Jason Draper - 2709 Reviews

I don't even drink alcohol and I can tell you that this would be the greatest mixer of all time. It's sweet, it has lime in it and it has just the right amount of burn. This is the kind of flavor that could make a sober man turn to the bottle. Actually never mind that, because they can just go out and buy a bottle of this and leave the alcohol out of it.

With only three ingredients Sugarcane Island created a beverage that far superior to those who could have all the ingredients in the world. Simple is almost always better, especially when it's fresh pressed and involved a buttload of ginger. I do admit that it is a tad sweeter than what I would normally drink, and that is the only thing keeping me from giving it top marks. Flavor-wise the ginger to lime ratio is perfect, it's just the sweetener that is keeping me from enjoying an entire bottle. Perhaps I should add a little water to make it what I want as well as to stretch it out.

For decades of my life I was denied the joys of the pina colada. My hatred of coconut ran so deep, that I dare not even try this delicious mixture. Why no one ever told me that toasted coconut and coconut water taste vastly different I will never know, but those people owe me a whole lot of this stuff to make up for lost time.

If I have learned anything from movies and other media it's that this is the taste of paradise. It's what everyone is constantly drinking in tropical locations. I completely understand why. It's extremely refreshing and it tastes wonderful. On top of that, whenever I drink some it gives me a relaxing sensation. It's like I'm in a hammock in the shade of some trees on a beach just listening to the waves. What other drink gives you that experience?

This has a nice pineapple flavor that perfectly blends in with the coconut water. It's also sweetened by palm sugar, which I have never tried before to the best of my knowledge. Even the sweetener is tropical with this drink. I need a vacation.

Dry Soda is known for their more “outsider” flavors. When they hit the market it was with flavors such as lavender, juniper berry and vanilla bean. Since then they have expanded their line to include their take on more traditional flavors, which are available only in cans and not glass bottles. At first I was unsure of this company, as like most Americans I was a soda junky. Over the years my palate has refined and I have grown to enjoy a light, dry soda. I don't need so much sugar in my life, and these sodas work perfectly to cover my need for bubbles that are flavorful.

If you are familiar with most apple sodas that are on the market, then you know that they tend to be some of the sweetest pops that you can find. Dry didn't fall into that trap. They kept their mission statement, which I can only assume is “Use sugar sparingly,” and made a lightly sweetened soda that is just great. I could drink this stuff all day. It's mostly sparkling water, but there is enough apple flavor in there to quench your longing, without being overpowering. It almost tastes unnatural for an apple flavor to be so light in a drink, but it's well worth your time and money, so I can only hope you are at the market looking up what we thought of this drink, and then you go and buy them out.

Let's be honest with ourselves, when you drink coffee out of a can you can't really expect a brew of very high quality. It's never going to be as good as getting something made at your local coffee shop, well unless that shop is run by a bunch of yokels who have no idea what they are doing. I've drunk a decent amount of these canned mochas and they range from horrible to decent. I've never been blown away by one before, until now...Oh wait, no this one didn't get me there either, although I really thought it would. It has a nice coffee flavor, and an exceptional chocolate taste to it. The problem is that they used a blend of sugar and stevia and that just throws the whole thing out of the window. I'm all for lowering the sugar intake of humans, but there are times when just using less sugar would be the better choice over using a zero calorie sweetener, natural or not. It almost always takes a nice, natural flavor and makes it feel wrong.

I don't want to dwell on the negative here though. If it wasn't for the inclusion of stevia, this would be the best canned coffee drink I have ever tasted. The chocolate would have been the secret of this drinks success. It actually tastes like a quality dark chocolate bar was melted down, and not like some garbage powder that most companies use. The fact that the coffee was cold brewed is also a nice touch. It's just too bad that one ingredient can knock down an otherwise really nice product.

Today is Halloween in in order to celebrate its arrival I've been watching far too many horror movies all month. Actually, I keep telling myself it's because of the season but in reality I am always watching horror movies. Seriously, I think I have a problem. The funny thing about today being Halloween and all is that I decided to celebrate at work with this bottle of Sider Venom soda and by watching the Mel Brooks gem Dracula: Dead and Loving It. Perhaps I had burned myself out, or maybe it's because I like to laugh at dumb-funny movies. Whatever the reason, I simply don't care and it made the work day fly by.

Another thing that flew by was this soda. I drank it way faster than I meant to. It was delicious and I have little self-control. This is the season for gluttony, right? The cola flavor in this soda is pretty much lost behind the veil of wonderful cherry. It's not like a candied cherry as the flavor comes from the extract of dark sweet cherry and not some artificial garbage. I could have used a stronger cola, and if that had been the case this might have been a near perfect pop. Wasn't that the name of your band in high school? Near Perfect Pop?

