Jason Draper - 2709 Reviews

Just Chill has been good to us. They have sent us samples several times, and when they have they have sent a lot of them and we appreciate that. Here at Thirsty Dudes we are not to be bought though, just ask Mountain Dew about the time they sent us a care package with the samples of their Kickstart line before they hit the market. The same can be seen in our first Just Chill review. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't great either. It was a perfectly serviceable middle of the road beverage and because of that it got a 3/5 bottle rating.
I'm pretty sure they accidently sent our samples to us twice because I got two identical packages with a whole lot of beverages in each. It's no secret that I am a sucker for ginger flavored drinks, but the mountain of cans staring at me that clearly state that they are zero calories had me a bit standoffish. I can handle stevia and in moderation it's just fine, but thinking of so many ounces of it just waiting for me was intimidating. I let a can chill (get it) in the fridge for a while and then cracked it open for a nice relaxing night on the couch with a movie.

There are two important things to acknowledge at this point.

First, this is a relaxation beverage, but it did not put me to sleep and that is the way I feel these things should work. I have no doubt that has I went to bed shortly after drinking this I would have been fast asleep in no time at all, but I appreciate that it allows me to stay awake in a calmer state. I've had a handful of other drinks of this variety and most of them just make me sleepy. This one still allowed me to function and that is great.

Second, ginger reigns supreme. Zero calorie sweeteners are no match for a healthy dose of ginger. Think of the perfect ginger ale, with just a hint of a burn, and then up the ginger flavor a bit more and you have this drink. If I were to place a wager I would put my money on 95% of the stevia flavor is masked by the ginger. Only the faintest hint of it remains.

You may not be able to buy our opinions at Thirsty Dudes, but I am very grateful to have a stack of these on hand to drink at my leisure.

It seems to be a trend these days to be healthier. It may just be the best trend of all time. Everywhere I look healthier food options are popping up, including many drink companies making lower calorie beverages and presenting them in a “cool” way and not labeling them as diet. In the past diet drinks were pretty much marketed towards housewives. Now they are attempting to make them more attractive to the general population. Jones is doing so with their “Stripped “ line. The typeface they use looks as though it should say something along the lines of “extreme.” That's what the kids want I guess.

Another change these days is that in the past a single sweetener, such as sucralose or aspartame, would be used and I'm fairly certain we are all familiar with that diet death taste they would leave behind. A few years ago stevia started to get popular. It was more palatable, but still had a very distinct taste that it added to whatever it sweetened. At some point in the recent history of the world someone realized that no matter how diet drinks were marketed if they tasted more like the sweetener than the flavor of the drink, they weren't going to change many minds. This genius decided that while most people wouldn't drink zero calorie beverages, lower calorie was better than nothing, so they proposed using stevia as well as lower quantities of cane sugar. The result was beverages that I can drink without feeling like I need to run a mile to work off the calories.

The orange and mango flavor in this soda may be on the lighter side of the spectrum, but they are still stronger than whatever diet taste that is barely noticeable. It's not perfect, but it's a step in the right direction. As a nation we embrace sugar far too much. I know I just crave it sometimes, but this is helping move us to a place where we don't need as much of a fix. It's to soda what methadone is to heroin. Junkies, all of us.

Up until this point Rocky Mountain Soda Co has had a consistently great record here on Thirsty Dudes. They have put their own twist on some standard sodas, and their use of beet sugar is commendable. Unfortunately this flavor falls short. I've enjoyed other elderberry beverages that I have tried, but this just misses the mark. Perhaps the deer, or elk, on the label licked the berries a bit, and perhaps those same animals have saliva that tastes like Orajel, but without the numbing factor. The taste of this falls somewhere between fruity and floral, but with a medicinal twist. I don't get it. I expected to love this, but it's just not happening.

I am by no means an expert of this topic, but I always thought bitters were little bottles of distilled flavoring that you added to alcoholic drinks. I guess that could be what this is, but I was under the impression that they were along the lines of a concentrate and that you added a very minimal amount to reach the desired taste. Of course, as always, I make up my mind just on an idea and I don't finish reading the rest of the bottle before my brain decides what to expect. Before I even took a sip I was convinced that his was not going to be what my mind thought it should be. I was ready to write it off instantly. Then I took a sip and read the rest of the bottle and found out that this is tonic water with a dash of grapefruit mint mixed in. So it looks like my beliefs were correct and also that I should not be writing drink reviews because I don't always have an open mind.

