Jason Draper - 2709 Reviews

I have to bone to pick with the world, the universe, humanity, etc. For 30 some odd years I wandered through life thinking that I hated all things coconut and no one tried to tell me otherwise. You see all I had been exposed to was that toasted garbage that goes on desserts, which is some of the worse tasting trash that has ever graced my tongue. I never knew there was another side of coconut, a fresh side. Finally, for the sake of this website, I drank some coconut water. It wasn't bad at all. It wasn't my favorite thing in the world, but it was a whole new beast compared to what I was used to. I would occasionally drink them, and the world was an okay place to be. Then this bottle of coconut water showed up at my door looking for a stomach to call its own. For a week I ignored it, but today I was feeling a bit sluggish, so I gave it a go. WHY DID NO ONE TELL ME THAT THIS EXISTED?!?!?!?!

This is pure glory. It is 100% natural coconut water and juice. There are no concentrates involved. This essentially tastes like a giant ripped open a coconut with its giant strength, then it squeezed the hell out of a pineapple to extract its juice into the open coconut. Finally it took it easy and squeezed a little bit of lime juice in it. For that giant, that would probably be less than a shot of liquid, but for me it's perfect. It tastes ridiculously fresh like you wouldn't believe. It's a taste that I didn't know existed in the world. So I thank you dear giant and I say screw off to the rest of the world for not letting me know that such a delicious beverage could exist.

Welcome to the 24th Annual Drinky Dranky awards show. We're happy to be your eyes outside the event to give you an update as to what celebrity beverages are wearing this year. It looks like the first to arrive is a nice peach ginger black tea, which is wearing a sash proclaiming itself to be a “Celebri tea.' A fitting name for any tea that is important enough to be invited to this event.

This Celebri tea is in essence a not very strong black tea that is wearing not one, but two sweeteners. We're talking the unusual pairing of organic cane sugar and organic stevia extract that result in 22g of sugar per bottle. If you were to ask me I would say that the stevia is unnecessary, and just showboating a bit. If they had stuck to just a low level of cane sugar it would have turned out to be nicely semi sweetened, and it wouldn't have that very specific stevia taste to it. I don't know about our home viewers, but I for one would rather have an unsweetened tea than one with that aftertaste. In reality it still has a decent amount of sugar per bottle, so the stevia isn't really pulling that much of the load anyways. If anything it just works against the taste of the ginger, which you have to actively think about to taste at this point.

When we're in our 25th year I would hope that this Celebri tea will ditch the stevia without adding any more sweetener and what we would be left with would be a lightly peach flavored black tea with faint moments of ginger. That is a drink that would surely turn some heads on the red carpet.

The beverage world is clamoring trying to make a healthier soda for the consumers who think that they are too good for diet drinks, who are sexist and think that diet drinks are only for girls, and more than likely those who just think diet drinks taste gross. I myself fall in the last category. I just can't get down with normal zero calorie sweeteners. Sometime I find a stevia sweetened drink refreshing, but even that gets old fast. Dr Pepper Snapple has found a middle ground. They use three sweeteners: aspartame, acesulfame potassium, and high fructose corn syrup that result in a drink with only 10 calories and only 2g of sugar that doesn't have a very strong diet taste to it. I don't understand how they worked it out that HFCS is the second ingredient and kept the sugar amount so low. I can only assume that there are especially low amounts of the other ingredients as well, but it still has a strong flavor. It doesn't just taste like soda water.

This tastes surprising like the real deal Canada Dry. It's by no means a top of the line ginger ale, but it still somewhat tastes like real ginger, which they brag about on the label. You could hold this in your mouth all day long and it wouldn't taste diet one bit. The thing is that once you swallow, you get a bit of the diet in the aftertaste as you take a breath. It's a huge step up from normal diet drinks, but the world has a long way to go before they develop a diet soda that I would drink on the regular.

Snapple was one of the first “big” companies to make the switch back to real sugar from high fructose corn syrup. I for one was a happy camper. As you may know if you are one of the three people who actively read this website, that aren't me (I'm looking at you Mike and Neuland), HFCS destroys my stomach if I drink more than one bottle of something with it in it within a week. Snapple was a savior for me on the road. It some something that I knew would be in every rest stop and gas station. It allowed me to mix things up from water and straight up apple and orange juice. At that point there were maybe only 4 or 5 flavors in their “All Natural” line, but since then they've been cranking them out. In an age when there is a decent selection of non-corn sweetened beverages regularly available I started taking them for granted. Trying this drink I realize I'm an idiot. This is pretty darn good. Sure it's sweet as all hell, but sometimes you get “the tooth” and you need to serve it as your master. Would this be better with less sugar? Of course it would, what juice wouldn't be?

