Jason Draper - 2709 Reviews

Dad! I knew you would find someway to ruin my 13th birthday party! I kept you in the dark about most of it, because even though I know you have the best of intentions, you always mess everything up. I had mom take care of the cake, the clown, the decorations and all of the food. Not surprisingly all of that is perfect. You had one responsibility and that was to buy pop for everyone and you somehow messed that up! I even made you a list and told you specifically where you could get it! What, you don't know many 13 year olds who know exactly what stores to buy specific sodas at? Well I'm a new breed, okay?

You completely ignored my list, and obviously went to a discount store. Don't try denying it; you left the price tags on the bottles. Not only did you go the cheap route, but you also only bought one flavor. I know you bought it because you thought it was cute that it's called Dad's and you're my dad. On top of that it's “Big Daddy Size.” I have to tell you, now that I'm a teenager that just sounds creepy and gross. Don't ever say that phrase again! So here we are with a bunch of bottles of Dad's Old Fashioned Red Cream Soda. At first I gave you the benefit of the doubt because cream soda is delicious, and I loved that can of red cream soda mom brought me back from Toronto. The thing is this stuff is garbage. It tastes like someone took 3 parts bubble gum flavored soda and mixed in 1 part cream soda. It's basically champagne cola and cream. It's gross! I hate it! You've ruined my birthday! I'm never speaking to you again!

NASA has been having some trouble with their astronauts being little piggies. No lie those space commanders have become real porkers. Long gone are the days of the fit and cut astronauts from our youth. Instead they look more like your unemployed uncle on a good day. NASA decided something needed to be done. Not only is it bad for PR, but also the extra weight causes issues with the flights. They decided to launch a two tiered attack. The first thing they did was to start serving healthy vegan food in their cafeterias and on the flights (that is seriously not a lie, I just read about it today). Secondly, they decided that all of the sugar that “Major Tom” was injesting via Tang wasn't helping at all. After half a century the relationship between the two companies was dissolved and our space scientists teamed up with Glaceau. Instead of the uber sugary Tang, astronauts now ingest a stevia sweetened alternative called Rise (get it, because they are rising to space). It really taste exactly like Tang with stevia instead of real sugar, but they do it well because they use less than 1% of the sweetener. It has a slight diet sting, but it's mostly orange, and you can't really ask for more than that. Now they just need to up the treadmill time. How are they supposed to find God (aka any array of Bowie characters) out there if they are too fat to get off the ground?

Editor Dan picked this up for us. I had no idea what guayusa was, but I'm not one to turn down any sort of iced tea. Seriously, I'll even drink Nestea if it's put in front of me. I drank this tea before doing any research on it, and I would have sworn that guayusa was just another name for yerba mate. It really reminded me a lot of Guayaki Pure Heart tea. The tea is very heavy on the hibiscus and berry (shockingly it's a combo of yumberry and blueberry), and it's great.

While I was writing this I did some research and guayusa is not the same as yerba mate, but it is another plant that grows in the Amazon. The article I read said that it does taste very similar to mate though. It's nice to know that after so many damn drink reviews my taste buds are still up to par. Guayusa also has as much caffeine as coffee and twice the antioxidants as green tea. It's a nice healthy energy kick. I'm definitely interested in getting some guayusa to brew myself. I'm sure I'll mess it up somehow though. Hopefully more companies will start using it, or Runa will become more popular so that my failure won't matter too much.

I pose to you a question: When Kurt Russell was escaping from New York, and later L.A. would he have had an easier time if this drink were on hand? Would it have given him the refreshment he needed in such dire situations? Would he have just been able to trade a bottle of this for the president? I can only imagine that pineapples and guavas would be like gold on a prison island. If you lived in an area that was cut off from the world for years and suddenly someone dangled those fruits in front of you, I think you would be surprised as to what you would do to procure it. The joke would be on you though if you traded something as precious at the president for a bottle of this. You see there are four main ingredients in this bottle: aloe vera, pineapple and guava (which are all incredibly delicious), but then you also have sea buckthorn berry. I've never actually had one before, or heard of it until now, but a quick internet search tells me they are extremely healthy an also extremely tart. My question is if they are so tart why does this drink taste like someone took a delicious tropical aloe drink and mixed in a little bit of vegetable soup? There is just this little flavor of soup that makes this whole thing really, really weird. It counters the tropical flavor, and once you realize what the taste reminds you of it's hard to concentrate on any of the other flavors. It's still enjoyable, but it's just a weird drink. Snake Plissken sure pulled a fast one on those cons. Now he just needs to get the president back to his glider.

