Jason Draper - 2709 Reviews

Apparently the world has gotten a little lax on the meaning of the word “pure.” If someone were to offer me some pure juice, I would expect it to be straight up juice with nothing added to it at all. I would also expect it to have not gone through any sort of process. I'm looking in your direction concentration. Mr. Pure seems to think that juices from concentrate still count as being pure. I suppose they get some credit for not adding any sweetener to this juice. It's just orange and pineapple concentrate and water, which is better than most inexpensive juices. My issue with this drink is due to that they are a bit heavy handed with 1/3 of the ingredients aka water. The juice tastes watered down, which brings me back to my pure argument.
To sum this up it tastes like watered down orange juice with a slight nod to pineapple. I guess if you're looking for juice in a gas station like I was it could have been way worse, but I'm not sold.

Ladies and gentlemen, steal them from seafood restaurants or from your children, but do whatever you can to get yourself a bib, because we're in for a wild ride. Welcome to the 4th annual Westminster Chug-A-Thon, where literally dozens of people come to compete to see who is the national chugging champion. Due to legal issues, we can no longer use beer as our chugging liquid of choice, so this year we have a treat for everyone with some nice Blackberry Lime soda from the appropriately named Bibb company. We have a tanker truck full of the stuff, and that is about 8,000 gallons people. That's a whole lot of liquid, which means there is a good chance we're going to need the paramedics that we have on hand. It's also guaranteed that our contestants are going to be hurling the contents of their stomachs all over themselves, hence the bibs. There's only so much liquid the human stomach can hold, and they are going to need to empty their "tanks" several times if they are serious about winning. It's really a shame though, as the soda we're using is quite delicious. Actually, I feel odd calling it a soda, as it's more of a sparkling juice than soda pop. It's just blackberry and limejuice mixed with carbonated water and a little sweetener. With only 13g of sugar per serving, it looks like no one will be getting diabetes during this contest, which is good because we can't afford another lawsuit. Seriously though Bibbs has a great blackberry base with a strong lime flavor added to it that is nice and present without making you think that it should be called lime blackberry instead. It really is a shame that such a tasty drink is going to flood the streets in the form of regurgitation. With 8,000 gallons in the trunk there is sure to be enough leftover for everyone in the audience to enjoy a glass or two as well. So you're welcome and enjoy the event. Please put on your nose plugs though as we don't want another Stand By Me scenario this year.

Vegetable based juices can be fickle things. If they are made fresh it is wonderful. All of the subtle nuances of the vegetables pop out at you, and it just feels like you are doing something healthy and nothing can change that. On the other side of the coin, if they are prepackaged and mass produced to have a longer shelf life the glitter in their eyes fades away and you end up with something that tastes more like soup than juice.

With this product Odwalla is walking a tightrope between the two. It certainly doesn't taste like it was freshly juiced, but it's not quite in soup territory yet. It tastes mostly of carrots and beets, with the carrots giving it that slightly dirty taste, as they are prone to do. There is a slight hint of ginger flavoring, but there is no burn to speak of. Drinking juice that isn't very sweet will probably be a shock for a decent amount of people, and I can't really see this going over too well with the general populace, but there are people out there like myself who will enjoy it, and they should give it a chance.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I am about to propose something so radical that it may literally make your heads spin, so before I tell you please sign the waivers that you will find underneath your seats that will ensure that you cannot sue us in the case of death or dismemberment. Everyone sign? Good.

For decades the world has been plagued with garbage “green apple” flavoring. Nothing about that flavor tastes anything like the juice that would fill your mouth if you plucked a nice green apple from a tree and took a big bite. No instead it tastes like fake sour garbage. Everfresh is dedicated to putting an end to that tyranny, so we proudly present you with our newest product: Granny Smith juice. It is made with actual Granny Smith apples (albeit from concentrate) and nothing chemical or foreign. This is what green apple juice should taste like. Call your congressperson and demand that this be put in place of any juice that bears the fake green apple name. We are no longer children with candy on the brain and we deserve a serious juice. I fully expect a small parade for our efforts. Thank you and goodnight.

For some reason when Monster adds juice to their energy drinks they give them some sort of destructive name. Their tangerine/pineapple one is called Khaos and this one, which is more tropical, is called M-80. I don't know what juice has to do with causing trouble, but Monster has embraced it. Apparently their marketing department thinks that kids go to the grocery store, chug a few gallons of juice and then go out and blow up frogs and mailboxes. I'm all for blowing stuff up (well not frogs), but I don't need juice to do it. Any beverage will do. I mean, you have to stay hydrated.

