Jason Draper - 2709 Reviews

When we were in San Diego recently I woke up early, as I am prone to do, and our friend Jay who we were staying with asked me if I wanted to go surfing. Being that I am not a fool I instantly shouted yes and we loaded the boards in his van and made for the beach. I didn't do nearly as well as I had in the past, riding the waves, but it was still ridiculously fun, especially knowing that back home the temperature was in the negatives while I was worrying about a sunburn.

After beach fun, we headed to get tacos and I went next door to grab a beverage. How could I say no to a beverage called Beach Day after just spending the morning on the sand and in the surf? The answer is I probably should have found a way, because this was pretty ehh. It tastes like a watered down juice. It has apple and mango juices from concentrate in it, but there is no real passion fruit in here, unless it's hidden under another category. It has a generic fruit flavor that is kind of tropical. If anything I would have to say that it tasted the most like mango out of any fruit. I didn't let the so-soness of this get me down though. I mean I had just surfed all morning and very few things are cooler than that.

Folks, I'm afraid it's finally happening; I'm growing up and becoming an adult after 35 years. I have a savings account, I'm closing on a house next week and now I'm enjoying seltzer water. I think that means that life as I knew it is now over. I've always had a fairly strong distaste for seltzer water and their overly dry taste. This tastes exactly like what it is, seltzer water with minimal vanilla flavoring added to it. I've had drinks in the past that tasted exactly like this and I was very turned off by them, now I am straight up loving this. I'm afraid I'm going to wake up in the morning and have pure white hair and back problems. Youth is over. Geriatric life has begun.

Oh yeah this also has caffeine, guarana, panax ginseng and niacinamide in it to give you a boost of energy. As far as I can tell they have zero effect on the flavor, but still give you a little push. Now where do I sign up to get my senior discounts?

Even though they are never anything special and also not very good in the traditional sense I am a complete sucker for local farm/store brand iced teas. They are generally mostly sugar water with a bit of tea mixed in, but something about them that is incredibly endearing too me. They are so full of sugar that there is no way they are healthy, yet they seem so wholesome. They are a piece of what Americana was to me as a young teenager.

Stewart's output is fairly similar to what a lot of the dairies in PA produce. The name from any of those companies is pretty interchangeable with the contents of the bottle. It's water, sugar and a green tea premix and honey. It tastes like an over-sweetened green tea, Just as you would expect, and just as I wanted it to be.

I've mentioned my brief time spent in Hawaii many times on this website. I tend to romanticize that time of my life, well, because it was magical. I went off to a tropical paradise with all expectations of not enjoying it, because I simply am not a beach person, but my friends who planned the trip were no dummies and they made sure we stayed in the “natural” part of Hawaii. There were no cities. I think I saw two chain stores the entire time I was there. Everything else was local little shops and nature and it was exactly what I needed. Any troubles I had did not matter for those 8 days. Anything that takes me back to that time makes me smile and I appreciate it in the low times.

While only the pineapple in here takes me back with the taste sense, just knowing it was from Hawaii was enough tonight. I'm imagining I'm walking through some lush jungle type area, or that I'm sitting on a beach at dusk watching the waves and truly relaxing for one of the first times in my life. There is caffeine and niacin in this beverage, so it shouldn't be relaxing me, but it's giving me energy while the thoughts keep me calm. On top of the wonder that is pineapple juice this can also contains mostly yerba mate tea, which may be my favorite type of tea. It tastes earthy and slightly bitter, the way nature does. Actually that pineapple I mentioned it's not even a secondary player in here. It's yerba mate, then noni and then pineapple. It's refreshing. It's tropical. It's just the push I need on a spring day like today where there is still snow on the ground, but the temperate has finally hit 50 degrees. There is a light in the darkness of winter and it is here and everything will be warm and new.

