Jason Draper - 2709 Reviews

The county fair is one of the most wonderful places in the summer. There is a ton of gross awesome food, animals galore and great people watching. Sometimes spending all day out in the sun gets to be a little too much in the heat department, so there are little “mist tents” set up where you walk through a little tunnel and water is misted on you from spray bottles and fans. It's really not the most effective thing in the world, but any little bit of help is appreciated.

All I can think about with the name of this company is one of those tents, but instead of spraying you with water, it pumps out iced tea. It would be the stickiest refreshment anyone has ever seen. It would also be absolutely terrible. If I were forced to go through one, I would choose the diet peach option. I can only assume it would be less sticky than real sugar, and also the peach doesn't taste as insanely strong in this as it does in the regular version. I would just wander through, with my mouth open and let the refreshment wash over me, and hopefully get a little flavor on my tongue along the way.

Like every flavor in this line, it tastes nothing like yerba mate, which as always is disappointing. It tastes a little bit diet, but not in a chemical death way. It's a little strange because it's specifically the peach flavor that tastes diet and not the actual tea. It tastes diet in a way that makes you say, “Why not, there's nothing else to drink, and I don't find this completely disgusting.” Can you really ask for more in a diet drink? The answer is yes, but this is still better than most 0 calorie beverages on the market.

For a good portion of my life I consumed far too much sugar, and the majority of that sugar came in the form of iced tea. I love the stuff. Can't get enough of it. With the advent of the iced tea tall boys and the expansion of the medium they are everywhere and generally only $1. That's a deal that was hard to pass up. Eventually I got to the age where what you eat/drink finally catches up to you, and it was quite a shock. For 30 years or so I ate and drank whatever fancied me and my weight never went under 170 and never above 175. They were the golden years. Then I started to notice a change and I decided I needed more exercise in my life and a change to my diet. I am happy to say that I have actually stuck with it, and things are looking good.

One of the steps I took was to start brewing my own tea at home. I would boil a huge pot of water, throw a couple of tea bags in and them transfer it to a growler after an hour or so. I learned to love unsweetened tea, and it help stave off the cravings I used to have for tallboys. I still drink more tea than is probably good for a human, but at least there is no sugar involved.

One of my go to teas to brew is “original” Runa guayusa tea. It has an earthy taste that is similar to yerba mate, but with it's own twist. Sometimes I drink it just like that; sometimes I throw in a different tea bag into the mix of flavored tea. Either way it's always delicious. I love that I have the option to get these teas in ready to drink form. I wish this were available at every gas station around the country, so I could easily find them when traveling. It is a perfect balance of earthy tea and limejuice. It's mostly tea, but the lime flavor is very obviously there.

These days “mixologists” are all the rage. It seems like just a fancy word for a bartender that knows how to do their job. If I were to use the term though, I would say that Runa has one of the best mixologists around, sure this is a simple beverage, but ratios are as crucial to a drink as the quality of the ingredients used, and they have it down to a science.

Who knows what one does in their sleep? Perhaps you are a werewolf and without even knowing you transform into a wild beast and cause havoc throughout your town. Maybe you sleep-mallwalk with a bunch of geriatrics that wake up at 3am. Some people have night terrors of game show blunders past that cause them to be restless. Or perhaps it's simply the time when you think you are a Viking. If any of those things are true of you, then you certainly wake up with a loss of fluids and a lack of electrolytes in your system.

The only rational solution to these problems is to grab an oversized bottle of sugary beverage and down it as soon as you wake up. I mean staying healthy is a must and you'll be damned if nighttime you is going to ruin the rest of your day. So chug my friend, chug!

Guess what this tastes like? That's right it has the same sodium base as every other flavor of Gatorade. Not a bad thing at all. I like when drinks have a specific taste through out their entire product line so that you can spot them in blind taste tests. It's a taste America has known and love for decades. This version they went a little tropical with the taste. There may not be any mango listed on the ingredients, but it tastes enough like the fruit that you don't feel cheated. It is way sweeter than anything I would typically want to drink in the morning, but I'm not an athlete, a werewolf or have grandeurs of sailing the seven seas plundering villages. I'm just a Thirsty Dude, who thinks this tastes just fine, but I wouldn't drink it in the morning…€¦.okay it's 9am right now, but I drank 90% of this yesterday. I'm just finishing it off to get a taste for the review.