This is exactly what is says it is, and it does not lie about it being bitter. In most drinks that are grapefruit flavored one would expect the flavor to come from grapefruit juice. In here it tastes most like the rind was used, which makes it very bitter, but not unenjoyable. Also, the mint is there more as a cooling factor than as an actual mint taste. In a world where people generally go overboard with mint, this is something that I can truly appreciate.

I may have finally grown up this year and accepted the greatness of seltzer water, but I'm not quite ready to fully embrace tonic with bitters. Give me another couple of years and we'll talk again.

Up until I discovered the Just line of pop, the only thing I knew about Canadian sodas was Pop Shoppe, and while they are decent, they are fairly standard. There is nothing standard about Just. They take flavors that you would never imagine meeting in soda and combine them into greatness. When in your life have you ever thought about peach and habanero meeting, except for possibly in a salsa? I'm going to guess that your response is, “Never.” To be fair if I was told that my mean would consist of a pairing of those two foods, I would just assume it was fancy pants cuisine that came in too small of portions that I would not really enjoy. In here though, in here it is fantastic.

The peach actually brought along some friends named apple, pear, pineapple and lemon. Together they forma sort of fruit punch troop in while peach in the ring leader. He's the one who is in charge and your taste buds know it as soon as they meet. The habanero is there all by it's lonesome and it waits in the shadows of the aftertaste. You could swish a gulp of this around your mouth for hours and never detect the pepper, but as soon as you swallow your breath brings the flavor and the heat out. It's similar to the burn from ginger beer, but with a little bit of a different taste.

I would love to have bottles of this on deck for when I get sick this winter. Drinking a bottle would clear my sinuses right out, and do so with flavor and taste. I need to make my way back up to Canada and pick up the other flavors that this wonderful company puts out.

Here is a brief story of me buying a handful of 2B flavors. I was somewhere in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the Midwest. I was as central as one can be. We had a ridiculously long drive to get to a show and we stopped in a town to eat, which to the best of my searching had nothing quick that was suitable for vegetarians except for French fries, onion rings and ice cream. I'm no fool and knew that on such an empty stomach that anything deep fried would destroy my stomach, so I of course got ice cream like a champ. In said horrible town we stopped to get gas as well and I found these cans in the cooler. I grabbed this vanilla one, and let the others be. Then as I approached the counter as say a mixed case of them for 50 cents each. In the cooler they were listed as $1.89 or something like that, so I grabbed the other flavors, because a deal is a deal and I have a duty to report to you, our readers. When the woman rung me out the vanilla rang up as full price. When I questioned her, so said only the room temperature ones were on sale. Does that make sense to anyone? They are the same product. They obviously paid the same amount for them. Also, the cooler is running the same amount whether they are in it or not, so it's not costing them any more money. I swapped my cold one out for a counter one, paid the woman and off we went. There's no real point to that other than me pointing out that if you're not in a bigger city the Midwest is a weird place.

Now, on to the soda; the entire shtick of this company is that they use monk fruit in combination with cane sugar to lower the sugar content by 80%. I've had too many diet drinks lately and have been putting this off because of it. I have to admit it's not bad. It has a little strange aftertaste from the monk fruit, but the “diet” flavor is not there. This is one of the strongest vanilla beverages I have ever come across. I'm venturing a guess that a good portion of the population has snuck a taste out of a bottle of extract of vanilla at some point in their childhood, with horrible results. It just smells so good, but it should never be tasted in that form. This tastes like a healthy dose of that was put into a generic soda water. It's kind of strange because overall it's a fairly light beverage, but the vanilla is so strong that you expect it to be creamy. It's a light, diet cream soda that doesn't' taste overly diet. It wouldn't be a go-to for me, but it falls under the category of I would happily drink it if it were served to me.

Strange things are afoot at the Circle K, and by Circle K I mean this bottle of carbonated tea. I've had a handful of tea sodas in my days on this planet and to be honest I don't know if any of the flavored ones have really impressed me. Give me a straight up sparkling black, green, white, or yerba mate tea and I'll be all over it, but something gets lost in the translation when you mix carbon dioxide, tea and fruit flavors. Something especially seems wrong when a zero calorie sweetener is brought into the mix. Look, I've made my peace with stevia. I don't love it, but I know it has its place and I've even been known to enjoy it in some drinks. In this bottle of Sotea it's blended with real sugar, so it should be actually decent, but it mixes with the peach flavor in a way that just makes the whole thing taste artificial. The ingredients say nothing about the peach juice, but “natural flavors” is listed, so I'm assuming it has something to do with an actual peach, but it just doesn't taste authentic. I was excited to try this line when I came across it, but it really is just not for me and my taste buds.

