Mike Literman - 1759 Reviews

Dude? I'll drink thicker drinks all of the day. Creamy, syrupy, so on and so forth. I'll do it. Thing about it is that I want to know what I'm getting into when I open drinks. This drink was a strange, syrupy drink. It tasted fine, a lemon lime drink that isn't carbonated which, if you think about it, is kind of weird. When have you ever drunk a drink that is lemon lime that isn't pop? I don't think they make many of those. Associating a flavor with a type of drink aside, this drink is still a little strange. It tastes like they used a gallon of agave. I like agave, but it seems to make the drinks a little thicker than you might be used to.

Kids are dumb. They'll drink anything as long as it's sweet. This is sweet and has kids playing soccer and skateboarding and stuff on the package. Kids will love it. It's made for kids, not disgustingly cynical thirty year olds. Kids? Get some standards. Me? Lay off kids. They're just kids.

Is it possible to strain a liquid through a liquid? I suppose it would be. If you wanted to strain water through an oil, that would work. It's a matter of volume and separation. You may have to go through some sort of skimming process to take a layer off, but that works.

This drink, which sucks, tastes like you strained sweet tea through soup; iced tea through all the corn, peas, carrots, broth and the like. I gave this drink to our new employee slash my new coworker and she knocked it out of the park. I made her just smell it and she said that it smelled like water chestnuts and me, hating water chestnuts, am not too familiar with the scent. Number two ingredient after water? You guessed it, new girl: water chestnuts.
You're re-hired™. Take that, Donald Trump. I've coined my own phrase that people have been using for years and called it my own.

Sheryl, there isn't enough coffee to make two cups. I know how you get when you don't have your coffee but I too need the energy to make it through the morning. Perhaps we compromise with the following scenario. We take the coffee, we split it right down the middle. Then we take a little bit of creamer and a little bit of sugar to fill up the cup a bit more. Then, since we aren't going to make a coffee with fifty percent coffee and fifty percent milk, we are going to do about a fifty-fifty split milk and water to fill it. Yes, it will cut down on the coffee flavor and it will taste like watered down coffee but hey, we both need what we need, right Sheryl? You agree to this agreement? Let's have a marital shake on it. There we go. Let's take our "probably worst cup of coffee we will ever have" and go to our separate works. I love you, Sheryl. Sorry today's coffee sucks. Let's blame it on our twenty-four year old son who refuses to "conform to society" and instead, doesn't work and drinks all our coffee and sleeps in the basement. I swear, if I have to hear that Macklemore and Ryan Lewis song about the Salvation Army one more time, I'm going to take all his stuff and donate it there since he loves it so much. That'll show that kid. Well, then he'll just spend more time here to acquire more stuff to move out with. Sheryl, he's never leaving, is he? Can't we live our own lives? Why can't we live our own lives, Sheryl. Sheryl? When can we live our own lives?!?!?

I'll tell you what I need now is a taste of the tropics. I'm tired of the snow and the cold. Layers are for idiots. If I didn't have any friends or family, number one: I feel like I would be really depressed, but number two: I would go somewhere nice. I went to Key West a couple of years back and that was nice. It has a certain small-town, local, petina feel to it. I liked it. The entire time I was drinking this I wanted to be back there. I got a good taste of pineapple but I can't really place anything else. That's not to say it was bad, I just couldn't decipher any other fruits. It had that salty, Gatorade taste to it that I somehow like. Oh, nothing suits me after a long day of crushing weights like a nice, salty juice.

This was good. The flavor line is pretty promising, too. Pomegranate Cherry and the other one is just a generic "citrus" which is fine with me. They are something to look forward to. Am I at all on my A game? Nope. I don't know what that sensation is at all but I'm quenched. I don't know the streets, but I might say that I'm half way there.

I don't want this to sound negative or inappropriate, but I wanted this drink to make me choke. After drinking this I wanted it to do the same thing. I wanted each sip to be punishing but deserving of another go. Once again, it's not bad that it didn't but a man has his standards.