Ladies and Gentlemen, we have been wrong for far too long. As we have recently learned the song should actually go, “You put the lime in the mango and you drink it all up.” You see mangos and limes go together far better than coconut could ever dream. We have sent a cease and desist to the Harry Nilsson estate and we have been assured that with the magic of technology his song will be digitally altered so that he sings mango instead of coconut at every instance. It's was really shocking how quickly the executar of his estate agreed to it. I guess she must be a huge mango supporter, but who wouldn't be?

To celebrate the change in the song Arizona has released this version of their Rickey line. It is some version of mango and lime juice mixed together and injected into carbonated water. In any world this is really just an interesting flavor of soda that comes in an oversized can, but we'll play the game and refer to it as a sparkling beverage.

Mangos and limes work so well together that I can't believe it's not a more common experience. This actually tastes more of lime than mango, and that might be the secret right there. Lime is normally a secondary character in the beverage world, but it has a co-starring role with Arizona, and the reviews all say that it performed amazingly. Now if only it came in smaller cans and with less sugar it and I could be BFFs.

It has recently come to my attention that through all the gallons of beverage that I have drank throughout my 34 years I have never once had a NOS energy drink. I've drunk far more energy drinks than I am comfortable admitting, but for some reason I have never reached for one of these. Perhaps it's because far too much of my time during my 20's was spent with friends who cared far too much (in my opinion at the time) about cars. We're talking about “pimping” and sooping up cars for cars shows and the like. Because of the boredom I underwent I became disinterested in all things car related. Now that I am older I say, whatever makes you happy, do it, but back them I was a surly bastard about it.

Anyways here I stand at my inaugural tasting, and of course it's not even for their flagship product, but a new line that they are promoting called Active. This line is basically an energy drink/sports drink hybrid. Due to the bottle and the fact that both are distributed by Coca Cola, I have it in my mind that this is NOS mixed with Powerade. I have no idea if that is true, but that is the way it looks and that is the way it tastes.

What we have here is very light lemonade with a little bit of raspberry flavor to it with a whole lot of electrolytes thrown in the mix. Oh, and a whole lot of sodium, which is normal for sports drinks. You don't taste the energy drink aspect of this at all. The only foreign flavor I can really taste is the artificial sweetener sucralose. Overall this isn't all that bad. It's not a flavor that I generally go for, but I know there is definitely a lot of people out there that would.

This is a beverage made for when you work out. My question is when are you supposed to drink it though? If you drink it before you work out you get the benefit of the caffeine, taurine and the like, but the electrolytes are wasted. If you drink it after, the opposite is true. I suppose you could drink it during your work out, but I feel like you'd only get half the benefits from each side. I chose to drink it before hand, in hopes that somehow the electrolytes are set on a time release. We can only hope.

There was a point in my life where I thought that Mistic would eclipse the rest of the beverage world. It was nicely carbonated, it tasted completely amazing and exotic to my ten year old taste buds in the late 80's. Best of all they looked like wine coolers, so being the dumb kids we were we could act like adults (or older teenage girls of the time) after a long day of skating. Then they all just disappeared without a trace. I was dumbfounded as to what could have happened to my beloved drink. I pounded them whenever I could, so obviously the rest of the world was doing the same. Something must have been amiss. Perhaps it was a government conspiracy.

Probably a decade later Mistic reentered my world. The bottles looked similar, but they were no longer carbonated. My heart was broken. It just wasn't the same. It still had a great fruit flavor, but without it's bubbles, it sank into the scenery as companies like Sobe took center stage.

Now more than another decade has passed and I've encountered the beast again. The bottle has changed, and perhaps that is for the better. The old bottle always left me hoping in vain that it would be sparkling. With the new bottles my former dreams have been decimated, so I can enjoy it for the fake juice that it is.

