Derek Neuland - 489 Reviews

Since I normally don't like diet drinks, I bought this along with Cherry Coke to contrast the two. Much like I expected, it tastes the same with the usual fake sugar aftertaste. The cherry flavor masks the gross taste enough that this actually isn't that bad as far as diet drinks go. It's still nothing that I'd want to drink regularly.

I didn't mean to buy this. I wanted a grapefruit pop, but I didn't mean to buy the diet version. I didn't notice until after I opened it so I decided to just keep drinking it.

The weird part is I didn't notice it was diet when I tasted it. For a diet pop, this is pretty good. It has a nice tart flavor to it as well. Hopefully next time I'll look as I'm grabbing pop out of the cooler at Wegmans and be able to try the non-diet version.

I have spent very little time in the south. I've been to New Orleans for a weekend, but was only there for a big music festival and barely saw the city. I also have never had a peach in the south, so I didn't know what to fully expect with this "southern peach" flavor.

I actually never eat peaches, but have consumed a good amount of peach flavored drinks over the years. Come to think of it, I have probably had 10 peach flavor drinks for every 1 whole peach I have consumed. I really don't eat that much fruit except for avocados.

Anyways, this is pretty good peach lemonade. There is no mistaking that this is a peach drink, as it smells and tastes just like a fresh peach. I wish it were a little more tart though. As far as lemonade goes, this is kind of weak in the sour department. Overall though, it's another pretty good drink by Calypso.

Until today, it had been years since I had Cherry Coke. I had nothing against it. I just never desired to buy one. But yesterday I was craving Pepsi but made myself buy this because we hadn't reviewed it yet. Seriously, if I drank a different drink every time I've had a normal Pepsi in the past year, I'd have a LOT more reviews.

This was better than I expected it to me. Obviously it's not the fanciest cola, but it has a really nice cherry taste. It makes sense that this is a staple in the Coca-Cola line because the cola and cherry flavors go really well together. Here's to another omnipresent soda that I can get behind.

I always knew Turkey Hill made a damn good iced tea. When I was first getting into iced tea many years ago, Turkey Hill was my go-to brand of choice. I always knew they made lemonade as well, but could never tear myself away from the iced tea. I also was afraid they would make bad lemonade so I just decided to pretend it wasn't there. It's like the father whose kid is a troublemaker and he'd rather just look the other way and pretend it's not happening rather than deal with the heartbreak.

Thankfully, this pomegranate lemonade is not going to be sent to 'juvi'. It's not an amazing flavor, but it's definitely better than most. If we want to keep with the child analogy, this would be a B+ student. It does a great job and is above most of it's class, but it's still has a little bit of work to do if it wants to get into Yale.

My friend Biff, who is a fellow Juggalo historian, I and decided to get together for a viewing of Stranglemania. For those who don't know, Stranglemania is Insane Clown Posse commentating on old Japanese wrestling death matches. What better drink to consume during the viewing than Faygo. Sadly, Biff asked me not to spray his room with Faygo.

This is a flavor I've been looking forward to trying for a while. I love grapefruit soda, but have never had a grapefruit/lime mixed soda. I must say, it's quite nice. It has the tart flavor of the grapefruit with a nice lime aftertaste. It's a nice twist on a classic grapefruit pop.

I have a weird relationship with Coconut Water. I have nothing against him, but he's not my favorite. He always shows up in nice packaging and chilled, but usually leaves a sour (not literally) taste in my mouth. When I picked him up today, he was hanging out with my good friend Aloe Vera. Now I haven't known Aloe Vera as long as Coconut Water, but he's a good dude and he always brings a smile to my face.

When they showed up today together, I was excited to try them together. They had an interesting fragrance on, not bad but not mouth watering. They had "Goji Berry" and "Lychee" clothes on, two names I was familiar with and have liked in the past. Now I don't want to blame it all on him, but I wish Coconut Water wouldn't have come. He kinda ruined the party. Otherwise, I think it would have been a really fun and memorable experience. He just kept bumping into everyone else and making things a mess. It's too bad because I was really looking forward to this.

I feel like there should be a Venn diagram for this drink. It has so many things stacked against it that are intertwined into one. It is a natural diet energy drink. All three of these things tread in dangerous territory, but the three mixed together in one can could be monumentally bad. Luckily, Steaz has a good track record so I'm not that worried.

First sip: eh.....
Second sip: It has a strong tea taste with a chalky berry aftertaste.
Third sip and beyond: It definitely doesn't have a battery acid energy drink taste, which is good. I don't know if it's the lack of sugar, or the 0 calorie natural sweeteners in this but this is definitely not sweet enough for my taste. It has a real bitter taste. People who love green tea and yerba mate would probably love this, but not me.

I've been trying to avoid high fructose corn syrup lately. Anyone who has tried this knows how hard it can be. It's in everything! Even most ketchup has high fructose corn syrup as one of the main ingredients. I was feeling a little sleepy/exhausted from working all morning so I decided to take a walk to the Lexington Co-op to get some food and a drink. Since I was feeling sleepy, I thought an energy drink would be good. Luckily, the co-op doesn't carry anything with HFCS in it.

