Pure Cane Sugar (154 reviews)
Bruce Cost Fresh Ginger Ale Pomegranate with Hibiscus
Here at Thirsty Dudes we search far and wide, from bodega to grocery store looking for the perfect ginger drink. The general populace has been fooled into believing that main stream ginger ale's are in fact what ginger is all about, when in reality most of those sodas don't have even a smidgen of actual ginger in them.
When our journey first began we believed that the stronger the burn from the ginger, the better the soda. We found some that really knocked us on our butts and they were great. Now that we are a bit older and arguably wiser we've come to accept that a blend of flavor and burn is what we truly want from our ginger soda. A soda can burn so bad that you won't be able to taste anything for a while, and that might be fun, but really how often are you going to sip on a bottle of something like that.
Today Bruce Cost stepped up to the plate. He didn't point to the stands to signify he was going to knock us into next Tuesday. He just stood there, shrugged and said "If you like this that's cool. If not, that's cool too." Well Bruce we did more than like it. We loved it!
The bottle states that "Separation is natural" so I gently shook the bottle. As I did a cloud of sediment with little pieces of actual ginger lifted from the bottle and swirled around the amber tinted fluid contained within. That is always a good sign. Drinks that need to be shook due to settling are almost always superior to those that are consistent all the way through. Finally it was time to twist off the cap. As soon as I did a nice fruity ginger aroma greeted my nostrils. When I took a bigger whiff it kind of burned, which is another good sign. After a single sip, I knew it was love and that it was the real thing. I knew wedding bells were in my future. Hey I live in New York State. Same sex marriages are now legal. I can only assume that means that the next bill to pass will let me marry an inanimate object. (For the record I am so stoked and proud of NYS for passing the same sex marriage law. How it took people so long is beyond me.) It's slightly fruity and flowery, but ginger will always be the main player here. It's the only flavor I've ever known that can overpower pomegranate and believe me that fruit needed to be put in its place. Oh, the burn? It's there. It's not a crazy burn like the Goya Ginger Beer has, but it's decent enough that I can say that I have no complaints. This may in fact be the greatest ginger ale that I have ever consumed. Bruce Cost if you are an actual human and we ever meet be prepared for a hearty handshake and a big wet kiss on the lips.
- Website
- http://www.freshgingerale.com/
- Country
- United States
- Sweetener
- Pure Cane Sugar
- Categories
- Soda Pop
- Rating
- Reviewed By
- Jason Draper on 6/26/2011
- Comments
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Texas Tea Poteet Strawberry White Tea
Editor Dan sends me messages all the time like, "Have you ever tried _______?" and I will refer to the list and let him know if we have or not. He goes on more little trips than anyone I know. Dude will just up and leave and I'll call him and he'll say "Oh, I'd love to get tacos but I'm in Nebraska" or "I'd love to get pizza but I'm in Albuquerque". One thing that Dan excels at is thinking of Thirsty Dudes and always bringing us stuff back.
Well on this occasion, he brought us stuff back from a store that is two miles away that carries this drink that I've never seen, Jay's never seen, and Derek's never seen. That's strange as we typically scour stores we've been to hundreds of times. You know, just in case.
So he brought us back every flavor they had and I paid him in a burrito. Fair trade? I think so. He wanted me to wait for him to try this, but since he's not here, I'm thirsty, and this guy was cold, I had to go in without him. He would and should be upset.
This tea rules. It's got all the inherent bitterness you would expect from a white tea but a killer, natural strawberry flavor through and through. It contains "strawberry flavoring" which is a bit ominous but it also contains Poteet strawberry puree although there isn't any seeds or strawberry remnants. Poteet is a city in Texas known for its strawberry festival, and dude, if this is what they come up with, I might have to schedule a trip. This tea is wonderful. It's strong, sweet, and it tastes as natural as it says it is. I believe them. Texas is known for being big, not liars.
- Website
- http://www.teasoftexas.com
- Country
- United States
- Sweetener
- Pure Cane Sugar
- Categories
- Iced Tea
- Rating
- Reviewed By
- Mike Literman on 7/16/2011
- Comments
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Marley's One Drop Mocha
There is a very fine line between crust punks and hippies. Seriously there are so many similarities; dirty, smelly, anti-job, and they both like getting messed up. One of the differences is that hippies prefer weed and hallucinogenics, while crust punks prefer alcohol...oh who am I kidding? They will take anything that will get them messed up. Another difference is that most hippies like to relax and "chill to the groove," while every traveling crust punk I've ever known has been obsessed with coffee. Seriously coffee non-stop. I am hereby requesting that for their coffee line Marley's changes their name to either Discharge or Crass.
