Derek Neuland - 489 Reviews

Flavored cream sodas have become my new favorite sub genre of drinks. If you think about it, you can add almost anything to cream soda. I wonder what a cola cream soda would be like? This is my first strawberry cream soda and I must say, I'm sold! This soda is delicious, and I'm not usually a fan of strawberry flavored drinks. It's the perfect mixture of fruity and creamy. I see that Lost Trail makes a root beer too. If it's half as good as this, we are in for a treat. I found this lone bottle in a Whole Foods in Utah so hopefully we can find it available somewhere in Buffalo.

Apple vanilla juice? Did I read that right? I had never heard of such a thing before I stumbled upon this in New Seasons. I'm trying to imagine what it might taste like but my mind is coming up blank so I'm just going to dive into the bottle.

It has a REALLY strong vanilla smell, just like someone was burning a new vanilla candle they bought from the mall. Not a cheap one from Sears, a "nicer" one from Yankee Candle or something. I don't know, I don't shop for candles. Upon first sip it does have a vanilla taste to it, but not as strong as the smell. It complements the apple juice really nice though. I'm into this. If this were what all apple juice tasted like, I would drink it all the time. It's a lot better than that Mott's crap.

When I was pulling this out of the cooler at a random gas station in Utah or Oregon (I forget), a lady asked me if I've ever had it before. I replied with "no" but in my head I was laughing because I get that question daily from friends. Whether it's in person, on Facebook, or over text message, friends are always asking me "Have you tried this drink? Is it good?" I almost wanted to tell her how funny her question was to me given that I scoured the cooler for this bottle (and the diet version) and that was the ONLY drink there we haven't reviewed on this site.

I labeled this as a cola because when I bought it that's what I thought it was. It wasn't until I took a sip of it did I realize that it's a Dr. Pepper clone. I suppose the name should have clued me in on that. For a Dr. Pepper clone, it's descent but I've had better. It definitely didn't make my "taste buds flip" as the tagline suggested. Maybe they would have if it was sweetened with sugar and differentiated itself from Dr. Pepper a little more.

Going into this I knew this was going to be bad. Any energy drink found at Big Lots (where drinks go to die) named "Max Velocity" is not good. On top of it, there's no flavor on this. What flavor is "Uncaged"? At least there's a grainy photo of a cheetah on the can.

Yup I was right, it's like a Red Bull/ Mountain Dew mix. So gross. It burns the throat as it goes down.

Key Lime soda is my favorite thing to stumble upon. It's not that popular/common so it doesn't happen too often. When it does though, my face lights up (or I assume it does). I stumbled upon this bottle in a Big Lots in Salt Lake City and couldn't believe my eyes. Two of my favorite sodas, key lime and cream soda, combined!

First off, I wish this wasn't sweetened with high fructose corn syrup. It's very noticeable and makes the soda much heavier than it should be. I think this is the reason why the key lime taste isn't has strong as it could be. The cream soda part is great, and in combination with the key lime it's one of the best flavored cream soda's I've had.

Damn you HFCS for making a delicious soda not as good!

When I saw this alongside Silk Nog my heart jumped because it's my favorite time of year. While many of my friends protested that it's "too soon" for eggnog, I disagree. It's never too soon and I wish it were offered year round.

While this is no nog, it's a seasonal drink so I couldn't pass it up. This is the friend your best friend brings along with them. You'd rather just hang out with the person you know and love, but you'll give this other friend a shot.

While this may be my first chocolate mint soymilk, it will not be my last. This stuff is really delicious! It's a very smooth chocolate with a nice crisp mint that isn't overpowering. While my love for eggnog has not be surpassed, this wonderful soymilk has earned its spot next to it in the fridge.

My good friend and business partner Alex Wrekk went to a brewery in Eugene, OR on her day off yesterday. While she went for the beer, she excitedly called me to tell me about the flavors of soda they also made. Later in the day she surprised me with bottles of two of them! Isn't she the best?!

I've only had one chai soda before, but it's one of my favorite sodas of all time. The smell of this is strong of chai, which is awesome. While I don't drink chai tea as much as I used to, I still love the smell of it. The chai taste isn't as intense as I was hoping, but it's still good. It almost taste like weak grapefruit soda, with a splash of chai.

Since this was made at a brewery, I can only assume by the taste of it that it is a fermented soda. I'm not a huge fan of fermented sodas so that might be throwing me off a bit. They definitely got the 'fizz' part of the name down. This is one of the fizziest soda's I've ever had.