Oh yeah, in case you didn't already realize it this drink also has chunks of aloe in it. I normally love them, but they kind of add to the vegetable soup scenario in here.

This was really supposed to be one of the greatest things to ever grace my taste buds. The Bundaberg flavors I've had in the past have been nothing short of greatness. On top of that it has been scientifically proven that guavas are one of the greatest fruits to even ripen on this planet of ours. Even better this was the third part of a gift that my great friend Terry brought back from a work trip to Australia. As you can tell from my wording everything was aligned for greatness. If there was a god then this had to be the greatest soda to ever be produced. Apparently Homer Simpson's flat tax plan was correct, there is no god.

While this is a soda made with actual guava juice, and it is carbonated just like their other flavors, the other flavors masked the fermented taste that the yeast used caused. Unfortunate for me fruit juice doesn't do as good of a job masking that flavor. It turns out that Bundaberg Guava Soda tastes like a wine cooler. My friends who drank loved this. They were all raving about it. To me it was a disappointment that I still enjoyed. It still tasted like guava juice, just a little fermented, the way that Fentimans fruit flavors do. I will give the company credit for making the soda the old fashioned way though.

I need better fans in my screen printing shop. It's so ridiculously hot in there, and I have to wear a stupid shirtsleeve as a headband or else I'll drip all over the shirts. I drink well over a gallon of water a day in there, and it's still never enough. After my shift today I felt so completely dehydrated that I knew I needed to treat myself to some coconut water. It's true that when they are ice cold they are one of the most refreshing beverages to ever exist. I may not be a plant, but that doesn't mean that my body doesn't sometimes craze electrolytes.

All of my life I have stayed away from anything pina colada flavored because of my extreme hatred of toasted coconut. I assumed that all coconut tasted like that, but I later learned I was wrong. Coconut water can be great, and so can pina coladas. That is essentially what this is and it was great. It was so good, and so refreshing that in less than a minute the carton was empty and I was looking for more. When your ingredients are natural pineapple juice and natural coconut water, can you really go wrong? For a brief moment my mind was a tropical island and I was enjoying a nice cool breeze. Then I realized I still had another order to print so I went back down to the shop and all of my refreshment was sweat out of me.

Kristall makes nothing but quality fruit sodas. I have loved every flavor of theirs that I have tried, and this one continues their streak of awesomeness. I was at a backyard going away party today and I drank way more pop than I normally do. I also ate nothing but chips and salsa all day (it's my curse) and now my stomach regrets it. This was my ladyfriend's drink of choice for the day, and she was kind enough to share it with me. We drank it early on in the party, so my taste buds were fresh and my stomach wasn't bloated. Lucky me.

Let's face it, 7Up and Sprite don't really taste anything like lemons or limes. Maybe there is a slight hint, but if you squeezed the juices from those two fruits, added them to some sparkling water and then mixed in a bunch of sugar it would not taste anything like those brands. Just ask Mitch Hedberg. That mixture would taste very similar to what is in this bottle. Kristall was able to capture with essence of those citrus fruits without the sourness. Good job guys.

Dr Pepper has been a part of “big soda” for years. Some would say he ran the soda game in the 70s. I mean you never see anyone wearing shirts that say “I'm Mellow like Yello,” but “I'm a Pepper shirts were everywhere.”

To combat this unholy terror, the Coca-Cola company released Peppo in the early 70's. The Doctor was having none of that blaspheme of his name and a lawsuit soon followed. It was then that Mr. Pibb was born. One might ask, “How can just a man compete with a doctor?” The answer to that question is to have slightly more cherry in your flavor.

After decades of living in the shadows of Herr Doctor, Pibb decided to step up his game and add some cinnamon into the mix (or so Wikipedia tells me). It was this mixture that became known as Pibb Xtra, and it was labeled as a spicy cherry soda. In reality I can't taste much, if any, cinnamon in this soda. It really tastes like someone mixed a Dr. Pepper and a regular cherry soda together. I must say that I prefer it to the Pepper, but it's not something I would drink on a regular basis. I do know a bunch of people who love it and drink it religiously. I'm not kidding they have a Pibb alter and have ceremonies and everything. You would think they were drinking the blood of Christ or something.

If you've ever found yourself at a backyard party, staring into a cooler full of pop and you chose the orange flavored one; you know what this soda tastes like. It's completely standard orange pop. Nothing fancy. Nothing gross. If you've never found yourself in that situation then you my friend must be attending some fancy parties. Did you drink a caviar soda? If so, that's gross and I want no part of those parties.