This soda would have been great during any season, but the spooookkkyyyy label made it a perfect addition to my day. I can also pretend that this is what the spiders that Renfield ate in the movie tasted like. Man, he would have been one lucky servant if that was the case.

When I first read this companies website, I immediately thought to myself, “These people are either completely unaware of the market, or they are a bunch of dirty liars.” You see they claimed that in 2012 they released “the first packaged, shelf stable, ready-to-drink, & natural Vietnamese Sparkling Limeade beverage.” I thought to myself, I've had limeade before, this is nothing new, those liars!” Then I looked back at prior reviews on Thirsty Dudes and I realized that all of the limeades I have drunk in the past were either still beverages or they were mixed with cherry if they were carbonated. None of them would be considered classic sparkling limeade. I take back the thoughts I had in my head Phancy. Your statement may very well be correct, even if it blows my mind that this hasn't been marketed before.

The genius of this beverage is in its simplicity. The only ingredients are sparkling water, lime juice and cane sugar. It tastes authentic and homemade. It actually tastes like someone squeezed a lime into sweetened water, which is how it should taste, because that is what it is.

Obviously this leads me to think of lemonade with the primary ingredient swapped out for limes. That lead me to wonder if children in Vietnam set up limeade stands in front of their house, like kids sell lemonade in the states. I hope they do, because that sounds delicious.

The power of the moose compels you. The moose compels you to drink a soda flavor that you would normally overlook. The moose is not sure if either black cherry or lemon lime is the worst of the classic soda flavors. The moose doesn't care. It could be any flavor, and if the moose is on the label you drink it. As it turns out the moose is very wise and doesn't appear on just any label. It knew that I couldn't care less about black cherry soda, so it strolled up to that digitally created stream to stand in a picturesque pose, just knowing that it would get my attention. The moose was right; not only that its presence would get me to drink this soda, but also that this is above and beyond a standard black cherry. The main reason is that cherry juice is actually present in this beverage albeit in a concentrated form. It's more than other companies deliver and it gives a normally bland flavor the kick it needs to make it truly enjoyable. It's still tastes like black cherry, but how it should taste and not articifial. Since it's kettle brewed it also has a bit of the standard flavor that goes along with that. It's vaguely smoky and a little metaly.

I was waiting for Mike to get around to reviewing this, but then the moose came to me and told me to partake. When a silhouette of a moose talks to you, you listen.

If there are two beverages that I truly enjoy in this world it would be green tea and aloe juice. I drink at least a half-gallon of unsweetened green tea daily and back before I was watching my sugar intake so much I used to down those giant 50oz bottles of aloe all the time. The thought of that now makes me feel disgusted with myself, but man are they tasty.

This product combines those two wonderful beverages with low calories and low sugar. While that sounds great on paper, I think the lack of sugar/use of stevia takes away from the allure of the aloe. The way it is I don't like it aloe very much. See what I did there? Terrible joke. The aloe flavor that I love is nowhere to be found. I'm guessing it's obscene amounts of sugar that give it the wonderful white grapeish flavor. In addition to that the tea flavor is not very strong.

I've told you what this drink is lacking and now I'll tell you what it delivers. What I get when I take a sip is a watered down green tea that has been mixed with not-very-sweet aloe that gives it a taste that makes me think of a cleaner. All of that is sweetened with a mixture of cane sugar and stevia with a hint of honey thrown in for good measure. Doesn't sound very good, does it? Luckily it does deliver a nice smattering of vitamins and it is also very refreshing. I can only imagine drinking this on a hot summer day would quench your thirst quite nicely. Make sure you're prepared for a flavor that isn't terrible, but also one that doesn't live up to it's potential.

I can only hope that everyone who reads this is familiar with the Purity Test. If you're not, what did you do with your time in school? It's generally a questionnaire used by high school and college students to determine your degree of innocence in matters such as sex, drugs, and other damning things. Depending on what type of crew you roll with a low purity score could be a thing of embarrassment or pride.

I hadn't taken one of these tests since college, so I decided now was as good a time as any. I would like to report that these juices were nowhere to be found on the test, shocking I know. I'm sure some weird questions could be rephrased to include it, but I can also assume that the company would be none too pleased about that. Oh well, I don't need to know what degrading things can be done with juice. All I need to know is that it's tasty and that I enjoy drinking it.

This is just mango puree and orange juice with some sugar and water added to it. The mango flavor is steering the ship, just as it should be. I have no problem with orange juice, but it's such a standard juice that I enjoy when other flavors take over. I personally don't see the need for the added sugar. I would have enjoyed it much more in its natural state, so I didn't feel as if I had to brush my teeth afterwards. I can't argue with flavor though, and this is full of it.