Now I've had some hits and misses in the past with "natural" energy drinks. Either they actually know what they're doing and it taste great, or it tastes really bland and almost worse than normal gross energy drinks you find at the gas station. Steaz usually makes good drinks so I opted to give this one a try. I must say, it's quite nice! It's a really good mixture of green tea and orange soda. Unlike most energy drinks, it's not heavy at all. It does leave a little bit of a weird aftertaste, but nowhere near as bad as most cans of battery ac.... I mean, energy drinks.

There are two types of people in the world: those who love Mountain Dew, and those that think it's really disgusting. I am on team "Mountain Spew". I have had this Mountain Dew flavored energy drink before and didn't like it. I bought this for a friend who was going to be screen printing all night, but he ended up not needing it so I decided to drink it.

Now when you mix a drink I already hate with lots of typically gross tasting energy ingredients, it's a recipe for disaster. This taste like someone mixed Mountain Dew in a vat with a piece of carpet and then filtered it through a moldy sponge. Sure it does the job and gives you energy, but at what cost? I feel like my stomach hates me right now.

This is such a weird drink. I really liked the Jamaica soda I had by Jarritos so I was excited to try this juice. The first I learned: I don't like the smell of hibiscus. Maybe other people like the smell of it, but to me it smells like a pile of dirty socks. Luckily it tastes much better than that. It's a sweet juice that is very close to a cherry taste. Unfortunately, the dirty socks smell creeps into my nose with every sip and takes away from the delicious taste. Someone really needs to de-stinkify this juice.

Mouth: "Is this supposed to be water?"
Mama Fratelli: "It's wet, ain't it? Drink it!"

These thoughts were the first that came to mind as I saw this bottle in Wegmans today. The bottle of this isn't black, it's clear. The water itself is black. To quote blk.'s website:

"Our proprietary blend of Fulvic Acid (a derivative of plant matter) is mined from an 80 million year old source deep within the earth. Naturally black in color, the formula binds to the molecules of our pure Canadian Spring Water turning it naturally black, with no artificial dyes, coloring, or additives. Fulvic Acid is critical in growth of plant life, helping the transportation and absorption of nutrients. Fulvic Acid's small molecular structure allows for the fast absorption of over 77 different trace minerals and elements, powerful electrolytes, antioxidants, and free radical scavengers."

So yeah, this is black water. Pretty weird huh? I was expecting a sulfur smell upon opening the bottle, but it was just as odorless as normal water. As for taste, I was hoping for a charcoal aftertaste. Was there any? Nope. It sadly tastes just like any other water. It's pretty refreshing, and is good spring water. Unfortunately I don't have the palate to know the difference in different brands of spring water. The one thing that's interesting is that it has 30mg of sodium in the bottle, which I assume is naturally occurring from the minerals in it.

blk.'s tagline is "Enjoy the Dark Side of Water". I can only assume they hope this will be big in the goth community. If this is actually better for you than traditional water like they say it is, I'd drink this over boring clear water everyday.

File this one under "I drank it because it was free". Regular A&W root beer is a fine, generic root beer. It's a step above most store brand root beers, but a diet version of an already mediocre drink? Bad news. This taste like someone dumped dish soap into a can of perfectly fine root beer. I'm sure there are some people who wouldn't mind the taste of this, but I'm not one of them. The only reason why I'm finishing this can is because I don't want to be rude and dump it.

With all the drinks in the world, it's hard to keep up sometimes. That's why it's nice when people suggest drinks for us to try. It's even better when they buy them for us. My friend Jenna was appalled that we hadn't reviewed her favorite flavor of Calypso so she bought me this bottle of Black Cherry Lemonade. She was talking it up a lot, and I was afraid of it not living up to the hype and thus ending our friendship when I gave it a bad review. I was kinda afraid to open the bottle because of how much was riding on its contents.

Luckily, it is as good as she made it out to be. The black cherry has such a strong and juicy taste to it. And then the perfectly tart lemonade kicks in and completes the drink. It's a little heavier (or maybe rich is the word I'm looking for) than most lemonade due to the great black cherry flavor, but it works and I like it a lot.

Like everyone else in this ghost town, I like to go to the saloon everyday. The usual characters are always there: One-Eyed Jack and the blacksmith playing poker, the owners son 'lil Johnny playing with his dog in the corner, and Davey playing the piano while two women danced on the balcony. The only problem is I always get made fun of for my drink of choice. While I'm told Smitty's Saloon has the best whiskey this side of the Mississippi, I don't like the hard stuff. My father was a drinker and I didn't like what it did to him so I swore I'd never try it.

I prefer Outlaw Orange Cream. No, it's not because I'm a criminal. I only had that one run in with 'the law' once when I was playing a prank on my best friend and took his horse around back. The sheriff and I straightened that all out years ago. I like this soda pop because it has a classic orange cream flavor. I've heard some fancy hot shots in New York City are trying to make orange cream soda that will appeal to everyone, but what do they know? This is great the way it is. It has a great orange flavor, with a really nice smooth aftertaste. Sure I wouldn't mind if it was a tad bit smoother, but it's a damn fine orange cream if I do say so myself. In fact, when this one is gone, I just might order another one if Smitty ever comes back to this side of the bar.