The weird thing about this is that pear juice is one of the main ingredients, above any other juice. Now, a lot of companies use apple juice to stretch the juices they use, but I've never run across a company using pears for that self same thing. It's one of those things that you would never taste if you didn't know, but once the knowledge enters your mind grapes you can taste it. Luckily the peach flavor overpowers any other flavor, with raspberry riding shotgun. The pear juice is nice and tied up in the trunk where unsuspecting people would have no idea…€¦just where pears belong.

The essence of Hawaii has been captured and is now available in can form. From my brief stay there I believe I have gathered enough information to make the scientific assumption that it is impossible to be stressed out there. Everything about the island that I was on was just peaceful and beautiful. Lanilai wants to share that inner tranquility with you, the mainlanders, so you can know their joy.

Unlike many relaxation drinks, this is not meant to be a sleep aid. It is simply there to help you “relax, refocus and rejuvenate.” Basically it just calms you down so you can enjoy the little things that are going on around you. It is also non-carbonated, which is nice because harsh bubbles don't really scream relaxation to me, yet a lot of these types of drinks use them. It's something I will never understand and at this point I don't care, because I'm just chill.

The flavor is a mixture of purple muscadine grapes, peaches, mangos and herbal passion flower. I tastes quite sweet and tropical, the way you would expect an island non-adventure to. The peach flavor really stands out the most, but you can detect the other flavors as well. My only complaint is that they used stevia alongside evaporated cane juice, and it left a slightly distracting taste. I don't think they needed to add another sweetener, the amount of cane juice in here would have been just fine.

You could do hours of yoga to relax, or you could be lazy and drink one of these. Guess which one I chose.

If I know anything about the Greek alphabet, which in actuality is very little, then this is the end drink. The drink that will either bring about the end of humanity, or else it will be the only drink that survives the impending apocalypse. Hopefully it's the second option, because besides the fact that it has a very nice light berry flavor, it also has a lot of health benefits that would prove to be beneficial in an end of the world type scenario. It's chock full of omega 3, fiber, calcium and antioxidants, and we all know that the lack of antioxidants is what is going to bring on the decimation of our planet.

This is the first chia drink I have tried that does not have whole chia seeds in it. This is nothing but liquid, so I've you're concerned about chunks or texture, this won't be an issue for you. It also has salvia in it. I think you have to smoke it for it to have hallucinatory effects, so don't go wasting the world's last source of fluid trying to get high. It just won't work kids, and then you'll dehydrate and die…€¦a dried out husk.

The scientific community has been shocked that the great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandson of Ben Franklin strived to do for most of his life; capture the energy in a bolt of lightning in a can for human consumption. It was not widely publicized in the day that those were his true intentions with all his experiments and inventions, due to the fact that not that much time had passed since the Salem witch trials and no one wants to be drowned or crushed by a ton of rocks. Our Founding Father never succeeded in his quest, but each generation of his lineage has since added to his work. It wasn't until Stevie Franklin reached a 100% achievements in Skyrim, took a gigantic rip from his 4-foot bong and took a cursory look at his ancestor's work that everything fell into place. Being the consummate stoner, Stevie knew how to make any household items into a smoking device and he took that knowledge, skewed it a bit and by the next thunderstorm he had a can of lightning.

Most people have no idea that lighting is really made up of glucuronolactone, ribose, inositol, potassium citrate, caffeine and a whole mess of B vitamins. In its liquid form it can provide an individual with great amounts of energy that Stevie hopes to use in order to crush teenagers in Halo. Lightning has a strange chemical taste that is like most energy drinks, in a way that is similar, but with a berry flavor all it's own. The only thing is that it tends to be a bit tart. Stevie added 23g of corn sweeteners to combat that problem, but it still has that tartness to it.

This is a scientific breakthrough that could change the entire world, but in true form of his ganja freak friends, Stevie doesn't mind if others use his work, but he's just too lazy to write any of it down for them.

I recently wrote in a review that pineapple pop always tastes like a candied version of what someone thinks the fruit tastes like, and that person is always off. Sumol decided to call my bluff. While this doesn't taste exactly like carbonated pineapple juice it does fall more on the actual juice side of thing than that previously mentioned candy flavor. There is 8% juice in here, and to be honest it could use a higher percentage, but it's still one of the best pineapple sodas I've ever tasted. It's carbonated, but the bubbles aren't shoved down your throat. It's the kind of soda that one would enjoy on a warm sunny day. Oh look, that's exactly what it's like outside today. Well chosen me.