What we have here is a “juice drink” that only has 3% juice in it, yet it really tastes like mango...strongly. It's ridiculously sweet and not very good for you with 56g of sugar in this 16 oz bottle, but what it lacks in health is surely there in flavor. Let's face it mango juice is not readily available in a lot of areas. Especially in the more inner city bodegas, which are the only places I ever seem to find Mistic drinks. Sometimes you just crave the mango taste, and this is a decent tasting substitute for when the real juice is not at hand.

I would now like to take the time to plead with the Mistic folks (who seem to have no internet presence) to please bring back your sparkling line, and make it exactly as you did when I was a child. I will buy a truckload. Actually how about you send me a truckload for free, for making you millions by reminding you how awesome you once were.

In the deserts of the southwestern United States there roams a nameless man. He is a man with many friends who have never heard him utter a single word. To those who know of the lore he is simply known as Ahhmigo. He wanders the desert with his trusty llama and helps those who are lost. The thing is he is kind of a jerk. He drives around in a jeep all day with a llama riding shotgun, until he finds someone wandering in the sand. He then pulls up, flips open a cooler from the back and tosses the wayward soul a bottle of water and a packet of vitamins and the like. He then just points in the direction of the nearest town, and just drives off. I know he's giving some help, but the dude has a jeep. He could easily drive the people to safety instead of just hydrating them. He becomes their friend (I guess) and offers them refreshment, but like I said, he's kind of a jerk.

This is the closest you will come to experiencing an encounter with this leathery skinned man. It is a bottle of spring water that has a cap full of freeze dried vegetables, roots, fruits, herbs and vitamins, just like the astronauts use. It helps to keep the ingredients fresh so that you can get the most out of them. Much like a Japanese soda, you smash the top down, into the fluid below, but instead of releasing a marble, a dusting of health enters your water.

The majority of these ingredients in cap drinks use zero calorie sweeteners to help make it more palatable for your average drinker. Ahhmigo is no different in that they use stevia, but with so much other healthy stuff in here, you can't really taste it at all.

For drinks like this I normally list all of the weird ingredients that I've never heard of before, but I'm sure are ridiculously good for you, but this seriously has so many that it would be the entire review. They are broken up into different categories on the ingredients list, which include algae, phytonutrients & enzymes, tonic herbal extracts & mushrooms, green juices, western herbs and natural antioxidants. I would like to mention that it has bladderwrack though. Now that's something completely new to me.

Overall this tastes like an old style health food store smells. It's mostly wheat grass that I taste, but there are a bunch of other flavors in there that just make it taste healthy. It's like someone took every little think that was healthy that they could find, juiced it all together, and then watered it down a bit. There are some flakes of the powder that I couldn't get to dissolve, no matter how long I shook it.

This is certainly a strange drink that is fitting for the strange fellow in the desert who travels with a llama. If you ever come across him, make sure you thank him, as he probably saved your life, but also give him a little guff, for not helping more.

We here at Thirsty Dudes have not been too stroked on the Suavva line. In fact both of the other flavors we have reviewed have gotten the lowest rating possible. As is to be expected, I have been very hesitant to try this third flavor, and it's been staring at me every time I open my fridge for the past month or so. Sometimes you need to just buckle down and power through an experience, and that is what I had prepared myself for today. I expected to make it 2-3 sips into this bottle, but to my surprise it actually tastes decent.

I guess cacao just needs a strong fruity flavor to combat its strong superfruit taste. I find it odd that most superfruits taste kind of similar. It's like they all use acai as a weird mutated grape tasting base. Due to that it's no surprise that this reminds me of mango and acai mixed, with a little something extra in there. Luckily that something extra is not the paint smell/taste that mike mentioned in his review of the original variety. The mango flavor takes center stage in this, and I am grateful because that means I will be able to make it through the entire bottle and gain the benefits of the antioxidants from the cacao.

Am I the only one who feels like non-carbonated energy drinks don't work? Even thought I know they have the exact same energy giving ingredients, the absence of thousands of tiny bubbles tricks my brain into thinking that I will not be awake for much longer. Well brain, learn to work properly because I can assure you this does provide the burst of energy that it sells you on. It's been awhile since I have physically been able to feel an energy drink, and I'm sure my nearly empty stomach played a supporting role in that.

