Jason Draper - 2709 Reviews

So, I found myself at the store earlier today, trying to search out a supply of eucalyptus for the family of koalas that have taken refuge in the abandoned apartment above mine. No, don't be silly, I'm not trying to get those cuddly little dudes high. Eucalyptus doesn't affect them like that. It actually has some toxins in it that make them sleep a lot. Believe me, these guys need to sleep. They keep me awake all night blasting old Nickelodeon cartoons about their kind. I tried feeding them Marley's Mellow Mood, but that did nothing. This store doesn't have what I need. I should have found a Whole Foods. All I could find was this honey eucalyptus green tea. It's a little bitter because of the green tea, but the honey sweetens it up a bit. I never knew what eucalyptus tasted like before and I couldn't properly describe it now. Go ask your local koala, if they aren't passed out. Remember to not call them bears though or they will just call you a racist.

Today I spent the day in the studio recording with my band. It was awesome and we had a lot of fun. An added bonus was that we were locked away and we missed the complete annoyance of the St Patrick's Day parade on the streets below. We wrapped up a little while ago and I was walking to my car when I noticed some drunken jerk had completely trashed the side of my car (there was a video camera in the parking lot and the driving was definitely a drunk parade goer). So here I sit, hating drunken idiots even more, waiting for the cops. What better way to pass this time then with a drink review?

Bai is turning out to be a pretty incredible company. They use the fruit of the coffee plant in their drinks for its antioxidant properties. You may expect that to be gross, but it doesn't taste like brewed coffee. It actually tastes like a really fruity tea. This one specifically tastes like tea with butt-loads of fresh peach juice added to it. It's good enough that it's helping me calm down. It is also so good that I didn't even realize that this was the diet version until I was halfway done. Yep, sweetened with erythritol and I didn't even realize. That gives it two thumbs up from me.

In the movie Clifford there is this one scene that I just love. Mary Steenbergen is berating Charles Grodin for not liking children. Charles Grodin yells, "I love kids. As a matter of fact I have a nephew I'm very fond of". She asks him his nephew's name and he responds: "I want to say.... Mason. Clifford! Little Clifford!" I can't get that out of my head when I'm drinking this.

This hasn't gotten that good of reviews before, but I really like it a lot. It's very creamy and has almost a caramel flavor to it. Apparently the company that makes Dad's root beer used to make it. This seems like a much better version of Dad's. Way to move backwards. Oh and Clifford is criminally underrated.

What can I say about this? It's True Brew. They make consistently great teas. This is just filtered water and organic green tea. No sugar or sweeteners of any kind added. It's just a nice bitter green tea. Sit down, put your feet up and enjoy one of these yourself. You've earned it.

Today Dan, Tony and myself took a day trip up to Toronto to visit Soda Pop Central, which is the largest soda pop store in Canada. It was incredible we got a little out of control and spent way too much money on way too much pop. Afterward we stopped by Toronto for some veggie dogs from a street vendor (50 Toppings Guy for those in the know) and some other great veggie food.

On the way home we decided to open up this can of ICP "Energy Sauce" as it's called on the can. We had a good laugh at the ridiculousness of it all. It is a self-proclaimed can of "Frothy, Freaky Frosty, Refreshing Energy Freshness Can of Shazam!" How can anyone take that seriously? We drank it down and the laughter fell into a comfortable silence. The other two were staring out their widows while I was looking straight ahead as I drove. After a couple of minutes I hear Tony yell "What the hell!" I look over and he's in full clown face paint! I look to the back seat to get confirmation from Dan that this is in fact happening and he too is all painted up! From the look on their faces I quickly ascertained that I also had face paint on. We then noticed that absolutely terrible hip-hop about beating up rednecks and spreading love to "my ninjas" was playing out of the stereo. It was a truly terrifying experience. We had suddenly become Juggalos! We were in fact "Down with the clown." We tried to scrub it off, but it wouldn't go anywhere. After a couple hours it eventually faded away and Smashing Pumpkins came back on the stereo. Beware to all who want to try this drink. It is more powerful than you would ever expect.

Oh yeah it tastes like Red Bull with way more sugar added. Woot! Woot!

This is on par with the other Mary Anna's teas. It's a pretty sweet black tea with peaches mixed in. The ingredients actually say "peach pieces", but there are unfortunately no chunks in this bottle. I'm assuming they cut up peaches and let them soak in the tea. Then, before bottling, they strained out the chunks. I would have really enjoyed it if they had been kept in there. I don't believe I've ever had a tea with that sort of extra fun added to it.

