Raspberry (32 reviews)
Hata Ramune Raspberry
Jimmy was a kid growing up in the 1920's who lived in a one-bedroom basement apartment with his parents and 5 brothers and sisters. Unable to afford anything and unable to get to school, he spent his days roaming the streets looking for something to do. He once came across some kids on a stoop playing marbles. He had never seen marbles before and they intrigued him. He was timid, but he managed to ask them if he could join. They were reluctant, but said he could play with them if he brought his own marbles.
This proved to be a challenge to Jimmy, as he didn't have any money to buy marbles. Just then he stumbled upon an empty bottle of Ramune in the trash. He had seen them many times before while he went looking for cans and bottles to return. The one thing he never noticed was the marble in the neck of it. His face lit up as he rattled the marble around the bottle, but slowly faded as he realized the marble was stuck in there.
His initial thought was to smash it on the ground, but he was afraid of cutting himself, causing a scene, and possibly losing the marble. He then notice that the top of the bottle was plastic so he found a sharp rock and started prying it off. It took some work, but he finally did it and retrieved his first marble. But this was only one marble, how was he going to get enough for a whole collection?
Just then he remembered that the karaoke bar down the street always had a lot of empty Ramune bottles in their dumpster. Sure enough, he was right and he found over 30 bottles he could pry the marbles out of. As he was going through one, he noticed a raspberry bottle still had some soda left in it. He had never had soda, and was afraid of his parents catching him drinking it. He hid behind the dumpster as he took a sip of the fizzy beverage. It tickled his throat, but was much too sweet for him. The most sugar he has ever had was a small piece of cake on his birthday last year. To his family, sugar is "not-essential" so he has learned to live without it.
Within a couple hours he had a couple dozen marbles and returned to the kids on the stoop. They were impressed with his collection and promptly punched him in the face and stole them all.
Moral of the story: don't play marbles with randoms on the street.
- Country
- Japan
- Sweetener
- High Fructose Corn Syrup
- Categories
- Soda Pop
- Rating
- Reviewed By
- Derek Neuland 3 weeks, 5 days ago
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Laziza Non Alcoholic Malt Beverage Raspberry
Along the I-90 in South Buffalo lies the abandoned Buffalo Malting Company. It’s funny because I must have driven past it nearly a thousand times in my life, but it never registered. When someone mentioned it to me I actually had to put effort into finding it. I passed by twice until I realized where it was. It had become so engrained (no pun intended) in my mind as part of the scenery that I just wasn’t registering it as an individual building. Then I saw a couple of jag off teenagers smashing things there. What fills people with the need to destroy things for no reason other than destroying it? It’s infuriating. Sure it’s abandoned but it’s apart of the cities history and it’s interesting to see what has been left behind.
I’m 99.9% sure that the grain that was processed in that building was never used to make soda, but a guy can dream can’t he? I just picture it back in the 50’s and the guys are strolling into work carrying their huge metal lunch pals with smiles on their faces because they know their hard work is going to make tasty sodas for the world to enjoy. During their shifts their minds will wander wondering what flavoring will be added to the malt. Will it be pineapple, grape or maybe a nice fancy raspberry? They each would get a case to bring home to the family on weekends and everyone would gather around the picnic table eating hot dogs and washing them down with a nice delicious malt.
The problem with this scenario is that I just cannot see kids enjoying malt soda right off of the bat. I think it’s something of an acquired taste. I certainly didn’t like it the first time I had it (I still think straight up malt drinks like Malta Goya are very high on the list of worst drinks ever). They have a weird grainy barley taste to them. It’s like a non-alcoholic beer, which is also disgusting. The more I drink them to review for Thirsty Dudes the more I appreciate the complexity of the flavor. Perhaps if you grew up drinking them since you were little it would be a flavor that you loved. This particular malt would definitely take a shorter time to grow into. It’s got a nice raspberry taste similar to a lot of raspberry iced teas, but instead of being mixed with tea it is mixed with processed grains. Strange, but who am I to judge? Oh yeah, I’m a professional drinkologist.