Now Khaos is one of my favorite energy drinks. It tastes more like juice than anything else, but something went wrong when they were developing M-80. It has apple, passion fruit, pineapple and guava juice in it. It should be a home run. I was fully expecting it to be the best energy drink I've ever tasted, but as I said something got mixed up. It has more of a general Monster flavor with a bit a generic tropical mixed in than it does any of the individual fruit juices that are combined to make it. None of the individual juices are distinguishable. The more I drank, the less I liked it. I would have preferred an original Monster with it's generic energy drink flavor over this. You can't win them all.

Even though Welchs has a large array of juices on the market, my first thought when I hear their name is always “jelly.” I don't even eat jelly. I mean I have no moral objection to it, I just think that it's unnecessary. I generally eat my bread products dry, and if anything they get a little dab of peanut butter. There is no need to get fruit involved. Still, I hear Welchs and my mind goes to jelly.

This bottle only contains 10% juice. I wonder what percentage of their jelly is actually fruit? 10% is a joke in the juice world. If it's less than 40% juice I say it's not worth my time, and I have a hard time actually calling it juice and not “drink.” So to me this is not a juice, but at least the pittance of juice they used was actually partly mango and passionfruit. It was probably 1% each, with the other 8% going to that generic base, apple juice. So what we have is low levels of juice, which is only concentrate mixed with overly sweetened sugar water, yet somehow it ends up tasting great. I mean really, really good. You can very blatantly taste the mango, passion fruit and apple juice. It's the passion fruit that really shines through though. I had such low expectations for this, and I was pleasantly surprised. Well played Welchs.

Like most teenagers in the 90's who didn't drink I spent many a weekend night at parties downing soda. There was no better way to do that than drinking IBC 40s. Okay they really weren't 40oz, they were only 32, but they had the same look. Many of the drinkers out there thought that we drank them to be “cool” and try to fit in. In reality they simply tasted delicious, and more importantly they did trick the drunkards into thinking you were also drinking, which led to way less questions as to why you weren't drinking, which led to way less taunts, which led to way less altercations. There the secret is out. I drank IBC “40s” so I didn't have to deal with idiots who thought they should give me crap because I chose not to drink alcohol.

As I got older, I started going to fewer parties, and started buying less IBC. It's just as well, as it seems they no longer make the large bottles. The dream died. In fact this is the first time I've had IBC cream soda in 10-15 years. Even though I've become a bit of a soda snob in that time, I can honestly say that this is still pretty great. I don't know if it's just because of nostalgia, but I really loved this. To me this is what cream soda should be. It sweet, and has a nice vanilla flavor without tasting like extract. It's also on the lower end of syrupy for being sweetened with high fructose corn syrup. Now I want to go out in the fields with a couple of bottles of this and sit around a small fire watching as kids try very unsuccessfully to hook up with each other. It's the American dream.

There has been a birth in the royal family. The child was created out of wedlock, so the family kept the pregnancy quiet. That was all good and well until the birth occurred and they knew there was no way the secret could be kept, for with gazing upon the can brought nothing but love to the royal family. The union of cola and cherry was complete and cherry cola was born. The family felt to shame so they proudly shared their love with the world (well at least the Midwestern states, as I haven't seen this anywhere else).

While this may not be the world's greatest cherry cola (it is a bit on the syrupy side), it is still better than most. It has a stronger cherry flavor than I had expected. It's more along he lines of cherry Pepsi than it is Coke, which makes it strange that I like it so much, as I have always been on the Coke side of the great cola wars. I would still choose this over its big cola competitors.

I doubt the day will come when the world hears, “The king is dead. Long live the king” as RC Cherry takes over the throne, but as a prince or a duke, it does a fine job.

I just found out that his flavor was introduced in the 80s. How I have never seen it until now is beyond me. I guess that is what I get for living in the northeast.

There are a decent amount of breweries out that that make sodas along with their line of beers. I always wonder what prompts them to do so. I'm not complaining, but to be honest, I can't see there being nearly as big of a market for pop as there is for alcoholic beverages. Maybe they do it out of nostalgia, or perhaps they do it because being around so much consumable liquid all day every day makes for some thirsty employees. They certainly can't sit around drinking the beer all day, or things would most definitely get messy around the brewery. Whatever their reasons I thank them for following through. The soda that comes from breweries is generally of a higher quality than your everyday pops that you find at the corner store. They take more time in making their beverages and it shows in the flavor.