I tried to drink a chocolate soda that completed disgusted me, so I decided to settle for an only slightly better vanilla one. When cream soda is done right, it can be one of the best pops out there. It can be so incredibly smooth and flavorful. Unfortunately Red Ribbon missed their mark with this one. It tastes a little too sweet than it should, and the vanilla tastes more like vanilla extract that it also should. It's a unique tasting soda, but it's not unique in a way that I like. I really just wanted to sit back and relax with a nice soda this evening, unfortunately the two that I opened both left me unsatisfied, and were left unfinished. Sorry guys, I'll drink your almond cream soda all day long, but I'll leave the vanilla cream on the shelf.

There were two things that Mario loved in life. Those two things were chocolate and soda pop. What can you really expect from a six year old? Seriously though, Mario had terrible parents, or so his bedroom would have you believe. It was littered with empty pop cans and chocolate bar wrappers. They said it didn't matter because he ate it all of the time and he was still “skinny like a bean.” Mario's parents were idiots. A. All of that garbage would catch up to him weight-wise as he got older. B. I'm sure all of that sugar gave your poor child diabetes or some other disease.

One morning Mario woke up and found that there was not a drop of cola left in the house. On top of that he was out of chocolate bars. He felt like garbage. He now understood why his dad was so irritable on the mornings when he didn't have coffee. The boy was going through withdrawal. It was as he was writhing in pain on the kitchen floor that he came up with an idea. He took one of his mom's seltzer waters from the fridge and dumped a whole mess of cocoa powder into it. He grabbed a bunch of sugar packets and pours them into the mixture as well. It's unfortunate for Mario that he didn't realize that they weren't actual sugar, but his mom's “diet sugar” packets. Mario then took out an oversized spoon and mixed it until it was just a liquid with no powder on top.He took a whiff and it smelled like his mom's chocolate scented lotion. Pleased with himself he took a big gulp and immediately spit it all over the kitchen. His concoction was utterly disgusting. It tasted like a three day old, melted chocolate float that had aspartame in it for some reason. Even though the ice cream had melted, the carbonation remained. Ugh…€¦so gross. Being the scumbag child that he was Mario didn't even clean up his mess. He just took a five from his mom's purse and walked down to the corner store to get his provisions. That little bastard.

Up until this pop touched my taste buds I had completely forgotten that Faygo used to make a chocolate cream pie soda. I remember convincing my grandfather to buy me a bottle. I took one sip and thought it was completely revolting, and I felt bad for wasting it. I pretty much had the exact same reaction with this similar tasting pop, except this time I wasted my own money instead of someone else's.

I would like to think that a doctor created this after being up in arms with the amount of soda Americans drink on a daily basis. I like the idea of a doctor creating a healthier soda that actually tastes good, but as it turns out this 12oz bottle actually has 45g of sugar in it. This doctor isn't in it for the health, but maybe that's the whole point. Perhaps the dear doctor decided he had had it with medicine, and he decided to go the way of Pepper and Brown. Perhaps the doctor realized that he wasn't good enough of a doctor to be a world renowned surgeon, and thought that he would have a better chance at fame in the soda game. Unfortunately no one will ever really know what was on the doctor's mind when he made his line of sodas. You see poor story telling and uninteresting plot lines tragically killed him. The doctor and this review have much in common.

Let us not wallow in his death, but instead celebrate his soda. In essence this is a cherry soda, which leans a little bit on the medicinal taste. It doesn't cross the line into full-blown cough syrup flavor, but it hints at it. The thing that saves the drink, and in fact makes it great is the slight herbal undertones. They make the cherry flavor seem less medicinal and makes it very interesting. It is very sweet, but sometimes you just crave a soda like that. Today just happened to be one of those days, so things worked out nicely.

The drink has caffeine, guarana and ginseng in it, which make it quasi energy drink. I guess if you would consider Jolt an energy drink, than this would fall in the same category for you.

Today I turn 33. I really couldn't care less about my birthday. As Patton Oswalt so wisely pointed out there are only 20 birthdays that really count, and I have 7 more years until I get to celebrate again. So logic would show that today is a day like no other. Logic would be flawed today. Sure my birthday doesn't matter, but more important than that, and just about anything else, is that the new Batman movie comes out tonight. Any celebrations that I may have, or any gifts I receive are not because of my birthday, they are because of Batman Day aka the best holiday of all.

