It is a little known fact that in Italy volcanoes reign supreme. Many know that such practices occur in places such as Indonesia, but for centuries the denizens of “The Boot” have kept their rituals a secret. I'm about to blow up their spot in a major way.

I'm going to go ahead and ruin everyone's fun right away; they don't perform human sacrifices. I mean they aren't savages. They aren't trying to over throw the world. They are just looking to help their crops, by appeasing to some old gods. You might find yourself asking why has it been kept such a tight-lipped secret for all this time. It's simple actually, with the Vatican basically in their back yard; you don't really want to upset the Holy See with what they would see as false worship. Basically if the church blacklists you, your tourist trade goes in the turlet.

Back to the important garbage: The main item that is sacrificed to the volcano gods is blood oranges. You know how gods are all into symbolism, well they like to pretend that the juice of the blood orange is actually human blood, like the old days. Gross. The Italians may not be savages, but the gods really wished they were. Some people just throw bushels of oranges into the fiery depths, but others believe that the gods prefer you to take the time with your sacrifice and juice it. I mean, what's more impressive: a tiny body, or a big jug of blood?

Dream Foods started pilfering from their sacrifices in order to sell the deliciousness to the public outside of the country. With a mixture of three different varieties of blood oranges with no sugar added, how can you go wrong? It tastes like a mix between a sweet orange and a grapefruit. It's glorious. Once you get a taste, you'll never want to go back to plain orange juice again. Don't let the name fool you though. This is not an Italian soda; it's not carbonated. It is straight up juice meant for a sacrifice. By drinking it you may be taking away from fields of rigatoni and penne, that would feed a nation, but hell, I think it's worth it.

There's sugar in grapefruit, right? I mean I buy juices with no added sweeteners and there's always a decent amount of sugar in the juice, just from the fruit. The internet tells me that grapefruit has sugar, which makes sense, it's a fruit. According to Google half of a large grapefruit has 11.59g of sugar in it. So does Rob's somehow remove that sugar and replace it with erythritol, because the label on this clearly says there are zero grams of sugar. That would be some wacky science that just doesn't seem worth it.

I don't know how Rob's makes this, but this is tasty. It has the essence of grapefruit flavor without the extreme tartness. Sure it has a zero calorie sweetener in it, but it doesn't have a gross diet taste. I think the grapefruit flavor balanced it out nicely. My real question is was the erythritol really needed? Was it just used to round off the tartness? Only Rob knows and he's not talking. He's too busy with his Pirate's Booty (seriously one man, two great products. I'd give him a high five).

Dear fellow scientists, how much longer must we toil under the tyranny of water? Are we not scientists? Are we not the creators, the magic makers? H2O? I scoff at that! I propose we create a new liquid; a superior liquid. I propose to you that we create H10O. It is the power of water times 10! The problem that I am running into is that when I mix ten parts hydrogen to one part oxygen the result isn't even fluid. If it were I think it might kill you. We are scientists though and we can overcome these issues, and let marketing sort out the rest.

My assistant Billy presented this to me earlier. He calls it H10O, but it is not my vision. I guess we can present it to the public as H10O version 1.0. Billy took everyday water and infused ten different vitamins into it. See what he did there? 10? Get it? I was skeptical at first because due to his never ending diet he sweetened it with sucralose. I asked him why he just didn't leave it unsweetened, and he said that no one would want a drink that tasted like water that a multivitamin had dissolved in. To overcome the vitamin and diet flavor he also added a healthy dose of peach and mango flavors. Somehow that covered up the poison sucralose flavor of the drink. I personally hate that stuff and didn't think I could handle more than a sip, but I've downed several bottles since he first brought it to me. It's peach, it's mango, it has zero sugar in it, it's chock full of vitamins, and it doesn't taste like death. This may not be the beverage of my dreams but until one of us can properly take on the beast called science it is what H10O will have to be.

Steve, why did you start brewing the green tea out in the yard? You didn't like the way it made the house smell? Well that is just dumb. Brewing tea smells delicious. In fact I always look forward to coming home from work so I can open up the door and be greeted by that wonderful aroma. Now, my second question; why did you start brewing the green tea out in the yard in the middle of the bee apiary? Oh, that's the only place it would fit where it wouldn't be in the way of your croquet game. I guess that's understandable, but tell me this did you clean the vats out between batches? I mean I know I probably shouldn't have left you in charge for the two months that I was on vacation, but I leave a life of leisure and I need to do that from time to time. The thing is that the bees seemed to have incorporated the vats into their hives and if we want to sell any of this tea we're going to have to filter out the honeycombs and dead bees. Let's just do that and never mention this to anyone else. I just hope the tale of this doesn't end up on some dumb website.