There's nothing like a big can of milk to make you want to go and work out. There may be a lot of other ingredients in here, but flavor/consistency wise what it boils down to is that is tastes like you're drinking vanilla milk. Yes, I am aware that the protein in these shakes usually comes from whey, but I also normally drink them after going to the gym, not before, which is how this beverage was intended to be enjoyed. The main ingredient in here is skim milk, and that really shows through. It's probably mostly psychological, but it makes me feel logy, even with the taurine and other energy producing ingredients present.

Is there anyone on this planet who before heading out for a run heads to the fridge and pours themselves a nice tall glass of milk? The thought of it just sitting in your stomach makes me think about the inevitable amount of vomit that would spew forth within the first ¼ mile.

I appreciate what they are going for with this, and I enjoyed the chocolate version, but as a pre-workout drink this simply does not work for me. Afterwards I could see, but surely not before.

After nearly 20 years the world's questions have finally been answered. Nearly twenty years ago a commercial was aired where a teenager read off the contents of his fridge to his friends so they could choose a beverage; “OJ, purple stuff, soda, Sunny D.” The purpose of this was to show that kids preferred Sunny Delight over other beverages. We all know that is a fallacy, as the stuff is fake orange juice that is so syrupy. I don't know a person now who would accept a glass if it were presented to them. The mystery has always been what was the purple stuff? Was it grape juice? Kool Aid? Some other weird concoction? I now know that it was a product that was ahead of its time and the children in the ad simply did not know what to do with it. Purple Stuff was/is a calming, relaxation beverage.

Now call me old fashioned but when I think about relaxation, drinking a cola isn't the first thing to come to mind. Actually, carbonation and relaxation don't commonly fall into the same sentence. Finally the time came when I was freaking out about the house I am in the process of buying and I needed to just calm down or I was going to give myself an ulcer. I sat back, cracked open the can, took a deep breath and sipped away. I was surprised at how good it tasted. It had a very nice cola flavor and the cherry is also pleasant, but in a way that is almost like an energy drink. With each sip it starts off as a normal cherry cola but slowly shifts into a candied aftertaste. No part of the experience was gross or weird though. In addition to a pleasant flavor this also helped to slow my brain down a bit so I could continue with life and not be consumed about all of the little things I had to get done from the road in order to close on my house. I could make a dumb joke about that British army saying, but you've seen enough puns of that for a lifetime, so I'll leave you alone.

This is simply yerba mate and nothing else. It has that great bitter not-tea tea flavor like yerba mate should. It's perfect for when you need a little bit of caffeine and you've had your fill of sugar. Everything this company releases is near perfect and this is the base of it all. It's wonderful, and if you're not familiar with yerba mate this company is the place to start. If you're cool with unsweetened drinks I would definitely start with this variety.

Cocktail is a loose term for juices. It has the main ingredient in it, but any other juice is also fair game. This cocktail includes white grape, apple, and dark cherry juices as well as the named cranberry. That's a lot of different juices to combat for flavor, and yet the strongest flavor is the caffeine from green coffee beans. Next in line for top flavor would be the cherry and then the cranberry comes in third. There needs to be a way to disguise the taste of the caffeine better.

Sometimes you have to drive from LA to Salt Lake City in a day. In every case of that instance you end up stopping in the filth hole that is Las Vegas and spending way more time than you meant to. In such cases you may find yourself stopping at a hotel on the Utah border. For some reason the hotel has propane grills outside of the rooms, so you put the sodas you purchased earlier in the day at Galcos into the fridge to chill as you run across the street to pick up some veggie burgers from the grocery store. When you return you realize that the fridge isn't doing anything, so you get a bucket of ice and chill some of them and leave the rest in the fridge. After a night a hanging out and relaxing poolside with some quality sodas and grilled food, so retire to bed so you can get up early and finish the drive. As you're exiting the room in the morning you remember that you left some sodas in the fridge, when you go to grab them you discover that apparently the fridge did work, but more like a freezer and that the sodas have frozen and the caps blew right off the bottles due to the pressure. If it were a nice warm day you could have eaten it like a freezie pop, but it's fairly cold and it's also 8am and who wants a freezie that early in the morning, so into the trash it goes. You're sad that you lost an un-reviewed soda, but while you're in SLC you hit up a grocery store that just happens to have the exact soda you lost earlier in the day and you squeak with glee and return to your day with soda in hand.

