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.

I have been sitting here for 10 minutes drinking this white grape tasting energy drink trying to think of clever plays on "Amp" but I'm coming up empty handed. I'm going to blame the Sabres because they're not playing that great right now despite firing their coach. At least this drink tastes decent for an energy drink. Somehow it tastes more like a juice energy drink, despite not containing a drop of real juice. Why can't more diet energy drinks taste this good? It would make diet drinks have a better name.

You've come a long way baby…€¦is what I would tell myself if I was a complete creep. It wasn't all that long ago that I would drink “mainstream” soda all the time. I didn't know that there was more out there. Now that it's years later and I have drunk more of a variety than 95% of the population it's hard going back to these types of sodas aka basically anything that also comes in a 2lt bottle.

I don't even remember when the last time I had Cherry 7Up was. I do remember that I used to enjoy it a decent amount. Now I would never refer to it as “Crisp. Clean. Refreshing,” as the bottle does. It's so thick and syrupy to me now. I loved drinking Shirley Temples when I would go bowling as a kid, so when I was able to get it on the regular in this form I was stoked. I remember thinking it tasted exactly the same. Oh how our palates grow to be more sophisticated. This tastes nothing like a Shirley Temple, which I will be enjoying tonight as I actually have a bowling date. As an adult the cherry flavor tastes cheap to me. It's too bad because I was actually looking forward to drinking this, hoping that it would be as good as I remember.

Since I do not have the same tastes as the general public, and because I remember how much I did enjoy this pop at one point in my life, I will give it three bottles. If this was something new, it would probably get two, but nostalgia runs high.

Someone get me a Delorian, this iced coffee has given me an idea. You see the chocolate in here that makes it a mocha rather than a normal iced coffee, actually tastes more like a malt. To be fair, my first couple of sips I was kind of put off by it, but the more I drank, the more I became accustomed to it and really enjoyed it. It's different from any other mocha that I have ever tried, and that makes it interesting. It also got me to thinking. IN the 50's there were malt shops where the teeny boppers would go to hang out and listen to the juke box, you know the whole one drink with two straws deal. Back them coffee shops were places that only dope fiends hung out at, so you know there was a bad stigma about them. I say I take said Delorian and go back and start introducing this at the malt shops. It will get the kids acclimated to the taste of coffee and I will slowly bring in more coffee drinks, until I have created a coffee shop that everyone hangs out at, kids and dopers alike. I will usher in the coffee shop culture of the early 90's four decades early and I will make a killing doing it. I will then leave all of my earnings in some sort account that I can then gain access to at this very moment in history. Think of the interest. I can then use the money to buy even more drinks for this dumb website, and die early of diabetes.

ps. I didn't finish this in time before it started to go bad. I took one sip post goodness and I can't get the taste of rot off of my tongue. ick.

Thirsty Dudes' friend Diana and her sister have a serious problem. It's to such an extent that I am looking into getting them on Intervention. No, they are not alcoholics, nor are they popping pills. They aren't even hysterically inhaling computer cleaner. Their addiction is something so much more sinister. The Vito sisters are addicted to the Dutch food, toast sprinkles.

“Like junkies waiting for their sweet, sweet fix” these two sisters will drive up to St Catharines, ON in order to fill up their tiny hatchback with box upon box of little chocolate sprinkles to put on their buttered toast. It is truly a sickness that needs professional attention, and perhaps a television spot.

I suppose we did benefit from their addiction as on a recent trip Diana brought me back this bottle of juice/lemonade concentrate. Let me rephrase that, “this enormous bottle of juice/lemonade concentrate.” Seriously it would take me years to get through this bottle as you add a tablespoon of concentrate to a glass of water. It is a mixture of apple, strawberry, elderberry and rosehip concentrate. It tastes like what I always hope fruit punch tastes like before I take a sip. This is 75% fruit, which is more than can be said about most fruit punch. It mostly just tastes like a mixture of strawberries and elderflower, which is a recipe for greatness. I mixed it with normal water, but I think if it were added to sparkling water, I would be in for a real treat.

Now back to pestering the folks at intervention, so I can make one of my friends day and embarrass the other a great amount.

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.

Apparently this is supposed to be a morning drink so you can 'kick start your day'. So it's competing against coffee and energy drinks essentially, two things I love and definitely drink a lot. When I first heard about this new drink from Mountain Dew, I thought it was just going to either be a repackaging of their energy drink Amp, or a slightly modified version of Mountain Dew Livewire. At least that was what I was expecting when I tried it.

