Jason Draper - 2709 Reviews

At some point in your life you may find yourself on a ferry returning to England from France. It's a pleasant experience, even on the dreariest of days. Actually shouldn't life at sea be dreary anyways? That's how I always imagine it in books. If you ever find yourself in the situation I would recommend that you do the same thing I did, listen to The Cure and Joy Division on your headphones and just space out looking at the sea. I don't care if it's overly melodramatic; it was flat out enjoyable. In the moments when you come out of it why not enjoy a nice German soda? I myself chose a can of this Valensina.

Now, I can't read a word on this can, but I can read the language of flavor, and the book I'm reading it a real page-turner. This is a lemon-orange beverage that is somewhere between a soda pop and a sparkling water (although I do consider anything carbonated with added sugar to be a soda). Each of the two fruits are equally present in a battle for flavor supremacy. To tell you the truth I don't want either of them to win, because their struggle is so darn tasty. It's slightly tart and very flavorful. I don't know why we don't get this flavor combo back home, but I really wish we did.

Oh, and when you're ferry is approaching the dock, take advantage of the numerous gigantic seagulls that are hovering around. You can totally get them to eat out of your hand, if you are a turd who gets excited about things like that like I am. One of my traveling companions just wanted to feed them and then punch them as they grabbed the cracker. Now I'm against animal cruelty, but the visual of that in my head is over the top hilarious, and I hope the same visions are now in your mind grapes.

Of course after I spend a week and a half in the UK, and only have one day in Germany to grab all the drinks I can, I end up getting a juice that is produced not far from our home base back in England. Eh, I do what I do and who are you to judge me? Oh the people who read this site and make it worth doing? Okay, I'll accept your judgment.

This juice sounded very interesting and it sounded like reality? Did I just blow your minds? Let me restate that, It tastes exactly like you would expect it to from the flavor. It's mostly apple juice, with a little bit of kiwi added for a nice pleasant taste. It's calming. It's relaxing and it's delicious. Then the lime sneaks up behind you and punches you square in the mouth. Suddenly it's a whole new adventure. The lime is so strong and authentic tasting that it took me by surprise. I quickly grew to love it and before I could take a breath the bottle was gone. This is simply fruit juice that is thick and smooth and I loved every second of it.

Now I'm sure that rhubarb grows somewhere in the United Kingdom, but will forever be associated with American country living to me. I can't think of a single time in my life where I was offered rhubarb when I wasn't on a farm. Goats, bails of hay, horses, barn cats and rhubarb are all grouped together for me. Oh yeah and don't forget strawberries. Is there anything better then being on a farm and plucking a strawberry from the plant and jamming it in your mouth. Oh man, the tiny ones are so damn good.

Now that I think about it all of the things I've mentioned could very easily exist in England. Maybe I just need to spend less time in the cities there and more in the rural areas. I once spent two days on a farm in Bavaria and it was one of the best experiences in my life. Everything we ate was grown on the farm. I'm talking homemade veggie burgers that were composed of fresh vegetables. Being vegetarian was never so good.

Okay, I retract my statement. I will assume this makes sense abroad, and let it be. I now wish that I had been on a farm over there whilst I was drinking this. Instead I was in a kitchen of a friend's house in Wales. It was a perfectly pleasant place to be, I had a cat and dog around me, but it didn't have the same effect as a farm.

Okay, pondering/complaining aside, this sure is wonderful. It's subtle and the rhubarb isn't over the top (not that I would complain if it were). The strawberry is very present and it's just shy of tasting like fresh fruit, which is quite a feat for a concentrate. I wish I had some bubbly water here because this would make one fantastic soda. It's more than fine with still water, but the bubbles would take it over the top. Now just close your eyes and think of goats as you take a sip.

Dear Red Bull,
Perhaps a lawsuit is in order.

It's mid May and I think it's finally safe to say that winter is officially over. I know it should have been over for a long time, but it snowed here in late April. Something it wrong with Mother Nature. She needs to go see a doctor STAT because up is down, left is right, cats and dogs…€¦. You get the drift. It's finally sunny and warm (if not downright hot at times) and that means bust out your lemonades and teas because we need refreshment.

For the most part Made has treated us well in the past. They have provided us with some spectacular beverages as well as some average ones. Only once have they steered us wrong, and that just happened to be with another drink that was composed of lemons and green tea (also strawberry). The problem with that was that the lemon was too strong, and it had a weird plastic taste to it. From the taste I will safely say that this is that self same drink, before they added the strawberries to the mix. It just doesn't taste right.