Don't tell me you haven't had that exact same thing happen to you at least once in the past three months. It's the American tale as old as this country of ours. It's a rite of passage for children in our culture, and I am an idiot and should just stop writing this and just talk about the way this soda tastes. It's made with real peach juice, but it has a nice taste that rides the border of fruit and gummy candy. For other flavors I might find that gross, but it somehow works for peach. The usual quasi-alcoholic taste that Bundaberg sodas generally have isn't very strong in this flavor. Maybe it's just because the peach taste is so strong that it hides it. Australia is still killing it with their sodas.

Whenever I come across a company that is making a spiced apple soda I just want to tell them they needn't bother. Such a thing already exists in a fairly perfect form and it is made by Reeds. Even though I am an authority on such things, the companies would never listen, and their output always leaves something to be desired.

Natrona Bottling Company through their hat in the ring, and the results of course could not match up. This is a spiced apple soda, but it doesn't have the classic cider flavor to it that I had expected. Actually it's more spice than apple that that is just plain unfortunate. I want a nice mouthful of sweet, sparkling apple juice/cider and instead my taste buds are overrun with cinnamon and nutmeg with every swig. I have to admit that the amount of swigs wasn't very high, because there was so much spice that it wasn't all that enjoyable. I will now refer you to the first paragraph I wrote. Needn't have bothered.

Until 5-6 years ago I don't think I had ever heard the word probiotic before. Then some yogurts started advertising it, saying they were the good type of bacteria, and that they helped with digestion and stomach issues. As someone who has suffered through stomach pain for a big portion of my life, I jumped right on that train. Do you know where that train took me? Nowheresville. Eating those yogurts that I generally thought were disgusting, did nothing to ease my pain. I guess probiotics can't do anything when the source of your pain is stress. I later discovered that if I cut out most of the corn syrup from my diet I wasn't writhing in pain every night. I don't know how that math adds up, but the pain is gone so I'm not complaining. The point in all of this is that only for the briefest moment of my life have I paid attention to anything because it was probiotic.

A few days ago some of these packets arrived at my door for review. The literature that was included claims that not only are probiotics good for digestion, but they also help with your immune system and promote healthy metabolism, by helping to absorb more nutrients. When we started Thirsty Dudes, Mike and I both swore the Hippocratic Oath of beverage reviewers to give all brings affair and impartial review (unless they contain bananas or vinegar), and to always listen to scientists because they are our betters and would never lie to us in a million, bazillion years. Keeping that in mind a doctor, who is one form of a scientist, created this and tells me it's good for me, and I am contractually obligated to believe him. It also helps that our reviews have very little to do with functionality and almost all to do with flavor.

When I opened up this packet I was greeted to a very pleasant smell. It was like my kitchen had been transformed into a smoothie shop. It's a very specific smell that is like berry ice cream, and it's delicious. Looking at the ingredients list I am informed that this is 95% stevia. That seems like a whole lot of stevia, especially since the berry flavor is so prevalent and the diet taste is so minimal. I knew there was zero sugar in here, but from the last I thought it was just berries with no added sweetener. That is how good of a job they did masking the stevia. It's a pleasant drink that I can only believe is very good for you as the scientist who created it has a higher ranking that myself, and it is illegal for me to question him. I will say that this seems like it would be a good additive for a smoothie, but that's probably just because all I can think about is getting a smoothie now, but I just ate and I don't want to leave the house. So, you know, someone bring me one.

Last summer at the Pride parade I stopped into a little shop that was on the route that I knew had an ever changing, but always decent soda selection. When I saw they had Cock …€˜n Bull ginger beer I instantly thought they had missed a great opportunity to move some product to the people celebrating right outside their doors. Seriously, just a small sign with the brands name and I bet they could have sold a few cases worth. They didn't realize what they had, and that was the last time I thought about Cock …€˜n Bull until I came across this new variety in a grocery store on the west coast. It's not often you come across a flavored ginger beer, so when you do, you take notice.