For those of you keeping score at home, I got 44% on the purity test. I'm sure there are people everywhere praying for my soul. Take the test yourself and see if you need to be saved.
http://www.puritytest.org

These days a handful of coconut water companies are moving away from the classic “heavy” can and tetra pak cartons towards more innovative packaging. I understand; anything that can make your product jump out more to consumers is a plus. Coconut Cartel has taken things too far though. This is not coconut water. This is simply a coconut with the companies name stamped/burnt into the shell.

I feel like someone has played a prank on me. When we were in talks with the company I say the pictures of the coconuts with the company logo on them, but I thought they were just being clever. When a box with three coconuts in it, and nothing else, showed up at my door I just laughed. Sure the liquid in the coconut was great, but this has officially taken the title of the most inconvenient beverage of all time. There's no going to the fridge for a quick hydration. There's a process that goes into opening a coconut, and it's not pretty. I ended up using a drill to put holes in the shell, so I could pour it out. That was after many failed attempts with coconuts in my youth.

I really hope that this whole thing is some long term prank being played on me. I hope one of my friends created this website and then shipped me some coconuts, because the whole thing is laughable and I can't imagine this company being sustainable by any means.

I don't really know why that I am shocked that I like this, but I am. It just sounds like something that would be terrible. Whenever companies try to grasp outside of their safe zone, I am always very skeptical. For some reason with this line I expect the results to be less than stellar, even though I have had several other flavors that I have enjoyed. Each time I expect my mouth to be greeted with a gush of grossness. You can just tell looking at this that it has a zero calorie sweetener in it somewhere. The thing is that the stevia mixed with the cane sugar works in here. It has a bit of a diet taste to it, but the actual berry flavoring is much stronger, and that is all that you can ask for.

I think the saving grace for Glaceau is that they went for their own thing. They didn't take a classic energy drink and try to mix it with their pre-existing products. They took what they were good at and added green coffee bean extract an B vitamins to give it a little energy push. There's no chemical garbage in here, and as a result it just tastes like a carbonated Vitamin Water. It may not give you the crazy rush as other products do, but you can feel better about drinking it, and really when in your life did you actually need the shot to your heart that the other players give? To me it just seems like overkill.

I'm glad that I have continuously been wrong about the Vitamin Water Energy line. It's nice to be surprised in a positive way.

Are you tired of boring old lemonade? Well then, you should step up your game and grab yourself a bottle of this sugarcane juice. Not only does Sugarcane Island swap out boring old lemons with exciting state of the art limes, but there is also so much sugarcane juice in here. There is a certain joy that I experience when I can taste the difference between cane sugar and any other sweetener. When done right it has a nice natural flavor that is sweet and almost gritty. It is the most superior of all sweeteners.

Some, like myself, may find it humorous that the label says no added sugar, when one of the two ingredients in here is sugarcane juice. You might think, “This whole drink is mostly sugar, which tastes delicious but should probably be drunk sparingly.” Like me you would be wrong, as I was informed by the company. Sugar cane and cane sugar are two different things. Sugarcane comes from pressing a sweet grass and cane sugar is processed sugar. The bottom line is that the previous is healthier and not in fact an added sweetener.

See, now you learned something new, so throw that lemonade in the filth bin and enjoy a bottle of this the next time you're at a beach on a nice hot day, trying to hide from the murderous sun.

I would like to speak with whoever was in charge of deciding how much sweetener was to be put in this beverage? Did they have a cold the day the decision was made? Were their collective noses stuffed, so that it affected their sense of taste? I don't know what situation would make me not want to fire them, but I hope something is brought to my attention, because this is just ridiculous(drinkers of a product have the ability to fire employees of the company right). Normally when stevia/erythritol are used in a beverage it's towards the bottom of the ingredients list. In here it's the second thing listed; carbonated water then zero calorie sweetener blend. It's so overly fake sweet that it's hard to make out the intended flavor of the drink. Guava is generally a very strong flavor, like passion fruit. In here it gets lost and it seems like an afterthought.

There are people out there who will really like this. I personally just don't understand using that much zero calorie sweetener, just use less. No one will complain.

What is wrong with me? Why do I do it? Why do I love sodas that cause me physical pain? Ginger beer is one of my favorites, yet it hurts. Oh how it hurts. I had an overnight drive and instead of downing an energy drink I decided to drink this bottle of ginger beer. Every time I felt a bit sleepy, I took a sip. What better way to stay awake then by giving your throat a nice liquid kick of fire?

Overall this is a pretty standard ginger beer. It's nice and sweet with a decent burn that you feel in your throat as well as your stomach. This is basically the non-alcoholic version of a shot of whiskey. It's not insanely intense, but it's enough and sometimes that is exactly what you're looking for.