Steve, we've somehow brewed a tea that tastes exactly like Asian green tea. I don't know how to explain the difference between the green tea I brew from a tea bag and the kind you get in a Chinese restaurant, but this is way more like the latter. The bee residue that we filtered out actually gives this a little bit of a honey flavor. I personally like my green tea unsweetened, but I think a lot of people would be into this. It has a medium level of sweetness, which is what many people need for a stepping-stone to the world of unsweetened teas. Your blunder may have actually been a gateway to a healthier America. Good job, son.

"Holiday milk" sounds like the world's most generic product that has ever existed. It sounds like a gimmick that is used to just reel in idiots to think that it's something truly special. I mean chocolate and mint is not specific to any time of year. If it were eggnog or something with nutmeg in it, yeah, I would say that it is limited to Christmas. Chocolate and mint? Please. Give it to me any time of the year. Please. I love those two rascals together

Enough. Alright. Enough. As a product this is an absolute gem. It's smooth chocolate milk with a little bit of mint in it. It's not too much at all. I was actually surprised that they went as subdued as they did with it. Pleased but surprised. Normally the mix is fairly standard. This though, someone tried this one out and knew what they were up to. They didn't just call up Mix Warehouse over on Pine Avenue and order up the old "Chocolate Mint" mix to add to their product. They called up Harold at Mix Warehouse over on Oak Avenue and bought a chocolate and mint mix separately and mixed them to their liking. I know what you're thinking. A lot of streets are named after trees in this town. It happens. Trees are common. I would move to a city with a group of streets named after trees. Better than living in a city with a group of streets named after presidents or fruits. Those, my friends, are almost always bad news.

Blasted ladyfingers. Why? Why do you have to ruin a perfectly good dessert with rum? You turds. Why? I don't eat things cooked in or with alcohol so when I found out that tiramisu swam in the lake of Cap'n Morgan, I swore off the sweet treat for eternity. Honestly, I never was that crazy about it to begin with so not eating it doesn't really affect me but when I came across this little guy in a wondrous Asian market in Toronto with the Thirsty Dude called Jay, I had to buy it.

This drink tastes like tiramisu. It's odd. Cake flavored drink. Oh, I'm sorry, have you had one before? We've had ice cream flavored drinks, Masala flavored drinks, corn flavored drinks, but never cake. Why not? It seems to not be a problem for these guys. Maybe a chocolate cake tea would be nice. Try it. This tea tastes like the cake it's supposed to. I know it's a novel idea since it's a self-proclaimed "Tiramisu" flavored but we drink stuff all the time that doesn't taste like it's supposed to and this isn't exactly a "regular" drink so it could have gone either way. As far as the "milk tea" thing goes, it's more milk than tea but they're both there. A black tea powder (odd) and a skim milk (not odd) make up the base of this.

Also, it should be pointed out that one carton of this is about as bad for you as a slice of real tiramisu so if you are looking for a replacement, this is it, but if you're looking to save on calories, don't bother and eat real cake. If you've got your jaw wired shut like Kanye West before he felt the need to make up for lost time and never shut up, this is your go-to-guy.

This is one the lightest, and most lightly sweetened teas to ever walk the face of this earth. Did I just insinuate that this tea is sentient? Possibly. For all I know this bottle could sprout legs and it could go on a walkabout. I don't know and I don't care, as I would still drink it. It's a quality black tea that is ever so slightly sweetened with cane sugar and honey. You can taste the honey a teeny tiny bit, but it's enough to add leaps and bounds to the overall flavor. There is only a faint hint of peach. It's more in the aftertaste than the sipping taste. If sentient beverages is the cost of having teas that taste this good, I say let's do it. Sure we'll have a moral dilemma with each sip, but we're humans we adapt to the craziest things.

Jack Nicklaus is a man who likes to talk trash with his beverages. He saw that his rival Mr. Palmer was getting all this attention for his love of mixing iced tea and lemonade. Jack scoffed at that bastardization of two fine drinks. He believed that both of those beverages are perfectly fine on their own and there was no need to mix them. “Listen folks, there is a time for lemonade and a time for tea, and it will be a cold day in hell when you see them mixed in my home,” is a direct quote of his to the press. He then went on to tell the press that he will be releasing a line of drinks that will leave Mr. Palmer quaking in his golf cleats.