Monster hit the nail on the head when they decided to mix their energy formula with tea and lemonade. They use a nice mixture of brewed black and green tea, instead of some garbage powder. That mixed with the pink lemonade it tastes wonderfully like summer and it does a great job of masking the typical energy drink flavor. It also 95% hides the taste of the sucralose used to sweeten this. This is decent tasting lemonade that has only 6g of sugar in the entire can. That's some kind of magic right there. By the way what is in pink lemonade that makes it pink? Online tells me it's just dye, but it taste different to me.

On top of this tasting great and giving you a healthy dose of hopped up energy it also has coconut water and a bunch of antioxidant rich fruits to help you recover from a rough night of some crazy scavenger hunt that you were more than likely on. I mean that's how everyone spends their weeknights, right? Oh, and the secret to winning is to find the name of the baby gorilla buried in the pet cemetery, and get that can of Mello Yellow, no matter what.

Follow this path of information. Arizona is from Long Island, and they are co-opting a beverage from Brooklyn. Okay, that wasn't too bad was it? They started at the end of last summer when they released their Cherry Lime Rickey, which I believe was their first trek into the world of carbonation. It was a drink I enjoyed. It was pretty crazy, and ridiculously sweet, but on a nice hot day, it was enjoyable. Recently they have released three new flavors into their Rickey line, and they are what they are.

While it may only constitute 10% of the beverage these Rickeys are flavored with real juice. I don't believe there was ever a time in nature when grapes and limes commingled. They certainly are a strange pair when put together, but it's kind of enjoyable. I started drinking this last night at band practice, and it was a bit much to handle. Upon taking one sip I knew there was no way I was going to drink this entire can in one sitting. The label says it's three servings, but Arizona knows as well as we do that we are a country of gluttons and 99% of their customers drink them don't divvy up the portions. They separated the sweetener into HFCS and sucralose to keep the calories down, but it still makes it way sweeter than it needs to be. It is also harshly carbonated, so be aware of that when you go into one of these. Sometimes I really like that kind of carbonation, but last night was not one of them. The grape lime flavor was very interesting though, so it helped me get through half the can. The rest I put in my fridge so that I could review it later.

Here I am, the next afternoon, and now the beverage is lightly carbonated. Without the harsh bubbles, the flavor shines through a lot more. You can definitely taste the grape and lime juices, of course it's through a haze of sweetener, but that is what the majority of the Arizona customer base wants. Unless the temperature is over 85 degrees I probably will not purchase another one of these, but I am still excited to try the other two new flavors.

It is a well known fact that it is more important to have core strength rather than strength in just your extremities. Imagine having a weak little torso, but huge bulky arms. That is just ridiculous. I would like someone to draw a caricature of me looking like that. I will pay you one American dollar for it.

It is a lesser known fact that the best way to increase your core strength is with chocolate milk. Okay that is not exactly true. You do need to do some exercise and the like, but afterwards a properly placed chocolate protein drink will work wonders in building muscle and in being less hungry.

This tastes like a ridiculously good chocolate milk. It's slightly gritty, but it doesn't seem to be in the whey protein way. It's more of a “we didn't completely shave this chocolate down to nothing when we made this drink” kind of way. Just think of them that way; as tiny, miniscule little chocolate flakes. Doesn't that make the drink even better?

Most protein drinks you have to take with a grain of salt, and expect something to be a little off with them. This does not fall victim to that taste-wise and I could pound this all the livelong day. Sure, I would probably be a lard since I'd be ingesting so much protein, but my taste buds would be happy.

Did you know that white tea helps to promote healthy skin? Well the internet tells me it does, and the internet never lies. Armed with this knowledge I would like to suggest that Celebritea partners up with Courtney Love for some publicity. Sure she appears to be an absolute nut job, but if this video is any indication she'll up for promoting companies.

Oh you don't know what Courtney Love has to do with tea? Well, her band has an album called Celebrity Skin. Get it? Celebritea Skin. The ad campaign would focus on the positive effects this drink can have on your skin, and of course we would use the same song as the NJOY commercial.

