Diet cola. It's a rough game. Murderous. Competitive. Mostly kind of gross. This drink has potential. It's a brave venture into a dangerous game filled with tree hugging hippies. Filled with strange middle-aged women with distinctive salt and pepper hair that carry around canvas bags all times in case they come across a killer farmers market with rutabagas they just can't leave behind. Filled with young dudes who will stab you if you as much as mention chicken nuggets and loves the band Crass and has black pants that appear to be painted on his tiny, malnourished frame.

This drink, with all its promise, falls short. It's got a decent cola taste but is quickly replaced with a semi-bitter, sweetness that is known to many as "that Stevia" taste but is really Erythritol. Who cares? Right? Who cares? When a drink isn't that great, who cares what sucks about it? Well it's actually the Erythritol that eats it. It cruds up a potentially good drink. I don't know what would make it better. I don't even know if regular diet pop wins or loses. I don't know what's going on anymore.

Finally, I say. Finally I have found a black currant drink that doesn't taste like a foot. I don't know what other people were doing but seriously everyone. Are you still mushing up fruit with your feet and are you also not washing your feet? Classic. Classic.

In the modern day, we've got machines and...I don't know...steamrollers...that mush up fruits to make juice. Clean things. This company is pretty spot on with everything we've had. This tea is a good, naturally sweetened black tea with a very nice and fruity black currant drink. It is a good split between the flavor and the base that I could drink again and again.

Look, if you've got a small, intimate company that still makes juice with your feet; I would love to drink it as long as you have some sort of FDA related clearance. I don't often care about the FDA but when potentially skuzzy body parts are involved, I might like a little bit of interference of a third party agency.

If this line of beverages is any indication, I believe I am long overdue for a trip to the Philippines. So far we have reviewed mango, calamansi and guava juices, and now we're on to pineapple. That's one hell of a foursome of juices to have readily available in your country. Do you like how I assume that all of those fruits grow rampant everywhere? Oh of course you can walk down any block in the Philippines and pick each of these fruits from trees you will pass. It's just like in America where you can't look more than 50 feet without finding apples, pears and grapes.

The other juices from this brand that we have done have had sugar added to them. It was unnecessary, but I could live with it and enjoy the juice. With this pineapple juice, they decided to throw caution to the wind and leave out the sugar. It was a wise choice. All that is in this can is pineapple juice, it's not sweetened and it's not watered down. It's wonderful, and not too acidic. It tastes like you're biting into a fresh pineapple that you cut from the bush you just passed on vacation, except you don't have to fear about your tongue bleeding from the amount of acid in it. Life is good in the Philippines.

I'm surprised Jason hadn't already reviewed this, seeing it's made in his backyard. Well not literally his backyard, but his stomping grounds of West Seneca. New York has the best cider in the country (that I've had). I don't know what it is about the apples here, but they make incredible cider and I moved back at just the right time, when gallons of it are everywhere and on sale.

Blossom Valley is no different either. This cider is a prime example of how delicious apple cider from Western New York can be. I may be biased since I grew up here, but I stand by it.

Miller High Life is the self-appointed "champagne of beers." While I don't know much about beer, I doubt this is true and think that it's kind of a tongue-in-cheek thing, this could be the champagne of kola champagnes with one single caveat. Pre-caveat, right out of the fridge this is great. It's not as bubble-gummy as a lot of other kola champagnes I've had. It did have a nice, unexpected bit, like some of the ginger juice from their wonderful ginger beer got stuck in the machine, no one cared, and it bled into this drink leaving a little bit of a bite. I always want a little bit of a bite when it comes to food and drink. Spice almost always beats no spice.

Great, right? Awesome. But wait! I said there was one thing to worry about. That one thing is that you either have to keep this cold or drink it fast because once it lukewarms, it gets perfumey. I drank half, went and got a sandwich, came back, bad. Ten minutes or so killed this drink.

Don't let this happen to your kola champagne. Drink it fast or keep it on ice. Do the right thing.