One thing I don't understand about the Mary Anna's brand is that they love to add lemon juice to all of their teas. I think it's completely unnecessary. I think it even detracts from the great natural taste of the tea and the fruit flavoring. Peach and lemon are just two flavors that fight too much when mixed together.

Thanks to Thirsty Dudes I now have the wonderful fruit pomelo in my life. It's an Asian grapefruit that's not as acidic. I really enjoy it. When Mike and I found this in a little Asian market I quickly claimed it as my own. I wanted it to be a lot stronger than it actually was, but you can't win all of the time. It's an over sugared pomelo juice that has been watered down a bit. It's nothing spectacular, but it's still a decent drink.

Soda pop is supposed to be a delight for children and adults alike. It's supposed to spread joy and wonderment to the masses. It's a sparkling sweetness that is meant to dance the Charleston on your taste buds. What it's not supposed to do is taste like vitamins. That's right, this tastes like a mixture of all natural and Flintstones chewable vitamins that were ground up with a pestle and mortar and poured into a bottle of carbonated sugar water. If Frostie was managed by a member of the Bluth family, they would have surely exclaimed, "I've made a huge mistake", in regards to this soda.

For too long fruit punch has been run by the more tropical areas of the world. Everfresh has decided it was time to put an end to this long running era of tyranny. Although they don't refer to it as such, this drink is a fruit punch for America. Peach, Plum, and Pear can all be found locally (locally meaning in the US) in abundance. They've managed to blend them all together in a way that creates a new flavor that tastes like home. If you search them out you can detect each individual flavor, but if you blindly down a bottle, it just tastes nice and fruity.

We normally don't review beverages that aren't already prepackaged. I made an official decision to make an exception for this review.

McDonald's is gross. I think everyone over the age of 10 knows that. Yet millions of people eat there daily. I don't get it. The last time I ate food from there was in 1995. I remember my friends wanted to go there after school and I got an order of fries. I can't even remember when I last ate one of their burgers. Even though I never eat the food, I still find myself sighing once a year as I walk through their doors. The Shamrock Shake is my weakness. Since I was a kid, I've been obsessed with them. As soon as winter looks like it might end, I get excited because I know this minty milkshake will be available soon.

I decided today that it was time for my yearly visit. On my way to the mall to pick up a birthday present for my lady-friend, and some jeans for myself, I made a pit stop to get a milkshake. The restaurant still looks and smells gross and the Shamrock Shakes are still wonderful. A nice thick vanilla milkshake with just the slightest bit of mint mixed in. It shouldn't be good, but it really is dreamy. They have also switched to a classier clear cup. Also, this year it comes with whipped cream and a cherry on top. Even better. If you want one, hurry up. They will only be available for a few more days.

Flying Bison has improved upon their Ginger Soda. This is not as sweet and has way more ginger added to it. I still think it needs some work, but they are fairly new to the game and are still messing with their recipes. In most drinks, if there is a peach flavor involved it is the main attraction. In this soda it is only faintly there. I don't know if I would have even noticed it if it wasn't labeled "peach". It was getting to the end of the batch, so that may affect the levels of peach to ginger. I still think there is great potential in the Flying Bison sodas, so I will continue to try them as they become available.

Do you know what I hate? Straight up V8. I blame the tomatoes. Tomatoes are strange things. On their own they are the devil in food form. Seriously disgusting. I can't get over it. The thing is, salsa is one of my favorite things ever and the tomatoes in that don't bother me at all. I also like red sauce. I think ketchup is a crime against humanity, though. The smell alone makes me want to hurl. V8 didn't really stand a chance in its original form when it went to war against my palate.

V8 eventually saw that they were never going to be able to please me with their old business model (I mean I am who the company is always trying to please). They stepped up their game with the Splash and V-Fusion lines. They realized that if they mixed a bunch of fruits and vegetables together (yes tomatoes are still in the mix) it actually tasted decent...and not like something Beelzebub would be sipping on in the sixth circle of hell.

This is one of the best that V8 has to offer. Each 8oz glass contains a serving of both fruits and vegetables. In doing so it performs some sort of sorcery that makes the drink still taste like raspberry iced tea. This has sweet potatoes, carrots, and tomatoes in it. You would never know unless someone spilled the beans. Apparently they still keep Satan on the payroll.