Since my birthday doesn't matter, I worked today. I woke up and printed a buttload of shirts in my shop, which gets way to hot this time of year. It really is exhausting and since I am going to see The Dark Knight Rises at midnight (and I'm sure it will be three hours long) I decided to give this Monster Java a try. I like it. It tastes like any other prepackaged chocolate-coffee drink. I always thought that taurine was what gave energy drinks that weird chemical taste, but there is just as much in this can as there is in other energy drinks, and this just tastes like over-sweetened coffee with chocolate mixed in. I am grateful for that. If it had that energy drink taste this would be puke sauce in a can. If you are someone who likes your coffee black, you probably think this is far too sweet. Actually, you probably would be the type of person that wouldn't bother with any sort of fancy coffee at all. This is very sweet. It's actually sweeter than even I, who doesn't really like coffee much, would want it to be. I do enjoy it though, and I'm sure it will help to keep me up and alert to watch the “breaking of the bat.” Seriously, you have no idea how pumped I am to see Bane wreak havoc on Gotham. It's going to be so sweet!

I decided to continue my mind trip to our neighbors to the south with this beverage. No, I'm not drinking apple soda and this back to back, I'm just writing the reviews at the same time.

For those of you who are not familiar with horchata (I'm expecting that to be the majority of you reading this), turn off your computer, make your way to the closest authentic Mexican restaurant to you (of course Chipotle doesn't count!) and order yourself the biggest glass possible. You don't even need to know what it is. You have the assurance of the Thirsty Dudes that you will love it. Actually if you are lactose intolerant or vegan ignore that order because you will either get really sick or the vegan police will come after you. If that is the case, we assure you that you will not love the way you feel after drinking it.

Horchata is rice, milk and spices (mostly cinnamon) in Mexican culture. Other countries have their own varieties, but the Mexican version is the only one I have ever tried. I admit, it doesn't sound too appealing, but something happens when those ingredients are mixed together that is magical. It still has a slight rice flavor, but nothing horrible. Actually none of the flavors are too overbearing. They all mix together and live in food racial food harmony.

I've only ever had one prepackaged horchata before, and it was a bit on the gross side. If it's not coming from one of those constantly churning drink machines that used to always be in restaurants, but that you don't see too often anymore…€¦well then I would tend to avoid it. My friend Ian bought me this when we were on tour together, and I'm glad he did, because it's one of the best horchatas I've had. It tastes like it came right from the machine. Everything is in perfect balance (unlike my last prepackaged one). Now I really want to eat a burrito. Too bad it's so late and I'm too lazy to make one.

Overnight flights are simultaneously the best and the worst. They are the bet because you can sleep through most of the flight and it seems to pass quickly, which is always appreciated. Even if I have an early morning flight I tend to stay up the whole night before, just so that I can sleep on the plane.

They are the worst because no matter how tired you are; you never get a consistent sleep. It's impossible to get “sleep comfortable” on a plane. There's no place to put your head and if you try to sleep in a full sitting position your head will inevitably fall forward like you were in some boring class in high school that just put you out. Case in point is my last day in Vegas and the flight home. I woke up at 7:30 am and went and ate far too much at breakfast. Then I walked around all day to wear myself out. There was a point where I just thought that if I just sat down anywhere I would pass out, but I stayed vertical and kept moving. Our plane left around midnight. I tried to stay awake until they approved use of portable electronic devices so that I would put on some sleepy music to drown out all the noise around me. I remember the plane starting to move on the runway, but I apparently couldn't keep my eyes open for another minute because I was out before the plane left the ground. You would think that a situation like that would be ideal, but as it turns out that sleep lasted me a whole twenty minutes of a five-hour flight. As to be expected, my head fell forward and I woke up, unable to fall back asleep. Luckily I had planned ahead and brought a Koma Unwind with me. I quickly downed the berry chemical flavored liquid, which I initially thought was horrible, but left a pleasant aftertaste. It's rare that these shots truly taste pleasant, so I'll take all of the niceness I can get out of them. After about 10 minutes of pondering the taste I was asleep again. I wasn't able to sleep through the flight, I woke up probably every 20 minutes or so, but the unwind shot helped me to fall back to sleep with relative ease. The moments that I was awake were extremely annoying, but I will take that collective 2 minutes over being conscious for a five-hour flight any day.