This was sweeter than it was asphyxiating. The trade-off left me with a little more syrupy, candy-esque cinnamon. It was good but everyone agreed that it was just too sweet. If you could make cinnamon apples and just ate the cinnamon candy shell, that's what this would be.

Look, I don't want this to seem like I'm into choking because I'm not. I'm fixated on the punishment that I wanted from a drink. That might be just as concerting.

Sometimes you can just cram a couple berries together and make something nice. This isn't always the case. Most fruit and berries are pretty good but sometimes you find something that just sucks up your drink. I feel like, for the most part, you could add grapefruit to anything and it will turn your concoction into the equivalent of a fruit poop. Yeah, if fruit had butts, it would make that. Blackberry, a pretty sacred berry, and blueberry...eh..., come together for an epic collaboration that you will talk about like it was 1992 and you just heard "Nothin' But A 'G' Thang" for the first time. Now, sure, in that case, Snoop and Dr. Dre are both blackberries since they are both awesome and calling either of them blueberries would be insulting to their bodies of work.

This is a pretty great drink, though, all jokes aside. It's diet but does not taste like it and just tastes like a juice. Go ahead. Go to a Snoop Dogg/Lion show and make him a glass of this. He'll love it. He'll (slowly) say that it's sweet, tastes like the fruits that are in it, and probably ask for another glass since, I don't know, I feel like he's eternally thirsty. Dr. Dre is in cahoots with Dr. Pepper so he probably wouldn't drink this for you. That's not a dis, it's just that I don't want you to get shot down. Go with Snoop.

Ps. Kraft sent us this sample. They want us to make sure we say that.

Concentrating and dieting tea sounds like the worst idea to me because I'm such a tea snob that I can't stand anything but either unsweetened tea or pure Southern sweet tea. Everything else is just kind of situational. I drink it for the site but I can't tell you the last time I went to a restaurant and even wanted anything other than unsweetened tea. One primary reason is because sweetened, mass-produced tea typically sucks. No need to beat around the bush. In terms of legitimate quality, it sucks. Every once in a while and completely due to this website, I come across a diamond in the rough that breaks the mold a bit.

This Crystal Light Liquid that Kraft sent us doesn't break the mold but it's a nice middle ground that I'm giving extra credit because it is a diet drink that doesn't taste like diet. It tastes like a watered down, not sharp tasting, Brisk. Basically, it is what Brisk should be instead of the toxic sludge that it is. It's got a decent sweetness that, no, doesn't taste "natural" but isn't offensive. The tea taste is pretty good, too. All-in-all, I would say that this is a success. Diet or not, this is a pretty good tea mix.

When we were at the Asian market, Jay asked if I wanted this pandan leaf drink. I heard "panda meat" and although I knew that wasn't true, I wanted it nonetheless. I'm not surprised they don't have meat-flavored drinks but they're close with Clamato and I had a Goya with clam in it that wasn't half bad. It was like a briny V8. This, on the other hand, was not as good as the other grass jelly drinks I have had. It smelled and tasted like corn cereal. I don't know what pandan leaf is. The crude illustration on the can makes me believe that it looks like an aloe leaf but this didn't taste like aloe at all. There is cornstarch in this drink, which seems odd to me. What business does cornstarch have in a drink? I can't think of one.

Flavor aside, I missed the chunks. This had aloe-esque chunks in it rather than the generous chunks that I wanted and expected and expected my intern to drink. He got off easy today. Better luck next time, malicious me.

Anyone who can get this drink at their leisure is a lucky person. This is a complete treat. Spicy, sweet, tart, and bitter all at the same time. You can't get this close to an even distribution of wonderfully blended flavors easily. You take a sip and it's sweet, fantastic lemonade. Then you get the burn of the ginger followed by a little bitterness of the mate. To make something like this you have to be a mastermind of flavors and concoctions. I think that this, if put in the hands of the masses, would blow up as a company. We've become too safe with our beverages and no one wants a little bit of bang. "Oh a spicy drink? Who wants that?" Oh, I don't know. The millions of people who purchase hot sauce, jalapenos, or put ginger on their sushi. It doesn't taste like chicken wings, you idiot. Things can be spicy and sweet. Have fun with your drinks. Don't be scared.