I can just imagine Christian groups being up in arms over this beverage. I envision picket lines and protestors screaming about how this beverage is luring the youth of America on a dark path; that they will become possessed by the devil if they drink it. Then someone will calmly explain to them that “diablo” is devil and “diabolo” is actually a prop for juggling and has nothing to do with the dark lord. As I've said in the past one letter can make a huge difference. For some reason the protestors will think that they already took things too far and won't believe the facts presented to them. It would be nice publicity for the company, so maybe that will actually happen and it will help them out.

In other worlds Diabolo is apparently a beverage that you can get in French cafes. They are fruity sparkling sodas and that is exactly what we have here. The twist with this company is that their products are low in calories and blend cane sugar, erythritol and stevia to sweeten their beverages. I'm not sure if it is this flavor in particular, but as soon as I took one sip my mind began to compare it to Clearly Canadian. It's very light and fruity. Unfortunately the diet taste can be a bit strong, but the dragon fruit and plum are flavors that it blends with nicely.

This is a nice alternative to the sodas that the American public is used to. It's a different beast that is not as horrible for you. Even compared to other diet sodas this feels lighter and not as thick. It definitely makes sense that it is the type of beverage that is popular in European cafes.

Here we have a company who understands how to do low calorie beverages. Perhaps it's just me but when I'm looking to lower my sugar/calorie intake, just reducing the amount of sweetener is a perfect solution. I don't need a beverage that is “fake sweet.” Sure zero calorie sweeteners can lower the amount of calories until they are non-existent, but they also have a very specific overpowering flavor to them that can ruin nearly any drink that they inhabit. In most cases you can taste the sweetener more than you can taste the actual flavor. Dark Dog still uses cane sugar, in conjunction with coconut sugar, but lowers the quantity to give you an energy drink that has 50 calories from 11g of sugar, yet you can also taste the flavor of the beverage with no distractions.

The caffeine in this drink comes from the trifecta of green tea, yerba mate, and guarana. Unlike the sweeteners used those flavors are very prevalent in the taste. This is essentially a sparkling tea drink with vitamins and a splash of juice added. The combination of elderberry, acerola, cranberry and lemon juice is very minimal and you can only detect hints of it when you take a sip. There is a vague fruitiness floating around the tea flavor.

If this can didn't state that it was only 50 calories I would never guess that it was a low calorie beverage. It still has just enough sweetness without loading you up with buttloads of sugar. Yes, that would be cubic buttloads the only official unit of measurement at Thirsty Dudes.

Do you know me? Do you know what kind of being I am? Do you know what I like? What I crave? Do you know of my love for smoothies? Do you know that I also have a love for all things “apple cinnamon” flavored? Did you know that I could survive happily on smoothies for longer than your average person? Most importantly, did you know that I am not a horse? To be more specific, did you know that I am not a horse who has lost all of its teeth and needs to be fed a special paste? I think that you must not have been aware of that fact, sprout. Otherwise I can't imagine why you would feed me this. This tastes like the bins of grain that were in my aunt's barn for the horses to consume smelled. (There is definitely something not proper about that sentence). It's like someone took a scoop of those grains, put them in a blender with some water and added an apple and a dash of cinnamon. The grain flavor is way stronger than anything else and it's so very thick. I thought this would be something that I would really enjoy, but the ratios are off, or it needs a little something else to make me not feel like a sick horse. Maybe change who you're marketing this towards? Actually, I think horses get put down before they get that far along. I don't know who this is for anymore.

These post-daylight savings time days have got me down. It's dark too early and I always feel like it is way later than it actually is. As a result I've felt worn down for the past few weeks. Tonight was no exception. I didn't want to go full on energy drink, and I remembered that I had this tea stashed away just waiting to be reviewed so here it is.

Tea Drift was nice enough to send us a variety of their flavors and “Good Morning Energy” sounded just like what I needed at 6PM. It's black tea, lavender, rose, bergamot and rosemary. Let me tell you they are not messing around with these flavors. As soon as I opened the package the room was filled with the aroma of flowers. I have a strange soft spot for floral beverages, but this was a bit too much for me. It was more flower than tea. I also always thought that flowers were supposed to be relaxing and not give you energy. I mean they also have a flavor called “Calming Rose.” I'm pretty sure the only boost I'll be getting is from the black tea.