- Country
- Lebanon
- Sweetener
- Sugar
- Categories
- Soda Pop
- Rating
- Reviewed By
- Jason Draper on 2/7/2012
- Comments
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Sweet Leaf Iced Tea Raspberry
This tea has a good, natural taste. Problem with a lot of companies is that they think that if it's flavored, they have to make it prominent, but Sweet Leaf gets it. They have a good tea taste with a subtle amount of sweetness and raspberry. It's good and the entire can may be drank in one sitting all the while you not having to worry if you have dental insurance.
If purchased at the right place, you can find this entire line for under a dollar, which is a steal for all organic iced tea. Anyone who drinks as much as we do here probably understands that.
- Website
- http://www.sweetleaftea.com/
- Country
- United States
- Sweetener
- Organic Cane Sugar
- Categories
- Iced Tea
- Rating
- Reviewed By
- Mike Literman on 9/16/2010
- Comments
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World Classics Trading Company Sweetened Black Tea Raspberry
A friend gave me this tea to review the other day. It's not bad. It reminds me a lot of Brisk Raspberry Tea. It's sweetened with high fructose corn syrup, so it's a bit thicker than I like my iced tea. It also doesn't taste much like actual raspberries, but it does have the fake raspberry flavor that people are used to. Not great, not terrible. It's just an okay iced tea.
- Country
- United States
- Sweetener
- High Fructose Corn Syrup
- Categories
- Iced Tea
- Rating
- Reviewed By
- Jason Draper on 10/4/2010
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Steaz Sparkling Green Tea Raspberry
I’m pretty sure there is a basic human need to drink carbonation at times. I’ve gone through periods where I give up soda all together for awhile. I never actually last very long, because I get this weird feeling in my throat after a week or two and the only way to make that feeling go away is to drink something that has bubbles in it. This inevitably ends up with me drinking some sort of pop a few hours after the feeling’s arrival. Sure I could just drink some soda water to “scratch” my throat, but there is something about it that I just can’t stomach. Who knew carbon dioxide had a flavor?
I bring all of this up because in the past I always used to wonder why someone didn’t carbonate iced tea. I love iced tea; some would say that I was a junkie for it. The idea of being able to get rid of that throat itch with some tea was always the dream. Then some companies finally came out with carbonated tea, and it just turned out all wrong. I don’t know exactly what was wrong, but something was missing. I’ve even had some other Steaz sparkling teas and they didn’t live up to my expectations. They are finally onto something with this raspberry one though. It’s not 100% there, but it’s leagues beyond the other ones I’ve had. It actually tastes like someone just added bubbles to some raspberry iced tea. I think the thing that seems off about it is that it is green and not black tea. I think this would be close to perfect if it were black tea, but I have very few complaints about its green brother. My only real complaint is it doesn’t have that classic bitter green tea aftertaste. The sugar covers it up, which makes me question why they didn’t go with black tea, since that aftertaste is what I love about green tea.
To sum things up: Throats get itches that need to be scratched by carbonation. Iced tea is awesome. Carbonated iced tea when done right is also awesome. Scratch your throat with some of this tea from time to time. You deserve it.
- Website
- http://www.steaz.com/
- Country
- United States
- Sweetener
- Organic Cane Sugar
- Rating
- Reviewed By
- Jason Draper on 10/30/2010
- Comments
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Xing Tea Green Tea Raspberry
I like this company. With the exception of the sweet tea, which, in my opinion, was just something they did for fun, everything I've had from Xing is very good. Plus, it's an all-natural tea and it's got great flavor options. The green tea always has a nice bitterness that isn't lost in whatever flavor I've tried. This raspberry is no exception. It has a raspberry nose to it and to the tongue, you get raspberry and then a bitter, green tea aftertaste.
I don't know why it's not more available. I found it at a local "half way between corner store and bodega" place. They didn't have a lot of flavors, but beggars can't be choosers, and for that reason, I like this tea. I would easily say that it's better than Arizona Raspberry.
