Jason Draper - 2709 Reviews

I can assure you my dear readers that lemonade does not have the same effect in winter as it does in summer. There is a reason that it is a beverage that is celebrated in the warmer months. It's refreshing qualities help to fend off the oppressive heat. Now when you're standing in a freezing basement watching bands play an a December eve, you may want to rethink your choice if you grabbed a lemonade to keep you hydrated. I simply do not know what I was thinking.

The Chill line is Veryfine's attempt at the inexpensive tallboy game. 23oz at only $1 is a deal…€¦or is it? I mean sure it's inexpensive, but wouldn't you have been content with a nice 12 or 16oz drink instead? Do you really need that much liquid, sugar and calories? Lucky for us Veryfine took that into consideration when formulating this beverage and used a mixture of corn syrup and sucralose to sweeten this lemonade. I must admit that they are two of my least favorite sweeteners, but at least the combined three servings in this can only contain 24g of sugar. A tallboy of Arizona's lemon iced tea contains 72g.

Perhaps some of you, and it's more likely most of you don't particularly care about the healthiness of your beverages. All you want to know if what does it taste like. If you ever hung out at my house whilst I was in high school, you are probably well aware of the ever present jug of blue juice that was in my fridge. What it really contained was an overly sweetened Berry Blue Kool Aid. This drink tastes exactly like how I made my Kool Aid as a disillusioned teenager. The thing is that while I used to dump insane amounts of sugar into my concoction, this will not give you the diabetes. Even though it has sucralose in it, it taste in no way diet. It also doesn't taste overly like lemonade either. It mainly just tastes “blue.” You know you know what I mean by that too, so do with it what you will.

Does anyone else out there get to a point where they just need to drink something carbonated? As in you feel like you're just going to explode if you don't get some bubbles in your throat. I am certainly in that camp. It's not often, but every couple of weeks or so I get a tickle in my throat, and no matter how much I cough, clear my throat or drink water, it simply will not go away. The only cure for what ails me is to drink some pop or other carbonated beverage. Now I don't always want all the sugar that comes along with soda, but I generally can't stand tonic water. Lucky for me Hint exists and they have created a line of sparkling water drinks that don't have the bitter seltzer taste. It tastes like someone took normal everyday water and added bubbles to it and it didn't change the flavor at all. They then added just a hint (well duh) of strawberry kiwi flavoring that gives it just a light flavor. It's perfect for what I need, and it has zero nutritional value, as well as zero negative connotations. It's a win for everyone, especially my scratchy throat.

I notice that your shopping cart is full of cases of bottles of water. Were you aware that you are in fact a savage? Well, I mean you must be if you're drinking all of your water from tiny little bottles of water. Yes, I understand that you feel like you're more civilized because you don't drink water from the tap. Apparently you don't care about waste created by the containers you use. If you must drink water in a portable container that you can buy, get one of these little guys. Water in a carton; it's the wave of the future. They are made from a renewable resource that can be easily recycled. It's crisp. It's clean. It's refreshing.

I still believe that water is water for the most part, and with a decent filter in your home, you can drink your tap water and it will taste just as good as it would if it were bottled/cartoned. If you absolutely need to be a snob about it, please grab a carton instead of a bottle. The world will thank you. Okay, hardly anyone will notice, but it's really for the best…€¦I swear.

Oh how I dream of a proper pineapple soda. My mouth waters on a beverage that is just sparkling water, pineapple juice, and I guess a little cane sugar. It would be heaven to your taste buds. Seriously, they would have visions of tipping their caps to St Peter and they entered the pearly gates. They would spend the rest of time resting on clouds while being bathed in this delicious concoction.

Unfortunately this drink only used two of the three required ingredients I mentioned above, and a bunch of superfluous ones. There is no actual juice in this soda, and the flavor suffers because of it. This just tastes like your average pineapple soda, that doesn't really taste like the fruit, but it's close enough to trick you into thinking it does. On one hand their use of real sugar puts then at an advantage, but on the other the flavor is a tad on the weak side compared to its contemporary sodas.

It's not amazing. It's not terrible. It would certainly do in pinch if you had an undying need for something that tasted vaguely like pineapple.