I was halfway through this bottle before I questioned whether or not it was a relaxation drink. I know the idea of a relaxation coffee is ridiculous, but I was working and I had a shirt order I needed to get done, so falling asleep just wasn't in the cards. It, of course, is not a relaxation drink. It's a regular coffee drink. Maybe regular is wrong, because I am not a fan of coffee per say, but I think this is incredible. That could be because it tastes more like chocolate than coffee, but that's exactly how a good mocha should be. This tastes exactly like what my friend Nina makes me at her place of employment (minus the peanut butter). I seriously love it, but I would love it more if it was called Crass' Systematic Death Mocha.
- Website
- http://www.marleybeverages.com/
- Country
- United States
- Sweetener
- Pure Cane Sugar
- Categories
- Coffee
- Rating
- Reviewed By
- Jason Draper on 9/9/2011
- Comments
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Reading Draft Premium Reserve Soda Blueberry Birch
Deep in the mountains of Pennsylvania there once was a group of hill people who lacked intelligence to such a great degree that they couldn't even make moonshine properly. They were the laughingstock of the yokel world. All these pour saps wanted to do was make some cheap hooch that could potentially make them blind, and they failed at every turn. No one really knows what they were thinking when they were trying to make it, but what resulted was a world-class birch beer. You know the kind that you would buy out of a tin mug at a county fair. When they presented it to some of their neighbors, it took awhile for the laughing to subside, but then one of them said something along the line of "how do you expect to make booze without some sort of fruits or vegetables. Since they were in season the family added a butt load of blueberries to their next batch. They still failed to make anything that would get them drunk, but what they did make was truly magical. It was a fine birch beer to start with, but the addition of the blueberries made it astronomical. It was incredibly fruity and sweet and chock full of classic olde time birch beer flavor. To top it all off it somehow went from a healthy dark brown to a bright blue.
The word soon spread about how dumb this family was, but how they had somehow managed to create a tasty treat. The tale soon reached the ears of a wealthy railroad family who moved to PA and hired the family on the spot to continue production of their soda. As a salary they would be paid in low-end whiskey (the gave them nice whiskey at first, but the hill people made fun of it saying it was too hoity toity, so they switched to swill). And that is the story of how Reading Railroad got put on the Monopoly board.
*****************************************EDIT*****************************************
As I drink more of this I realized that Reading Draft has done to birch beer what Voltage did to Mountain Dew, except normal birch beer is great where as regular Mountain Dew is garbage. It just has a slightly similar taste to the Voltage, which is the only Mountain Dew flavor worth putting into your body.
- Website
- http://www.readingdraft.com
- Country
- United States
- Sweetener
- Pure Cane Sugar
- Rating
- Reviewed By
- Jason Draper on 11/21/2011
- Comments
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Manhattan Special Sarsaparilla
It’s well known that in the 40’s the Manhattan Project was underway to produce the first atomic bomb. The US, UK and Canada all worked together, spending an obscene amount of money to basically devise a weapon that will someday cause the end of the world. Scientists worked long and hard to achieve their goal, even coming up with some cool fission guns using uranium. Nuclear weapons in gun form sound terrifying, yet strangely alluring (note to self: you may indeed grow up to be a super villain).
The men who worked on this project knew that they would get nowhere if they worked constantly. No one ever got anywhere with out a little playtime mixed in. Since they were scientists their playtime of course involved mixing ingredients to create something new. Back in ’43 they had a little challenge going on the various project locations to see which team could create the best tasting soda. The team based in Brooklyn, NY ended up winning the competition. Led by Dr. Jonathan Osterman the team had a brief brainstorming session while separating uranium-235, and decided that the only way they could win this little game was to brew their own version of the greatest soda on the planet: sarsaparilla. To say they succeeded is a bit of an understatement. If there were any justice in this world these men would be more famous for their soda than their weapons of mass destruction. What they created is a dark sarsaparilla with a heavy licorice and wintergreen levels in it. Every aspect of it is strong, and I will forgive those men for the future destruction of everything I know. The 10oz bottles that it comes in simply aren’t enough. I could drink this all the livelong day and not have had enough. Perhaps the team cheated and used a little bit of that uranium in their recipe. I would risk radiation for this, would you?
- Website
- http://www.manhattanspecial.com/
- Country
- United States
- Sweetener
- Pure Cane Sugar
- Rating
- Reviewed By
- Jason Draper on 6/24/2012
- Comments
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Trader Joe's Radiant Water Tropical
Dude, I'm so glad I caught you. You'll never guess what happened last night. I was walking around, minding my own business when aliens abducted me. I know it sounds nutty but it really happened. It was kind of cliché, honestly. A UFO, round with a glass dome on top, flew over me, shined a light and I was sucked up into it. How did it feel? Um, it was just like it sounded, actually. Not painful, a little slower that I expected it to be, and just kind of like they turned down the gravity a bit.