- Website
- http://www.drinkxingtea.com/
- Country
- United States
- Sweetener
- Cane Sugar
- Categories
- Iced Tea
- Rating
- Reviewed By
- Mike Literman on 11/5/2010
- Comments
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Romano's Italian Soda Raspberry
I really want to get one of those machines that let you carbonate anything. How great would that be? I would carbonate the dumbest stuff, just because I could. Carbonated chocolate milk? Sure it would be gross, but I'd still do it.
This tastes like it was home carbonated, and I mean that in a good way. I know it's just some sort of syrup in carbonated water, but it's great. I feel like I'm drinking it in a little cafe somewhere in Italy.
Now bring on the carbonated soup.
- Website
- http://www.romanossoda.com/
- Country
- United States
- Sweetener
- Pure Cane Sugar
- Rating
- Reviewed By
- Jason Draper on 11/5/2010
- Comments
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Wawa Raspberry
Wawa is a member of the prestige grouping of my top three gas stations/mini marts. I believe they only have them in PA and NJ. I'm currently visiting NJ to work on some stuff with my new band. On the way to practice we stopped at a Wawa. There are three very important things go get at these stores, "Built to Order" hoagies, soft pretzels and their store brand iced tea.
Most store brand teas that come in big jugs are basically brown sugar water. This is actual tea made with real sugar, and even though there is a notice on the bottle that says, "Contains no raspberry juice," it somehow actually tastes like the fruit.
This is probably the #1 drink in the ghetto tea category. Now someone pass me the mustard for my pretzel.
- Website
- http://www.wawa.com
- Country
- United States
- Sweetener
- Sugar
- Rating
- Reviewed By
- Jason Draper on 12/2/2010
- Comments
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Snapple All Natural Raspberry
I know, I know. First we list 600+ reviews with no Snapple and then we've got three in a week. Well here's what happens...when you find something that used to be alright and then you discover that they changed their whole ingredient list and started doing things differently, they deserve another shot. I mean, they were early in the game of bottled tea and then once other cats got in the game, they were pushed aside. Now that they've stepped it up, and I mean really stepped it up, there's no stopping them.
This raspberry tea might be the best I've ever had. That says a lot. I've had tons of raspberry teas and this one tastes better. It's incredible what real sugar allows flavors to do. Artificial flavoring and sweetening disguises and distorts the real flavor of items. This is not bitter at all, even though there is green tea in it, but you can really taste the sweet, natural raspberry flavors come across like if you made it yourself.
This is saying a lot. If you wrote them off in the past, put your grudge aside and get a bottle of this.
- Website
- http://www.snapple.com
- Country
- United States
- Sweetener
- Sugar
- Categories
- Iced Tea
- Rating
- Reviewed By
- Mike Literman on 1/17/2011
- Comments
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Lipton PureLeaf Raspberry
Can we all be honest here for a moment? Let's all just admit that the Lipton Brisk line was one of the biggest blunders in the history of tea. Sure it probably made them millions of dollars, but at what cost? A world of children now think that iced tea is actually just sugar water. Seriously brisk doesn't even taste like iced tea. It's just some ghetto sugar drink. It's something you should find in gallon containers at your local mini mart. I need to sit down and look at the ingredients, but I bet there's not actual tea in it at all. Ugh!
Brisk had me turned off from Lipton for years. Yesterday while hiking we stopped at a small town gas station for refreshments. They had one of the worst selections of drinks I've ever seen, but hey it was a very, very small town, so I can't really expect much. I saw this, and I decided to give it a try. I think it may have been the only drink in the place that didn't have HFCS in it. I didn't even see any bottled water there. So I begrudgingly bought this bottle of Lipton PureLeaf. I now have a renewed interest in their company. It's still pretty sweet, but it doesn't taste like sugar water. It actually has tea in it, and that is evident in the flavor. It also has a classic raspberry tea flavor. It was definitely something I enjoyed after a few hours hiking in the snow and watching a cow run full speed. If you have never seen a cow run, you my friend are missing something spectacular.
- Website
- http://lipton.com/
- Country
- United States
- Sweetener
- Sugar
- Categories
- Iced Tea
- Rating
- Reviewed By
- Jason Draper on 2/28/2011
- Comments
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