Apparently someone else out there, besides me, doesn't like maple syrup. Said person, whose name may rhyme with Leiland Kirk, most certainly got a tapping kit as a zany Xmas gift, and didn't know what to do with it. Why would he want to go harvest his own maple syrup, when he has no taste for the stuff? Instead he decided to take it another way. Since he was such a big fan of birch beer he went out to the woods behind his house, found the largest birch tree his little eyes could spy, and drove that tap right into it. Rumor has it that as soon as he did a great torrent of birch juice flooded out, nearly drowning our hero. I don't believe a word of it. I tend to think that he left that spout in the tree for a good week before he remembered to go back and check on it, and he had gathered maybe half a bucket full. There's not much juice in them there trees, you see.

Our recipient of an unthoughtful gift was a bit disappointed to find out that the liquid that came from the tree did not in fact taste like his favorite soda. Instead what he got was a slightly sweet liquid that tasted very lightly of trees. On it's own he found it to be a bit bland and nothing that he cared too much about but he decided to add a little blueberry juice to the mix, and he was onto something. The flavors blended together wonderfully, and tasted nice and sweet, without being overly candy-like. It had a taste all it's own, and it was something that he grew to love. It was just unfortunate that the trees would only produce the juice in the spring before they sprouted leaves. This became a seasonal drink indeed.

So you don't like oxidants, huh? Do you, or 99% of the population even know what they really are? I'm pretty sure I don't. I know that they have something to do with being sick, and ingesting antioxidants helps to stave off said sickness, but that's as far as my knowledge goes. Even though I don't know the science behind it, I can tell you a lot of fruits that are high in antioxidants. It just so happens that all three fruits mentioned in the name of this beverage fall into that category. What we have here is a naturally flavored sparkling water that is rich in antioxidants and vitamins, or so the company tells us. I have to interject and say, sure there is sparkling water in here, but once you add this much flavoring and sweetener (albeit zero calorie) it ceased to be water in my eyes.

Do you want to know more about how this drink tastes? Well, it tastes like a diet Vitamin Water with bubbles in it…€¦a lot of bubbles. If this wasn't diet, I think I could get behind it more, as the flavor is fairly decent. Actually, if they had used erythritol or stevia to sweeten it I would probably enjoy it more. The sucralose just makes it unmistakably diet in a way that I can't handle as much as I try.

I must implore everyone who tries this beverage to not give up after one sip. I completely understand why you would want to. Something about that first sip seems like the drink had gone bad. It tastes like the beginning stages of fermentation, and it's not very pleasant. The thing is that if you can make it past the first introduction of tea to tongue, you will be rewarded. With each sip this drink gets better and better until you get to the last drop and you are completely bummed out that it is gone. That's right, this went from gross to “when can I get another bottle?” in 12 small ounces.

With a name like Classic Gold I expected this to be straight up yerba mate and carbonated water, with a little sugar mixed in. To be fair, that was delivered but along with it came some spice as well as prune, lime, tamarind and ginger juice (I don't know how you juice ginger). The culmination of all of this is extremely interesting on ones taste buds. You can swish it around your mouth and actually make out the different flavors. That's exactly how I like my beverages. It has the classic yerba mate flavor, with just the right amount of sweetness and additional flavors.

I'm telling you, work past that first sip and you will find that you are in for a true treat.

Harmony is an important thing in all aspects of the word. Living in peace and harmony with other human beings and animals is a great way to live, and you will ultimately end up living a happy life. It's also the vocal harmonies in your favorite songs that are probably the reason you like them so much. I know that's the case for me most of the time.

There is no negative connotation to the word harmony. That is the reason I think this company either needs to be renamed, or delete this flavor from their catalog. This soda was most certainly not in harmony with my taste buds. Harmony Springs makes a great sarsaparilla, so I was excited to try their ginger ale, another favorite flavor of mine. This pales in comparison to the nice dark pop that I had on my last go round. This tastes like a generic sugar soda with a little bit of ginger ale flavoring added to it. The ratio of flavoring to soda base seems way off and the flavor suffers because of it.

When you're making your next batch, think more Boys to Men and less The Shaggs.

Cranberry sodas have existed before this. Companies were content with just adding some cranberry juice (or more likely a mixture that tasted vaguely like cranberry juice) to some carbonated water and sweeter. I've never had one that I disliked, but also never one that I would ever describe as great. Taylor's Tonics are never ones to shy away from a challenge, and they set out to create a cranberry soda that is made from the stuff of dreams.

