Jason Draper - 2709 Reviews

Redline makes some of the most intense energy drinks I have ever some across. If I drink one it's absolutely guaranteed that I will not come anywhere near sleep for at least 12 hours. It's a blessing and a curse, just like logic. The reason I mention this is that the same creators have concocted this energy drink as well. While it may not have the same intensity it still gives you the shot to the heart that you so desperately want from energy drinks, but that so few deliver.

Bang does not use sugar in their beverages, as the spike in blood sugar that they cause is also one of the things responsible for the energy drink crash that some people experience. Nobody wants to go up, just to fall even further down later. Instead it's sweetened with sucralose; I know, not very game changing. The thing that does make Bang stand out amongst the armies of energy drinks that fill coolers in gas stations all across the planet is their energy blend. They use a mixture of Creatine, CoQ10 and branch chain amino acids as well as the usual caffeine and B vitamins. I'm not totally sure what the difference is chemically, but I can tell you I most definitely got a pick up on my drive home from MI yesterday. Of course it was just in time for traffic to come to a standstill, so I was chock full on energy in an essentially parked car on the highway. How wonderful. It just hit me that since Creatine is included these are probably intended for use when you're working out, you know…€¦not sitting in a car.

This flavor is Star Blast and that may mean that it's supposed to be star fruit flavored, or it may just be a catchy name. Either way it tastes like a slightly diet version of some random Hubba Bubba or Bubblicious gums from the 80s/early 90s. It's very sweet in the fake sugar way, but it's not gross. It really tastes like kind of fruity gum to me, and that's fairly pleasant.

I have no qualms with Bang. In fact I quite enjoyed this. I do have a problem with the way people were driving in Canada yesterday though. There were no accidents. There was no construction. Why were you stopping and starting so much then?

While I was drinking this I kept thinking about the Red Rose tea my grandmother used to drink. Then I thought, wait I've drunk a tea that reminded me of that before, and I did a quick search and saw that I had reviewed Snapple Straight Up Tea, but nowhere did it mention that it was sorta sweet. The thing is that everything I was going to say about this, I said in that old review. I don't know if it's the same product just relabeled, or if it does have less sugar, but my review stands.

I think it might be a stone cold fact that every American elderly woman who was a grandmother in the late 80's/early 90's drank Red Rose tea. Mine certainly did and everyone I've questioned about it came back with an affirmative response. Red Rose ruled the tea world at that time, and as an added bonus, the boxes came with little animal (Wade) figurines, which were nice for the grandchildren; everyone was a winner.

As I drank this tea all I could think of was Red Rose. This tastes exactly like how my grandmother's tea would taste cold. It's a nice black tea with a bit of sugar in it. It's actually probably about a spoonful. This is a nice genuine tea. It's not particularly fancy, but it's just black tea and sugar with a little citric acid in it. I've had many a cup of tea in my life from all sorts of companies, and this has the very specific Red Rose taste. I had other try this to confirm my thoughts and we all agreed. So where…€˜s my little figurine?

Seeing as neither of us at Thirsty Dudes drink at all, let alone enough to give us a hangover, we had our friend Paul Morin (from the band Orations and famed impersonator) drink this and give us his thoughts. Here are the jumbled notes that he sent us:

Smells like grass.
Greenish color.
Tastes like smarties/ lemon-lime Gatorade.
Pasty chalky texture.
Tastes like artificially sweetened "Limeade."
My friend who is a chemist said after looking at the ingredients it was basically like taking a Tylenol before drinking.
Vaguely smells like dirty socks. "Limey sock water."

I did not wake up with a hangover however I did have to make several to the bathroom. Not sure whether to blame the alcohol, something I ate, or the product for that.

This is from a man who went to college to be a librarian. I guess you can't blame him since he started sober and kept writing as he got progressively drunker.

I can't really argue with most of his thoughts though. This tastes like a diet lime Gatorade if it had the concentration of an unfrozen Freeze-E-Pop.

This tastes like nothing, for that is what it is. It's just water with tiny bubbles. It doesn't taste bitter. It doesn't taste much of anything and that is a wonderful thing at times.

I travel a lot. Be it touring with bands, or just for leisure I like to leave Buffalo a lot. I love it here, but I appreciate it more when I'm able to take a break and then come back to it. When I'm out in the world I don't often do touristy things. I prefer to go on adventures and find the weird, cool things cities have to offer. Recently I was in Boston for the probably two dozenth time in my life and my friends who I was with really wanted to check out Cheers. They love the show and it we had some time to kill, so we walked across some park or another and checked it out. I must admit it was pretty neat to stop in for a few minutes. I really had no interest in eating there, or having a drink because…€¦yeah I'm not a fan of bars. The television nostalgia was nice though. They each picked up some souvenirs and I grabbed this bottle of root beer.