It was actually a chore for me to work through a mug of this, but my ladyfriend loved it and drank hers happily. People like different things, and that kind of makes this website obsolete.

Allow me to let you in on a little secret; one letter can make a world of a difference. Someone could be threatening to “kill” you, but you won't think it's a big deal because their phone autocorrected to “bill” you. Perhaps you are preparing your loved ones a nice dinner of “Hunan” beef, but they think that you have slaughtered the neighbors and prepared them a “human” feast. Things can go pear shaped fairly easily these days. It is at this point that I must inform you that “mati” and “mate” certainly are not the same thing. So when you open up a can and expect to be getting a nice,, cherry flavored tea; what you actually are getting is cherry flavored guayusa. Sure they both supply you with a decent amount of caffeine, but the tastes are wildly different. What you expect to be a beverage that will have a nice earthy flavor will actually be strangely fruity with no balance. This is fruity and something that falls between bitter and sour. I'm not sure I would really enjoy this even if I wasn't mistaken as to what I was about to imbibe. Even though there is real cherry juice in here, when it mixes with the guayusa it gives it a vaguely medicinal flavor that just doesn't sit right with me.

At the apparently culturally diverse Main St. Cafe they know that there are different people from different walks of life that like different beverages. Sure there are the people out there that are die hard coffee fans, who only drink it black, but there are also the people out there who aren't really fans of coffee, but they also still want to participate. This beverage is for them. When they call it French Vanilla Iced Latte what they really mean is “This tastes like sweetened vanilla milk with a splash of coffee in it that you can only really notice in the aftertaste.” It's for times when you want to get together with some friends to catch up at the coffee shop, but don't want to be the jerk who doesn't get anything. This way people will think you're participating in coffee culture without dealing with the flavor that you're not a fan of in any great amount.

I personally enjoyed this a great deal, but for a primary category I would list this as milk and not coffee. I wonder what the actual percentages are in here.

When I see the word “cider” I have a very specific flavor in mind. It's a fall flavor that is created by juicing apples in a certain way, and a lot of the time it involves spices. It is not simply just any apple drink. It's a flavor that I am particularly protective over, because there is a cider mill in my home town and to be honest, it's one of the best beverages ever created.

This, this is not cider. It definitely tastes like apples, but nothing like apple cider. To me it tastes like all of those apple sodas that you can get in the UK. My ladyfriend tells me that it tastes like alcoholic cider, without the alcohol. It's sweet, it's appley, but it lacks the bold warmness that comes with real cider (even when served cold).

If this were not presented as cider, I would say that it is one of the better apple sodas, but as I said I'm a protective man, and cider this is not.

First things first; This is Northwoods Soda's “Wild Bill's Root Beer” and it is not to be confused with the company Wild Bill's that also makes root beer. I'm not sure which company came first and who is the proper owner of the title according to the judicial system in this country, but it can be confusing. Northwoods is made in northern Michigan, and I grabbed it on a recent drive through the U.P., which I hope I can do again when the weather gets nicer.

On question I have is who named this gentleman Wild Bill? Is it a joke name like calling a fat man Slim? The picture on the label shows an aging man who looks proud of the root beer he has concocted. There is nothing about the picture that would make me question his sanity or think of him as a crazy party animal. He does have something to be proud of though, as he has made a tasty bubbly beverage.


This is a root beer with a heavy caramel flavor to it, especially in the aftertaste. It's a nice soda that lets you pick out the flavors that make up root beer and not just a general amalgamation of them all mixed together. There is some nice licorice and vanilla in here, without either being extremely present. I'm not a huge caramel guy, but the way it's done in here is quite nice and it left me wanting more when the bottle was done.

I'm happy to announce that Bhakti Chai has made its way to Buffalo, NY and I can now purchase it whenever I want to have an intense experience. If you think you know what chai is all about because you've ordered it from Starbucks before you are in for a wild ride with this company. The spices and ginger used in these teas are much more pronounced in order to try and recreate the traditional chai of India and not the watered down American version. I understand that this is not a drink for everyone, but I certainly love it. It borderline hurts to drink this, and I love Bhakti for it.

This is the Semi Sweet version of the beverage, and as you would expect it tastes exactly like the original, only not as sweet. I prefer this version, because who needs that much sugar?

Also, in a moment of brilliance I decided to add some of this to the pancake batter I was making and bam chaicakes, your new favorite breakfast food. I know I will be making them again soon.