Why keep a soda simple, when there are so many ingredients out there to make it pop? There are things in the world like balsam fir needles, ginger, allspice, coconut water, cherry juice, extract of orange and a combination of Douglas fir and French vanilla flavors. These are the things that keep the beverage world interesting. When combined all of these things with the original three that other companies used created a beverage that I would most certainly describe as great, and perhaps even stupendous. The only problem is that somewhere along the way the drink started tasted more of a culmination of the extra ingredients (mostly allspice) and the flavor of the cranberry base got lost. While I do love the way this tastes, the boldness that is normally present when cranberry juice is in the mix is all but nonexistent. A simple name chance would lift all of that concern off of my shoulders, but Taylor does what Taylor wants.

I know what you're thinking. No, this does not taste like you're eating a Christmas tree. Actually it kind of does, but not in the way you're thinking. It doesn't taste like cleaner or pine. It does taste like the essence of Christmas though. If you took all of the good things about the holiday and threw them all in a blender, this is what it would taste like. This company has hit the nail on the head with their holiday four pack.

Were there teas made to accompany a science fiction movie based in the desert? No one knows for sure, but I would like to start off those rumors that have not previously exists, right now. There it is. I am now claiming this tea was made as a marketing aid for a fake movie to get US soldiers out of Iran. No one told the tea company that the movie was a fake. They were just about to launch a line of teas and they didn't have a name, and tying it in with what would obviously be a popular movie seemed like a nice cash grab. Too bad for them it never came to be. Also, too bad for them that Ben Affleck decided to make a movie based on said fake movie and draw attention back to the name. Did any of this really happen? No one knows. The answers have all been lost in the sands of time. Maybe the truth will come out under a cowl with a gruff voice in the near future.

Whatever its origins may be Argo makes one heck of a tea. They have messed around with various incarnations, and I am pleased that they keep coming back to using hibiscus as their tea base. If you don't like hibiscus you are a fool, plain and simple. This beverage is simply hibiscus tea, cane sugar and lemon juice. The last ingredient is what makes it part of their “squeeze” line, which is their fancy versions of the half and half, or Arnold Palmer game. I am a fan. It tastes like real lemon and not some gross cleaner. I don't understand how so many companies get the lemon flavor wrong, but Argo is right on the money.

This is a “no way to lose” beverage. It's a quality lemonade mixed with hibiscus tea, with no extraneous ingredients. I love it and so should you, unless you want your taste buds to be wrong. I don't mean to be a jerk, but if you don't like this you should go see your physician, because something has gone wonky inside your mouth.

Popeye and the crew from Sweet Haven are back with their first foray into diet energy drinks. You see everyone thought that Wimpy had put on a bit too much weight with all his cheeseburger conniving ways. Seriously, how long does one man expect to live when all he consumes in beef patties smothered in cheese? Since his blood work came back last month he's been on a kale diet. He claims that it doesn't give him enough energy to make it through all of the whining he has to do on a daily basis, so they formulated him this lemon mint beverage. Being the health conscious team that they are, they help back on using taurine and it's friends and stuck to vitamins and caffeine. Also knowing that their friend was doomed to some burger related cancer they didn't want to speed on they also chose to sweeten the drink with erythritol/stevia.

The results of it all are a nice lemony beverage with notes of mint in it that aren't over powering. It has the stevia coolness to it, but with the lemon and the mint it's not bad at all. In fact it's fairly enjoyable, even for those of us who don't like diet drinks. Calories to flavor this can't be beat.

For those non-teetotalers out there, when my friend Steve tried this he instantly proclaimed that it would taste amazing as a mixer with vodka. This is a win-win-win for everyone right here.

It's no secret that us here at Thirsty Dudes are very large fans of root beer. I was going to say junkies, but then I realized that we're not guzzling any version of the stuff we can find to get that sweet, sweet (literally) fix that we need. We have a bit of a refined palate when it comes to this particular beverage. Sure, if we're at a party and someone offers us store brand, we will drink it, but we search out those sodas whose companies have spent some time perfecting their brew. With all of that in mind, I would like to inform you that diet root beer is the devil. It is the liquid form that the dark lord takes to steal souls from the living on this planet we call Earth. It is always the lowest grade of root beer that has had its sweetener swapped out for something zero calorie; usually aspartame or sucralose. It's blasphemy and I want nothing to do with it.

