.

The folks at Arizona are preparing for the worst. No, they are not in financial straights (at least as far as I know), they are simply doing what every smart company does, and that is prepare for the worst and come up with an exit strategy. Some companies figure out how they could sell all of their assets, and what they could get for everything if the worst finally hit. Others, more likely in less legal pursuits, bury bags of money random places so that they have something to fall back on in case they need to go fast. Arizona has forgone all of the traditional routes and has purchased a surplus of oaken barrels. They have chosen to ride the iced tea wave until the end, and if that leaves them homeless and penniless, at least they won't be naked and will show their sense of humor, by going the classic editorial cartoon route of wearing nothing but a barrel with shoulder straps.

While these barrels were originally bought as a joke, some quick thinker on the R&D team realized that until the day came when their last tea leaf was brewed and all of their clothing was sold off to the Richie Richs of the world, these barrels could serve another purpose; they could be used to brew a special blend of tea. You see if you brew the tea in the barrels some of the oak's flavor is absorbed into the tea giving it a more refined taste. The same method is often used in making wine, except with the tea it doesn't taste like death and rot, it tastes sophisticated. Add a little honey and maple syrup to that brew and you're good to go. Make sure you don't add too much though. Those are strong flavors that could easily distract one's taste buds from the oak notes. Luckily Arizona got it right on the nose. You can taste the tea, the oak, the honey and the maple and none of the flavors are fighting for dominance. This lightly sweetened version of this tea has a little sugar added as well (8g per serving, 20g per bottle). There's more sugar in here than I would expect in something that is lightly sweet, but to me it does have the perfect amount of sweetness for when I'm not looking for a straight tea, no sugar.

Unfortunately for the future of Arizona, some rookie, smashed up the barrels and brewed the chunks in the tea. Sure it has the same results on the flavor, but what about when the market falls out? What will the employees wear?

Sometimes I hate myself. I currently hold ill will against me because all I can think of while drinking this root beer is a non-existent radio edit of the Sophie B Hawkins song Damn Dang I Wish I Was Your Lover. Actually I don't even know if I hate that song. I don't think I have any opinion about it either way, it simply exists. That is not a feeling I want to have when I drink a root beer and luckily Dang! root beer does not leave me apathetic. It's on the smoother side of most brews and that is something I like from time to time. Luckily, this happens to be one of those times. I'm really enjoying this it's a traditional style brew. Sometimes you're looking for something more than that, something new and exciting, but then you drink a soda like this and you remember why it is the go to for most root beer, it's just great. I don't mean to say that this is a clone of everyday root beer. It's in the same ballpark as that, but it's playing for the majors, not that done AA team.

Now, decide for yourself.

Liquid Ice is back with a new variation of their (mostly) non-chemical tasting energy drink. Like this classic blue flavor this has a very candy-esque taste to it. Instead of tasting like Spree, or the ever popular Smarties (US version) this just has a general red candy taste. I can't exactly pin it down. It's not cherry, strawberry, or raspberry. Perhaps it's an amalgamation of all three combined. If there was a generic red Runt that just spelled out the word fruit, this is what it would taste like. Grape and Orange have their flavors that taste nothing like the fruit, and now red has its own variation.

I will say that it does taste ridiculously sweet, as you would expect liquid candy to, but there is only 28g of sugar in this can. I know that's a lot, but I expected much more from the taste. I can also assure you that this beverage is functional. I feel crazy, and it's been awhile since an energy drink has noticeably affected me in this way.

This is some reverse science at work. You take the common and separate the pieces into something new. I always thought that if you removed lime from the lemon-lime soda equation the result would be carbonated lemonade. This experiment in Crush proved that my hypothesis was wrong. Instead of something that resembles a bubbly summer drink it ended up tasting more like Sprite gone wrong. No, I don't mean that it's bad. I mean that it's like a happy accident. It's as if the machinery that made Sprite misfired and the lime was never added. It has that “major brand” sugar water soda base flavor, that a lot of the little guys just don't capture, but it just doesn't taste like lemonade. The reason for that may be that it contains artificial lemon flavoring. I feel sorry that the Crush corporation is doing so poorly. I mean they must be floundering if they can't afford to use real lemons, you know the cheapest of all fruits.

Lemon Crush is its own thing that fits in perfectly with their other flavors. It's enjoyable in its own way and who can argue with a cool glass bottle like this? I really miss when companies had their own distinct bottle shapes.

Okay folks, I'm stumped. I need to know the secrets of red cream soda, and the internet has been very little help. Most of the digital world claims that the only difference between regular cream soda and the red variety is the inclusion of red dye, and that they taste the same. While that may be true for some bush league companies, the real players don't follow those standards. There is most definitely an additional ingredient that gives it a little something extra. Other sources state that the missing link is grenadine, but that's not what's lurking below the surface of this bottle of Dang! The only thing I can think to compare it to is Kola Champagne, if that flavor actually tasted good and not 100% like liquid bubblegum.

Think about an above average cream soda with a fruity/slightly bubblegum undertaste. Yes, I just made up that word, but you know you can defer what I mean from that. It's a sweet soda, but not in a childish way. It's not just bubbly sugar water; it's just a sweet cream soda. Wisconsin has pulled through again to show its dominance over other states.

Oh hazelnut. Who would have thought to combine you with chocolate and make such a wonderful combination? Can I think of hazelnut and not thing of Nutella? Nope. Who cares? I love the stuff. Why wouldn't it want the association? Oh, because it's its own man and can just be himself and not be associated with the likes of another? Who cares, you stupid nut. I'll eat you alone and I'll eat you all creamed up into a remarkable achievement that is a spreadable chocolate.

Hazelnut in a coffee energy drink? Look. Hazelnut does what hazelnut wants to do and what she wants to do is fraternize with coffee right now. As an energy drink, this is fine. Good for me actually because I drank half a can and didn't lose my mind with the shakes. All is not golden, though, friends. This is oddly creamy and slightly "diet" tasting. Can you deal with it? It didn't taste terrible. It just tasted like a diet coffee drink that someone mushed up some Nutella in. Is that such a bad thing? No. It's not. So it's got a little bit of a diet taste? Who cares? Leave it alone. It's just trying to be accepted as something more that "an ingredient used to make the best bread spread alive." What have you done lately? Nothing. Oh, right. That. We don't need to talk about that. I thought we were done with that.