The world has yet to see any tea drinks bearing Mr Nicklaus' name, but his lemonades are a force to be reckoned with. Sure he sweetens them with high fructose corn sweetener, and many people take offense to that, but I believe it was the correct choice for these drinks. It makes them smoother and takes away some of the bite. With this particular version the lemonade perfectly accentuates the mango of the flavor. It seems more like a mangoade with lemon flavoring to it, than vice versa. The use of mango puree makes the flavor wonderful and authentic. Jack Nicklaus really has something going on here and his partnership with Arizona is truly a hole in one.

-Steve Brummerberg
Associated Press

Orange pop out of the gate is not on the top of my list. I've had decent ones but I've never had great ones. I've had one or two blood orange drinks that have been good but as a whole, orange pop, and most "fruit" pop should be limited to backyard barbecues. This though, this was not only the epitome of mediocre it was downright boring. Flat flavor and a rather candy-esque orange flavor all together. It actually was so non-impressive, it doesn't warrant any more of my time.

Congratulations, you my friend have found the golden ticket that entitles you to take a tour of the Wonka candy factory. I'd like to preface this by telling you that this is nothing like the movie. There is no river of chocolate, or crazy experimental gum that will make you float, and I must emphasize that you will not be put into the running to be handed the keys to the entire establishment at the end. Our factory is a factory and nothing else. It's just a bunch of big machinery that pumps out sugary goodness. There is a gift shop at the end where you can buy some of our goods as well. I would also like to add that this will be a long in-depth tour, as I like to explain every little thing in great detail. I am sick of the folks on my tour falling asleep, so here is a complimentary can of Red Bull. I must also urge you to not touch any of the candy as we move through the factory. The movie may have been fictitious, but the accidents it shows can and will be very real if you put your little hands where they don't belong.

Let us start off with the Pixie Stix machine. This machine powderizes the sugar and adds a little flavor...HEY! What are you doing?! Didn't I just tell you not to touch anything? Here you are dumping some of the flavoring extract for the blue Pixie Stix into your Red Bull. Oh great, the sugar caused it to fizz over and now there's a mess on the floor. Do you know how long it's been since we had an accident here at Wonka? Are you trying to ruin my streak? I don't care that it tastes like blueberry Red Bull now. No I really don't care! I am furious with you. Seriously I don't care. I can perfectly envision in my mind what concentrated blue Pixie Stix flavor and Red Bull would taste like together. I admit that it would taste nice, but my anger with you is complete and I will have to wait until after security has led to you to make some myself and sell the recipe to Red Bull. Oh think of it now the merging of two great companies. Mr. Wonka will be so pleased with me. Maybe he'll even hand the company over to me instead of some punk nosed kid. Oh yes I lied earlier; you were going to get the company. Instead you and your con artist of a grandfather can go back to living in squalor. How can a grown man pretend to be in pain and not walk for years and then just jump up and dance suddenly? I'm calling shenanigans!

I'd like to start off by saying I have zero idea where this drink came from. Editor Dan and I went on an adventure today to explore these gnarly caves. He wanted to take some photos while I just wanted to explore. At some point in our day Dan lost his keys. We retraced our steps and eventually found them at a grocery store (the most unexpected place). Towards the end of our search we were going crazy trying to figure out where they could be and I checked the car again after Dan did. I felt a can under my seat (note, my car is normally very clean with no trash). I thought it was an empty that must have rolled under there from when my ladyfriend and I drove to Virginia a few months ago and trash got thrown everywhere for a few days. When I pulled it out I realized it was full, and more startling that I have never set my eyes on this can before. I don't know how it got in my car, and I sat there puzzled for a moment before I cracked it open and started drinking it. I came to the conclusion that the drink gods were smiling on me for helping a friend to find his keys.

Apparently the drink gods appreciated that I helped out, but not enough to give me a great drink. What I got was on the lower end of mediocre. I've had guarana drinks before, so I knew what I was getting into. If you want to know, think of fruitier Kola Champagne. This particular brand had a general sweet soda taste that was followed by a fruity bubble gum aftertaste. It's not particularly my cup of tea, but I can see where it might appeal to some people. I wonder if I keep doing good deeds if the portal to the drink realm will open in my car again. It's gotta be good for something.