Cock …€˜n Bull may not be the craziest, strongest ginger beer on the market, but what they lack in heat they make up with flavor. It's more like an old fashioned ginger ale with a little burn to it that hits in the after taste. It's got a nice afterburner to it, like your favorite bowling alley arcade game. The cherry is nice and subtle, but it still adds a lot to the drink. It's like someone mixed a cherry Slurpee with a ginger beer, and that may sound gross to you, but I mean it in the most endearing way.

Folks, I feel like an idiot. I have never once in my life considered brewing tea with any hot liquid other than water. Actually the more I think about it, it would more than likely be pretty gross. This beverage wasn't created this way, but imagine if they boiled apple juice and brewed some loose leaf tea in it. Would that be gross, or would it be awesome. I think it may depend on the season. In the Fall I bet it would be delicious and fitting, but in the summer it might seem oppressive. Now I want to perform some experiments where I brew tea in apple juice, and also brew the same type of tea in water and then add apple juice after the fact. How different do you think they would taste from each other?

None of that matters because this juice in front of me is a great twist to a modern day classic. I don't really know if the Arnold Palmer should really be described that way, but that's how I feel in my heart of hearts. Red Jacket not only adds their wonderful apple juice to the mix, but they also didn't just use regular old black tea. They stepped up their game and used guayusa in the mix and it's noticeable in the flavor, in a very good way. I will admit that apple is the strongest flavor in here, but you can definitely make out the lemon and the tea separately. It's great, and Red Jacket has done me right once again. I mean it's more of a Third & Third & Third and not so much a Half & Half, but who am I to complain. Now I have to go deal with the two boiling pots on my stove.

I've been burned by Redline before. Well not burned, more like an adrenaline shot to my heart, because I simply do not know how to read directions. It's recommended that you only drink half of the bottle. Being that I'm sensitive to caffeine I probably shouldn't even have drunk that much. I drank an entire bottle last time and I feel like I didn't sleep for a week. I of course forgot all of that and I grabbed a bottle before driving overnight from Kansas City to Chicago, after only sleeping three hours the night before. I got behind the wheel of the van, and downed the entire bottle. As soon as I did, the concentrated “shot” flavor caused the memories of a sleepless night to come flooding back.

I'll tell you what though, I drove like a champ. I went through rain storms, intense fog and a whole lot of darkness and I got us to IL by 10am. I pretty much didn't sleep until like 3am then. These drinks are insane. Sure they taste like energy drink shots that are so very, very diet. Sure there was some berry taste in but I just couldn't concentrate on it through the diet. I'll take that flavor though if it means it will work the way this does. Function over mouth fashion my friends.

Look folks, Mike and I are born and raised in Buffalo, NY. Even though I haven't eaten meat in 18 years wing sauce still runs through my veins. I've eaten my fair share of vegetarian chicken wings all across this country of ours, and yes they are chicken wings, not Buffalo wings, and I am highly critical of the sauce places use. There is a very specific recipe here in Buffalo and if it's not right it can ruin the wings for me. I was fully expecting to be disappointed in this, but not to this extent. This tastes nothing like chicken wing sauce at all. It just tastes like a citrus soda that has some spice to it. It's almost orange. It's almost grapefruit. It tastes like there is a healthy scoop of capsicum in there as well. If you took all that unappealing mixture and then watered it down you would have this soda.

I was afraid that maybe I was being too critical of it, so I had my friend Ruben try it and all he said was “I absolutely hate this” and then walked out of the room. The verdict is in, this is gross, and not appropriately flavored at all.

