Jason Draper - 2709 Reviews

What is it about Pennsylvania that makes them love iced tea so much? I'm pretty sure there are more tea companies per capita than anywhere else in the world. It seems that every little region of the state has it's own dairy farm that puts out tea. While we're at it, what is the correlation between a dairy farm and iced tea? How the world do they even come close to fitting together? Is it just because the farmhands like to drink it while they are working?

The Pittsburgh area has Schneiders as it's local dairy, and their tea is pretty standard for this sort of fare. It's made with a tea mix, which is a thumbs down in my book, but outside of their lemon tea the flavoring makes up for it. With this particular tea cooler you get an artificial lime flavor that could be likened to the flavor of a green Popsicle. It doesn't taste like nature's lime, but it's a familiar taste, so we accept it for what it is and enjoy it all the same. It's a very smooth tea, and not harsh as all, which is the case with a lot of lime flavored varieties. It's nothing to go crazy over, but it's good enough for how inexpensive it is, especially since they use real sugar.

In a world where bigger is deemed as better in almost every regard, it is nice to see a company scaling things down. Monster has created a 5oz beverage that “packs a 16oz punch.” This is essentially the same amount of ingredients that give their larger canned beverages the energy kick that the world so desperately craves these days. They just decreased the other ingredients in the formula. The most appreciated decrease is the amount of sweetener used.

One would imagine that the result of this concentration would be a beverage that was so strong it would taste like you were downing a bottle of toxic chemicals. Monster somehow worked out the kinks and while the flavor is a tad stronger, it basically tastes like the classic, or original Monster flavor with the green packaging. I had expected an intense sludge from this but was pleasantly surprised by what I was presented with. I can assure you that the energy aspect of this certainly worked and it made me feel as crazy and jittery as ever.

If you ever find yourself in Providence, RI, stop whatever it is that you were planning on doing and head directly to Tina's Jamaican Caribbean Restaurant, or the Whole Foods where I found this. Get yourself some of the spiciest food your human form can handle and cool it all down again with a bottle of cucumber ginger beer.

I have to be honest here; while this was an amazing drink, I wouldn't consider it a ginger beer, as it was not carbonated. If it had been I don't know if I would have been able to handle the sheer joy it would bring me. What it actually consists of is cucumber, ginger and lime (a very, very light lime) in a highly sweetened water base. It's so sweetened that it has the pseudo grittiness of a southern sweet tea. Actually that is the best description I can think of. Think of a sweet tea, minus the tea and add cucumbers and ginger. There is not enough ginger to give it a slow burn, but the flavor is very much present. As for the cucumbers, they taste earthy in all the right ways. It's not the crisp cucumber flavor that Mr Q Cumber has, but a slightly dirty flavor like the ones you would find in raw juices.

This would have gotten a perfect rating, but the lack of carbonation in relation to the name, and the fact that I find it to be a bit too sweet the more I drank, made me deduct a bottle. I assure you it is still an amazing drink that you should not pass up if you are ever in that area of the country.

Are you an adult that loves the taste of Strawberry Quik? Well let me ease that mind of yours and let you in on a little tip that will not only allow you to bath your tongue in the flavor that you crave, but also do it in a healthier manner. You see Odwalla's Strawberry Protein Monster tastes exactly like that treat from your childhood that you miss so dearly. Sure it's a little denser of a liquid, but that is a small price to pay for not looking like you're stuck in arrested development when you're trying to flirt with your cashier at the grocery store. Who could take someone seriously when they are buying a big tin of strawberry powder to flavor their milk? No one, that is who. On the other hand if you were purchasing this beverage, you will appear to have your act together, and it might even get you that cashier's number. Actually don't be the creep that bothers the cashier. They just want to make it through their shift as painlessly as possible. Just drink your strawberry drink and keep to yourself.

Touring in a band can be a draining activity. You don't get much sleep, and the small amounts you get are generally uncomfortable. On top of that you generally also eat like garbage. Don't get me wrong, it's my favorite thing in the world to do, but after a while I sometimes find myself getting a severe case of soft brain. It's times like that that I reach for a Moxie. Oh you mean you didn't know that the official beverage of Maine, Moxie, was originally created in 1876 to help fight the completely fictitious ailment known as soft brain? Well now you do, and you also know what to do if you ever find yourself in the grips of this infliction.