All of the above is what I would have said to you until I tried this can of Honest Fizz. This product went up against all of the odds and came out victorious. First off, it's in a can and not a glass bottle, which does not bode well for it. Properly brewed root beer simply does not come in cans. Yes, that is the snob in me coming out. Of course it's also fighting again being the most unholy force in the universe. The thing is Honest did the unthinkable and they made a zero calorie root beer, that I not only could stand drinking, but that I down right enjoyed. I think the secret is that they started with a quality product before adding the sweetener (erythritol). This doesn't taste like an everyman root beer. This tastes like something that was microbrewed. It has a darker taste than something your local supermarket would produce. Sure, once they added the erythritol there is a bit of diet flavor in the aftertaste, but the superb quality of the root beer does a nice job of covering it up, unlike all of the rest whose products taste more like diet than root beer.

I liked this so much that I could see myself drinking it on a semi regular basis. With zero calories and no sugar, my body will be sure to thank me for that.

It's Thanksgiving and the holiday season is officially upon us. Celebrate this dreary time of your with us and a bottle of carbonated eggnog. You know you want to. If it helps any it's not thick and gross like real eggnog, it's more like a spicy cream soda.

The weather has turned to turd soup, but you aren't going to let that down. You gather up some provisions, and your significant other and head out to the local botanical gardens for a mid winter picnic. Sure, the gardens look down upon people taking their meals at their establishment, but that's nothing that a twenty slipped to the security guard can't take care of.

Everything is going perfectly. You're surrounded by wonderful green foliage, and the temperature is in the mid 80's inside the dome. No, not “Under the Dome.” I don't know how Brian K Vaughn got mixed up in that train wreck. He's better than that, and his comic writing proves it. Speaking of along with some sandwiches, veggies and hummus you also brought along the last few issues of Saga, for your lover to catch up on as you just sit back and enjoy the escape from winter as you sip on the tea you brought along. You spent a little time making it at home. You brewed it in this big kettle over the fireplace. You wanted to be romantic, and why waste the energy from the stove when you have a perfectly good fire roaring? You brewed some nice green tea in that kettle and added a little honey to sweeten it up. Okay you added a decent amount of honey, and it is very obvious when you taste it. It has the heaviest honey taste out of any tea you've ever made. Apparently at some point during your outing a single hibiscus leaf fell into the tea. It's weird because it gave it a bit of flavoring, but since it doesn't' have cinnamon or other spices in it, it tastes different to other hibiscus teas you've tasted. It's a great tea though to go along with a great outing to make you forget about the weather outside.

That is exactly what will run through your mind grapes as you drink a bottle of this tea. Either that or I am just a true weirdo who envisioned that while driving through the Canadian countryside on a blustery night.

First let's look at the pros:
This is a non-carbonated energy drink. While it's not entirely novel, but it's a nice option regardless. On top of that it is also an iced tea energy drink. Something about that makes it seem more natural, even though there are unnatural things afoot. The sugar content is on the lower side for these types of drinks, which is always appreciated. The final plus is that it doesn't taste like a typical energy drink. The weird chemical candy taste is not present at all. When companies can achieve that, they get my attention.

Now on to the cons:
This smells like a cheap lemon flavored iced tea, and the taste is right there as well. This tastes like it should be a close relative to Brisk. While that may be a very good thing for some people, I personally am not a fan of that fake tea taste. In fact, this doesn't taste like a “half and half” at all. There is no classic lemonade flavor in this can, it's just an overly lemon iced tea. Again, perhaps that's good for some, but I'm not on board. The final con is that along with the glucose this also has sucralose in it. That is the reason for the lower levels of sugar, but it also takes the flavor down a notch as you get hints of diet occasionally.

There it is. Take these lists and decide for yourself if this is the kind of thing you want to put in your body or not. I personally did not make it through the entire can.

Will someone out there please lie to me and confirm the thought in my head that this line of energy drinks was created for or by the 90's rapper The Lady of Rage. I want so badly for the woman who rocked ruff and stuff with her afro puffs to have shifted her attention to a Canadian beverage company. If Snoop or Dre inspired shots show up on the market I will know that everything is right in the world. Until that point I will just avoid looking it up on the internet as to keep the dream alive.

