Jason Draper - 2709 Reviews

It's a steaming hot day. It's so hot that you can't even comprehend the idea of moving. You are soaked with sweat just from breathing. This fan isn't doing anything. There's only one thing that can save the day. A Slurpie? No that's kids stuff. You're an adult now and the only thing that will cool you down is a nice ice-cold bottle of soymilk. Crack one open and chug it. As you wipe some dribble off your chin you are the picture of refreshment. You've beaten that heat.

Obviously that is completely fabricated because of two important things.
1. Slurpies are for all ages. They cool down your body like nothing else. On top of that they are delicious. I don't think I could ever trust someone who tells me they don't like them.
2. Soymilk, or cow milk for that matter, is not refreshing at all. I love it on my cereal, but other than the chocolate variety, I can't see myself ever downing a glass of it for pleasure. It's very strange to me to have it in single serve glass bottles.

Also soymilk and tofu are both made out of soybeans, so why don't they taste similar? I think Vita Milk had the same thought and decided to do something about it. This tastes like they took bricks of tofu and put them in a blender with way more sugar than is ever needed. I think I'll stick to my vanilla soymilk on my cereal in the morning.

Mike and I have had our collective eye on the Cell-nique drinks for months. We would see it in the store every time we went. More often than not we would pick it up and look at the bottom of the bottle. There is so much sludge there. It was equally enticing and disturbing. The $4 price tag deterred us for a long time, but I finally gave in this week. I wish that I had put it off even longer.

Let's start with the fact that this has the longest list of ingredients that I have ever seen on a drink. There are 36 different ingredients. Sheer insanity. There is so much crazy stuff in here that I never in a million years would have expected to drink. Also, everything says "Organic" before it. I hate when companies do that. It's such overkill. This is pretty much supposed to be the healthiest thing you can ever drink. By default that means that it's going to be one gag shy of a trip to Pukeland, USA.

Here is my thought process starting with smelling it:
-Wow this doesn't smell nearly as bad as I expected. It has a general cocoa smell, with some undertones of weirdness. This might not be nearly as bad as I had anticipated. Oh wow it would rule if this actually tasted good for how healthy it is for you.
*Bottles Up*
-Okay that tastes like a strangely fruity dark chocolate bar. It's not the greatest thing ever, but not that bad. I also expected this to have little chunks of grain (Quinona) in it.
*.2 seconds later*
Oh sweet Jesus what the hell is that flavor. It's like someone took every single thing that was in a fridge and put it all into a blender. It's a complete assault on the taste buds. There is absolutely nothing good about this flavor. Show me someone who enjoys this and I will show you someone who is either a liar or someone that was tragically born without taste buds.
*Again .2 seconds later*
Okay now it tastes like I just ate a spoonful of black licorice and hot chocolate mix, but the taste of liquid hell is still lingering in the background. Oh man this flavor just will not leave my mouth. I may have to cut out my tongue if this doesn't go away. I'm going to try and wash it down with something else.
*Hands bottle to Mike, goes into the kitchen and downs a tasty fluid*

Mike wanted to add that it tasted like he was eating a campfire somewhere in the middle of the flavor spectrum. I can't comprehend how disgusting this is. It's now a few hours after my initial tasting and I still have the memory of the flavor on my tongue. I've eaten several things since then as well.

Mike said that I should give this a two. Things this healthy don't have a chance in the flavor department. Sometimes you have to deal with something purely disgusting for the sake of health. This is so disgusting that the only way I could give it a two was if it gave me supernatural powers. I'm still normal me, so it's getting the loneliest of all numbers.

Yerba Mate is a tea all of it's own. It has such a specific taste that just always pops out at you. This style of tea should also always have a leopard on the bottle. Why? Leopards are awesome, that's why. Look at that thing. Is it smiling, or does it just want to rip you in half? It's the secret of the leopard. I would totally ride that thing around like in Harold and Kumar (I don't care what the world thinks, that movie is hilarious). I'd pick up Mike and the two of us would ride around from bodega to bodega looking for drinks. Sure we might have to buy the leopard a Gatorade once and a while, but he too will be a Thirsty Dude.
Guayaki knows how to blend their mate with other flavors. The citrus in this balances out the bitterness of the tea perfectly. It's not overly sweet or bitter, just a nice happy medium with a tangerine twinge. You know who loves tangerines? That leopard and I. Shibby.