So I'm in the spaceship and everything is chrome and white. There are aliens in there that started speaking a strange language to me and when they saw that I didn't understand, they just kind of switched over to English, but British English like in the movie Dreamcatcher. They said they were marketing some new drink and wanted someone "out of this world" to try it. I told them that it was a very lame line but I would help them anyways. Then they sat me down in an uncomfortable looking but incredibly comfortable chair and started pouring some drinks down my throat with a carafe that looked like it had been stolen from Denny's.
I've got to tell you, though. This drink, like their odd target demographic, was out of this world. It was somehow light but super flavorful and they said it was "tropical" but I've tasted a lot of fruit and a lot of "tropical" drinks and aside from a little lemon, everything else was indistinguishably fantastic. I mean it. I asked if I could take a carafe home but they said that this was a survey and all they could pay me was $20. I said that was fine, they beamed me down, and that was that.
I know you don't believe it but it's the truth. I gave them my mailing address and they said if it goes through the proper approved process and makes it to production, they would send me some. Here's hoping to that. I hope they ask me to do another survey.
- Website
- http://www.traderjoes.com
- Country
- United States
- Sweetener
- Pure Cane Sugar
- Categories
- Water
- Rating
- Reviewed By
- Mike Literman on 7/1/2012
- Comments
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Argo Tea Charitea
Charitea…get it? Charity. Cherry Tea. It’s wacky word play that comes around full circle. This is a cherry hibiscus tea and a percentage of its proceeds are donated to different charities. Those are two things that I can get behind.
I love that Argo chose to use hibiscus as their tea. It’s not the obvious choice and it makes the drink that much more enjoyable. Also, unlike most companies they actually use real fruit juice to flavor their teas. So to clarify this is hibiscus mixed with straight up cherry juice. Could this get any better? Well self, I’m glad you asked. You see on top of the cherry and hibiscus there is also vanilla in the mix. For those of you not in the know, cherry and vanilla makes one heck of a combo. It also makes Mike’s favorite pop of all time. This is a strong flavorful beverage, and even though it’s a tad on the pricey side, it is well worth every penny. It’s one of the most unique teas I’ve enjoyed in a long time, and I’d like to share this experience with you. So, you know you should probably dish out the cash and buy a couple of bottles and come over to hang out. I swear I won’t just be reading Batman comics and drinking the tea while you sit there uncomfortably.
- Website
- http://www.argotea.com/
- Country
- United States
- Sweetener
- Pure Cane Sugar
- Categories
- Iced Tea
- Rating
- Reviewed By
- Jason Draper on 9/29/2012
- Comments
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Granny Squibb's Astonishingly Delicious Raspberry Tea
I don’t mean to bum everyone out, but I currently have no grandmothers, as mine have both passed on. It happened a long time ago and I have moved on and learned to live in a grandmotherless world. Now that I’ve tasted my fourth bottle of this brand of tea I realize I was wrong and this is a plea for Granny Squibb to adopt me as her own so that I can get my fill of her tea any time I so wish. You see it’s not available in Buffalo, and waiting for her new flavors to come out so that we can get samples is simply not acceptable.
This tastes like a nice black tea that one of my past grandmothers might have brewed up, except they never would have iced it. It was hot tea or nothing with them. This is chilled and sweetened. If it were just black tea I would have loved it, but the addition of raspberry made it perfect. This may in fact be the best raspberry iced tea I have ever tasted. When a tea actually tastes like it was sweetened with real fruit, you know the company has done well.
So what do you think Madam Squibb, will you be my new grandmamma?
- Website
- http://www.grannysquibb.com
- Country
- United States
- Sweetener
- Pure Cane Sugar
- Categories
- Iced Tea
- Rating
- Reviewed By
- Jason Draper on 10/30/2012
- Comments
- View and Leave A Comment
Romano's Italian Soda Vanilla Bean
I'm not that familiar with Italian sodas, but this one is delicious. It's one of the strongest vanilla flavorings I've ever tasted in a soda. This is like a cream soda with extra vanilla flavor. I'm excited to try the other flavors Romano's makes.
- Website
- http://www.romanossoda.com/
- Country
- United States
- Sweetener
- Pure Cane Sugar
- Rating
- Reviewed By
- Derek Neuland on 9/28/2010
- Comments
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Crater Lake Soda Root Beer
This is what I call a damn good bottle of root beer! It's exactly how I like my root beer: creamy, smooth, and lots of flavor. There was just the right about of traditional root beer bite too. On top of it, this is a local soda so that's a big plus.
- Website
- http://www.craterlakesoda.com/
- Country
- United States
- Sweetener
- Pure Cane Sugar
- Rating
- Reviewed By
- Derek Neuland on 10/12/2010
- Comments
- View and Leave A Comment