Want to make this at home? Here's what you need: two parts diet Pepsi, one part artificial cherry flavor. That will about do it. There's not much else to say about this soda. Luckily the cherry flavor cancels out some of the diet taste and it's semi-enjoyable.

A trip to Hogsmeade isn't something I'm able to do on a regular basis. I wish I did have the time, but my life is so busy. You see I opened a wand shop in Diagon Alley after Ollivander's closed down. Okay, yes I know he didn't just decide to close down the shop. If I were kidnapped like he was I would have probably closed too. Anyways, so I own a wand shop and that takes up most of my time.

Yesterday I was lamenting to a customer about how I hadn't been able to get a butter beer in a long time due to my long hours of work. They told me to wait a minute and came back with this wonderful looking bottle. I didn't know they started bottling butter beer, which goes to show you how much I get out. I wasted no time in opening the bottle and the delicious butter beer smell wafted into the air.

And the taste you ask? Oh man, the taste is perfect! If you've never had butter beer before it tastes like a butterscotch candy (Werther's Original to be exact) in liquid form. So delicious and so sweet. I can already feel my teeth forming cavities. I loved the bottle so much I asked my new friend to buy me four more. I gave them a free wand in exchange. Maybe I shouldn't have done that since a wand costs around 5 Galleons and five bottles of butter beer is only a couple of Sickles. Oh well, it was worth it.

I found this at a specialty soda shop here in Portland called Cosmic. After visiting Galco's, Village Candy, and Pop Culture, I didn't think there was a chance they'd have anything that I hadn't seen before. To my surprise, there were a good handful of brands I hadn't heard of yet. I decided to give this one a try first, perhaps because I was with two friends from Philadelphia at the time.

Disappointment. That's what the first sip tasted like. It has a very syrupy taste to it, but practically no bite. It honestly was more of a sarsaparilla than root beer. It wasn't horrible (I've had much worse), but it wasn't that great.

I have a housemate from Rhode Island who introduced me to Coffee Milk. I had never heard of Coffee Milk before, nor did I know it was the official state drink of Rhode Island. I didn't even know state's had official drinks. After reviewing this list, apparently most states really like milk.

Anyways, Coffee Milk is made by adding a little of this coffee syrup (which is basically high fructose corn syrup and coffee extract) to a glass of milk (or in my case, I added it to soy milk) and mixing it up like you would using chocolate syrup to make chocolate milk. The end result looks like coffee that has a good amount of cream/milk in it. More importantly, it is delicious! I had my doubts at first, but I now wish I lived in Rhode Island where this is the official state drink. It tastes like a coffee milkshake, which now makes me want to make a coffee milkshake with this syrup.

I need to order a couple of bottles of this soon. I can already see myself getting really addicted to this stuff.

I've been having some awful tooth pain lately. I finally made an appointment to see the dentist, but last night was not fun. My mind was racing about how I can't afford to go to the dentist and fearing that the doctor is going to tell me I have to stop drinking soda. With my mind racing and my tooth pain, I was having a hard time falling asleep so I decided to give this relaxation shot a try.

I have been drinking a lot of lemonade lately so when I saw lemon flavor on the bottle, I assumed it was going to be tart. To my dismay, it was not. It wasn't bad, just surprising. My housemate claimed it smelled and tasted like Pine-sol but he couldn't be farther from the truth. It's a smooth lemon taste. It's actually a mellow taste, which is nice.

As we know with "functional" drinks such as this, the taste is only half of it. I was interested to see how well this worked because unlike a lot of relaxation drinks, this doesn't have melatonin in it. They went for the all-natural approach to relaxation, and it worked. Within an hour I was asleep and slept like a baby. On a night where I almost gave up on sleep, this was a miracle drink.

This is the second time I have bought a bottle of this, but only the first time I was able to drink it. You see, the first time I had this the bitter cold of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan decided to freeze and shatter the bottle as I slept. Lesson learned, don't leave your soda in the van overnight when the temperature it below zero (that's -17 in Celsius).

Not this time! I was finally able to taste this elixir (I love that it's called an elixir). I thought it was going to be a spicy pepper infused cola. To my surprise, it tastes a lot like Dr. Pepper. But not just any Dr. Pepper, cherry Dr. Pepper. The best part is the slight deep pepper burn in the after taste. It also has a medicinal/ natural cough drop taste slightly. I am not a huge Dr. Pepper fan, but this is worlds better than it.

Joia soda, we meet again! Your complicated looking flavors always intrigue, and never disappoint me. I have never met a grapefruit soda I haven't liked, and this is no exception. I can't really distinguish the chamomile or cardamom in this, but the grapefruit is strong and delicious. While other grapefruit sodas have a decent amount of grapefruit flavor, this actually tastes just like taking a bite out of a grapefruit. I've already finished the bottle, but my mouth is still watering from how delicious it was.