I fell victim to marketing yet again. I went to the store today and noticed a big selection of Turkey Hill teas and lemonades in the cooler. Turkey Hill makes some of my favorite drinks and has never disappointed me. I was going to just get a traditional raspberry iced tea, until I saw this jug of raspberry lemonade with the ominous “limited edition” beacon. As much as I wanted that raspberry iced tea, not wanting to potentially miss out on this flavor drove me to buy this instead.

I had reservations with this before opening since it is a light/diet drink and sweetened with fake sugar. Luckily, it's pretty damn good! It doesn't have a diet/chemical taste at all, which is good news. In fact, in a blind taste test I doubt I could identify this as a diet drink, which means they're doing something right. It has a really nice sour taste to it, which is key (in my eyes) for good lemonade. Hopefully others concur with my thoughts and Turkey Hill rethinks this as being only a limited edition drink.

I've never been to anywhere in the world that could be considered tropical. The closest I've ever come is Disney World in Orlando, Florida. While some may call it the happiest place on earth, I don't think anyone has ever called tropical. That label is reserved for places like Hawaii and the Bahamas. I have no desire to go to these places because they are very hot, and I don't like extremely hot weather.

But if I were forced to go to somewhere tropical at gunpoint, I would imagine drinking this there would be very fitting. While I'm not crazy about coconut water, this one is actually pretty good. It tastes really fresh and has a real creamy taste to it. While the summer heat in Buffalo doesn't compare to the tropics, this is definitely helping me …€˜beat the heat' as they say. My only complaint about this is you can't really taste the pineapple. This is disappointing to be because pineapple drinks are delicious and I was really looking forward to tasting the combination of coconut and pineapple.

The weird thing about diet drinks is the more you drink them, the more tolerable they become. Normally I despise diet sodas because they taste like chemicals, but I've been drinking a lot of Diet Pepsi over the past couple weeks. This is because I've been staying with my mom for a few weeks until I found a place to live (which I will be moving into tomorrow) and all she has here is Diet Pepsi. Being the soda fiend and night owl I am, I have been drinking enough of it to build up a tolerance to fake sugar in soda.

I realized I had built up this tolerance when I took my first sip of this diet birch beer. I was expecting it to taste gross, but the first sip wasn't that bad. In subsequent sips I could taste the Splenda. This is a really light birch beer. It has a slight bite in the aftertaste, but not nearly as much as I would like and tend to expect from standard birch beer. This definitely gets filed in the "not the best, but not the worst" file.

I saw Jimmy Eat World play last night. I've been a fan of them for many years, but had never seen them live. Being the music nerd I am, I found their set lists for this tour so I knew what to expect. It was a good mixture of Bleed American, Clarity and Futures, with a splash of Chase This Light and Invented.

They started the set with "Bleed American" followed by "A Praise Chorus", which was their standard opening on this tour. What came next, I wasn't expecting at all. "Today is the 10th anniversary of the release of Bleed American so we're going to play the whole album". The show I already knew was going to be good, just became amazing!

What does this have to do with this pop? That is exactly how I feel about this orange cream. Jason has given two other flavors by Vintage Soda great reviews, so when Mike gifted me this can (because he doesn't like orange cream soda. Crazy, huh?) I knew I was in for a treat. The first sip was good, tasted like a standard orange cream. It wasn't until the 2nd or 3rd sip that it hit me: this has a tangerine taste to it! Sure enough, tangerine extract is in the ingredients after orange extract.

Call me crazy, but I love tangerines more than oranges. In addition to the citrus medley, it has a really nice vanilla taste. It's not the smoothest orange cream, but it compliments the tangerine/orange flavor so well. To top it off, this soda is clear and is made with real sugar which is great seeing as they actually live by their "100% Natural" label, unlike some drinks.

I recently moved back to Buffalo from living in Portland, OR for 2 years. When I got back, fellow Thirsty Dude Jay gave me some drinks from his stash to get my queue going. He pawned this drink off on me, presumably because he wasn't looking forward to it. I don't blame him, it has all the characteristics of a horrible energy drink: no flavor listed, company you've never heard of, diet/sugar free/0 calories, bad artwork, etc... Oh, the pull-tab says "buzz" on it too. Ugg.

After a little research on their website, I found out this is pink grapefruit flavored (or should I say flavoured since this is a Canadian product?) This was good news to me since, as I've said many times, I love grapefruit flavoured drinks. But it's still a diet energy drink so I was still skeptical.

Here is my thought process after opening it:
Hmm, smells like grapefruit and not like chemicals.
*takes first sip*
Definitely tastes like grapefruit, now lets wait for the chemical aftertaste.
*it never comes*
Wait, really?
*takes another, bigger sip*
This diet energy drink is awesome! It tastes like Squirt and doesn't taste gross at all. After a half dozen sips, I already feel energized and can't wait to be productive the rest of the night. Once again, the fine folks of Canada have made a great product.