Cucumber, eh. I'll try it. Zero, eh. Alright. I don't hate Stevia and/or equivalents. Together at last? We'll see about that. After some scientific discovery, I have come up with the following conclusions. This starts off well. It's promising. It smells like cucumber and tastes like cucumber until...oh...there it is, the badness. It's overly sweet. Too sweet, even. It's that fake sweetener "too sweet" where it's sweet and cold at the same time.

Remember when you were in your freshman year of college and there was that adorable little girl that, for some reason, liked you? She was like five foot naught and somehow, without access to a legitimate kitchen, would make you cookies and cupcakes but out of the genuine sweetness of her heart and not because cupcakes are "cool" and a fad. She makes them because she wants to be noticed. She is truly sweet and was probably unfortunately taken by some dirtbag on the lacrosse team who just didn't treat her right. That simile is not like this drink. The simile to this drink is the girl you ended up with for six unfortunate days that loved light beer and was not shy to show a little too much skin and was a bit of a floozy. You knew that you made a mistake. She never made you sweets but she once bought you a cake that she got from a college party that somehow was still in one piece but had a ridiculous amount of the world's worst frosting ever one it. That's this drink. Frat cake. Too sweet. Promising on paper but just too much.

Buffalo used to have a chain of convenient stores called Wilson Farms. They weren't all that incredible, but they were a staple of Western New York. A year ago, 7-11 swooped in and bought the franchise and has converted them all into their homogenized storefronts (as best they could given the various building sizes). A legacy is gone, but now Buffalo has a lot more 24-hour stores, which is great.

I will admit, I did not buy this bottle here in Buffalo. It was actually purchased in a 7-11 in Salt Lake City. But I recently (as in yesterday) moved back to Buffalo and have more to say about 7-11 here than a random one I went into in SLC. I remember I bought this because I hadn't had orange soda in a while and had a craving for it. While this wasn't the best orange soda ever, it definitely satisfied my craving. I would put this in the middle range, where most generic orange sodas lie. They're good, but not amazing.

Sometimes you date a girl who lives across the country and you go visit every other month. Sometimes things don't work out and you end up splitting up right before you leave from a visit. Sometimes your flight gets delayed and you turn around and said person is standing there asking if you want to get food. On top of that sometimes pizza and great soda can mend the relationship (for a couple more months at least).

Portland, OR's Hot Lips is a diamond in the rough. Well, not a diamond in a sea of bad food, as that city has obscene amounts of awesome veggie food (Vita Cafè I'm looking in your direction). It's a special place because it is a place where you can get a decent slice of pizza on the west coast. For the most part I don't even tough pizza past Wisconsin and even that is really pushing it. Hot Lips was great for its pizza, but even better for it's soda. They take local fruit and add sparkling water and a little cane sugar. If you've ever read Tom Robbins' “Still Life With Woodpecker” you know that blackberries run rampant in those parts. This is so simple and so wonderful. It tastes light lightly sugared blackberries, because that is exactly what it is. Why anyone would mess with a recipe like this boggles my mind. Okay, I understand that they want to save money, but they end up with a product that is not even close to this in quality, those big dummies.

I was always under the impression that this soda was only available in Portland, but my ladyfriend (of three years, not the previous ladyfriend which I mentioned above) found it in a health food store in North Carolina. I really hope Hot Lips expands their reach and takes over the country with their quality soda.

On our great Canadian drink adventure about a month ago Mike and I came across theses sodas in a Shoppers Drug Mart. I called dibs as quickly as I could because it's a soda with pineapple and passion fruit in it. I'm pretty sure that if Mike would have tried to grab it for his own I would have drug him out to the parking lot and we would have had to put up our dukes. The idea of Mike and I in fisticuffs is absolutely absurd. I can't even envision it in my head without the visions of us putting our fists up like an olde timey movie and erupting in laughter. Luckily, it never came to that, as Mike knows my taste buds and gave it up happily.

You might ask yourself, if I was so excited to an extent that I would have been willing to pummel one of my dearest friends, why did it take me a month to drink it. The answer is simple. The night was the first night of a tour I was on and Mike and my ladyfriend brought the drinks I purchased back home for me. This bottle was lost in the shuffle and it just resurfaced. What a glorious day it was.

All of my expectations of this drink were not only met, but they were surpassed. It's sparkling water, fruit juice and nothing else. The folks at Nativa were smart enough not to gunk up the mix by adding sugar. It tastes like some one blended up some pineapple and passion fruit, squeezed in a spritz of mango and strained out all the bits. Then they poured the remains into some sparkling water. The fruit itself is sweet enough to overcome any potential seltzer flavor. It's the perfect fruity soda. I've never had one that was better.