Did you ever wonder why Gargamel was always trying to get at the Smurfs? Some theories are that he wanted to turn them into gold, he thought they would be a delicious treat or that he just hated them and wanted to destroy them. Truth is that good ole Gargy just needed their blood to power his doomsday machine. He was actually quite upset about their eventual destruction. He spent many a late nights sitting up with Azrael, crying about how such innocent creatures needed to die just so he could completely destroy the rest of the human race. You see at school everyone picked on him for being bald and ugly. Oh, you didn't know that Gargamel was actually a high school student? Well he was. The entire Smurf world was really just a school shooting about to happen. It was sad really to see a boy so confused.

Eventually Gargy grew up and started a Fortune 500 company. He invested a lot and created this juice in homage to the creatures he once thought he had to destroy. All proceeds go to Smurfs all around the world. It's like reparations: reparations that are a mixture of blueberries, blackberries, apples and a banana. It mostly just tastes like blueberries though with some other flavors around the edges. Gargamel tried to list them as Smurfberries on the label, but the FDA wouldn't hear a word of it. If he had just reversed the percentages of blackberries to blueberries this would perhaps be the world's finest drink, but alas he did not and what we are left with is still delicious.

A great thing about Vuka is that they specifically formulate their different energy drinks for different activities. They know that if you're staying up for an all night study marathon, you don't need a bunch of taurine or other chemical garbage junking up your drink giving you the jitters. You want to stay awake and to be able to concentrate at the same time. For this Think variety they use natural caffeine, gingko biloba, panax ginseng, same bitartrate as well as niacin and B-vitamins. Their other flavors use different ingredients and it certainly shows. The Renew Mango Peach gave me crazy energy and a bit of the old jitters, but with this one I don't feel insane at all. I just feel alert, and it's helped me get through a bunch of things I was not looking forward to on my to-do list.

The functional side of this energy drink is absolutely perfect. Unfortunately the flavor side of it doesn't come through as much. I'm all for stevia being used as a natural zero calorie sweetener, but from the taste of this it seems like they went overboard with it. It's like whoever was adding it to the batch got distracted by a dirty joke and accidentally dumped too much in whilst laughing. It's supposed to be pomegranate lychee flavored, but the pom flavor is very mild and I don't really get any of the old lady flavors of lychee in here at all. Mostly it's just the cold taste of stevia. I will say that the more I drank the less I thought it was gross, but it's certainly not my favorite tasting thing by any means. I would drink it again and power through the flavor to get the functionality out of it though.

Mike gave the original version of this beverage a less than stellar review. The one line of his review that stuck with me, and also made me fear drinking the other flavors was, “It also smells like paint.” Nothing could make me want to taste something less than the smell of paint. Lucky for me when I finally gathered the courage to try this, the scent of paint was nowhere near my nostrils. They were only filled with the rich smell of chocolate.

Actually, maybe I wasn't so lucky that the paint smell wasn't there. Had it been I would have been more prepared for the way this tasted. I have never had cacao juice before, but I never would have expected it to taste like this. I mean it's the base of chocolate for crying out loud. This tastes like it's bitter, bitter dark chocolate mixed with acai or some such harsh fruit. It's sweet, but in all the wrong ways. I wanted to like this because it has a lot of health benefits and I love chocolate, especially dark chocolate. I couldn't bring myself to get further into this than three sips. I was hoping it would get better if I drank more, but nope it was still grosser than gross.

What is it about soda pop and fruit that just doesn't add up? To be more specific, why is it that when pop companies make a fruit flavored sparkling beverage nine times out of ten it ends up tasting like candy and not like the fruit it is meant to be? These sodas end up being like the actors that are used in true crime shows to recreate the events of a horrific ordeal for the world to see. They are kind of similar to the people who were originally involved, but there is something just not natural about them that is just off. In such shows, pineapple would be one of the better actors. Sure he still doesn't come across as true as a real pineapple, but he's a much stronger actor than banana and his cohorts. He may not play fruit the way we want him too, but I'll be damned if he doesn't take the character in a different direction and make us believe that it is the way things have always been.

Push's pineapple is at the top of his acting game. It's not fruit by any stretch of the imagination, but he pulls off a compelling performance that is as good as any fake pineapple I've ever tasted.