This is my first go at Frostie Root Beer. It's a brand I've heard of since I was a kid. It's a classic in the world of root beers. The logo is iconic. I have friends that have Frostie paraphernalia hanging in their houses. I've always wanted to try it, but they don't have it around Buffalo, and I never saw it in my travels. Our friend Dan picked it up for me on a drive down to Florida. Now here I sit with my first bottle of Frostie. I like it. I really do. I didn't have high hopes. I was expecting a pretty run of the mill root beer. It is a pretty safe root beer, but it falls on the better side of average. It's very creamy. I mean really creamy with a lot of foam. It's not a gourmet drink, but it doesn't taste like root beer candy either. It's kind of a root beer of it's own kind. I'm kind of bummed that it's going to be quite some time before I can have this again.

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EDIT
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I finally got my hands on a cane sugar version of this. It was even better than the one I previously reviewed. It was in fact probably the best "normal" root beer I have ever had. It wasn't micro brewed or anything. It doesn't have anything wacky in it. It was just the best of the best when it comes to the style of A&W and Dads. If you ever see one, don't even hesitate to pick it up.

I can't even begin to tell you how refreshing it can be to come across a good carbonated beverage that doesn't have any sugar added to it. We drink a lot of beverages here at Thirsty Dudes, and most of them are full to the brim with sugar. Most of the time it's not a problem, but sometimes it just gets to be too much (I do brush my teeth all the time for fear of them falling out of my head). These are the times I love to visit my friends the unsweetened teas and spritzers such as this.

Fruit is sweet. That is one of the reasons it is so good. You normally don't need to add sugar to it. The R. W. Knudsen family knows all about that. Nothing that I've ever had by them has any sugar added. I may not have been a huge fan of their Sparkling Essence line, but their Spritzer's have been great. This is just sparkling water added to fruit juice. Boysenberries are a hybrid of raspberries and blackberries, and it's definitely shown in it's taste. Mix in a little grape and you have a refreshing drink that I think everyone would enjoy.

If the soda industry took note and followed this process there would be a lot less overweight people in this country. Well if the soda companies also found a way to make American's less lazy too.

Have you ever stopped at a small gas station down south? If the answer is yes you have probably seen the large pots of grossness that are known as boiled peanuts. Serious barf sauce. Soggy peanuts are no ones friend.

I was afraid this was going to taste like those sloppy nuggets. I lucked out today friends. This tastes like unshelled peanuts were ground into a fine power and then mixed that into rice milk. It almost tastes like peanut butter, but it's not quite there. It was very enjoyable. It's pretty thick.

I also found out while drinking this that Mike doesn't shell his peanuts. He pops the entire thing into his mouth and chomps down. Who does that? He said it like it's a normal thing that everyone does. The other four of us looked at him in disgust. He also doesn't believe in napkins.

When I was in fifth grade, all of my free time was spent hanging out with my friends skateboarding. The funny thing about most kids from around here in the late 80's that skated is that only about 20% of the time we were "skating" was actually spent on your board. The majority of it was actually spent sitting on your boards in front of your local mini-mart. We spent way more time scarfing down snacks and talking about skating than we actually did participating. Our local mini-mart of choice was J&D foods. We would skate up there everyday we could and stock up on candy and our favorite Mistic drinks. We probably liked them so much because we were young, dumb and they looked like wine coolers. As everyone knows wine coolers are the pinnacle of coolness. Back then the juice was also carbonated. I can't even comprehend how many of those things I drank before they inevitably disappeared from our world.

The other day I was out riding my bike on an unseasonably warm day and I stopped at a little mart somewhere on the west side. It would have been more fitting if I were out pushing around on my board, which I'll add was my initial plan. Either way I probably looked like a complete idiot when I saw the Mistic. I may have audibly squealed, but we have no way of knowing for sure. When I finally drank it I was a bit disappointed that it wasn't carbonated anymore, but it was still pretty great. Unlike most "juice drinks" you find in mini-marts these days this actually has some juice in it. It tastes mostly like grape juice with a hint of strawberry in it. It really makes me wish it were still warm out so I could call some old friends and sit in front of a random gas station on our boards and talk about how awesome skating was, even though we could be skating at that exact moment.

I don't care if pineapple juice sometimes reminds me of vomit; I'm still going to keep drinking it. The positives outweigh the pukeatives every time. Pineapples are just too tasty to ignore. It may be the most acid fruit to ever exist. So much in fact that my tongue bled from eating too much. I don't regret it. It was so tasty that I couldn't stay mad.

Everfresh has added just enough water to the juice to minimize the effect of tasting like you just blew chunks. The acidity is low. The flavor is up. If pounding the actual fruit isn't possible, this drink is a decent stand in.