Maybe this combination was doomed from the start. It is more than likely that green tea and lemonade just weren't meant to co-mingle. I wanted to like this, but I just can't. It doesn't sit right. Also, going back and reading my old review put dumb Robert Palmer songs in my head and I am holding Made accountable for that terror.

Suja has expanded their line of beverages past the world of juice cleanses. While I appreciate the juice cleanse, I have to admit that for a lot of people it's probably a fad, especially with the hefty price tag attached to it. There are also more and more companies popping up who are providing that service and sooner or later that bubble us bound to burst to some extent. Maybe it will blow up and some little bubbles will be left over, but one thing is for certain and that is that the market cannot sustain all of these companies. I'm glad Suja is spreading their wings into other avenues of juice.

With their Essentials line Suja is offering quality juices at a lower price point. I went for the Berry Goodness this time around, well because I'm a sucker berries. There's not big reveal. I just love the things. This is a mixture of blueberries, strawberries and blackberries amongst other fruits. Unfortunately for me, but probably welcomed by most is that one of the main ingredients in here is banana puree. Even though I have a complete disdain for bananas I did not let them ruin this smoothie for me. This has a wonderful mixed berry flavor that tastes like someone mushed up the fruit in front of your eyes. There is a banana aftertaste, but if I can look past it, anyone can. One good thing about that devil fruit is that it thickens up the beverage nicely (along with crushed up chia seeds). The apple juice that is the base of the drink sweetens up tings nicely, and naturally.

Once you get to the bottom portion of the bottle there is tartness from the orange and lemon juice involved. I shook this thing up pretty darn well, but it still just sat at the bottom. It was an interesting turn of flavor, but I strangely enjoyed it.

This is cold pressed and highly enjoyable for less than half of the price of their original line. Grab a hold people and don't let go. It would be a shame to see this company go down with the “juice cleanse” ship.

Pull the arrow back. Feel the quill in your fingertips. Set the target in your sights. Release. If you were a marksmen your arrow would fly true and hit that sucker dead center. If you were this drink you would be somewhere just outside of the bullseye. It's so close to being right on the money, but that little distance can mean a lot in the competitive world of archery.

The juice has a heavy blueberry taste that is rounded out by apple. The thing is that it lacks the robustness that I so badly want from it. I blame this on its origins being from concentrate. It only contains 1% blueberry juice, but that is the prominent flavor. If it was straight, pure juice it would have been strong enough on it's own and it wouldn't have had to outsource the work to grape, orange and lemon. It's a shame because I had high hopes, and the cheaper juices just won out.

Orangina is a trickster. It is in fact the Loki of soft drinks. You think to yourself, this is just carbonated orange juice, so it's the healthier choice. You down an entire huge bottle and then that jokester comes out to point out that yes there is orange juice in here, but there is also a cubic butt-load of added sugar as well. It has the same amount of sugar as Coke, according to the internet. Deceit!

Even though I have been tricked before, I still jumped at a chance to buy an alternate flavor that we do not have back home in the States. Rouge! I believe this is the same formula with the boring regular orange juice swapped out for blood oranges. The results are astronomically better. It's the perfect midpoint between a normal orange and grapefruit. With that in mind think of this as mixing orange juice with Squirt. Tasty indeed.

For added effect you may notice that the orange on the label has a devil cap and tail. I love that. I also love that it's made with real sugar in France and not high fructose corn syrup. We have a lot to learn America.

While I know in reality this is not true, with all of my heart I want to believe that the huge contribution of the Jamaican/Caribbean culture in England came from the Clash going to record Give …€˜Em Enough Rope in Jamaica. I'd like to think that they got so hooked on the cuisine on their trip that they came back home and made it for everyone and it just caught on like wildfire. It's such a ridiculous notion that it's wonderful.

I unfortunately know this isn't true because the Ka soft drink company started in the 1960s, nearly 20 years before Mick, Joe, Topper and Paul make their trek. The company claims their drinks are based on original Jamaican soft drink recipes, but they are either liars, or they just did something wrong. I've had pineapple sodas from its country of inception and they are generally wonderful. This Ka pineapple soda is completely middle of the road. It tastes very generic. I wouldn't ever question it if it were store brand. It's perfectly fine for family parties, but I wouldn't drink it for my own pleasure. I will listen to the Clash's second masterpiece now and pretend I have a more fitting soda.