I don't know why she wouldn't agree. This is a tasty tea, especially for having stevia in it (as well as cane sugar) to cut down on the sugar. It's got a classic white tea taste with mellow blueberry and acai overtones. You get a bit of stevia in the end, but it's not too terrible. So get her on the horn and make this happen. You can send me my 10% when you get everything sorted out.

This morning Mike and I had a meeting at the local Coke bottling facility. Our new friends there told us about what they do and about the new products coming out. Once that concluded we were taken on a tour of the warehouse/bottling section. Everything was normal and on the up and up until we came to a make shift boxing ring tucked away in a back corner. When we questioned its existence, our tour guide gave us a sly smile and tossed us a can of this new Monster Baller's Blend. He said it was a way to promote the new SKU inside the company. Every week the warehouse employees downed a can of this fruit punch flavored energy drink and had it out in the ring to see who would take the upcoming weekend shifts.

We were in luck because the week's fights were just about to start. We sat there as approximately two dozen employees cracked open a case of Punch Energy and used their keys to pop holes in them and shotgunned the hell out of those cans. Mike and I watched on as we sipped our can. It was surprisingly good. We were actually taken aback by how decent it was. When we think of a fruit punch energy drink the only image in my mind was an overly sweet cheap tasting syrupy mess. Luckily the liquid inside has a nice fruit punch flavor that doesn't seem too childish. I believe that was due to the fact that it's sweetened with sugar, so it's not too syrupy and the slight general energy drink flavor gave it a more adult taste.

We only had time to watch the first couple fights, but let me tell you those warehouse guys were no joke. This was an all out bare-knuckle brawl, with a bunch of grown men who were all sorts of amped up on energy punch. The second forklift operator lost at least one tooth that I saw. I guess when you're weekend is at risk and the weather finally getting nice out, you're gonna do what you have to do for some time in the sun. The invited Mike and I to go a few rounds against each other for the titled of Duke of the Dudes of Thirst, but we politely declined. There were tacos in our future and we didn't want to take a chance of ruining that with bloody lips and black eyes. Instead we downed the last few sips of our tasty beverages, said our goodbyes and made our way out into the wild world of taquerias.


As you may have guess by that last line, none of this is actually true, except that we did have a tour/meeting and we drank this surprisingly good beverage. There are no real taquerias in Buffalo, and that is the shame of our city.

Can you guess what I'm going to say about this tea? Oh perhaps it's that it's so sweet with a high concentration of fruit flavor that you can't taste the yerba mate that is supposed to be the base of the drink.

This drink is 100% natural, yet it tastes like it should be some random drink you find at a gas station. You know you go in and see a weird iced tea you've never tried and when you drink it you're in disappointment city because it just tastes like a sugar drink. Okay, that was a bit harsh, this is a lot better then that, but I so badly want this to have a strong yerba mate flavor that is nowhere to be found. Instead I'm left with a whole lot of sugary mango and the slightest notion of some tea.

Here we have one of the originals of the Arizona line. It's not very common nowadays. I was actually asked if it was a new flavor when I pulled it out to parch my thirst at band practice last night. I'm pretty sure the reason this flavor never became more popular is that I don't believe that it was ever released as a tall boy can; I've only ever seen it in glass and plastic bottles. It's a shame because this is way better than you would expect. Even though it is sweetened with high fructose corn syrup, you can actually taste the real brewed tea, instead of just sugar water. Sure, there is a decent amount of sugar in this drink, but it tastes like mass produced sweetened iced tea should. I'm looking at you with disappointment Brisk. That's right, you're getting the “dad face” while Arizona gets a proud arm around it's shoulder.

Dear Kraft, You sent us these samples months ago and I'm sorry I'm just getting around to reviewing this now. You see it somehow fell behind the giant mountain of drinks that is my kitchen, and it wasn't until I tried to organize everything yesterday that I found it. Such a little squeeze container can easily get lost in a forest of the gluttonous large bottles of most American beverages. In this country we are taught that more is better, but most of the time that is not true. More often ends up with stomachaches, cavities and diabetes.