Root beer is kids beer. Whenever parents are around drinking beer, the kids get root beer. "No, son. You can't have a beer but you can have a root beer." It has the "beer" in the title so they're fine. I think that I would like to meet a person who things that root beer doesn't taste better than beer, though. I mean beer is an acquired taste since it is bitter. Root beer? Sweet, bold, dark, and has fun ingredients that can rival "good" beers. Some have licorice, honey, and vanilla just like their alcoholic cousin "real beer."

One step beyond is this. It's got vanilla like A&W has but this is low calorie version of the regular one that you have grown up to love. It doesn't have a diet taste, which is the best part about it. I mean, if I had the calorie-full one next to the calorie-less one, I could probably tell but who's doing that? Not me, and I consider myself a professional. It's a self-appointed position that involves no perks, benefits, or fancy badges. It's nice to have a diet that doesn't taste gross and with the primary demo being a man, this rules. Men, you're fine. I've done the extensive research of drinking something for you so you don't have to. You're welcome. I do accept paper checks although hot, sweaty cash is better, as long as it's not actually sweaty. I worked in retail and it happens. Women coming in with money in their boobular area and hand it to me to buy belly button rings. Grozz. Please stop doing that, women. It's totally grozz.

Men. We're tough. We don't cry. We wipe our noses with sandpaper. We eat rocks and we eat animals. One thing we don't do is diet. We're fine with our weight and don't have any issues with our shape. Shows like "The Biggest Loser" include "guys" but they are really just holograms. No guy is at the gym, either. Every guy you see at the gym is a woman in a man's suit.

Often we do want to go up and down the stairs without having to stop half way and catch our breath. A diet of chicken wings, hamburgers, and triple thick chocolate milkshakes do not lead to a particularly healthy lifestyle. As I said, guys don't diet, but they do cut back a little. That's where the "Ten" line comes in. Flat gray can and a marketing message do a lot. It's only one step away from black, gray is. If you spend your days chugging fruity pop and need to "cut back," you've got another choice. This would be all well and good if this didn't taste so "diet." Yeah, part of disguising a diet drink as "manly" is to keep it from tasting like a diet drink and reminding these brutes that they are, in fact, on a diet. It's got a good, classic Sunkist orange taste but is promptly washed over by a sea of artificial sweeteners. If you can take your "cutting back" with a grain of salt and have grown to expect a different taste with your diet drinks, you'll be fine, but it just makes this drink feel like a Diet Sunkist rather than some new, rebranded line of beverage.

Men, you're awesome. You're arrogant, tough, aggressive, opinionated, and use hand tools. This drink has been specially tailored for you but it feels like more of an insult than a compliment. It just tastes like a diet drink and doesn't taste tailored.

This is going to be half review, half reminiscence, and half celebrators since this is our 3000th review. Since all of them have to happen at the same time, let's just start with the Thirsty Dudes ode to new drinks. Jay and I went to Toronto and stopped periodically at multiple shops. Our love for Thirsty Dudes is international. We travel beyond both state and country lines just in order to get drinks. This is a juice. I had to present my passport to get juice. Come on. Would you do that? You might? We do. When we are on vacation, we do it big. I went to Brooklyn this past weekend on an impromptu "vacation" and number one thing on my list was to get local root beer. Come on. What a waste of time but we love it. We're in Canada and there is a Whole Foods. We bought a ton of stuff, like forty drinks each, and yes, like this one, some of them were "house brand" but things need to get done. Drinks need to get drank. Sure, it took me well over two months to drink it but hey, we've got a cache of drinks. This, finally, was pretty good. It's about time that I get a nice, high quality juice. It's got a good blueberry taste but is dense. It's flavorful and bold. It's not cut with anything. I could have stretched this out probably 25% just by watering it down and it still would have been good.