I recently met up with Night Birds to do a mid-west tour. I took a bus to meet them in Cleveland, which caused me to get to town a couple of hours before they were to arrive. When you're in that town with some time to kill and an empty stomach they only viable option is to make your way to Melt. It's a gourmet grilled cheese bar/restaurant with a ton of vegetarian/vegan options and a soda list that rivals a lot of bars beer list. After a public transportation mishap and a two mile walk, I found myself sitting at the bar eating one of the largest sandwiches I have ever handled and drinking this wonderful bottle of ginger beer. At first I thought it was really tame, but the more sips I took the greater the ginger burn. I wasn't disappointed in that department. Actually, I wasn't disappointed at all. It had a nice natural ginger flavor with a slight burst of lemon. It had more lemon than any other ginger beer I have tried, but it worked ridiculously well with the ginger. It's also on the sweeter side of most sodas of this flavor, but you know what? I'm totally okay with that.

Someday I will actually make my way to Ithaca. It's in NY only a couple of hours from where I live, but for some reason I've never been there, even though it sounds like a place I would totally love. When I go I shall drown my non-existent sorrows in bottle after bottle of their ginger brew.

Dear World,
I would appreciate it if you could start giving me a $5-$10 a day stipend to spend on high quality juices. You see I blew the 1.3 million dollars that we made from Thirsty Dudes last year on a sweet jet and I can't afford to purchase my beloved juice now. I know I should have thought it over more, but at the time the plane seemed like such a good idea. I didn't take into consideration the continual cost of fuel, and I obviously can't afford that either, so here I am with this giant jet in my backyard, just sitting there. I know I could sell it, but do you have any idea how much one of those things depreciates just by taking it off the lot?

Back to my point: I love juice and it helps to keep me healthy. World, you want me to be healthy don't you…€¦and happy? I mean if you really don't want to keep me in supply of fresh juice, could you at least send me some Life Juice every couple weeks or so? It's the closest bottled juice that I have ever had to something that was juiced before my very eyes. I am particularly fond of this Positive Balance one. It's basically a mix between their Oh My Greens and Happy Belly juices. I mean there are some slight differences, but that's what it tastes like to me. It's a mixture of spinach, kale, parsley, cucumber, celery, beets, apples, carrots, ginger and lemons, and yes you can taste each and every one of those fruits and vegetables in it. Luckily the celery isn't as strong in this one, so it's basically perfect. It tastes like how a horse pasture in the country smells, well minus the poop. That might sound like a bad thing, but I assure you I mean it in a very, very good way.

So, what do you say world? Will you support my juice intake? I mean if you really want to lower it any more, I guess I could settle for Naked juice, but I wouldn't be nearly as happy as I would be if you just gave me butt loads of Life Juice.

It's that time of year again. The great hunt in Sweden is upon us. Every year in late March Sweden sends its greatest warriors out into the fields and meadows to hunt the most dangerous beast of all, the “Easter Bunny.” The Western world only knows of the cute, cuddly rabbit that is used as a spokesperson for the commercial holiday. Like most holidays there is a darker history to it. In the third month of every year a fierce beast awakens to roam the Swedish countryside murdering children in order to steal their Fish (Swedish Fish to us Westerners). No one wants those children murdered, especially if it's just for candy. So warriors head out and set up traps made from sugary treats. Once it's captured (it's not exceptionally hard since Anni-Frid from ABBA designed a mechanism to hold the devilish creatures) the Easter Bunny is exsanguinated and it's blood is gathered into barrels, where it is malted. The results are called Dryck Paskmust and the Swedish drink it on the morning of Easter Sunday to celebrate a battle won, and in hopes of a great harvest the upcoming year.

Here at Thirsty Dudes we were lucky enough to procure a bottle of this sacred treat. Look at those hell demons on that label. Each of those foul creatures has been laid to rest and we are celebrating on their life force. For some reason their blood is carbonated, which just cannot feel good as it is coursing through their veins. It has a sweet candied semi-energy drink taste to it that is mixed in with the malt flavor. It's one of those drinks that tastes a bit strange to those who did not grow up on it, but I'm sure is a much sought after treat to those who have had it since birth. I just keep finding myself wondering if all of this death could be avoided if barrels of Swedish Fish were just left in the fields for the bunnies. Can't we all just live in harmony?