Those who hate energy drinks will be pleased to hear that this is nothing like them taste wise. And despite high fructose corn syrup being the second ingredient, it's not syrupy like a soda. It has a consistency closer to sparkling juice, but with much more sugar (and caffeine). It's not quite as refreshing as most sparkling juices I've had, but it's definitely easier to drink than soda. As far as the orange taste goes, it's closer to orange soda than orange juice.

So will this drink replace coffee and energy drinks? Maybe for some people but it's not a groundbreaking drink. But that is also coming from someone who loves coffee and energy drinks so I'm probably not their target demographic.

Mountain Dew Code Red used to be my go-to soda. I probably bought a bottle every day I went to high school for a couple years. The problem was I over did it and I got sick of something I used to love. They don't make it obvious anymore, but Pepsi/Mountain Dew makes AMP Energy. It really shows with this flavor because it tastes like someone pour an energy drink into a bottle of Code Red. For those who have never had Code Red before: a. what is your problem? and b. it tastes like a really syrupy cherry soda with a citrus kick in the aftertaste. With the energy drink component in this, the kick is extra strong.


While writing this review I realized I hadn't seen an Amp Energy commercial in a while so I went to youtube to see if I could find any. While I found one featuring Buffalo Sabres goalie Ryan Miller hurling insults at another goalie in some weird underground insult competition, the majority of the videos were of 8-12 year old kids chugging AMP Energy drinks. I knew there were some dark corners of youtube that didn't have funny cat videos or Rebecca Black parodies, but I didn't think there would be adolescent boys in their backyard shotgunning energy drinks in hopes that the video will become viral/impress their friends.

I put a limit on myself at the beginning of the year. I was not allowed to buy any new drinks until I got through everything that I had at home. For those of you who have had the pleasure of visiting my palatial two bedroom apartment you probably noticed that I have (had) cupboards and shelves chock full of drinks (not to mention the fridge). I had drinks that I had acquired over a year ago, just sitting there waiting to be reviewed. Most of it was drinks that I didn't have a single iota of excitement about, but for the sake of science I had to push through them all. It took me about two months, but here I am with only two drinks left (I cheated a few times and bought some new juices, sue me…€¦seriously you can try, but I have no money, nor drinks to give up).

For the second last drink of my back stock I have a lemonade that I was actually excited about, but I had wanted to wait until the weather was fittingly nice to drink it. Who wants to drink lemonade in the winter, unless you have the heat cranked, some freshly cut grass candles lit and Summer Breeze blasting on the hi-fi to fool yourself into a different season? I pressed on though and drank this little guy down faster than you would believe. It's great. Some would say that it is close to perfection. It has the good side of lemon flavor, just enough sugar to not pinch your cheeks all the way, and an authentic mango flavor that just cannot be messed with. The mango flavor is ever so slightly lower than that of the lemon, and that is how flavored lemonade should be. It makes me wish it was summer more than ever.

Now I just have one more drink to get through and I can go scour the Earth looking for more drinks again. It feels good to be so close to leveling out.

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.

Editor Dan is a photographer. Mainly he shoots abandoned buildings. He's surprisingly good at it. The point of this is that he told us over the summer that he had access to a building that had a room with a glass wall. On it's own, that is not exciting in the least bit, but then we learned that behind that glass wall the entire room was a giant bee hive. It sounds so creepy and awesome. I had just bought this bottle of Honeydrop and I knew I wanted to do a video review in front of that window.

It's now seven months later, and we never got around to getting Dan to take us to that magical bee place, so I decided to just drink this bottle. As I'm doing so I realize I really should have done it in front of the bees, because it has such a ridiculously strong honey flavor. It is called a tea, but there is really no tea in it at all. It's like someone had a sore throat, so they boiled some water, cut up some ginger in it, added a splash of lemon and then for every two parts of “tea” they added one part of honey. It's definitely a drink that would traditionally be served hot, but it's kind of nice to drink it cold. I could do without the lemon, like I could with most things that flavor. The ginger more than makes up for it though. It has a bit of a burn to it, which I always approve of. If you ever have a sore throat in the summer, you should drink this, because who wants to drink a hot beverage in the blazing sun.

Now that I think about it more, maybe it's a good thing we didn't drink this in proximity to a giant beehive. I know they would be separated from us by glass, but this smells and tastes so much like honey that I bet they would have found a crack to sneak through and the next thing I would know I'd be wearing a beard of bees. That is something I just don't need.