I could have sworn that we had already reviewed this. I mean I know Mike and I purchased some years ago, because that is when Mike proclaimed that blackcurrant smells like feet and urine. I can't really argue with that statement, but I think it tastes just fine.

Growing up we had red currants growing in my backyard. Those berries were wonderfully tart, and nothing like this. Black currant falls somewhere between a grape and a blueberry, with the grape is on it's way to becoming a raisin. Luckily it tastes better than it smells, but it also tastes a bit watered down.

Could this be a great drink? I personally don't think it ever had any hope of that. It is okay though, and it could be a little bit better without being so watered down, but this is a huge company in the UK so they have to be doing something right.

If you were a “cool” teenager in the 90`s you hung out in coffee shops. It was a different time, before the great Starbucks takeover when these locals were the homes of true weirdos. You couldn't just pop off in your local suburb; you had to go the often seedy artsy parts of town. I'm sure if I were to go back in time to 1996 and head to Topic coffee it wouldn't seem nearly as insane as it did to a 16 year old. It was dirty, dimly lit and it seemed like John Cale was always playing. It was filled with the kind of people I wanted to surround myself in, and I felt like I was finally home. There was one problem though; I didn't like coffee. I loved the culture of the place, but I just couldn't get into the drink of choice. Sure at Perkins and Dennys I would get it, but I would also add so much sugar that it could turn a walrus diabetic. I could tell that that would be frowned upon at this establishment, and you know I had to keep the cool air about me. I mean cut-off dress pants with combat boots and a painted army coat only took me so far. My solution was that I would occasionally order an iced coffee (it never seemed as harsh), but most ofhte time I would drink Afri Cola. It always seemed exotic to me with the name and weirdly shaped bottle. Topic was the only place that I had ever come across it during my short time on this planet and since it wasn't a standard Coke or Pepsi I felt that the patrons wouldn't look down on me for drinking it. In reality most of them were probably nodding off on heroin or some other opiate. Oh if my mother knew where her little boy spent her nights.

So now you have the back-story of my love affair with Afri Cola. Shortly after Topic moved, and it didn't have the same esthetic. Coffee culture started to rise and more cafes opened and eventually what I thought would be my savior closed down for good. With it went my supply of Afri Cola. Occasionally throughout the years I would stumble upon it in some small store in another city, but I never had a steady supply. You can understand my joy when I came cross a decent display of it in a grocery store in Frankfurt, Germany. I bought the biggest bottle I could find and it was like going home again. I went home to a hole in the wall that was home to all of the disenfranchised of Buffalo; the punks, the weirdos, the junkies, the transgendered and many more.

Afri Cola has a special taste in the cola world. It's not like Coke, Pepsi or the unimpressive store brands. It's clearly a cola but it doesn't fit into those molds, just like the patrons of Topic didn't fit into the molds of the normal world. If I had to compare it to another cola I would say that it was closest to RC Cola. Keep in mind it is no clone, it is it's own soda and I miss it dearly.

I love when I'm in another country and I find a product from a company that I am very familiar with that we don't have back home. Most notably are all of the crazy flavors of Coca Cola that are hanging around this planet. Some of ridiculously good, and some are just plain ridiculous.

After spending a week and a half in the UK baffled by not being able to find a single bottle of iced tea, I came across this in Germany. Seriously though, we're talking about a region of the planet that probably consumes more hot tea then the rest of the world combined, and the iced variety is not in corner stores? Ludicrous. This was an exciting find though. Not only would I get my iced tea fix, but I would also get to try it in carbonated form.

For some reason I expected this to taste like Brisk with bubbles, and was greatly pleased to find out that was not the case. It tastes like normal Lipton's lemon tea, except you know…€¦carbonated. I'm sure that is what most of the denizens of this planet would expect this to taste like, but I live in America where corn syrup is king and it leads to gross teas.

I have to admit that the bubbles were a bit weird at first, but by the end of the can I was getting the hang of it. This is something I could definitely get used to. Who knows if it will ever make it to my neck of the woods with this formula though? With my luck it will show up and just be a syrupy mess that will deserve one sip and then an introduction to the filth bin.