I am under the impression that all green "super food" drinks are delicious. Everyone I've ever tried is good and filling and full of lots of stuff that's good for you. I don't like to drink them on a regular basis because they are very thick. I'd say once a month or every other month I pass the juice cooler at Whole Foods or New Seasons and think "I really need a drink that is good for me for a change". I don't even want to know what all the soda I drink has done to my insides.

This particular green drink has lots of delicious green vegetables that read like the worlds most delicious seaweed salad. Mmmm, now I want sushi. Anyways, there's also a bunch of fruit purees in here that make it sweet so it's not just a liquid salad. Columbia Gorge (or as we call it in Portland, CoGo) succeeds in making another delicious drink.

Speaking of CoGo, it's a bummer for the rest of the USA that they don't have a large distribution. Here in Portland they are in every store right next to Odwalla and Naked (they are basically competitors with them if you will). You know what? Columbia Gorge makes WAAAAAY better drinks than the other two.

I just found my new favorite drink. I wish I could say I was exaggerating but I'm really not. This is exactly what I always hoped a coffee soda would taste like. It has a really strong coffee taste, but it is also sweet and bubbly. It almost has a cream soda taste to it as well. I just passed this bottle around a room of skeptical people and they all said it was delicious.

This little bottle was $2 but it is so worth it. It would be awesome if they sold this in larger bottles because I feel like I'm drinking all 6 oz of this way too fast and I want it to last forever. Isn't a normal cup of coffee like 12oz? That would be a good size. I'd pay $4 for that, probably far too often than I'd like to admit.

Since we intake so many calories from consuming drinks all the time, I have actually come to look forward to diet drinks. 80% of the time they taste horrible, but every once in a while you'll find one that surprises you. This is one of those instances. Usually diet iced tea is really gross and tastes like a barrel of chemicals. Somehow Snapple has managed to keep the toxic taste out of this half and half. I have a feeling the lemonade might have something to do with it, but I'm not complaining.

As a half and half, this is just "okay". It's not the worst, but it's far from the best. It's middle of the road. Medicore, so-so, or any other way you want to put it.

Eric's Famous, we meet again! I have only ever found this at Whole Foods, but this time I found the other flavors besides root beer. I'm a big cola fan so finding new brands is always exciting to me. I came here to do some work and was going to get coffee, but then I saw this and decided to give it a try instead.

As far as energy drinks goes, it tastes great and is really effective. As far as cola goes…€¦ meh. I've had worse but I've also had much better. The vanilla and the goji cola have been recommended to me so I'm excited to try those next (saving the best for last perhaps?).

Reed's, you never let us down in making a delicious drink. I picked this up today instead of coffee. I haven't had much luck (in the ways of taste) when it comes to "natural" energy drinks. It's naturally caffeinated with green tea, which is nice and gives it that mellow green tea flavor. There's also a bunch of different fruit juices mixed in that make this quite a delicious drink.

What puts this over the top is the 23,000 mg of fresh ginger root it has inside. That is not a typo, 23 THOUSAND milligrams. The next ingredient is green tea with 1,000 mg. While it doesn't have the burn of ginger beer, it's a great ginger taste throughout that I wish more ginger drinks had.

Confession time: I spend way too much time on Tumblr. I spend most of my workday in front of a computer so it's far too easy to keep Tumblr open in one tab and refresh it every 5 minutes. Sure there is a lot of annoying animated gif's and Daniel Tosh apologists on there, but there is also a lot of rad things as well.

Today after I followed someone (http://rotgirlrot.tumblr.com/), they posted the following: "WHOA HEY WAIT A SECOND YOU'RE A THIRSTY DUDE fuck I LOVE YOUR WEBSITE DUDE HELLO /fans self"
This right here made my day. It's really nice to get feedback like this from people who read our ridiculous ramblings about weird drinks.

So since you made my day new friend, this review is dedicated to you! I was surprised that we hadn't reviewed this yet. I even had to check our master list twice because I could have sworn we did it. More often than not we look past the common drinks, but we eventually come back to them. A&W makes a decent (not amazing) root beer, and that's also how I feel about their cream soda. It's thick tasting due to the HFCS, but has a nice vanilla taste to it. The weirdest thing is that it has caffeine in it, which is very unusual for a cream soda.

And for those fellow tumblr addicts, feel free to follow me: http://derekneuland.tumblr.com/