I don't know what these fruits are furious about. Perhaps it's because they are being referred to as tropical, and they are all everyday heart of America fruits, except for the pineapple. Have the rest of the fruits worked themselves up into a tizzy because the pineapple is getting a higher billing than them? Well if it's the apples and grapes that we're talking about, that would be understandable. They are doing all the grunt work (they are the only two fruits mentioned by name on the ingredients list, the rest falls under natural flavors) and they get very little of the credit. Isn't that how it always is, the work of many is exploited by the few?

I really hope that our friend cherry isn't putting up much of a fuss. He may not be at the top of the marquee, but he certainly is the star of the show. Everything else melds together into a generic fruit punch flavor, but it's that small billed cherry whose performance shines through. Isn't that what is most important, to be the name on everyone's lips once the curtain falls?

When I purchased this yesterday it was the first time I had ever been confronted about taking a picture of a drink in a store. I was up in Toronto playing a show and I stopped in a little variety store because I had been up since 7, it was late, it was cold and dreary and I needed a little pick me up. I grabbed this can, set it on a shelf, snapped a picture, and took it up to the counter for purchase. The proprietor grilled me as to why I was taking pictures in his store. I told him it was just of the drink, and he wasn't satisfied until I showed him the picture to the left that showed none of his store and only a can of energy drink. I don't really understand why he was so upset. It wasn't like there was anything revolutionary going on in that store, it was just your every day corner store. Maybe there are sketchy things going on that I just didn't pick up on. Oh well, I got my drink and went out in the blustering cold.

The drink did its job in helping me to stay awake, and it did it in a delicious way. It didn't have a crazy mango flavor, as if you were drinking mango nectar, but more of an overall tropical flavor with high notes of mango. It was a nice change of pace from the usual suspects of the energy drink kingdom. It still had the underlying chemical taste of chemicals that you expect from drinks of this ilk, but instead of tasting like some sort of sugar candy it tasted like a sugared juice drink. You've done well yet again Canada.

I love that Granny and the family has started making unsweetened versions of their line of teas. You see I am an adult, and being one means that I no longer require obscene amounts of sugar in my beverages. Sure I drink a lot of sugary drinks to review for this website, but my intake of fluids is mostly water and unsweetened tea that I brew myself. That's good and well for when I am at home/work, but when I'm out gallivanting with my friends it's nice to have unsweetened options that aren't bottled water.

After those accolades I have to say that I'm not sure this was a good flavor to choose for the unsweetened line. Actually, yes it was. It's a good solid drink, but I would definitely purchase one of their other flavors before this. I love mojito flavored drinks, but they are one drink that sugar definitely helps even out. The lime in this distracts from the taste of the actual tea in this bottle. Tea is naturally a little bitter and that coupled with the sourness of the lime is a bit much. Perhaps I would be more prone to purchase this if the fruit flavor was toned down a bit. The mint flavor here is at a great level. It's very subtle, but still noticeable, meaning that it still has a slight mint flavor without tasting like you're drinking tea after brushing your teeth.

Okay, so I praised this, and then I took it down a couple of pegs, confusing I know. Let me set the record straight. I did enjoy this tea. I just feel that a few small changes could make me really love it. Granny, keep doing what you're doing and I'll keep drinking it, enjoying it and always be dreaming bigger.

My friend RJ was talking up a sandwich. He lives in Brooklyn and what he says goes when it comes to food. He's never led me astray before, knows what I like, and is more worldly than I. Therefore, when told me about a Vietnamese sandwich called "bahn mi," I had to find it. I went to a place that was rumored to have one but they removed it from the menu. It would have been awful had the pho and chicken dish not been so good.

The next day, I did a little bit more digging around on the onlines and found another place. I went and they had one fried pork bahn mi left. I grabbed it, noticed that I was a dollar cash short and hate charging for little purchases so I, in true Thirsty Dudes fashion, bought drinks to make it worth my while using my card. One was a drink for a friend and the other was this little dude.

I ate this sandwich, loved it, took a picture which I did later post to Facebook but not with a sepia tone or worn edge or overexposed filter. You're welcome, internet users. The drink, though, the drink...great. It's a sweet, nicely bitter green tea with a maybe honey and maybe barley. Why do I say "maybe?" Well, due to this country not making people learn anything other than French or Spanish and don't start teaching until ninth grade, I don't know Taiwanese. It's cool, though. Trust me. You always have in the past.