Being a novelty item I had low expectations for this soda and it ended up sitting in my fridge for a while. Obviously they went to some bottling plant and just had them slap a Cheers label on it. Normally in those situations the soda is completely uninspiring and more sugar water than anything. This was more robust than I had expected. It was better than store brand, which is the barometer that I use for root beer quality. It's a little dark, and fairly sweet. It did its job and I found it quite refreshing on this hot, anxiety ridden day. And no, I do not want to go where everybody knows my name. I want to hide out in the woods where I will come in contact with very few people. At what point do I need to admit that I have a problem? Oh, probably when I run out of drinks to review.

This was…€¦weird. No matter how many times I reminded myself that this was kiwi flavored, every time I took a sip my brain/taste buds colluded and made me expect lime. This is not lime. It was never supposed to be lime. Red Bull does not want me to think lime. The problem is the green can makes me think lime, and that is my problem, not theirs. I mean it's not a huge problem, but it is weird when you expect tangy citrus and you are greeted with a sweet fruit flavor.
To be fair this is probably the most accurate kiwi flavored drink that I have ever tasted. They really nail that quick aftertaste that kiwi gives you. I could actually believe that this was just a kiwi soda and not an energy drink, because the chemical taste is not very strong. I kind of want it there. How strange is that? I complain about that flavor so much, yet when it comes to a Red Bull product, I want it there. Something is clearly wrong with me.

No matter how many flavors of Jelly Belly soda I try I am continuously surprised at how they don't taste like carbonated garbage water. Confectionary companies making soda has rarely, if ever, turned out well until now. So here I am with a bottle of soda that I don't really enjoy, but I can't say that it's bad by any means. I just am not a big fan of pears. They are at the lower levels of the fruit chain for me. I mean they come nowhere near the atrocity that is bananas, but they are still not even close to my favorite. Let me take an aside here and ask if we can hold whoever it was that created bananas responsible for war crimes? I think they would be getting off light.

Back to the subject at hand; this tastes like someone took a pear at the peak of ripeness, juiced it and mixed it in with some sweetened sparkling water. It only tastes vaguely candied, and that is shocking. I can't believe how much it actually tastes like pears since it says there is 0% juice in here.

I may not be a fan of this, but I can certainly respect it. I also know a bunch of people who would love this. It's a shame they aren't here to drink the rest of it, because I more than likely will not.

Let's face the facts. There is no one out there who is going to think that these shots are “just okay.” People are either going to love them or hate them and the decisive element is the intense burn from the ginger. Oh, that wonderful burn. It places me clearly on the “love it” side of the coin.

To be fair the additional flavors make up at best 10% of what is going on in these tiny bottles. The vast majority of the flavor is the ginger. With this one you get a little sweet pomegranate taste up front but it is quickly decimated by that ginger that I love and cherish. It makes me feel as if there is any illness lingering in my body that it doesn't stand a chance against this beverage. If live were a videogame this would be the elixir that returned some of your hearts so you could keep adventuring.

I think this might be the last straw. If a quality company such as Four Point Zero can't make a green apple beverage that I truly enjoy, I don't think there is any hope for the flavor. The odd thing is that green apples are my go-to apple. Granny Smith all the way, all day. Green apple…€¦well anything other than actual apples, never taste like that to me. A lot of the time they taste like candy, which this does only vaguely. There must be a different breed of apple that the green apple flavor is based off of. I bet I wouldn't really like this in apple form either. This is all personal taste though. If you like the “sour” green apple flavor, but want it sugar free then this seltzer is calling your name. It's really not bad, even for me, but I just want a Granny Smith seltzer.

Last week was my birthday and I am now officially in my late 30s. I can no longer deny it, I am an adult. Sure I still act like a teenager tour the world in vans, ditch work to go walk around the woods and run a website where I review non-alcoholic beverages, but I am still an adult. Proof of that is that I really enjoy this drink. It is sparkling water with tonic bitters mixed in and I find it wonderful. Look, I know in every one of these companies reviews we mentioned them being for adults. Sure, kids can drink them, but I don't know a single child who would enjoy this. I've given them normal seltzer water and they hate it. The bitterness in this would probably make any child hate me for life. It's a risk I'm not willing to take. Also, I want to keep it all for myself. If pears had rinds this is what they would taste like, well with a healthy dose of ginger. Actually the pear flavor is very light, but the ginger is heavy. I want more unsweetened, sparkling beverages that are ginger flavored in my life.