When Harry Nilsson sang about putting limes into coconut for a nice treat he had it all wrong. When he should have been singing is “You put the orange in the cola and you drink it all up.” That concoction is a true treat, albeit one with a learning curve. When I first tried Mezzo Mix I was not a fan, but after being fed a couple of bottles, I grew to love it. In America we are taught that the only fruit flavor that really mixes with cola is cherry (and to a lesser extent lemon and possibly lime). We have it all wrong. Cherry cola is fine and dandy, but orange cola is wonderful. Unfortunately this bottle didn't have as much orange flavor as I would have liked. I would describe it as a cola with hints of orange around the edges. I'm sure that is what most people like, but I would prefer a bolder orange flavor. The cola is also pretty middle of the road. I wouldn't give it a second thought if my citrus friend weren't involved. When I'm in Germany in the future I'll probably stick to Mezzo Mix, but I wouldn't turn one of these down if it was handed to me.

Before the world of automation I feel like working for a coconut water would be pretty great. You'd get to wander through nature looking for coconuts to chop down from trees, and just spend your days outdoors. Yes I know that they are probably grown on farms, but I'd like to pretend that you had to meander through the jungle with a cart collecting the bounty for companies such as Cocofina. Later in the day you'd have to bust your butt cracking open all of those coconuts to get the sweet, sweet nectar inside, and that would be no fun. I mean have you ever tried to open a coconut? It's nearly impossible with a hammer and a screwdriver (yes I'm well aware that I'm an idiot).

The coconuts in this little “juice box” have been imported from Thailand. I wonder if they ship the whole coconuts, or just vats of the “milk.” It's gotta be just the “milk,” right? I mean think of the cost of shipping coconuts whole. I also wonder if the impending civil war in Thailand is going to affect the coconut water game.

As I said this comes in a “juice box,” which is a little strange. I didn't think it would be enough liquid in the container, but by the time I was completely satisfied. Its contents are very smooth, and they taste like high quality coconut water. It's a win here folks.

It's not like I'm ever going to turn down an apple when it's offered to me. You're reading the words of a man who has eaten apples until he was physically sick on several occasions, solely because he was hanging out in an apple orchard. I have no self control. The thing is that if the choice is given between a green, red or yellow apple, green is going to win out every time. It's a shame that when most companies make products that they deem to be green apple flavored they taste like sour, artificial garbage. Tango on the other hand does things right, but I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's go back in time to my first encounter with this wonderful soda.

The year was 2007 and I was touring Europe for the first time. We had just taken a ferry from France to England and we had played a show in Brighton. That night we stayed at some abandoned office building that some kids, and I mean a lot of kids, were squatting. The building was pretty run down and only a couple parts of it had weird makeshift electricity that I believe they were stealing from an adjacent building. The kids were nice enough and I accompanied them to a store so they could pick up some beer. As a non-drinker I was looking for something more kid friendly. I had still not given up my search for root beer or iced tea at this point, and my hopes were high when we entered the corner store. Of course there was no sign of what I was looking for, and since money was extremely tight, I bought a giant bottle of Tango, because it was under a pound and it would last me all night. I took some swigs from the bottle as we walked back to our home for the night and a wonderfully sweet, fruity flavor washed over my tongue. Over the next two hours I downed that whole bottle, and felt like garbage for it. I didn't regret it though as it was delicious. The soda was made with real apple juice and it tasted like actual fruit and not sour chemicals. It was like taking a teaspoon of sugar in your mouth and biting into a nice crisp Granny Smith. The night went long, and I was beverageless for most of it. I ended up hanging out in the building's break room, which was now the current denizen's kitchen most of the night. I always seem to end up hanging out in the kitchen of a party for some reason. The following morning I woke up and my saliva glands were just secreting apple flavor, which was fairly gross and concerning. I drank many more bottles of Tango on that trip, and I enjoyed every one, especially when I drank them in moderation and they weren't altering my chemical make up.

Not only is Tango a fine beverage, but it's also the best tasting apple soda with added sugar that I have ever drunk.

I've looked it up and elderflower plants thrive in the United States. Why on Earth hasn't this flavor epidemic swept over us? Sure pomegranate, mango and acai are wonderful and all, but I want, nay, I demand companies start releasing elderflower flavored beverages! I don't want to have to rely on trips to the United Kingdom to get my fix, or paying ridiculous amounts of money for imported drinks. Is there some sort of conspiracy I'm unaware of that is keeping the elderflower down? Do we need to march on Washington? Was that statement insensitive? If so I apologize, I am just very passionate when it comes to this specific flavor.

As you may (but probably don't) know I am not a fan of concentrates/cordials. I can never seem to get the ratios right, even when I use measuring cups. They just never taste right to me. I like a consistency to the taste of my drinks that they just don't provide. Yes I know it's something wrong with me and not the concentrates.