It turns out that this is the beverage version of an M Night Shyamalon movie. It turns out the soda has been dead the whole time. Wait, that's not right. It turns out that this wasn't made by some specialty soda company. Nativa is actually the Shoppers Drug Marts' store brand. Now that is true magic.

Fuze went a bit overboard and tried to mix ten million flavors together, and by ten million I mean six. There is a lot of text in this ingredients list and since most of it is fruit juice concentrate one would think that this would be a decent drink. Then you look at a different spot on the label and realize that there is only 5% juice in here. That's a lot of different juices to use to make a drink that is 95% other junk. It shows in the flavor too. It tastes thin and cheap. It tastes like generic fruit drink. These are not things that I look for in a beverage. This could have been in a giant gallon jug at a gas station and I would not have batted an eye. Okay, I would have because it isn't as thick as those beverages, but you get the idea. Sorry Fuze, you have not won me over with this one.

The text, much like the whippets at the Gathering of the Juggalos, don't stop. Non-stop text on this can. You want some ingredients? What languages don't you speak? This can't got 'em all, son. That's just number one right off the bat. I'm not penalizing Hype for it, just pointing it out. Oh, see that can with all the text on it? Yeah, don't worry about reading it. It's an energy drink.

Taste: Not terrible. I like it more than Red Bull. It's an energy drink so you know the overall flavor. This has a bit more, dare I say, "fruit." They have an organic version that Jay reviewed that might allow fruit not to be in quotes. I went to lunch and came back and took another sip and it was pretty vile. I'm not penalizing them for that, either. It wasn't refrigerated so that was on me. That's a free poisoning from me to you, Hype.

Honestly, I didn't hate it. If hype men like Flava Flav, Dapwell from Das Racist, or Bushwick Bill pushed this drink on me, I would say, "Gentlemen. No need to yell. I'm on board. Stop drinking this energy drink and maybe sit down with some tea. You need to relax. No, Dap, that was not a pun on your group's fantastic major label release."

I worked at Fun Fun Fun Fest again this year and one of the big sponsors was Red Bull. Big as in you couldn't walk 5 feet without being handed a can of Red Bull. It was 80 degrees in Austin all weekend long so instead of hot coffee I drank cold Red Bull.

Just as I was getting sick of the taste of Red Bull, I came across this can in a cooler. It's as if they really wanted to keep to the "limited edition" of the flavor and only brought one can for every 10,000 because this was the first time I saw it all weekend. Regardless of it being new, I was excited for something different in taste.

And it's definitely different, in a great way. It's lemon lime flavored! It's not as if they poured 7UP into Red Bull, it tastes nothing like regular Red Bull and everything like a delicious lemon-lime soda. If this were a regular Red Bull flavor, people would buy this in stampedes and leave the old cans in the dust.

Blech. Oh you like sweet pop? Consider me your number one researcher because I have found some sugary stuff for you. This is cream soda but it is more sugar than cream. I've got two sips invested into this guy so far and I can just hear the blood rushing towards the loins of dentists due to the amount of sweetness just degrading my poor teeth. Otherwise unaroused, middle aged men who secretly but not-so secretly love their quasi-attractive, semi-overweight receptionists and not-so secretly hate their wildy attractive wives just losing their mind at the thought of tending to my dental work due to the unfortunate run in with this pop. Dentists who expensive cars they hate but drive regardless because of the looks they get from girls. Dentists who have personalized license places that say things like "N1CETEEF" and " NYDENT15T" and "BR4CE584." They all want me.

I stopped by Aldi today to pick up some more bottles of that Pumpkin Cider before the season ended, and they were gone. Bummer. I did find this iced coffee while I was there. I recently read a handful of books that take place in New Orleans, so the French name Beaumont stuck out to me. I was hoping that this was a product from Louisiana so that it would have chicory in it. I've never had it in coffee, but the way everyone I know who was tried it has talked about it that coffee seems like something I need try it. Unfortunately Beaumont is just a name and this is made in Illinois.

I may have been left with a chicory free coffee, but what I did have in front of me was one that was nicely flavored with Dutch cocoa. Let it be known that anyone who is a serious coffee drinker would probably think this was gross, but I liked it. Sure it had way too much milk in it and was overly sweetened, but when you're not 100% on board with coffee it's a nice gateway. The cocoa also gave it a nice chocolate taste, which didn't hurt. The more I drank, the more I realized exactly how much milk was in this, and I would say “Hey Beaumont, cut it out with the dairy!”