The more is better mentality also does not fare well with Crystal Light Liquids. When they say one squeeze for each 8oz serving, they mean a small squeeze, not a big honking one. With a small squeeze you get a nice fruity flavor that tastes more like a tea that it should for not having any tea in it. IT has a general tropical fruit flavor rather than one of specific fruit. There is also a slight diet flavor from the sucralose they use to sweeten it, but it's more than manageable. The more you squeeze, the less pleasant the flavor become and the more the diet taste of it all jumps out at you.

When done properly this can make a nice little beverage for those weirdoes in the world that don't like the taste of water. It's also a nice substitute for sugar water if you're trying to lose some weight or just consume healthier beverages, just don't overdo it like you did those bacon triple cheeseburgers that got you into this mess in the first place.

Sadly this is my last bottle of Ralph & Charlie's. When we received a shipment of juices that were nearly all carrot based I did not expect to be taken on the wild trip that is concluding today. Carrots are great, but drinking them does not sound like something I would ever look forward to. This company has come up with the wonderful mixtures of carrots and other fruits and vegetables that are always interesting and leave me wanting more.

The idea of mixing carrots and cranberries has never crossed my mind. Sure both are staples at Thanksgiving, but I don't think of them as a team. Never in a million years would I expect their combination to taste the way this juice does. It is very sweet, without crossing over the line of tooth decay. It's also very fruity, which is due to apple juice being the second ingredient, following water. This is essentially a cranapple juice with carrots mixed in to give it just enough of a unique flavor to make you sit back and savor each sip.

I find myself wondering how this drink would fare if it didn't have sugar added to it. Would it be even better, or is the sugar necessary to give the carrot juice the little push it needs to not overpower the rest of the flavors?

Thank you for coming to the 3 o'clock show of The Great Blastino! I hope you all enjoyed the past 20 minutes of magic and illusions. We have time for one final trick, The Miraculous VBlast! In this trick I will turn an ordinary bottle of water in a vitamin packed treat with a light purple hue.

For this trick I will need a volunteer from the audience. Yes you, you will do nicely. Will you please come up here and inspect this bottle. Feel free to taste it. Can you confirm that this bottle is full of nothing but ordinary water? Yes? Good. Now let me return the cap, say the magic words, BolognaOnPastrami! Now you will notice that the fluid in the bottle has changed in color. Please take another sip and tell us how it now tastes. Ahh yes, you say it has a nice light grape candy flavor, but in a diety sort of way. You would be correct. You will also be happy to know that you just received a mouthful of crucial vitamins in a fun and interesting way.

Now folks magicians aren't supposed to reveal their secrets, but truth be told I actually am an employee of the VBlast Corporation and this entire performance was put together as a marketing technique to introduce you to our newest vitamin drink. You see it truly was just a bottle of spring water; the vitamins are all stored in the cap, which once you twist it causes the contents to drop into the water. All you need to do then is shake it up and enjoy. Bottles are available for sale in the lobby. I will also be out shortly to sign autographs.

Get yourself a big ole' bucket of water. Now dump a big ole' bag of sugar in it. Squeeze some of those little ole' passion fruits and those regular ole' mangoes into that there bucket and what you get will probably taste a little bit like this. This only has 30% juice in it, but what amount of the remaining 70% is sugar? It's ridiculously sweet to an extent that it takes away from the flavor of two of my favorite fruits. Both are present but the amount of sugar makes them taste candied. Too bad.

First things first; I believe the label for this packaging was misprinted. You see I have this and a bottle of the mango pear sitting in front of me, and the ingredients lists are the same. Sure they could just use different quantities, but I don't taste pear in this at all, and I had the “non-diet” version of this a while back and that had mango and pineapple in it, and this tastes the same as I remember that. Just a heads up Bai, you might want to look into that.

As I just mentioned two seconds ago I had the regular version of this, and I have to say this tastes eerily close to it, even though erythritol was swapped out for the cane juice, the flavor stays fairly consistent. It still has a great mango flavor with some pineapple mixed in. I'm going to feel like a real idiot if there is not any pineapple in the 5 calorie version, but I can taste it, but it could be totally psychosomatic. It also has a nice white tea base that is hard to miss. There is only the faintest erythritol coolness to this. So little that if I didn't know it was in there, I might not notice. Bai did a great job masking the flavor, while still keeping it low in calories. Good job folks.