I'm going to a friend's wedding this weekend. As a result I felt the need to step up my wardrobe a bit, so I took a trip to the mall. It was a rare case of shopping instead of people watching. It's a strange, strange place to be, believe you me. While going from store to store quickly growing more annoyed by the second, I suddenly noticed a fellow angered shopper drinking one of these. When I passed by the convenient store a few shops down I popped in and picked this up.

Like always I was quick to purchase before realizing it was a diet drink. I was okay with it because it didn't have an overly diet taste to it. The black raspberry taste is pretty strong and it overpowered the sucralose flavor. If I ever went on a diet I would definitely drink these on the regular. My mom drinks zero calorie flavored sparkling waters all of the time. I bet she would love these. I should probably be a good son and pick her up a couple the next time I'm at the mall watching people, drinking iced tea and eating terrible burritos.

Years ago on a trip to Toronto I was introduced to the wonderful beverage bubble tea. My first experience wasn't the greatest. I got plum flavored (I love plums, but I've learned that things plum flavored generally are pretty gross) and I didn't realize you were supposed to chew the tapioca balls. About halfway through I started to get a stomachache, and like any self-respecting person in their early 20's I started to use the tapioca as spitballs. What can I say? I'll always have childish tendencies. The amount of fun I had spitting the tapioca was enough for me to give bubble tea another try on my next trip up north. This time I tried the passion fruit (a flavor I wasn't familiar with) and I've never looked back. To this day it is one of my favorite fruit flavors. I've had the fruit itself a couple of times, but the effort never seemed worth the result. I never pass up the chance to try something passion fruit flavored though.

This juice is great. It's not as thick as nectar, but it's also not super watered down. There's no real way to describe it's flavor other than saying it's tropical. The amazing sweet yet tart taste of the passion fruit it right up in your face.

Remember those dumb little comics in the newspaper that were a picture with the text "Color me happy when..." follow up by some random thought. They were comics for old people. Not interesting to the young at all, but they had their place. Today comic would be slightly different. It would read, "Color me surprised when my grape soda isn't an overly sweet syrupy mess." A light soda was the last thing I expected 1/1000 chance that it will still taste decent. Zuberfizz beat the odds.

Ladies and gentleman we are gathered here today to bear witness to the holy union of Ginger and Ginseng. Many of you have known the couple for years and have your personal feelings about them.

Ginger, with her fiery brew, has always been very popular amongst the populace. As a child many a mother would call her over to care for her young when they had a stomachache. She has been an old friend to all of us from our first sips of her ale to our bottles of hearty brew. She is a flavor all her own and we love her for it.

Then there is Ginseng. Many people say he's from the wrong side of the tracks. He very rarely leaves his home and chooses to stew in his own filth. He always seems to be getting himself mixed up in the sketchy drug world. No matter how anyone tries to talk him up, in the end he always emerges as the filthy scumbag that he is.

Now that these two crazy kids are finally being bonded together there is a blend created. Ginger may not live up to her full potential, but she will help Ginseng straighten out his life. Even if that means she ends up tasting a little dirty. Hopefully by the end of the bottle he won't end up dragging her down to the gutter with him.

This is an iced tea for adults. I might go as far as to say this is an iced tea made specifically for grandmothers. I could never in a million years imagine a child drinking this, let alone enjoying it. Is that a bad thing? Not at all. There are tons of different people out there and everyone likes different things. It's not really my thing, but I'm sure others will love it.

This tastes like a kindly old grandmother brewed a kettle of red tea. She put some slices of lemon in it and lightly sweetened it with agave (okay so maybe this grandmother lives in Portland or Austin, who am I to say?). She then realized that it was the middle of the summer and it was blistering hot out (looks like she lives in Austin). She then poured the kettle into a nice pitcher and put it in the fridge. A couple of hours later she had company over so she poured some glasses and everyone sat out on the porch enjoying the Texas summer (I knew it was Austin!).

God I hate that tribal monkey. I don't know why it bothers me so much, but it just rubs me the wrong way. It's unfortunate because I really like their drinks. I also appreciate the shape of the bottle.

Monkey aside, the tea in this really stands out more than in their other elixirs. It has that unmistakable green tea flavor. It also has a very clear peach aftertaste. I had never heard of amalaki before this, so I did some research. It turns out it's another name for Indian gooseberry, and it has been used to fight a mess of diseases. It's supposed to have a bitter taste, so it works well with the green tea.