Wait, so you're telling me that star of Boyz in the Hood, Cuba Gooding Jr, has his own special edition flavor of Monster energy drink? Can you drive stick? Oh no, you can only drive shifter cars like the Cadillac Eldorado? Oh, this drink really has nothing to do with Mr Gooding…€¦Jr? In reality it's a play on a Cuban alcoholic beverage? Well, I can't say I care much about that. What I do care about is the son of Furious Styles and the sweet texture of this can. It's like an aluminum version of concrete. Oh, you want to know about the flavor of this and not my thoughts on a cinematic masterpiece? Well it tastes like regular Monster with some lime mixed in. It has a real lime flavor too, not that fake Freezie Pop flavor either. Now show me the Doughboy!

Something you may or may not know about my fellow Thirsty Dude Derek Raymond Neuland is that he was one of the founders of the Buffalo punk house 99 Custer, aka The Last Stand. If you didn't know that you almost certainly don't know that during his time there a list was made of over a hundred nicknames for him. They included names such as Neuliana Hatfield, Neulia Styles, The Neuliana Theory, Neulia Roberts, Neulia Child, Downtown Neulie Brown, Neulie Neulmar, and one of my personal favorites: Turbo. Now I should have let Turbo here drink this beverage and write a review, but if I had done that, I'm pretty sure he never would have mentioned the nicknames and you would have been robbed of knowing that at one point someone called him Neulia Louis Dreyfus. How could I deny you of that?

Now I will tell you basically what author of Twenty Thousand Leagues under the sea Neuls Verne would about this drink. It has that general energy drink taste that will more than likely make you think of Red Bull, but with a little more citrus to it. It's no better or worse than your average energy drink, so don't let the terrible tribal heart logo throw you off. I mean it's a product made by a drug store (Shoppers Drug Mart) so I guess we should cut them a little slack.

ps. This is not to be confused with the American product of the same name that is the fake Red Bull that comes out of the gun at most bars. Although they taste eerily similar.

pps. He was also known as Gary Gas Hands, due to the fact that he looks like his name should be Gary (according to our friend Pat) and he worked at Mobil.

James. You did something nice here. Here I am, laid out in bed and you thought of me and brought me a drink. You are a treat. You overheard my like for black cherry and lemonade and you found me a black cherry lemonade. Not only that but it's not terrible for my sick body. Not only that but it tastes pretty good. Not only that but...well I guess that's it.

I spent the last three days just up-chucking all over the place. I've got old newspapers and sawdust and kitty litter all over the place covering up my hurl spots. Look around you. I don't know why you took your shoes off. I know it's typically good etiquette to do so but you should have known at the mound of dirty towels covered in pickles from McDonald's hamburgers and french fries that you shouldn't have bothered. Anyhow, this is all sparkling, fruitful, lemonady and not terrible. It's got a little Stevia taste to it but it's better than that awful diet taste.

You really are a good friend. Hey, I appreciate you coming but could you do me a favor and push that pile of napkins covered in Big Mac special sauce, mustard, and a little bit of puke off the counter before you leave? I'm trying to watch Along Came Polly and can't see Jennifer Aniston's wonderful face though my mound of spew. Thanks dude. You're the best. You can use that hockey stick over there. Please don't use your hands. It might make me lose this drink, too.

In the dizzying haze of strobe lights a giant of an old man's face flashes in and out of the darkness repeating the words, “Something's wrong.” Even though that horror occurred years ago in a bowling alley, the sight was fresh in my mind as I took a sip of this juice. One of the numerous ingredients in here that are not mango left a wrong flavor to this. As soon as it hits your tongue you are greeted with mango, but nearly instantly some rouge shadow pushes the great fruit out of the way and blocks the doorway to proper flavor. On top of that the pulp in this are little cubes of mango that don't have a long shelf life floating in juice and other delicacies. The way they squish in your mouth gives the illusion that they are rotting. Knowing that they are not does not help the voyage. SOS, this ship is going down.

Now I know we previously reviewed the Bawls G33K B33R, but in the name of beverage science I had to give this a try since they dropped the 1337 speak and simply named this "root beer". Were they confusing people? Did they finally realize talking in numbers was kinda lame? Or did they completely change the formula and make it 100% less geeky?