You wake up one day and your back in your childhood. You're old enough to do somethings on your own, but young enough that you still have to go where your parents drag you. It just so happens that where they dragged you on this return day is to the beach. You totally got sunburnt, but you don't care because you played in the water and dug a sweet hole in the sand pretty far back, but you still hit the water table, or what you would later learn was the water table. After everyone is exhausted and had their fill you hit up a little shack restaurant nearby for hotdogs and fries. As a treat your mom totally lets you get a Slush Puppie and it is heaven to your young taste buds. You close your eyes and take a big sip of the syrupy sweet goodness that tastes vaguely like raspberries. When you open your eyes you are nowhere near the beach. You look down and you realize that you're middle aged and your drinking something that is supposed to be raspberry lemonade, but it tastes like childhood. You forgive it for tasting more like sugar water than lemonade because for a few moments you escaped work and dug a sweet, sweet hole.

For the life of me I have no idea why they have labeled this a milkshake. It's not thick. There is no ice cream involved. It's really just strawberry milk…€¦with a bunch of veggies added. To be clear they are veggies that you also cannot taste. They are hidden nicely in the mix. Also to be clear, this doesn't taste like Strawberry Quik either. It's a different beast that is close, but not quite the same. It really just tastes like what I imagine people thought strawberry milk tasted like before Quik was invented. Did it even exist before then though? Is this a chicken/egg or a music/misery type situation? I guess it doesn't matter. This tastes pretty good and you're getting some vitamins from veggies. Kids will love it.

To my taste buds mint and tea generally do not mix. I know it's a classic flavor, and I admit it's okay with hot teas, but once they get iced I feel like I poured myself a nice glass of tea, got distracted by a phone call, or my cat throwing up, brushed my teeth, realized I had forgotten about my tea, and then drank it anyways. To me the mint never tastes like it's part of the drink, more like it's a foreign aspect that just happens to be in my mouth. With Goldenbrew it's a tad better. The mint still tastes a bit detached, but it's more like I'm chewing Doublemint gum and drinking green tea instead of having just brushed my teeth. I don't know why that is preferable, but it definitely is. The lime is also a nice touch. So many companies rely on lemons too heavily when this superior citrus cousin is just begging to be used. It makes things a bit more interesting. You add high quality tea, and a little agave to round it out with a touch of sweetness and you have a pretty good beverage on your hands. Now if someone could just figure out how to blend in mint with tea a bit better this would be fantastic.

Over the years we have been sent a small handful of hangover cures. It seems like a great idea, but the problem is that neither Mike nor I drink at all. Our solution is to find a friend who is planning on getting drunk and having them drink it and relay their results to us, while we drink one and remark on the taste. Well, I've been somewhat of a hermit lately and I haven't been around people drinking in a while. I've been sitting on this for a couple of weeks and the proper opportunity hasn't arisen. I didn't want to make the company feel like we are neglecting their product and after the events of yesterday I have what I assume a hangover feels like.

Yesterday I had to print shirts for about 12 hours in a room that was easily over 110 degrees. I only stopped when a friend stopped by to get me to go push around the city on skateboards. Like the idiot I am I did not drink nearly enough water and as a result I was dehydrated, which I believe is a large part of hangovers. When I woke up this morning I was achy with a throbbing head and felt a little queasy. These are all complaints I hear from people who have hangovers. I decided this was as close as I was ever going to come so I drank this bottle of Boost, which can be drank before, during or the day after drinking. It seems to be jam packed with every B vitamin ever, Potassium, Electrolytes, Milk Thistle, Green Tea Extract, Aloe Vera, and Gotu Kola.

It's been about 45 minutes since I drank this and I do feel a bit better. I'm not sure if it's just time or the beverage, but I'll assume it was the drink. I also just learned that a big cause of hangovers is a toxin called acetaldehyde. Now I don't know if I had that but I'll just assume that this combats that quite nicely.

It has a berry taste, with a sucralose sweetness. It's a bit intense, but it's a shot, so that was expected. I don't know if this was a very accurate test, but I do feel better so I'll just say that this helps with hangovers because my word is law, right? RIGHT?

To me seltzer is seltzer, no matter what the brand. I mean it's just carbonated water with a little flavoring in it. I now love it as an adult, but I was fine with grabbing any brand that was available. Four Point Zero has shown me that I was wrong all this time, and I don't know if I'm going to be able to forgive them. I mean after tasting the perfection that is this seltzer, how am I supposed to go back to the cheap stuff they have at my grocery store? Those jerks.