Are you an elderly rabbit? Do you have a sweet tooth, or two sweet front teeth for gnawing? If you have answered yes to these questions have I got a drink for you. Ralph & Charlie, whom I can only assume wear giant bunny costumes all day due to their love of carrots, have released this beverage to honor said love. It's all an aging rabbit, who practiced poor dental hygiene could ask for (cause you know it's a juice, so they don't have to chew the carrots, did you really not understand that? Wow.).

Now, I've drunk a handful of carrot juices before, and I have strangely enjoyed them all. Every time I purchase one, I always question why am I doing such a thing, but when it hits my tongue, I am reminded that carrots are delicious and actually make a good juice. The thing about this drink that makes it stand out from the others I've had is that it has added sugar to it. It still had that classic carrot flavor to it, but it has an added sweetness, that almost makes it taste like a treat served at Thanksgiving. It doesn't taste as fresh as the other juices, but I think the added sugar would make it enjoyable to more people. You know, the people who think that vegetables and health food are for pansies. I think even those people would enjoy this juice. Them, and that geriatric rabbit I mentioned earlier.

Things are starting to warm up. The internet weathermen tell us that it's supposed to get up to 70 today. While I'm sure that won't stay consistent, theirs is no doubting that in the relatively near future lemonade season will once again be upon us. The weather may get hot, but the drink will help keep us cool. Now regular lemonade is great. It's simple and it gets the job done. Fruit flavored lemonades are even better. I was recently exposed to the Passion Lemonade at Starbucks and let me tell you it was a treat. Big Island Organics decided to go all the way to the top of the mountain and make a lemonade so great that they had to change its name as to not hurt the feelings of the lesser drinks.

They call it gingerade, but it is clearly flavored lemonade. The ingredients are water, lemon juice and agave nectar. That there are the makings of one hell of a lemonade, but why stop there when you can ad glorious Hawaiian yellow ginger. With it in the mix you get a great taste as well as a nice burn that is sure to turn a lot of people off, but those people aren't us are they? We love the burn, the more the better. Well, maybe not in this case, since this is a sippin' drink for a nice hot day in the sun. In that case, this has the absolutely perfect amount of burn to it.

I'm sorry this is not what you expected sir, but in all honesty did you really expect to be handed a scotch and soda or some such libation? I mean we are at an elementary school music recital. It would be more than a little irresponsible to serve alcohol at such an event. I'm actually shocked that these Hi Ball energy drinks were available in the vending machine. I mean why would kids grade K-6 have any need for energy drinks? Actually, why would kids so young have access to a vending machine? Shouldn't they be learning the basics of their educations, not chugging away at a soda?

Anyways, stop your complaining and try the drink. It's like tonic water with a splash of grapefruit flavoring in it. It's like a grapefruit seltzer, and it's not bad at all. It has organic caffeine, guarana and ginseng in it, and you would never be able to tell from the taste. I know you wanted to get drunk to make it through this night, but at least this will save you the embarrassment of your child seeing you fall asleep during his/her solo.

Sir I will not get you another. I'd like to point out for the third time that I'm not a waiter. I'm actually just another parent who's seat you have taken. Don't give me that garbage about not having assigned seats. You clearly moved my jacket that was on the chair when I went to the restroom. You also dumped my wife's purse out when she asked you to move. Now that I think about it, your trench coat leads me to believe that you're child isn't even in this production. Security!

While I love pineapples and all the juice they contain, it is sometimes nice to have it cut with another juice. If it's not a mixture of general tropical flavors, the go to for most companies is orange. It's a good choice. Oranges are great, but they are so common that people take them for granted. Mixed with pineapple they help cut down on the acidity that can make it painful to drink a lot of pineapple juice, and the oranges benefit from the pineapple flavor to make it stand out more amongst it's peers. I wonder how apple would work mixed it. I mean sure it would look silly on the packaging written out, but I bet if they used quality apples it would taste like liquid gold. Apple Pineapple or Pineapple Apple? They both sound ridiculous.

Unfortunately for all involved there isn't any actual juice in this bottle of Spartos, unless it's trace amounts under the banner of “natural flavors.” Actually no, small on the label it is written “no fruit juice.” It's a shame because while this is a decent drink (an even more decent drink considering that it is a fruity protein drink), but flavor-wise it falls close to Tang with a slight dairy edge. A citrus based tropical flavor, that is not quite orange or pineapple. The use of fruit juice would have solved that problem. Then again this is a water beverage and not juice, so that obviously wasn't what they were going for. It's just what I wish they had done. Don't get me wrong. I would rather drink this over 90% of the protein shakes on the market. Sometimes you just need to take the rough with the smooth.