Unfortunately a representative for Bawls could not be reached to comment on this matter. Ok, to be honest I didn't try. But I can comment on the last question: the taste. Is it different? Not at all. It's still delicious. Am I glad they changed the name on the bottle? Meh. I could care less really. I wasn't bothered by the 12 year old gamer talk on the bottle. What I would have loved to been a fly on the wall for is the meeting(s) where they discussed whether to keep the bottles as "G33K B33R" or change them to the traditional and less annoying "root beer". Maybe someday companies like Bawls will conference us in for our "expert" opinions.

Do you remember the Nestle Quik bunny, aka Quiky? From the 70s to the 90s he worked promoting the Nesquik powders used to flavor milk. He got all caught up in the glamour and in 2001 he hit rock bottom. The drugs, the interspecial relationships, he realized it was all to much for him and that he needed to walk away. Nestle hired a new rabbit (Nesquik) and most of the world never noticed the difference. Fame can do strange things to a bunny, and it takes a big rabbit to know when to extradite yourself from a situation.

Quiky spent a few years traveling the globe trying to find himself. He got clean, and adopted the vegan lifestyle. While visiting Taiwan he met up with the folks at Mong Lee Shang and he worked with them to create an incredible strawberry soymilk. It was essentially the old Nesquik strawberry powder from the 70s mixed in with soymilk, but it was a taste that Quiky had missed and he never thought he would have again. For some reason the company insisted on adding tapioca balls to the drink. Quiky didn't know why, but he had to admit that they added an element of fun to the drink and didn't really havea taste of their own.

Things were looking up for our bunny friend. He was set to appear as spokesperson for this new drink, and the company promised to keep it wholesome. Everything fell apart though when he found out that the drink actually contained caseinate (milk protein), and that it wasn't really vegan at all. Quiky felt like he had been duped and he walked out of the offices of Mong Lee Shang never to be heard from again.

I'm familiar with the Sambazon organic energy drink line, and I can honestly say that I am a fan. They provide healthier energy in a world full of chemical pick me ups. I had no idea this company made any other drinks until I stumbled upon this in the grocery store yesterday. If you know me, you more than likely know that the word ginger in relation to food is like the bell to Pavlov's dogs (no matter what anyone tells you, I am not a ginger as a person). If I'm at a restaurant and someone is labeled as ginger flavored, that's what I get. If a beverage has real ginger in it, it's going to end up in my belly. Needless to say this instantly went into my cart, and I couldn't wait until the morning to drink it.

This is the single best prepackaged smoothie I have ever tasted. It just tastes healthy in all the right ways. It has a decent ginger taste, that lacks in a burn, but who really wants a smoothie with a burn to it? Okay I probably would, but I have no problem with it lacking in this beverage. There is a small assortment of fruits in this smoothie, that all blend together nicely (yes there is banana in it, and no you can not taste it, thank goodness). The real star of this beverage is the Amazing Grass Super Greens. It's what Sambazon has labeled their concoction of wheat grass, barley grass, alfalfa, spirulina, chlorella and the mighty kale. They are mixed in with the rest of the ingredients in a way that you can taste them, but they don't leave any of the aftertastes that they normally would.

I could drink this by the gallon, but at $3.50 for a 10.5oz bottle I'll have to get it as a treat for myself. It tastes like a fresh juice smoothie that you would get at a fancy juice place like Fresh in Toronto. Now there is a great little place. Man, I'm done with this, and I want to drive to the store to buy another dozen bottles. This could get dangerous, but at least it's mega healthy.

Dear Howie,
You are a liar. You must sell a lot of pop out of your false promises to afford to replace all of your pants that are constantly ablaze. You are the worst kind of person. Untrustworthy. I hope I'm not the first to tell it how it is, but you, sir, are awful. Where is all this coming from? This bottle of Lemon-Up is labeled "Howie's Premium Root Beer" and it is not root beer. Your company may be called "Howie's Premium Root Beer" and, if that is true, that is a terrible name for a company that makes things other than root beer.

As for this drink, you've done a fair job of making a mostly lemon, semi lime pop. You think it's going to just be another citrus pop like 7-Up or Sprite, and there is a little bit of it in there, but then cap'n lime jumps in the mix and scrambles your taste buds. This drink captures the flavor of limes and leaves it's inherent, chronic bitterness and depression out of it.