The year is 1998 and cucumber melon reigns supreme. It's everywhere from lotions to candles...okay that's pretty much the only places that you would find that combo, but I had a candle in my room that smelled like that, and one of my best friends always used the lotion so in my eyes (or nose) the scent was everywhere. Then suddenly it seemed to vanish. I recently found cucumber melon hand soap, but my ladyfriend said she didn't like the way it smelled, so it remained on the store's shelf. Now here I am sitting in the "Golden Girls" hotel in Las Vegas waiting while said ladyfriend packs up her things. I'm just sitting on the bed sipping this wonderful soda. Cucumber and melon are both two of my favorite flavors, so them together is a no brainer. If it were any other flavor I would not have dropped the money on a four pack, but I just couldn't say no to these old friends. I'm glad I couldn't.

This is essentially a Mr Q Cumber soda with some honeydew thrown in the mix. I can guarantee that 99% of the people who try this soda will be surprised by how much it actually tastes like both of it's flavors. It's uncanny. I love it. I know a certain sound engineer in Buffalo who will probably love it even more. He ordered three cases of Mr Q Cumber after I introduced it to him, and I bet he'll order three of these as well.

When a lemon winks in your direction it would be wise of you to pay attention. There is no telling what disaster may befall you if you chose to ignore it. Let's face it, lemons are bastards and you'll more than likely get a squirt of citric acid in your unsuspecting eye. No one wants that, well unless that is some weird fetish you have. I'm sure there is a community online for folks like you to meet up and ignore winking lemons. I'm just not a part of it.

As I've said in the past Hubert's makes fantastic lemonades. Nice and tart the way lemonade should be. Their raspberry half & half left a lot to be desired because the tea tasted watered down. They got things right with their peach line though. It starts off as a great tasting peach tea and it fades into nice sweet lemonade as it swishes across your tongue. The problem with the raspberry was that it tasted like raspberry lemonade with tea added to it. With this it seems more like a flavored tea mixed with regular lemonade and that certainly works much better for me.

So here I sit refreshed, with happy taste buds and clear vision. This is what reviewing beverages should always be like.

Man, I could really go for a Vitamin Water now. It would be so totally refreshing. Unfortunately I'm stuck here out in the desert and there's not a store for at least a hundred miles. I really should have thought ahead before I went on this hike. Well I guess I tried. I did buy a bunch of granola bars, some packets of Emergen-C, and I brought some water. Hey wait! If I pour the emergency into the water it would be something like a Vitamin Water. Goddamnit! I bought the wrong water! I got sparkling water and not still. This is terrible. Here I am stuck in the desert and the only fluid I have is carbonated. This blows. Oh well, I guess I could still mix it together. At least it's the berry flavored one and not citrus. Well this isn't as bad as I would have expected it to be, but it's not very good either. It tastes a bit powdery. I guess I didn't mix it together all the way. Actually this tastes exactly like the wild berry flavored Vitamin Fizz. I didn't really like it then and I don't really like it now. Too bad I have nothing else to drink and I'm dehydrating.

Baby girl you're getting married today and I have just the thing for you. Don't look at me like that! No, it's not an energy drink! It's a beauty elixir. It will make you glow girl! You know how they refer to people as blushing brides? Well in the olden days that would happen naturally, but with all of the artificial crap that is in food now a days your body needs a little help. That's where Hansen's comes in. They have come up with a formula with all of the vitamins and nutrients that a bride to be needs to give her the blush at the alter. On top of that they gave it a nice berry flavor. It's a mixture of blackberries, blueberries raspberries and strawberries. For a little extra something something they even added a little bit of cranberry in there. Unfortunately in order for the formula to work properly they did have to add a little sucralose to it, but it's so slight of an amount that you can't really tell that it's there at all. The acerola in there you can taste a bit and it gives it a weird twist. It's weird, but it's good.

Baby girl you are going to blush so hard at the alter after you drink this, your husband isn't going to know what to think. Seriously though, do you think anyone is really going to believe you just because you're wearing a white dress? Let's get real here.

Hubert's makes lemonade that is to be reckoned with. It's the freshest tasting bottled lemonade I have ever tried. It's so tart and the little bits of lemon are an added bonus. When I saw that they started to make half & halfs I instantly bought a couple of flavors.

Unfortunately this drink didn't live up to their straight lemonades. It tastes like they look the base of one of their great raspberry lemonades and mixed it with a very watered down iced tea. There's no real tea taste and the mixture takes away from the lemonade. There is no longer any real tartness to it, a bummer indeed. I expected greatness, but what I got was blandness.