Alova,
This is so unlike me. I never do things like this, but I feel a grand gesture needs to be made. You see, I love you Alova, and I don't care who knows it. I am stupid head over heals in love with you and your wonderful drinks. That is why I am going all out and proclaiming you my favorite drink of 2013, even though we are only two months in.

This is my second beverage I have had form you (okay it's really been a lot more if you count the number of cucumber mint sodas I have imbibed over the past few weeks), and I already know deep down inside that you will have my heart and I will be singing your praises for months to come. It's rare to find a soda that tastes exactly like the fruit it is representing, but you have grapefruit spot on. The best part is that the aloe juice neutralizes the intensely sourness that it usually entails. It's the flavor, without the sour. It's every child's dream (or maybe three children in the world would really care). The moderate amount of sweetener that you used is really what makes this a perfect beverage.

I'm kind of like smitten,
Jason

Since I had never seen a rooibos tea plant, I Googled it (yes I use Google as a verb. It's 2013, embrace it).The plants themselves do not look all that extraordinary, but the pictures of the dried tea look like they would smell delicious. Have you ever gone into a fancy tea shop? It's on of the best smelling places ever. It's also a fairly expensive place to be, but it's worth it to treat yourself from time to time.

Rooibee Red Tea took this what I can only imagine to be delicious smelling dried tea and brewed it up with some sugar in a way that I can only describe as sweet tea made with red tea. It's not as insanely sweet as southern sweet tea, but the base of the flavor is there. That alone is enough to earn this company high marks, but their genius shines through with the subtlety of their flavoring. If someone offered me a watermelon mint drink, and gave no other description I would assume it would taste like a hellish combination of eating watermelon Jolly Ranchers while chewing an entire package of spearmint gum. The thought of that is just completely sickening. Luckily this bottle resembles nothing of the flavors in my mind grapes. The watermelon flavor is very light. You don't even realize your tasting it until you hold the tea in your mouth for a bit. Then you realize that the flavor has been there all along, but it blends in perfectly with the taste of the red tea. As for the mint, it's more of an afterthought. It only rears its head as an aftertaste, the way mint should. Mint is rarely good when it's strong, unless it's gum or you know…€¦a mint.

This is tasty and refreshing. It's a high class tea that you should drink on a nice spring day when it's warm enough to cast off your hoodie, but not so warm as to feel your flesh burn as your sweating yourself into dehydration. I can picture myself out in the country, just lounging on a porch, staring out over fields of wheat, sipping away. I wish I was there now.

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.

I wonder why this company didn't try and get some Spider Man 3 sponsorship when that movie was coming out. It would have been perfect and tons of comic nerds (like myself) would have bought it just for the bottle. It would have been a lot better than the Spencer Gifts all over print looking snake eye they have on the bottle.

It's a pretty tasty energy drink. Nothing I'd run out and get again, but it tastes like sugary purple drink. It definitely tastes better than it looks.

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.

Hey Rog, I think you forgot something. No you definitely shut the stove off, and yes you remembered to feed the cats. What you forgot was to add the pears to this tea. I'm pretty sure you remembered to put everything else in, but I don't taste even a splash of pear in here. It's got that herbal, almost licorice, flavor that the wolfberry fruit, euphoria longan, coastal glehnia root and balloonflower root give it. I don't know why we put all of those things in an iced tea, but it does give it a different taste. It's also has that weird rock sugar sweetened flavor. I always thought that was an odd choice for a sweetener, to melt down rock candy. All of that stuff is there, but no pear whatsoever. You really must have forgotten to add it.

I know I'm not supposed to be drinking the product while working on the line, but hey I'm thirsty and I like to think I'm working quality control. Wait, why are you on the phone? You're seriously calling security on me? For drinking one bottle of tea in the 35 years I've worked here? You're a real jerk Rog. I hope your cats got annoyed at you always forgetting to feed them and they turned the stove back on and escaped out a window before burning your house down. That's what jerks like you deserve.

Good things come in small cans. That sounds like some tagline for drink company X that ended up on the editing floor. I imagine Bob thought of the tagline on the way to work after days of emails that yielded no good ideas. He was probably so excited and couldn't wait to get to work for the first time in 20 years. He gave hints to his co-workers before the 9:30 meeting that he had a great idea.

The problem was he built it up so much that when they heard the mediocre tagline, they passed on it. He was devastated and always told the story over drinks with friends.

I almost forgot that I hadn't reviewed this drink yet. It's delicious is what I was trying to get at. It's really light and crisp and full of mango flavor. If it weren't so full of sugar I would drink these all the time.