Now I am a person who lives a sober life. I haven't touched a drop of alcohol in twenty years, and I don't partake in any drugs. I understand the allure and I know they are fun, but they just aren't for me. That being said, when I was just in Denver I went to a weed dispensary, or a “Weedery” as I like to call it. It was amazing watching my friends in there. It was like watching them in a THC filled candy store. Actually, that's exactly what it was as they bought gummies suckers and all sorts of treats. I like seeing people genuinely excited and happy, even if it's not my thing. A couple of days later I came across this energy drink and I thought it was my turn to get in on the fun, as we had a dumb overnight drive, and that is where I shine.

I really hope for everyone else's sake that their candies tasted better than this beverage, because it was pretty gross. Other hemp drinks I have tried tasted like rope, but this just tasted like candied poison, in a very different way than most energy drinks do. It had this horrible aftertaste that almost tasted like Vemma, if it had spoiled. I couldn't even make it through the can, even though it was 4am and I was driving from Portland to San Francisco. Now that's bad.

Spindrift has expanded their company with a seltzer line. If you are a fan of their sodas, which are just juice and cane juice added to sparkling water, but think it's a bit too sweet then this is the drink for you. It's the same idea as their sodas, except without the sugar. In this case it's sparkling water that is flavored by small quantities of tangerine and lemon juices. The result is possibly the best seltzer I've ever tasted. It's very mild, meaning lightly flavored, but without being overly seltzer. This is the answer to less sugar in your life for those who are soda junkies. Actually it's probably not enough for the junkies, but I certainly like it.

If you've been anywhere near a pop radio station in the past five years you've probably hear Katy Perry sing about her “Teenage Dream.” Yes, I sometimes find myself a sucker for homogenated radio pop and I have no qualms with that. The reason I bring this up is because when I found this bottle of juice in a Whole Foods in Salt Lake City I thought I was going to get to know my middle-aged dream. I don't know any teenager who would be this excited about drinking a juice, but I know my fair share of people over 35 who would be pretty stoked. This juice combines kale, pineapple, cucumber, spinach, oranges, lemons and matcha green tea. I am a fan of greens (minus celery) and I'm not an complete idiot, so I absolutely love pineapples. On top of that I have never met a matcha drink (or food ) that I did not develop an instant crush on. In my mind I was going to take some long night drives to some beautiful overview and just spend some quality time with this juice.

Like a pop stat that did not live up to their record labels expectations, this juice failed to rise to the top of the charts of my taste buds. There are watered down pop songs, and then there are juices like this that rely too heavily on the greens side of their ingredients in a general way and not showcasing the pineapple aka the hook of the song. It just tastes like sweetened greens with a hint of citrus to it. It's hard to make out the individual fruits and vegetables, which is rare in the cold pressed game. This drink is the juice equivalent of Destiny's Child without Beyonce.

Even after all of that it's still a great juice, it's just unfortunate that it didn't go where I wanted and as a result it will probably slip through the cracks and not make it to anyone's top ten lists.

There have been many reviews on this site where Mike or I have proclaimed that apple juice is one of the hardest drinks to write about. Unless it solely from a specialty apple, most apple juices taste pretty much the same, with various degrees of being watered down.

I can unfortunately say that this is not the case with Positive Energy. Sure it has a general apple base, but the addition of caffeine from green coffee beans leaves it tasting like the juice is going bad. We've been sent a jug of straight caffeine in the past, so I know what it tastes like all on its own, and I'm sad to say that the caffeine taste is stronger than the apple taste in this beverage. That is too bad because it only has the same amount of caffeine as one cup of coffee. The loss of flavor hardly seems worth it.

From the name I thought this was going to be a heavily caffeinated version of cherry Pepsi. Then I saw that it had zero calories and I thought that it was just a rebranding of Diet Pepsi, since the D-word is the new four letter word. Well, it turns out that both were right. This is Pepsi's new diet soda that has about 3x as much caffeine as the old Diet Pepsi. Diet caffeine to the Max bro.
Seriously though, this isn't that bad. I enjoyed it much more than the old version. I don't know how much of a difference there is to the actual formula, but it tastes more cherry than diet, and that is a very good thing. It's a less syrupy Cherry Pepsi with a slight diet aftertaste. It was a pleasant surprise that I might actually visit again.