Silly Americans. You thought the cold war was over and that you had won. You believed the movie Clue when it told you that Communism was nothing but a red herring and that capitalism was the true motivator. You have been duped and now we have infiltrated your very culture. Who do you think own all the Red Robin restaurants? It is us, working on getting you fat and slovenly. Did you really think that Red Bull was there to just help you get through your day? We created the company in order to weaken your hearts for the battles to come.

We even have some products over there for the sole benefit of our agents who are stuck on your soil. With all the garbage that you produce and consume we needed to make sure there were some things that were healthy for our people to consume. We bribed some of the higher ups at Naked and they created a special blend for us that they call “Red Machine.” It is a mixture of all of the finest communist fruits to remind our people what they are fighting for. Each bottle contains 13 raspberries, 11 strawberries, 3 cranberries, ¼ of a pomegranate, 1 ½ of an apple and 7 red grapes. We also mixed in 1/3 of an orange and ½ of a banana, as well as a bunch of other vitamins and the like to ensure continued health. While you and your countrymen choke on their excessive calorie and sugar intake, the people's people will remain at the peak of their health drinking these wonderful prepackaged smoothies. They taste like nothing but wonderful red fruit. It has been formulated so that the other ingredients are not evident in the taste. What you get has a strong berry flavor with the slightest hints of the bitterness of cranberries and pomegranate.

America, you stand no chance. Our day will come soon, and on that day all class struggles will cease to be. You will be too bloated with weak hearts to stop us.

In order to ensure that bullets don't pierce your person there are a few things you have to sacrifice, limited mobility for one. Also, if you're a sweet spy, the bulkiness of it all will ruin the lines in your suit. I also just learned that in order to become bulletproof, you also have to sacrifice flavor.

As with most energy drinks that don't proclaim to be a specific flavor, I expected the generic energy drink flavor of sugary candy. Well, diet sugar candy. I actually prefer the sugar free Red Bull to the original variety, so I thought this was going to be a little bit of decent, but nothing out of the ordinary. That proved to be not the case. This definitely has the chemical energy drink flavor, but it also has a weird almond smell to it that comes across as something completely different and weirdly citrus in the flavor. It's not something that I would ever purchase, as there are so many other varieties of energy drinks in every gas station ever. Maybe this will be your thing, but I couldn't really enjoy it. Maybe I'll unload a few rounds into it and see if it actually is bulletproof. My predictions: I'm going to tear this thing to pieces.

One of my favorite things about traveling/touring is finding and trying regional beverages. Recently I found myself in a crappy little grocery store at 2am in Kansas looking for something to satisfy my hunger. There was no “natural” section to speak of, and hardly any vegetarian selections except for crappy chips and actual vegetables that I had no means to cook. Things were looking grim, and then I stumbled across a little display of these sparkling ciders. My night started to look up, but I left the store with a bag of flavored rice cakes and this bottle of cider. Sure I went to bed hungry that night, but I had a good taste on my tongue.

This is not a spiced cider, and I can only assume that they grow a different breed of apples in the Midwest than in Buffalo, so it ended up tasting more like a sparkling cran-apple juice than sparkling cider to me. I'm okay with that. It was still delicious. Basically if you give me a bottle of any juice that is carbonated with no added sugar, I am going to love it. The cranberry juice isn't very strong, so the apples do most of the work. Apples: The backbone of America.

“And when we hit the twin cities, I didn't know that much about it. I knew Mary Tyler Moore and I knew Profane Existence.”

Dear Craig Finn, You forgot about your beloved Minnesota Twins and their beloved Harmon Killebrew. I mean you even wrote a song about them with The Baseball Project. Man, that must have been awesome to work with Peter Buck. Oh you also forgot about all of the “crust lords” that reign supreme in your city.

Well Mr. Finn I'm here to remind you with this review of Killebrew root beer. Harmon's son makes it and it's a homage to his father. First off, this is the first root beer that I have ever drunk that comes in a resealable aluminum bottle. It's weird, but I like that I can reseal it without having to deal with plastic. The root beer itself is sweetened with “pure Minnesota honey,” which is nice, but for some reason they also use HFCS, which seems unnecessary. The honey gives it a nice taste that you don't get in everyday root beer. There is something about it that tastes slightly medicinal in the way that Moxie does. It's also very dark tasting. I can't help but think that this would taste a lot better in a glass bottle. You know, the way that root beer was meant to be served.

As a final note I would like to point out that this would make a great float if you mixed it with some vanilla ice cream. Maybe that's just because I've consumed way more ice cream in the past two weeks than any human should.