From the get go I wanted nothing to do with this beverage. My interest in coconut water is still relatively new and a carbonated version sounded absolutely terrible to me. Just as I feared this drink fell on the sunscreen side of the spectrum. It wasn't to the extent that it tasted like someone watered down their Coppertone and then introducing it to a Soda Stream, but it is close enough. If that wasn't a bad enough description for you, take into consideration that the all-natural, zero calorie sweetener is ridiculously strong, and nearly unbearable. Simply put, this is not for me.

What we have here is a wonderfully confusing melody of flavors. This is a beverage that was formulated for function over flavor but with a roster like this the flavor takes care of itself. iQ has gathered up apple cider, white grape, strawberry, passion fruit, orange, lime, guarana and mixed them all up with a little bit of vitamin B12 and the results are fantastic. All of the individual flavors are very present and are just trying to beat the hell out of each other to come out on top. This is a true fruit punch. All of the others are just chumps compared to the joy that this juice brings.

I love that they chose to use cider over straight apple juice. In a world where apples are used to stretch juice and make them a tad bit sweeter, using cider pushes it to the next level. Also, out of all the juices involved only one (white grape) is from concentrate.


This beverage was put together to get the drinker up and running without relying on the caffeine from coffee. Who wouldn't rather drink juice than coffee? Oh, a lot of people? Well I don't want to know them. Actually, no that's fine, it just means more just for the likes of me, and we want all the juice.

This may be made from a concentrate with added sugar, but I'm going to give this little guy a break from my dumb rules because it's great. It's largely a sweetened orange juice, but it has these wonderful sunbeams of pineapple an guava that shine through the cloudiness and light up your taste buds.
Obviously I wish there was more of a guava flavor to it, as I am a guava junky. I could be handed a freshly squeezed glass of juice that was wholly guava and I would still wish I had more of that particular flavor. I will take what I am given though and I will happily drink it again and again.

In a short span of time the Day of the Dead will be upon us. The dead will be remembered and honored as altars are built and sugar skulls are created and eaten. I'm pretty sure that all of those left over sugar skulls that are leftover will them be melted down to sweeten these particular energy drinks. Seriously these things are way sweeter than they need to be. I have compared energy drinks to liquid candy a ridiculous amount of times on this website, so it only seems fitting.

Other than the sweetness of this is it a pretty standard energy drink that has been flavored by the memories of the dead. Actually that's not completely accurate. At first I thought it tasted like a cherry Red Bull, but with each sip it tasted more and more like a plain cherry soda. It's very grenadine heavy, but by the time I was 2/3 through with the can any sort of classic energy drink flavor was out the window. It was simply cherry soda water, taste wise. Perhaps that is what the ghosts of your ancestors want and who are we to argue with them?

If this beverage is supposed to be a tribute to American soldiers who are in the armed forces, Rip It surely does not think much of them or this country. One would think that if you are honoring something you would put some time and energy into creating something that is of at least a minimum of quality. Rip It only delivers a soda that is as generic as can be that is extremely lightly flavored to an extent that it seems like they were running out of flavor syrup so they stretched it out by adding far too much water. Nothing about this tastes like an energy drink, which can be nice sometimes, but not when the flavor that replaces it is so unremarkable.

This drink tells me that Rip It hates the troops and wants them to drink this gross generic beverage. I bet this is what would have been given to the troops when they came home from Vietnam and people spit on them.

Folks, a miracle was truly performed by this beverage. They used lemongrass tea and I didn't find it to be gross. In fact, I actually really enjoyed it. Unlike most miracles this is a divine interaction that I can deconstruct. The secret here is that the lemongrass tea isn't the base of the drink; it is merely an added flavor. The heart of this beverage is a mixture of water, apple juice and agave syrup. It's one of those drinks that you don't really taste the apple juice until you read that it is in the mix, and then its inclusion becomes very apparent and you can't believe you didn't realize it before. Now add a bit of orange juice to the mix and things really start coming into form. Throw in a few miscellaneous ingredients such as lemon juice, ginseng, orange extract, oolong, and that pesky lemongrass. Things are almost ready for the public, but that lemongrass is just sticking out too much in the flavor. Whatever should we do? Oh how about tossing in some ginger which will compete for one of the strongest flavors in the drink, but with not even a hint of a burn.

In the end this is really more juice than tea, but the effects are the same; it gives you a sweet, delicious organic energy, that might not be as intense as the chemical, artificial ones on the market, but it works enough.

Look at that I have explained a miracle. Perhaps the Catholic Church should hire me when they need to investigate such matters. I mean I don't have to be a believer to disprove things, right?