Dear Olde Brooklyn,
I marked this correspondence as private and personal, so I hope you took the proper precautions before opening it. I don't know how to tell you this without shocking your system, so I'll just come out with it. You have a spy in your product line. No, I don't mean a pointy nosed fella wearing all black or white. I'm talking about real deal espionage here. I would have called you, but I fear our phones may be tapped. This is serious business. Who knows how far their plants go into your company.

I blame the youth culture that has taken over the once fair neighborhood of "Billysburg." I believe they may have used their terrible sense of irony and love of PBR to work their way into your company. As far as I can tell, once they gained access to your factory, they found the barrels that you store your root beer in (Root beer is always stored in barrels right? Candy wouldn't lie to me!). They dumped out your supply of precious root beer and replaced it with root beer scented cola. While it may be a decent enough cola, and the little root beer that was left in the barrels flavored it slightly, it still clearly tastes like cola.

I can hear the sound of fixed gear bikes closing in on my office. I fear they may be on to me. I don't know what end these spies are working towards, but please use the knowledge I have passed onto you in whatever manner you see fit.

Sincerely,
I. M. Fletcher


ps. This message will self destruct in five seconds.

In the 80's there was nothing cooler than skateboarding. It's all my friends did and talked about. Somewhere along the lines skate videos came out. Companies took video of their best skaters, put it to music, and made magic for kids everywhere. My friends and I all had Powell Peralta decks, so we were obsessed with the "Bones Brigade" series. My favorite out of them all was "The Search for Animal Chin." The plot of the video was that the skaters were looking for a wise man named Won Ton "Animal" Chin. They searched everywhere for him and skated everything in their path. It led to some pretty intense sessions. At the end they find a half pipe in the desert with a Chinese symbol on it. The message is that "As long as skaters keep searching for Chin, they've already found him." I feel the same way about iced tea. We search high and low for the perfect tea and we come across a ton of incredible stuff in our adventures. This may not be the ultimate tea that we're searching for, but it's good. It's a blend of a bunch of different teas mixed together. It's "barely sweetened", so it's nice and bitter with a slight peach flavoring. This may not be Chin, but it's certainly a tea he would drink.

Did you know that when coffee is harvested it's a fruit? I certainly had no idea. Apparently it's a fruit and coffee companies discard the skin and the fruit, only keeping the center bean to make the caffeinated drink that billions of people are obsessed with. This may be the most interesting thing that I've learned thus far while being involved with Thirsty Dudes. I personally think coffee is swill. When chocolate is introduced into the mix it's not so bad, but regular coffee is grossville station. This made me very wary of this line of drinks. Coffee and fruit? Ick.

I decided to try this one on for size during dinner tonight. I twisted off the cap and took my customary sniff. Surprisingly it smelled like sweet fruit with no coffee smell to note. For the record I do think that coffee smells incredible, I just can't get down with the taste. I took my first sip and learned some even more interesting facts. The fruit of the coffee plant does not taste a damn thing like what the masses know as coffee. It was as if there was a parade in my mouth. I let the taste linger on my tongue for a bit, so it was a fairly long parade. I'm sure there were people on both sides (getting more and more annoyed by the second) waiting for the parade to end so they could get to their destinations.

The bottle says it's mango flavored, but the label lists both mango and pineapple as ingredients. It really tastes like a perfect blend of those two fruits. My brain wants me to think that the drink is gritty for some reason, but it definitely is not. I think I'm just imagining stray coffee grounds in my juice.

The added bonus of this great tasting drink is that coffee fruit is apparently the ultimate super-fruit. Pomegranate has 65 ORAC units of antioxidants. Acai has 100. Coffee fruit has a shocking 4,000 ORAC units of antioxidants. Any oxidants that were in my body prior to ingesting this have surely been banished to the depths of coffee hell. By coffee hell, I mean some terribly artsy coffee shop where all of the patrons and employees are the most pretentious group of people to ever be assembled. The walls are adorned with terrible art that they think is the deepest thing ever. In their minds they are about to turn the art world on their ear. Really they are just rebelling against their parents, since they still live in their basement, even though they are in their mid forties.

Before I even opened this drink the packaging made me fall in love with it. It's so bright and vibrant in a very classy way. The shape of the bottle is also pretty great. I obviously would have preferred a glass bottle, but at least they had the decency to use recycled plastic.