Howie, we haven't been the best track record with this drink but as a non-root beer drink, it's pretty good. It's no root beer as almost promised but it's acceptable.

Love,
Mike of the world famous supreme team Thirsty Dudes show.

Alright Michael, you've been working here at Izze for a couple of weeks now. I still think you're kind of a dunce, but lucky for you this job doesn't require much brains. Today you'll be making the sparkling lime soda while I make the more delicate birch beer. Remember we don't add sweeteners to our beverages, so don't bother asking me where the sugar is like you have every other day this week. Wait…€¦STOP! What are you doing? Where did you even get those little squirt bottles of limejuice? Did you have those hidden all over your person? You are just strange. Yes this is a lime soda that you're making, but that doesn't mean it's straight up carbonated limejuice. You just used three of those little plastic lime's worth of juice to make one bottle of soda. Do you seriously think anyone could drink that entire bottle? Oh you do, do ya? Well go for it. That's right, now take that sourpuss face of yours and get back to your station. We mix together mostly apple and grape juice with a bit of lime to make this soda palatable. You still get a mostly lime flavor, but the sweetness from the other fruits fights the tartness of the limes in the bet possible way. It ends up being like an apple-lime juice. You don't really notice the grape. Oh you think people will like your way better? Well we have orders for about 500 cases of my recipe and you couldn't even drink two sips of yours, so somehow I think your wrong. Just go to the washout station and clean up everything that is in your field of vision. I don't want to see you again until the end of the day. I swear a trained pig would do a better job at this than you.

You know why the holidays are great? Food and family. I don't care about gifts but I love to eat and talk about nothing. I don't care about sports so the whole "eat a million pounds of food and then sit down like a fat sack of crap and watch a gaggle of dudes throw the ol' pig skin around." Not a giant fan of sport. You know what I'm going to love about Thanksgiving this Thursday, though? All of the "thanks" I'm going to get from my family that I let try this drink. Oh, turned the tide, did I? Yeah. My family will be on their knees begging for another sip, a couple drops of this delicious, fantastic, quasi-seasonal drink. This is a secret gem amongst otherwise mediocre seltzers. This is a diamond in the rough.

How can I explain something so simple but yet so incredible? The "seltzerness" of this tricks you into thinking you are drinking a cinnamon pop. It's real cinnamon, though. It's like a less sweet version of that cinnamon sugar spice you have to basically only use on apples. It smells and tastes like real, not candy cinnamon. Do you have it? Do you get it? If you get it, get it. I mean it. Find it and get it. It's seasonal. Yes, this gets a perfect score but the candy cane one that I also saw probably won't get the same treatment. Sorry in advance. You are welcome in advance for this one, though.

This is one of those drinks that is hard to classify. If you asked a kid what this was, they would say a juice. I couldn't argue with him since it's dark, fruity, and tastes like juice. When you read the labels, though, they vaguely call it a "beverage" and use sweet buzzwords like "enhanced" and "natural" and "energy" which might or might not make it an enhanced natural energy beverage but those words are borderline worthless. Also, "agua" makes me want to put it in the same category as Vitamin Water and the like but I could be wrong. For the aforementioned reasons I will never discredit a scientist for having to pick the correct genus and species of animal, bug, fruit, et cetera. Some things are drifters. That being said, a tomato is eternally a vegetable. I don't give a rip what seeds mean.

This drink is good. I don't get a lot of pomegranate but get a decent amount of cherry. It does taste like if you ate a candle and I cannot pinpoint that. I worked at a skate shop in my youth that was next door to a candle store and this drink is like someone filtered a pomegranate and cherry juice through some strategically placed candles. I say strategically because if I were performing the task, I would have candles stacked up and carefully melted as to have a seamless, waxful route of like seventeen candles to pour the drink down.

Now I want to do this. Can someone commission me to make a candle slide in which to "enhance" my otherwise average drink with additional mystery flavors? If not to make a drink, just to melt a whole bunch of candles and hook up a garden pump to have water go through a multicolored slide-o-wax? I'll let you name it, just let me take care of the actual work and don't bother me while I make art.
e art.