Their greatness was proven to me when I drank this bottle of watermelon. That is a flavor that 99% of the time goes wrong and tastes like a Jolly Rancher. Even when sugar is not involved it still tastes like candy. This bottle is the new standard though. It tastes like someone squeezed the juice from the melon, watered it down slightly (but not too much), and then carbonated it. It's all of that but with zero sugar. It's magic I tell you. I have never tasted a more authentic watermelon beverage that wasn't just straight juice. The bar has been set, everyone take notice.

One wouldn't think there would be much variation between simple black teas. One would also be very wrong. Nearly every company whose black tea I have sampled has their own little twist on flavor that makes them unique. Goldenbrew uses whole tea leaves in their brewing process, and you wouldn't think that such a small thing would make such a difference, but it really does. You can tell that higher quality ingredients are used and they are brewed with more pride. Obviously this is better than a garbage Brisk, but it also overshadows the natural lines of the “big” tea companies. It also helps that it is lightly sweetened with honey. I'm of an age where I prefer my teas to be unsweetened, but honey is a game changer. It's not meaningless sweetness. It adds a depth and new flavor to the already wonderful tea. It's important to note that they also don't go overboard with the honey, which is so easy to do. It teases you with its hint of flavor, leaving you wanting more and before you know it the bottle is gone and you wish you had more. Now that is the sign of a good tea.

In recent times slowly but surely we have seen a rise in the number of cucumber flavored drinks that are on the market. It's nowhere near the amount of pomegranate or acai, but every once in a while a new one will pop up, and every time I get stoked. Cucumber is a wonderful flavor that I find ridiculously refreshing. The thing is that there are two different cucumber flavors, the pleasant “meat” of the vegetable flavor, which is what I usually find ideal, and the slightly dirty taste of the skin, which I still enjoy, but just not as much. I have some friends who hate the second version (I'm looking at you Jay Zubricky). Upon first sip of this I thought to myself, “This is more skin that meat, but I'm okay with it. It tastes pretty fantastic and it doesn't really taste like an energy drink. “ By the time I had taken two more sips my opinion had completely changed and I had had enough of this drink. What went from a slightly dirty, yet pleasant, cucumber flavor suddenly took a drastic turn into the world of diet sugar water that only vaguely tasted like cucumber let alone lime. I knew that they used a mixture of real sugar and sucralose in here to keep the calories low, but at first the fake sugar flavor was nowhere to be found. Suddenly it was all I could taste. I didn't even make it through half the can before I dumped it out on the side of the road. Well, at least it gave me a little bit of pep, even though my taste buds suffered for it.

They are not kidding with the name. This is one serious shot of ginger to the mouth, and it's absolutely wonderful. This is nothing but pineapple juice and of course ginger juice and it's very intense. In movies when people talk about the warm burn that they get from a shot of whiskey is exactly how this feels. You get one hell of a delicious burn all the way down. On top of that it tastes fantastic. It's hard to forget about the flavor because of the intensity, but it's there and it tastes like someone infused a pineapple with concentrated ginger. The best.

This is so intense that I kind of feel like I'm invincible because I drank it. It's as if it's some sort of magic potion that will protect me from any and all illnesses. I can't wait for Mike to try these. He's going to fall in love.

I'm not sure if this is the same product that comes in the little cans, or if there is something different about it because it says it's organic and over 3x the quantity. What I do know is that this tastes like a wonderfully delicious unsweetened green tea. It's slightly bitter, but in a way that is enjoyable instead of distracting. I didn't know something could be bitter and smooth at the same time, but that's what we have here. This is the baseline from which all unsweetened green tea should be compared.

I don't know what's happening to me, but I think I'm starting to like coffee. Well at least fancy “ready to drink” coffee. The past couple that I have tried (minus the Marley) I have actually enjoyed a great deal. Something about them has been different though. Even though they have been a variety or different preparations they have all been very smooth with little acidity. In the world of coffee smooth is the descriptor that I am looking for.

This is a “Draft Latte” which I'm pretty sure is a term that La Colombe invented. It's a can of frothed milk with a shot of cold-pressed espresso added (hence the smoothness). There is no added sweetener and there doesn't need to be. You can get a taste for the actual coffee and the milk (I do with it were almond or soy, but I'll enjoy what I can get). I don't really understand how the milk stays frothy, but it really does have that specific feel/taste. Okay I just looked it up and it's the way the can is pressurized that froths the milk when you crack it open. That's good science there.

I'm certainly not Mr Fancy Pants in most aspects of my life, but when it comes to coffee that's apparently what I need. I wish I could talk about the roast or whatever, but that is lost on me. This tastes like coffee when coffee is good. It's frothy, smooth and wonderful.