While I was in Maine, on the previously mentioned tour, I made my band mates stop at a grocery store so I could pick up a 12 pack of Moxie to bring back home, since it is nowhere to be found in Buffalo. When I went to check out I saw two different flavors of Moxie Energy Drink in the cooler at the register. My mind was reeling as to what these could possibly taste like. Obviously the best-case scenario would be liquefied candy mixed with the classic medicinal Moxie flavor. Unfortunately this was not the case. While the drink does contain it there wasn't a strong gentian root flavor (it's what fights the soft brain), but it also didn't taste totally like a typical energy drink. When I started the beverage had a strange orange flavor, but the more I drank the more it tasted like lime. It didn't have a strong taurine flavor to it either. It had a very distinct taste that I couldn't fully place. I want to say it tastes like Skeleteens soda, minus the burn, but I'm not exactly sure that was right on.

While I was disappointed that it didn't taste like one of my favorite sodas that it is it's namesake, this energy drink tasted better than most, but more importantly it tastes different, which is all one can ask for in the energy drink game these days.

One of the worst things I have ever drunk before was an Asian plum juice. I assure you it tasted like no plum I have ever eaten. I was later told that in Asia prunes are referred to as plums. I thought, “well that explains that,” but then I remembered that it didn't even taste like liquid prunes. It tasted like moldy wood and meat aka the absolute worst.

It's good to see that the fine people in Nantucket know what plums really are and how to juice them. I do have to point out that this is mostly water and pear juice so the plum flavor isn't the strongest, but it is still quite nice, albeit a little sweeter than I would prefer. It really should be called a plum-pear juice though.

My mind has gone off on a tangent. All I can think about now is a 100% plum juice. There would be nothing else in the bottle except the liquid that was squeezed out of what I imagine would be several dozen plums. I think taking a sip of that would be a little slice of heaven. Can you imagine that? Oh man, it would be so tart, yet sweet in just the right ways. I'm sure some cold pressed juice company will end up making it and charge $15 a bottle for it. I'm definitely one of the suckers who would pay it too.

When I was in 4th or 5th grade I got into skateboarding. It started out just skating in front of my friend's house, where we built a launch ramp and later had a quarter pipe. Eventually we grew bored of the scenery and took our adventure on the road. By that I mean we put on our backpacks, and fit our decks between the bag and our back so we could ride our bikes to new exciting places to skate. It seemed like we would ride forever to find a cool new spot. We would always end up at this one spot that had a little vending machine hidden amongst some bushes. It was no ordinary vender though because it only dispensed cartons of juice, well sugar water disguised as juice. They weren't very good, but it was always a spot that we would take a break, since they only cost a quarter.

While I was in Pittsburgh recently I found this carton of iced tea in a corner store. Sure they had the same tea in bottles, but the fact that it was in a carton made me think of all those days 25 years ago filled with riding bikes and skating. Holy crap I don't think I have ever felt as old as I do typing that out. The dust of my bones aside, I paid the 75 cents for the carton (damn inflation) with a smile and walking into the blinding sunlight.

As soon as I took a sip I remembered that some memories are better left in the past. The contents of the carton were the lowest common denominator of tea. The ingredients listed instant tea and powdered lemon juice, what on Earth is powdered lemon juice? It blew my mind that they would spend the money to use real sugar, but then skimp on the other ingredients. Overall it just tasted like overly sweetened tea water. After a couple more tentative sips I asked myself, “why the hell am I still drinking this?” and I dropped it into a conveniently placed garbage can. My childhood is now dead.

Arizona just keeps expanding their beverage lines. They have come out with at least a dozen new flavors this summer alone. I have a feeling that they may have more drinks available for purchase in the United States than any other company. Okay, I'm sure Coke or Pepsi has more if you count all their subsidiaries, but each of these proudly states that it is an Arizona product. Sure a decent amount of these drinks leave something to be desired, but a good portion of them are straight up pleasant.

After some success with their Jack Nicklaus Golden Bear line of lemonades they decided to expand a little and released this mint lemonade. Mint is a hard game to play. It's so easy to get overzealous and leave the consumer feeling like they are drinking something whilst chewing gum, or shortly after brushing their teeth. No one wants that, especially not the Golden Bear himself. In this formula Arizona decided to take it easy on the mint, so that there is just a hint in each sip. The lemonade itself isn't all that bitter, due to the use of HFCS, but it's something I can get around a lot of the time and in this instance, I can even thoroughly enjoy. This is a nice treat that would cool anyone down on a hot summer day on the greens.