In hindsight, this is not my favorite juice. It never was, but I'm summing it all up. Wrapping it up in a little package. It's good, I mean look, I gave it a four out of five. That's good, but this is the 3000th review. This should have been reserved for something epic like a cherry flavored slime with sparkles in it. I would have loved to reserve that for ol' Bernie Mac but we can't wait too long or we're not going to have reviews.

You know us. We don't only review good stuff. We review good stuff poorly and bad stuff well. We make up stories, tall tales, fish tales, and reflect on our past. We bring our family, friends, past relationships, and dreams into our reviews. You get to see inside our deranged minds with a lot of reviews and it gives you an insight into our lives and the people we are. We're three dudes that are friends that are creative idiots that like to drink stuff because it gives us something to talk about.

We talked about what we were going to do and the only thing we could think about was having a pizza party at a place that has been closed for probably twenty years that we each went to when we were eight and playing the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade game and then talking about the advantages of each specific turtle. We're immature kids. We're dumb idiots. We love what we do. Thanks for letting us get to 3000. Tell your friends.

Sugar is the cause of every youth getting in trouble. They get hyper because they ate too much or they get snotty because they can't have some candy that is just out of reach of their kid hands. It rots their teeth. Candy and sugar is to kids what money and sex is to adults; the root of all evil. If kids only knew what it was like to not worry about it. Celibate to sugar. That or just give it up for a little. I know as a crappy adult, I have a pile of sweets next to my desk that I dip into every once in a while. It would be hard for me. That being said, I can't tell you the last time I had a sweetened tea at a restaurant. If restaurants sold different unsweetened teas, aside from the mind-numbingly fantastic tea served at P.F. Changs, then we would all be less chunky and more trim, lean, and happy.

This tea is a nice unsweetened tea but every once in a while the lime gives it a little bit of a bitter taste. It's lime, though. It's not lime flavoring or candy lime, just straight up lime. It disturbs the raspberry a bit but it's not stopping me from coming back. I'm slowly polishing off this bottle and there is nothing that's going to stop me. It is good and I will be sad to see it gone, lime and all.

Kids, less sugar more unsweetened tea. Trust me, the sugar drinks you are consuming as a child suck. Wait until you are a little bit older and can appreciate quality chocolates, teas, and other stuff. You won't look back.

Initially when I saw this I assumed that we had done it. There was no indication of a new product coming up in any of our emails or blogs so when I saw it for the first time, I thought it was something like Frappuccino in a new bottle or something else we had already done. Let it be known, I am wrong enough to never say something as ignorant as "I'm never wrong." I'm right a lot, but I'm also wrong as much as any normal human being. That being said, I'm better than a lot of people you've met. I can be conceited where it counts.

Caramel is great. I enjoy those old people candies that are just caramel squares. I don't know why people say that they are old people candy, as I don't think that sticky things are good for their faux teeth. This drink is just about where I wanted it to be. Starbucks is kind of notorious for being too dark for me. This, though, is a nice medium roast that tastes great. It's perfectly sweetened but has a strong caramel flavor that I was glad to see. Not because I didn't want to taste the coffee but because I wanted to taste the caramel.

There are a few other flavors, vanilla is one and the other is coffee and milk. I will eventually get to them but this isn't too far from an iced coffee that you might get from Starbucks itself. I don't particularly go there just because I don't drink raw coffee so I almost don't have any business going there. It's good for them that they have captured me outside of their store. Congrats.

To put the capstone on my trip to New York, I wanted to do it right. I wanted to give a big "thank you" to Brooklyn for its hospitality so I found the highly regarded Manhattan Special. After that Arizona that was the same thing, on paper, this didn't have a high bar to jump over.

There was a bit of time before we went to dinner and I knew I had to catch a flight early in the morning so I needed to drink it now or never. I popped the top on it, took a sip, and loved Brooklyn all over again.

The sweetened, canned coffee drinks that I love have now been carbonated. It's got a great coffee taste and is justly sweetened. It never at any point made me feel like I was going to lose a tooth. The carbonation was just a nice touch. I feel like carbonating it was just a nice touch, something to push it over the edge of greatness.