For starters, Pitaya is another name for Dragon Fruit. I learned from the label that the flower of the Dragon Fruit only blooms at night. That's a pretty sweet little nugget of knowledge. I will admit that I was a bit skeptical of this drink because I'm not a fan of coconut water. Every other flavored coconut water I've had tasted like the flavoring fruit had curdled the coconut milk. Pitaya + does not taste like that at all. It reminds me of a juice box I used to drink when I was a kid. Which is strange because those "juice" boxes were filled with so much artificial junk that they were labeled "juice drink." This on the other hand is the picture of healthiness. It's made to keep your digestive system healthy and to cleanse your body of toxins. I strongly believe that they should manufacture these in juice box form for parents to buy their children. I bet the kids would never know the difference, and you would have to keep them away from those school lunches. No matter how delicious those mounds of mashed potatoes and turkey smothered in gravy are, there is no way they are ever remotely healthy for you.

On top of producing a very healthy drink that is also very tasty, Pitaya is also a socially conscious company. The fruit is harvested from farms in Central America where they only hire single mothers from the community (Who they pay well, I might add) to help them care for their families. They are committed to sustainable farming and run one of the only solar powered facilities in Central America. For these things you get two thumbs up from Thirsty Dudes.

People always say it's the simple things in life that bring the most pleasure. Wandering in the woods. Riding your bike around aimlessly. Watching Wet Hot American Summer for the 937th time. Arguing whether Sugar songs are too long. These are all wonderful things. Sometimes life gets complicated, so you deal with it and hope for the simpler times to return. Rob's Really Good understands that. They know that sometimes all you need is water, agave nectar, and hibiscus. Three simple things that are wonderful together. Sweet. Flowery. Delicious.

I've been watching too much Mad Men and it's obviously affecting my reviews. This reads like I'm writing copy.

This has been sitting in my fridge for quite some time. After drinking Malta Goya anything that is malted makes me weary. I'm also 99% sure I was racially profiled when I purchased this. I got it from a tiny African market. When I walked in all ongoing conversation ceased. When I brought my drink to the counter there was no price on it. The two employees shot each other a look, nodded, and then told me a price that was higher than expected. Oh well, it was the only drink they had that we had yet to review so, I won't have to deal with them again.

Tonight I decided I finally needed to get it over with. I grabbed the bottle (that eerily looks like a beer bottle) from the fridge, sighed, and twisted off the cap. I expected it to have a super malty smell, but was shocked to discover it had the scent of a freshly sliced green apple. Things were starting to look up so I took a big gulp. This is exactly what I want out of an apple soda. It tastes like a perfect apple. It tastes crisp and has a slight malt/barley aftertaste. It's not enough to distract you from the glorious apple taste. So many apple sodas out there have that disgusting fake green apple flavor, but Bavaria got it right. For that I salute them. I was expecting this to taste like liquid garbage, but it ended up being in the higher spectrum of drinks we reviewed.

We here at Thirsty Dudes love root beer. It's possibly our favorite beverage, and that is saying a lot. I've maybe tried a hundred different types of root beer and I've enjoyed almost all of them. I found this in a local specialty shop today. I was pretty pumped because their Puma Cola is fairly spectacular. On top of that, look at that combination of the crow and monkey creature on the label. It kind of reminds me of the racist crows from the old Loony Tunes cartoons. I'm going to assume it was not meant to be an homage.

So we've talked enough about the label, let's discuss the taste. I'm really not into it. When it first hits your taste buds it has a great classic root beer taste, then suddenly everything changes. Mike says it tastes like oak and that it's woody tasting. To me it tastes like someone spilled some cleaning solution into the vat of root beer. I kept on drinking, but I just can't get over that secondary flavor. Sorry Sprecher, you didn't do it for me this time.

I can't express how excited I was to get a package full of Smart Juice. So much soda and iced tea gets poured down our throats that it's nice to have a break to enjoy some natural juice. There are two ingredients in this bottle; Organic Pomegranate and Organic Purple Carrot Juice. I've said it before, but this is how juice should be made. Fruit doesn't need sweeteners added to it, and concentrate is just a cop out. Keep it whole. Keep it pure.

This is an intense juice. It's very strong. Mike Tyson strong. This juice could go for the belt and win it without trying much. I could see a lot of people wanting to water it down a bit to suit their tastes more. I applaud Smart Juice for giving us this pure 100% juice. Those of us who like it strong can enjoy it that way. The others can add their own water to dilute it. Pomegranate is the main force behind this powerhouse, but its sidekick purple grape sticks his head in there a little bit. You get a slight hint of carrot, but it's only recognizable as that if you really concentrate. These are the drinks us Thirsty Dudes need to keep up our health.