On a recent trip to the Asian market Mark decided to get a bunch of things he had never heard of before to expand his palate's horizons. He picked up some job's tears seeds, fragrant solomonseal rhizome, lily bulbs, lotus seeds, longan, gordon euryale seeds, and coastal glehnia root. He was so proud of his haul that Mike went right home and set out to make supper. That is where the troubles arose. No matter what he did with any of these ingredients the results were not very tasty. He tried to make tofu, pasta and even went as far as sprinkling them on toast. All were a no go.

It was in a moment of frustration that Mark decided to juice boil all of the ingredients together along with some rock sugar he had inexplicably laying around. He decided that a tea would be his last ditch effort. In the final moments of the game, he finally got his break. It tasted decent hot, but he decided to put it on ice and see what he had. Once cold his “tea” took on a new life. It was fairly sweet in the way that only rock sugar can make things. He's still convinced it's just rock candy ground up. It tastes about the same. Everything else just kind of blended together in a way that he could only racially describe as Asian. The flavor of this tea is just not naturally found in the Western world. It's hard to explain, but it tasted decent enough, so he drank it and was glad that his ingredients went to some productive use. It will be quite some time before Mark goes out and blindly buys unheard of ingredients again.

Sometimes when you're working out in the old cranberry swamp you need to take some snacks with you. It can drive a person crazy to be working around a potential food all day, but it's not in a form that is easily ingested. It's these times you bring along a sack of grapes to help pass the time and sate your hunger. What happens when you become mister butter fingers and you drop all of your grapes into the bushel of cranberries you've just gathered? Well, it obviously doesn't result in you spending the time to separate the grapes out. You're too lazy and they certainly don't pay you enough for that. What happens in reality is that you end up with cran grape juice. That's nothing to complain about.

Grape juice is one of the best juices readily available in any grocery store across America. It's delicious, but it's a little strong and you can't drink much without getting an ache in your guts. It's so strong that it's one of the few juices that can overpower cranberry juice. This mostly tastes like a nice purple grape juice with a cranberry aftertaste. Each juice is normally intense and I couldn't drink more than a glass at a sitting. When they are combined by Ocean Spray I think I could drink a gallon for breakfast.

Are you tired of energy drinks all tasting the same (ie. like some candy Willy Wonka dreamt up)? Well Vemma has a solution for you with their “insanely healthy energy” drink. Now I have qualms with them saying this is actually healthy as I don't think it's helping your health at all by drinking it, but I will say that after perusing the ingredients list and seeing what is in it I will concede that it is a “healthier” version of an energy drink. It may not cure, nor prevent illness, but hey it's an energy drink and it's not supposed to.

The base of the drink is mangosteen juice, and its caffeine comes from green tea and aloe vera. It also has taurine and a bunch of B vitamins in it, but you take your health where you can get it nowadays. When you open the can it has a weird almost bubble gum smell, that I don't understand. I don't think I can actually taste it. I think I can, but I also believe that the smell may be planting subliminal flavors in my brain. Overall this tastes more like a weird juice than it does an energy drink, and that is a great thing.

This is also the more intense energy version of the beverage. I drank this around 1PM as I had to go to a family party, then another party, and then another. I didn't think I would make it through the day. I also knew if I drank this later in the day when I actually needed it I would never sleep. So I drank it early. Around 6PM I started to crash. I made it through, but then by 9PM I was back with a crazy second wind that was anything but natural. I hadn't had anything else caffeinated or anything like that, so I can only hold this drink accountable. I came back with a fury and I felt like I had drunk three Red Bulls. Luckily by the time I was ready for sleep around 2AM it had worn off and I passed right out. Now that's efficiency.

Can we all agree that Christopher McDonald is one of the greatest character actors of our time? On top of being a great actor, he also has come of the best character names in cinematic history. From Reed Standish to Travis Cole, he has perfect antagonist names. Of course who could forget Shooter McGavin? I could only think about him as I drank this. A man who takes breaks from the golf course to sell his line of misleading juice drinks. Misleading you say? Well the bottle clearly states “No Added Sugar,” yet the ingredients clearly show that it actually contains sucralose. I guess technically sucralose is not sugar, but it still is a sweetener, albeit a zero calorie one.

I'll tell you what, if they weren't a bunch of big fat liars and had omitted the sucralose, this would be a nice little drinks. Sure it has a bunch of added nonsense, but the base of it is a decent tasting juice. Raspberry juice is rare, although I would kill for a nice cold glass of pure raspberry juice to accompany my dream glass of cantaloupe juice. Mixed with the strawberry juice it's nice, and I think kids (who this is marketed toward) would really enjoy this. The reality is there is only 10% juice in here, but I could easily over look that if that pesky sucralose wasn't present. It may not be strong in the taste, but it's still there and annoying.