Brooklyn, I will miss you as I sit in this terminal awaiting my flight that is miraculously on time. Manhattan Special was a nice way to go out.

Walk into a 7-11. Go towards the back where the Slurpee machine is. Now here is the hard part. Grab a cup and put some soda water in it. Like when you press the small white button next to the Coke or Mug root beer. Then shimmy over to the coffee machine and fill that bad boy up with the oldest, most burnt coffee, right to the brim. Shift back over to the fountain center and put some ice in there to cool it down. Then take a handful of sugar, all of them, artificial or real, who cares? Pay your $0.99 and go to your car. Give it a swirl and take a sip. Promptly make a face that looks like you just ate out of a momma bird's mouth.

I looked far and wide for this drink and now I found it and it unfortunately sucks. It tastes like how I described the scenario above. Gross. Joe DiMaggio, you should arise from the grave and White-Out Your name from this contract.

My stars. As you may or may not know, I am in Brooklyn. I have wanted to try Brooklyn Soda Works but it's not available in Buffalo and it's not really ship friendly. Well you can't duck me for long because I came to you and you can't escape your own home.

I went to a bar in the middle of the day filled with day drinking women with their kids and ordered a root beer. Upon delivery, I made my friend drink it first because it couldn't look more like beer. Honestly, it could and might play as beer's stunt double in Spike Lee films.

This root beer was fantastic. It was almost like a sarsaparilla because it was so sweet but every sip was a treat. It was a dark flavor that was just super bold and just a treat.

Now this isn't something that we would normally review but there are enough people in the Brooklyn/Manhattan area and enough distribution centers that people can enjoy this. Please, enjoy this. Please.

Mangos are Jay's favorite fruit. Cilantro is Jay's least favorite herb. Together this makes for a drink that he would never touch. For that reason and the fact that you can't get this in Buffalo, I bought this and am reviewing it for you now.

This is very seltzer-y. Not a word? I do not care. It's got that taste I'm not super psyched about but the cilantro cuts through and redeems this drink. When you burp, you get a little mango, but not much. If you expected mango and wanted mango, you might be a little disappointed. If you like cilantro, you have slim pickings when it comes to drinks so you've got no choice but to be excited to have found this.

Day one in Brooklyn was a success. My flight was on time. I didn't get hassled at the gate. I took the right subway from the airport. I Google Map'd it successfully to my destination. I handled it like a pro. We went to dinner and got a fantastic pizza and then went to get dessert. They didn't have the cookies we were looking for so we got a berry pie, which was awesome. While we were in the store, I checked for drinks and there were a lot of them. I settled on this one, which might be my most expensive drink I have ever purchased to date at $7. My buddy put it into perspective by saying that is what regular people spend on drinks every time they drink so it all evened out.

When we got home, we talked about what we've been up to, ate pie, and I drank this and it was pretty fantastic. It was slightly spicy with the cayenne pepper and the lemon was like really sour lemonade so together it was a wonderful assault on my mouth. The agave…€¦whatever. It might have smoothed everything out and left less of a bite and perhaps less calories than with, say, cane sugar. I have no complaints. This drink was great, though, and I'm happy to have finally found one to review.

Tomorrow we have all sorts of activities planned so there should be more reviews of probably expensive city drinks. I said that like I live in Iowa on some farm and this is my first time in an urban environment.

Here we are again. Dr. B's. I don't taste pomegranate and I don't taste acai. I like pomegranate but I dislike acai so that is a push. The Xylitol is running rambunctious through this drink and overwhelms even the worst flavor (acai) and is too bad because the thought of a pomegranate red tea that is naturally sweetened, low calorie, even with that turd acai is enticing to me. Cut the sugar in half. Xylitol just masks everything with its uber-sweetness and doesn't allow everyone to shine and do their thing.

All the ingredients in here are fine but the levels in which they exist is incorrect. It's as simple as that. Do you want to taste what fruity Xylitol tastes like? Here's your drink.