For those of you who do not know, I have a love of melon. I don't know when it started. I don't know what brought it on, but over the past couple of years I've been drawn to anything melon related. I even got a honeydew Swiss cake roll from Chinatown in Toronto. It was mind blowingly good. I tend to stay away from Ramune drinks, as they tend to be far too sweet for my tastes, but how could I turn down a melon one?

We drank this as part of our second visit on the Buffalo Eats podcast. While I was stoked on it, I was afraid it would be too sweet, and I wouldn't want to finish it. I figured this was it would be shared, and perhaps we could capture the sound of the marble being popped in for some live magic. Do those marbles serve any real purpose other than fun? I mean they are fun, but it seems like it's a lot of extraneous bottle design for a little fun, that so many companies have embraced.

This definitely tastes like candied generic melon. I assume it's supposed to be honeydew, due to the green color (no pun intended). It was pointed out in the podcast that it tastes like a Jolly Rancher if they made a melon flavor. I can see where they thought that, but the flavor doesn't have the intensity that those candies do. Perhaps it tastes like a watered down, overly sugared version of that. Yeah…€¦let's stick with that.

The rest of the Green Fit beverages have had a fairly mediocre taste. Since they are functional beverages that places them on the better end of the spectrum. This is the flavor I was least looking forward to. Look, I've come around on coconut water. I don't think it's the devil's spit anymore, but it's not my favorite, and coconut flavored things tend to be on the toasted side of things and I still cannot get down with that. Luckily they went heavy on the lime in this and the coconut is along the lines of coconut water.

The combination of the lime and the whey protein makes this taste more than a bit like key lime pie, well a light liquid version of it. The stevia is the only thing that detracts from that, but in a drink like this, you're not going to use regular sugar, so stevia was definitely the best possible choice. I think lime may be the secret to protein drinks. It makes the strange quasi-dairy taste seem appropriate and not just something you have to power through. It's always odd when the thing you fear becomes your favorite out of the bunch, but that is what we have here.

A nice thing about Spartos is that all of their regular flavors have red caps and writing, while the sugar free varieties are yellow. It makes it nice and simple for those warriors going into battle who are concerned about their sugar intake. Let me tell you the numbers of those sorts of warriors are rising.

Many of you out there probably have no idea what jackfruit is. My personal experience with it is limited to is using an unripe one to make vegetarian pulled pork. At that point the fruit is not yet sweet and it makes a perfect substitute texture wise. I have never had ripe jackfruit before, nor do I believe I have ever had anything flavored by it. While I was drinking this I could faintly taste the watermelon, which is a feat unto itself, as it's such a watery fruit that getting it's flavor without it tasting like candy is nearly impossible. I also kept tasting a hint of banana, but it wasn't the gross aspect of bananas. I even checked the label twice to see if it had banana in it. I was certain there was just a little in there. Overall it had a nice tropical flavor, you know with a hint of banana.

When I got home, I did a little (minimal) research on jackfruit and discovered that when ripe it is sweet and tastes like a mix between a banana and a pineapple. It's good to know that my taste buds are still working properly after all these years. There is the “coolness” of the stevia, as Mike refers to it, but it lets the actual taste shine and not some fake diet flavor. It really is the superior sugar free sweetener.

Since I have never had an actual ripened jackfruit I can't say for certain, but according to the description I read of the flavor Spartos got it right on the nose. Now I want to take a trip to Toronto, hit up Chinatown and get some fresh jackfruit, both ripe and not. I've got fruit and veggie pulled pork on the mind.

I cannot stress enough how this is not for everyone. I mean I think it's pretty obvious from the name and the ingredients listed right on the front that Joe and Sara Hamburger stand would never buy this in a million years to try, but I still feel like I needed to give a disclaimer. While it is not as intense as the vanilla bean flavored one, this ton bottle packs quite a punch. It's an extreme anti-oxidant cleansing formula full of turmeric, ginger, cardamom, spearmint, agave, lemon, sea salt, cayenne and cinnamon. Think about all of that mixed together. Doesn't it sound more like some sort of fancy soup, than a health drink? Well, that's pretty much what it tastes like a cold fancy soup that tastes like it just has to be insanely good for you, which it is. I know Tumeric is going to a niche market with this drink, but if they wanted to reach a wider audience perhaps marketing it as a healthy cold soup would interest more people. Who knows though, I'd gather that a large majority of the people in this world wouldn't care regardless. At least people would know what they were getting into before trying it though. If I were told this was a soup, my body would have been more prepared. As it is now, it's telling me, “Are you sure we should be ingesting this?” The answer is yes, of course.