This is such an odd drink to review. I drank about ¾ of the bottle Monday evening, and I decided I was not in the right state of mind to properly convey what this is all about. Here I am two days later, and I still really don't have a clue. Every time I open the fridge this bottle is staring me right in the eye, daring me to write something about it. I'm at the point where I can't take it anymore, and it's now or never.

The main construct of the contents of this bottle is coconut water. The thing is that with the added fruit and extracts, it barely tastes like what you would expect. I even had to double check to make sure this was coconut water, like the other flavor I had reviewed a few months ago. It is, but it has such an odd, yet interesting taste. Papaya, a fruit that smells like vomit, but tastes delicious, is present. I do believe that it is the camu camu extract that is running the show here. According to the internet it tastes like a mixture of hibiscus, berry and citrus. I can't pin down a great reference to the way this beverage tastes, but I would say that is a appropriate enough description of this odd flavor. I don't know if I have ever tasted anything like this before, and that is exciting, because it is new, and doesn't make me want to blow chunks.

In addition to tasting strange this drink is actually healthy. It is antioxidant rich, it has zero fat or cholesterol, there are only two grams of sugar in the entire bottle, and it's chock full of a ton of vitamins. It's a wild ride that you don't have to feel guilty about, so you can keep getting back in line and ride it over and over, until you are the one who blows the previously mentioned chunks.

Sometimes you decide that you're going to hike an 18 mile creek. You decide to do it in parts. Before you know it summer is almost over and you still have a bit of it you haven't explored. So you go out and hike it on an unseasonably nice day. The thing is that the area you have left to hike is much longer than you had anticipated. Eventually you get to where the creek ends on the map, and you find a pretty neat waterfall. Being the scientist you are you deduce that the water must be coming from somewhere so you climb up, almost falling numerous times. At the top you see that the creek goes on even further than you had thought. Being the dummy that you are you forgot your water in the car. You decide you reached your goal and your dehydrated and fed up with walking on uneven rocks, so you make your way through the woods to the road. The road back to your car is long (over four miles) and there are no stores on the way. You feel like you're going to die, and have convinced yourself that you need to go up to a house and knock to ask for a glass of water. At that moment you catch the scent of grapes in the air. Across the street there are rows and rows of grape vines, so you go steal a few handfuls, and hydrate yourself with their sour juice. The thing is you eat too many, and it starts to corrode your tongue. Eventually you make it back to the car, and of course your water is too hot to be refreshing, so you hightail it to a 711 and pick yourself up a bottle of lemonade.

Summer may be ending, but it's still hot for the time being, so why not sneak in one last bottle of the official beverage of the season? Snapple did it right with their Lemon Daze line. It has a ton of sugar in it, but that is the way lemonade is supposed to be. It's made with real lemon juice and it has a nice tartness to it. Unfortunately that tartness felt like hell on my grape corroded tongue, but I still enjoyed the drink. It cooled me down and refreshed me just the way I needed it to. Oh I also drank like a gallon of water, but it didn't taste nearly as appropriate as this. Oh, I seem to have slipped into the first person. That's just poor writing, but that's what you get with Thirsty Dudes.

Hey Gus, as we have learned through the last couple of years you have some very good fruit sodas, but as soon as you venture into the world of “brown” pop that all goes out the window. You have found your niche in the soda world, and there is no need to be greedy and make every flavor. Stick with the fruits and you will have a prosperous future.

Speaking of which, I recently had a bottle of your Star Ruby Grapefruit, and I must say kudos. No, not those fake granola bar treats from the 90s, I mean job well done. As a fan of grapefruit, and pop of the flavor, I will admit that a lot of the time the “big” brands take it a bit too far. The vision of the fruit is lost. You stayed pretty true. You took some grapefruit juice, cut it minimally with orange juice to get rid of that overly bitter edge, then added some sparkling water and a bit of cane sugar. 22g out of 12oz isn't bad at all. It is nearly half of what is in a can of Coke, or more fittingly Squirt. The end result is a soda that actually tastes like pink grapefruit, but doesn't give you that sour face look.

Gus, you're a good guy, and you have a great little company going. I just wish the world would realize what I have so this could be more readily available.

Body Armor is back with a couple new flavors and a few old ones reworked a little. The release of the new “mixed berry” flavor is an update to their Raspberry, Blueberry Goji beverage. The packaging is basically the same as the old version, and the flavor isn't that far off as well. It tastes of many berries, antioxidants and coconut water, which is good because that is exactly what it is.