The thing with this cordial is that I have experimented and no matter what ratios I put together, it tastes fantastic. I'm making it with still water, and it's not quite the same without the bubbles, but I'm not letting that stop my enjoyment. This is sweet and vaguely floral in the best possible way. I would liken it to lychee if it didn't taste like old lady perfume, but also different enough to make it mouth watering.

Get on board America, the train is leaving without you.

Holy crap. Holy crap. Holy crap. Holy crap. Holy crap. Holy crap. Holy crap.
I bought this in Edinboro, Scotland at a little shop where I got vegan haggis. I ended up getting a water to accompany my meal, and slipped this can into my bag where it went forgotten for a couple of days.

Cut to a couple countries later and I reach in my bag for a granola bar and find this floating around at the bottom, still somehow fairly cold. I didn't expect much from this from the get go. I'm not a huge rhubarb fan, and the sodas I've had of that flavor were perfectly fine, but nothing exceptional. This though, this is a game changer. I've been kicking myself ever since I drank it that I didn't drink it with my haggis. I would have instantly bought several more cans for my travels.

I suppose I should tell you what this glorious liquid tasted like, but I'm afraid I won't be able to do it justice. The Cawston Press company bases all of their beverages on apple juice, and they do that very well. Without the addition of the rhubarb this would have been a nearly perfect sparkling apple juice. Sure they add some sugar, which I normally frown upon, but they made it work and taste natural. You add a little bit of rhubarb to that and the flavor just skyrockets. You would expect the rhubarb to be overpowering, but it sits perfectly in the mix. It's a match made in heaven that no one else has seemed to exploit yet.

I need to stop thinking about this because it's depressing me that I don't know if I'll ever be able to taste this again. Perhaps I'll book another tour with the sole reasoning of acquiring more of it.

For a company that makes such wonderful sparkling juices, their still line leaves a lot to be desired. They have everything headed in the right direction; they use real juice and don't add sugar, but somewhere along the line the train jumps the track.

This bottle contains apple, orange, lemon, mango and passionfruit juice, which in any world should lead to a wonderful tropical fruit punch, but instead what we walk away with is a weak orange mango. It tastes like someone dumped a shot of mango juice into a pitcher of watered down orange juice.

There was so much potential here that has gone to waste. I mean this is still a decent juice, but I hold this company is high standards, due to their other products. At least they are honest with the name of the flavor.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Let it be known that I hold grudges. I don't care if you've become a pillar of the community and do all the work in the world to bettering life for the poor and needy, if you treated me like crap at one point I will hold that against you until the day I die. Sure there's the whole forgive and forget thing, but sometimes people are too forgiving and horrible things are welcomed into a community. I'm trying to get better at this, and let the small stuff go, and only hold on to my big grudges, such as you hooked up with an ex while we were still dating and oh you have Nazi tendencies. The small stuff though, the small stuff I'm going to try and let slide. In fact I'll start right here with this drink.

It's right there on the label. “Pineapple & Passionfruit.” That's all I want, a strong taste of both of those wonderful fruits. Instead what I am greeted with is something less than that. Sure it has percentages of both those juices, but it also has orange juice in it in equal amount as the pineapple and double the quantity of the passionfruit juice. Dear readers, this should clearly be called “Orange, Pineapple & Passionfruit,” if the company wants to be accurate, which I hold my suspicions about.

Even though it's the lowest in percentage of content, passionfruit is the strongest flavor in here, with the pineapple riding a little lower, but taking the lead in the aftertaste. The problem is that the orange juice is in there mucking things up a bit and making them taste light and a bit watered down. This is not the end of the world, and I'm going to let it go. Sure this could have been a much better drink without the OJ, but I understand price points, and this is a perfectly acceptable beverage with it included. I would just prefer more honestly from the companies out there.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Step right up. Step right up! Do you love the sour citrus taste of limes? Does your body crave the brisk, refreshing taste of mint? Then do we have a product for you! We have created a soda with an extremely strong lime flavor and added just the right amount of mint to give it the perfect taste. I know what you're thinking, and you're right who wants the sensation of drinking soda while chewing gum at the same time? No one, that is who. We have carefully engineered this drink to perfection so that it has no similarity to imbibing post tooth brushing or while chewing gum.

When flavors commingle like this true magic occurs. Not only does it taste amazing but also it is also ridiculously refreshing. This is a nice take on a classic alcoholic beverage. Kids and adult teetotalers can now enjoy it at their leisure. All for the low, low price of one Euro. Where are you going to beat that on the streets of Italy, friends?