The sweetness of the agave takes away a lot of the harshness of the other ingredients. It still tastes the way a spice shop smells, but that is what it is essentially. If you think about each of the ingredients while you are dinking it, each are easily identifiable. The ginger and the cayenne give it a nice little burn that I enjoyed a great deal, but my ladyfriend thought was a bit too much. What does she know though? She's no professional.

In a theoretical fight, who do you think would win, a lion or a bull? What if one of them happened to be roaring and the other was colored red for some reason? Some might say that the lion would win because it has sweet fangs and claws (aka it's a lot sweeter and more candy-like). Others may choose the bull because of its ravaging horns (aka more carbonation). Me, I think it's a pretty even match and that both parties should just nod their heads and walk away from each other. I mean this is all theoretical of course.

If someone hands you a berry flavored drink 9.5 times out of 10, you know exactly what you're in for: an amalgamation of mainly strawberries, raspberries and blueberries. If you're lucky there will be some blackberries in the mix as well. Who doesn't love it when that happens? The other .5 of the time you get drinks like this. I don't know what berry they use in these drinks, but it has a vague hint of fennel to it. It's not much, it took me a long time to place the taste, but there is just something extra to the flavor that doesn't normally occur in berry drinks. Depending on the beverage it can possibly ruin the whole thing. In this, I kind of like it. It's strange and unexpected.

An sentence overview of this drink would read thusly: “A sweetened berry flavored sparkling water with the faintest hint of the little candies you eat after an Indian buffet.” I should know, that's exactly what my dinner was last night. Unlike my saag and chana masala, this is also brimming with electrolytes. I swear they are in everything nowadays.

Who do I think I am to believe that I have a refined enough palate to taste subtle differences in bottled water? Well for one, I am an unpaid professional, which I suppose means that I am not a professional at all and two, I never said I could taste the differences. Well I know this tastes much better than tap water, and I drink that all the live long day. Seriously I'd say I drink close to two gallons of water a day. I always have a glass next to me, and I take trip to the restroom enough to prove it.

Aqua Hydrate surely tastes cleaner and purer. Perhaps that has to do with the raised pH level. According to the bottle normal water is at a 7 and this is 9+. For those of you like myself that never gave much attention to science teachers, the higher the pH is the higher the alkalinity, which means the more likely it is to detoxify excess acid waste that can lead to sluggishness, loss of strength, and decreased bone and muscle health. Yes, I stole that off of the bottle. I may be a scientist, but chemistry is not my field of expertise.

To sum this up: It's water, it's wonderful, it's crisp, it's clean and it has electrolytes, which will help you get through your day. Just drink more water people. It's good and it makes you feel healthier.

I'm having dèjà vu here kiddies. This tastes so familiar, that I had to go back and read our review for Honest Kids Super Fruit Punch. Just as I thought, this is basically the same light fruit punch, except with one little upgrade; there is no sugar added. I'd like to believe that I was partially responsible for that, seeing as it was the only complaint I had about it in pouch form. See, people do read us! This isn't a waste of time!

Do you see that completely fabricated wonderful blue sky and landscape on that bottle? When I drink this, I am there, and it is as real as anywhere. This is just plain wonderful. Like a lot of mixed fruit beverages the majority of juice in this is apple. It's a malleable juice that can take on the flavor of other fruits without overpowering them. Sure you can still taste the apple a bit, but it blends in nicely. It calms down the pineapple juice so it isn't so harsh as to give your throat the feeling that you just blew chunks in a public toilet. So you have this nice mild blend of pineapple and regular apple juices. That would be great as it is, but as Ralph & Charlie's is prone to do, they stepped up the game and added a bunch of carrots.

I like carrots. Actually, I borderline love carrots, but I had my reservations about this juice before I tried it. Carrots can be very overpowering in juice form, but in here they are team players. You can tell that there is a vegetable at work in the taste, but the fact that it is a carrot only slightly pokes its head out of the rabbit hole (all puns intended).

It's not fresh juice, and there is added sugar, but despite those things this tastes great, and you can drink it without feeling terrible about yourself. Well you can still feel terrible about yourself, but it will have nothing to do with your beverage choice.