If there was a meme about this beverage that featured a certain dog it would say something along the lines of “Such coffee. Much chocolate.” Actually, that is not true. I just thought it up and kept saying those phrases in my head until I felt like I needed to write it here. In truth this tastes like a really nice chocolate milk that has a bit of coffee in it. It's definitely more chocolate than coffee and that is a win in my book, although it probably would be a bummer for the coffee purists out there. Oh well. Much drink. Such flavor.

Today on “Great Moments When Your Friends Thought They Were Hysterical” we will explore the time in the late 90's during a moment of silence, on a long drive when someone felt the need to proclaim, “Ford Aspire, I bet it aspires to be a better car.” For the record the silence was apparently only uncomfortable for this would be comedian. The silence that followed the joke was uncomfortable for everyone.

That dumb joke would never apply to this beverage, because in the world of sports drinks where else is there to go? This is delicious, it is functional, and it is low in calories without tasting like diet death. This has the most accurate cherry flavor that I have ever come across outside of straight cherry juice. It doesn't taste like syrup, medicine or candy. It tastes like cherry juice with a few assorted berries thrown in for good measure.

If you've gone through life thinking that Gatorade was the pinnacle of sports drinks, and why bother with other brands, then you are in for a wild ride. This is the same basic concept as those beverages, but presented in a natural healthier way. It's chock full of electrolytes as well as antioxidants, B vitamins and minerals. Suck on that status quo of sports drinks.

For those of you too young to remember this company was everywhere in the late 80's/early 90's. Back when corner stores and bodegas did not have a large selection of beverages this was always right alongside the Coke and Pepsi. I don't know if this was the case all around the country, but in Western New York, we loved our New York Seltzer. Now I have to be honest with you, I don't know if I ever actually tried one of these back in the day. By the time I was of age to be purchasing my own beverages I was far more interested in straight up soda and Mistic (they looked like wine coolers and made you feel cooler than you were, because you know wine coolers were always the thing the cool kids drank). Perhaps it's because of similar choices made by the youth of the 80's that caused this beverage to disappear from the shelves and production to grind to a halt. I will choose to believe that because who doesn't want to think that they had that sort of power as a pre-teen?

Here we are over twenty years later and New York Seltzer is back in business and cranking out six of their classic flavors. We really should have gotten to this earlier, as we like to review the classic drinks when they come back, but for some reason I hadn't been able to find it until I was in Michigan of all places. Strange times.

My first thought as I took a sip of this was, “What the hell there is sugar in here!” I had always thought that seltzer was just (possibly flavored) carbonated water with no added sweeteners. A quick look online informed me that any carbonated water beverage is considered a seltzer and even soda falls under that umbrella. In fact in my world this is just a soda. There is 31g of sugar in this 10oz bottle, and well it tastes like a raspberry soda. It's a little on the light side, but it's a fruity soda through and through. To be honest, I feel a bit cheated, but it's solely because I was uninformed. It's a decent soda and I just need to get in the headspace for that kind of beverage.

I have never tried the original Dark Dog energy drink, but I have come across images of it on the internet and I have always found the yellow can with the weird black silhouette of a dog very intriguing. I don't know who that design is marketed towards as it doesn't look EXTREME or classy, but it's always made me want to try it. Okay, so I guess we discovered that it is marketed towards weirdos like me. Unfortunately I've never come across it in a store, so I've yet to try it. The company was nice enough to send us a bunch of samples of their new Organic line, and if these are anything like the original I was right to want to try it.

The design of the cans is definitely more on the classy side of things. It's simple and clean in a way that would appeal to the stereotypical health food yuppie. It still has that strange dog silhouette, but it's smaller and your eyes aren't immediately drawn to it. There is nothing intriguing or offensive about it, and that is probably how a food label should look.

The taste of this is very different than your classic energy drinks. There is absolutely nothing candy-esque about it. It tastes like a slightly bitter blood orange juice with a bit of lemon thrown in. It makes sense because 25% of what is in the can is blood orange juice. It's lightly carbonated, which with the juice makes it taste more like a nice Italian soda rather than an energy drink. The energy aspect of the beverage comes from natural caffeine and seven different vitamins. A lot of the time when energy drinks are like this the effects aren't that strong, but this can has certainly given me a little kick in the pants to get me moving on this sluggish day. It's nothing that will make you twitchy, but it certainly did more for me than a cup of coffee would have. Now I just need to know the story behind that dog. I fear he may haunt my dreams.