It's nice that there are so many options out there in a world that for years was Gatorade or nothing. I would say that 8 out of 10 times I would choose this over a classic sports drink. As an added bonus to the flavor with each bottle you get 2.5 times the electrolytes as a bottle of Gatorade and 2 times the vitamins that are in Vitamin Water. You're getting flavor and more functionality. It looks like this is a win-win.

Everyone knows that koalas sit around in trees all day tripping their balls off from the eucalyptus leaves they eat. Guess what, everyone is wrong. While eucalyptus is a staple in the animals diet it does not have any mind-altering effects on them. They are just lazy animals, which don't eat a proper diet to keep moving throughout the day. Perhaps if they had more of a high-energy diet they would be swinging from the trees like a bunch of monkeys.

In my mind this beverage was whipped up in a lab to get these little guys moving. I'm not sure if there is caffeine in here, like most colas, but I have to believe that lemon and elderberry juice along with agave syrup would have to give them a little more pep than a couple of quasi toxic leaves. Speaking of which, why is there fruit juice in this cola? I actually don't know how this actually tastes like cola with the ingredients that are in it, but it does. It's a slightly fruity cola that has a much different sweetness than most people are used to. I fully support the use of agave to sweeten sodas, but it does have a drawback. When it is used in “brown” pop they never taste as dark as you would want them to. It's something I can overlook though as this gives a new twist to a classic beverage.

You know that classic picture of the evolution of man? All I can picture is an updated version of it that depicts protein drinks. It starts off with just gross clumps of straight whey protein. Then it goes onto gross protein powder from the 80's. There are several different shots of various protein drinks that have risen to fame in the past decade or so. Then there is Muscle Milk. It stands tall, like the fully evolved man Darwin spoke of. To the left of that there is a smaller carton, but it is in an omnipotent glow. It is a carton of Evolve. Now that is advertising people. We should be getting paid to come up with this stuff. Instead I have a cat “ice gilling” me because I'm not letting him drink any of my beverage.

Evolve is based on the Muscle Milk formula, except that it is all-natural. It's sweetened with stevia and monk fruit, as well as cane sugar. Surprisingly you can only faintly taste the other sweeteners, and I probably wouldn't have noticed had I not read the carton. On top of all that it is gluten free, so all of you out there who suddenly suffer from wheat gluten allergies (something that I'm pretty sure didn't exist a decade ago, all hail the modern world and the way it mutates us) can have at it. Seriously, have at it. It's pretty tasty, and you look like you could do with a protein boost.

While I was visiting our local Co-Op here in Buffalo I ran into a friend who works there. He told me they just got in some weird carbonated coconut water. Of course my response was, “Ugh, that sounds terrible. Of course I'll buy it.” As I was cashing out my mind kept reeling about how it's ridiculous the amount of things that get carbonated. How could carbonated coconut water be refreshing? I know in Europe people drink carbonated water everywhere. Seriously, they give bands carbonated water on stage. I asked for still water and I was looked at as I was out of my mind. It's not refreshing at all.

Okay, so the point of all of this was I walked outside and cracked this can open to be pleasantly surprised that it was not carbonated; it was just a clever name. You know, H2O is water, so C2O is coconut water. I feel I could have easily figured that out by reading the can, but I took my friend's word.

I feared gross bubbly coconut garbage, but what I was delivered was a quite tasty, still coconut water. The only ingredient is 100% pure coconut water, so there's really not much room for it to go astray. On a side note can we all agree that plain coconut water is much better than the flavored varieties? They always end up tasting chalky and kind of wrong.

When I was in grade school I would wake up in the morning, eat a bowl of cereal, get ready for school and then pack my lunch. It was generally a ham sandwich with mustard, a juice box and a pack fruit snacks. When that was done I would make myself a beverage while I waited for the bus, which picked me up in front of my house. I was convinced that the weirder the stuff I drank the better off I would be. I would mix every beverage in the fridge and just down it. This included adding milk to everything, which as every scientist knows leads to curdling. That is what this drink reminds me of; adding a little milk to orange juice. The flavors separate from each other and the orange juice ends up not tasting like itself anymore. This isn't as gross as that, but since the ingredients are only coconut water and orange juice, I am left wondering what happened to the orange flavor. I'm guessing when they juiced it up the peel got into the mix. It tastes bitter, and neither coconut water, nor orange juice should taste that way. I think I fared better with my prepubescent cocktail mixtures.