This is a diet energy/electrolytes combination drink that has a general berry flavor that leans heavily on the strawberry for it's flavor. Actually it tastes a lot like the sugar free candies that my grandmother used to always have. I never liked them at first, but I would eat them because when your grandmother offers you candy, you accept it regardless of its sugar content. Eventually I grew to like those candies, and this is similar to what I remember them tasting like (It's been probably 20 years since I've had one). What I'm saying here is that this may be diet, sweetened with sucralose even, but it still tastes a little bit of alright.

The can is pink as you can see and it has the logo for the Breast Cancer Society of Canada on it, but it also makes no mention of any profits made from sales being donated. I will assume that it is the case as them using that imagery just to boost sales and not to share the wealth is pretty devious.

Ahh, the joys of simplicity for simplicities sake. It leads to a world where you get exactly what you expect, with no wildcards in the mix. Suja understand this, so for this juice the only ingredients are carrot, apple, celery, cucumber, beet and lemon. Six simple fruits and vegetables all juiced together into a whole that is as delicious as it is nutritious. I suppose that could mean that it tastes like dog food and isn't healthy at all, but I assure you this rides the other side of the spectrum.

All of the ingredients play a role in the flavor. The apples serve as a nice sweet base, the lemon adds a nice bit of tartness to the ending and it has a nice earthy flavor to it due to the carrots, cucumbers and beets. The celery rides the top of the flavor, but it's not nearly as strong as it is in other cold pressed juices I have tasted. I appreciate that they chose to dull it down, as it normally tends to be too intense and distracting.

Drinking healthy tastes and feels great. We should all really do it more often.

Why is it these days that when energy drink companies decide to make add a diet version to their line that uses either erythritol or stevia it has a fruit punch flavor? Why not just go with your flagship flavor, and not something that is not a staple in your line? Are people out there really clamoring so much for new fruit punch drinks, especially those of the diet variety?

This isn't all that terrible for a diet fruit punch, but as a friend pointed out, if you can't take the sugar, leave the punch on the shelf. It doesn't matter how many pennies you throw in the wishing well, it will never taste the way you want it to. Luckily for everyone involved this is a Hawiian Punch style fruit punch, but more of the classic not a mouthful of syrup variety.

Here are a few final thoughts for you that are a bit disjointed. Fruit punch is a beverage for children. Children shouldn't consume energy drinks. Energy drinks shouldn't be flavored like fruit punch. Diet and fruit punch have no place together. This doesn't make me want to die drinking it, yet I stand by my previous statements.

Holy greens Batman! The freshness in this tea is absurd. The flavor is as if you picked some tealeaves from the plant and started chomping away on them. That's right this raw tea tastes like plants. Whether that is a good thing or not depends on you, the drinker. I know this would be a huge turnoff to a lot of people out there, but at the same time I understand the allure for others. I'm personally not sure how I feel about it. On one hand, I appreciate the freshness and think it's great that such a thing exists, but on the other I kind of feel like a bully held me down and made me eat grass. I'm going to guess that most of you out there are going to pass on this product after reading this review, but for you adventurous ones out there, I say give it a shot. Who knows, maybe it will be your thing.

Okay I need a bit of clarification here from the company. Is Plan Tea supposed to be like “Plan B,” said so it sounds like you're saying “plenty” or is it supposed to mean something along the lines of “plan on emptying your wallet because the tea you are about to drink it excellent and you will want to buy all the store has to offer.”?

I can back two of those ideas. I certainly don't know what plan A is if this is the backup, but I would certainly like to find out, because this is an excellent showing of extremely slightly sweetened green tea, with a nice light mango flavor. There's just enough honey in it that it tastes vaguely sweet without losing the bitterness that is essential to the green tea flavor. It tastes like tea I brew for myself at home, and then let cool in the fridge, except it's of a higher quality leaf than what I normally purchase.

As for the “plenty” thought, I personally can be a glutton and at the end of the 16oz I could have drank more. Maybe they are saying that you will want plenty more, because this tea is so good.

The last possibility is the one I understand the most. I am kicking myself for not purchasing more of these when I came across them in NYC. Unfortunately they are not available yet in Western New York. If you do end up buying a bunch you can feel good about doing so because 5% of their net sales are donated to Trickle Up, a non profit organization that helps in the fight against global poverty.