I can only hope that monkey design is based off of a real monkey that hangs out in their head offices. I bet they got him to fetch them drinks and do their work for them. Too bad this primate has self-esteem and he's nobody's monkey-slave. I hear he's gunning for vice president next quarter.

Jelly Belly runs the jellybean game. Seriously no other company comes even close to touching them. They have single-handedly turned the candy into a year round thing, and not just an Easter time ordeal. When they stepped up and started making the gross ones from Harry Potter, my admiration grew even more. What's more fun then sitting in the dark with your friends so you can't see what jelly bean your eating, praying that you don't get wasabi or grass. Okay a lot of things are more fun than that, but it was entertaining for 15 minutes one night.

When I saw that Jelly Belly had expanded into sodas I was a little hesitant to try them. I thought they were going to be really strong and extreme. Of course like with most things, I was wrong. This actually tastes just like the blueberry jellybeans they make. It actually tastes like a blueberry, which can't be said for most fruit flavored pops. It's a little candy-esque, but in a good way. Let's just pray they don't start making Harry Potter flavors, or popcorn. Ick, just ick.

Last night I had one of the worst nights of sleep of my life. I went to bed around 1:30. Then from then until about 5am I woke up every half hour on the nose. Sometimes I was freezing. Sometimes I had to pee and others there seemed to be no good reason. I finally got fed up, and went and grabbed an Unwind. This allowed me to sleep for two straight hours, then the half hour bouts of sleep started anew. This has all of the usual sleep suspects listed on the ingredients; Valerian root, melatonin, passion flower and others. I'm not blaming the drink for not doing its job. I think on any other night it would have worked wonderfully. I think there was just something wrong with me last night. My roommate blamed it on me eating too much pizza flavored hummus. He might be onto something.

It tasted like a flavored sparkling water. It's a flavor I always initially confuse with a diet flavor, but it's not. It's something all of it's own. Pomegranate flavored sparkling water. I bet my mom would love this stuff.

I wonder what the Mr. Brown got his doctorate in. Was it Sodaology? Can he be called a Popologist? Should I just keep making up words? All we know for sure is that he (or is the doctor a woman?) graduated from a university and got a PHD in something. He/she then went out and got famous by creating Cel-Ray Soda. Love it or hate it you have to admit that it tastes just like celery. Science at it's best! Since the famous doctor was able to pinpoint the exact flavor of celery and transfer it to a soda I had very high expectations of what this magic man could do for their other flavors. After a sip I'm beginning to think that the good doctor may have been a one trick pony. This is a pretty average root beer. It doesn't have any interesting ingredients, thus nothing really jumps out at you. I would put it in the same category as A&W or Mug . It's nothing special, but also nothing terrible. I must urge the doctor to hit the books again. You may have a PHD, but it's never time to stop learning. Especially when we all know you can do better with your root beer.

Ginger drinks can be an iffy game. Sometimes they are super strong with a crazy burn (okay I really like drinks like that), and sometimes they can be really weak. Having just a hint of ginger is something is pretty gross. It always tastes like you didn't properly rinse a cup before reusing it. Tazo found a pretty amazing middle ground. It has a strong ginger taste, but with only the slightest of burns. It's an "every man" ginger drink. The lemon also isn't overpowering. It's the kind of drink that makes you feel like it's great for you, but it still breaks some rules of physics by tasting good. I didn't realize Tazo made drinks other than tea, but I'm glad they do, because they are onto something here.

There is an entire world of low rent iced teas out there. Leave it to the Midwest to produce the blandest of the bland. Like the planes of America's Badlands, this tea feels like it's going nowhere. Unfortunately for World Classics, I don't thing Bruce Springsteen will write any songs about this tea. I guess there could be something he could write about rising above its mediocrity. I don't think it would get quite the same sing-a-longs in a live setting.

It's a bitter syrupy white tea. So bitter it feels like it's drying out your mouth. The tangerine flavor tastes nothing but artificial. For 30 cents what did I expect? Whoo Oh Oh Ohhh!

This is an orange cream soda that doesn't taste like a creamsicle. That is something that piques my interest. I like me some creamsicle pop, but for the most part if you've had one, you've had them all. This was a pleasant surprise. I'd describe this as 60% orange pop, 30% cream soda and 10% honey. I love Thomas Kemper for their use of honey in their sodas. It's always noticeable without being overbearing. I think there's a Winnie the Pooh joke in their somewhere. It gives them such an advantage over their competitors. I can't wait for them to expand their empire in an easternly direction.