Charlie, why do you drink pop all the time? You know that the giant things of tea I make are communal, right? You didn't? Tea is like free. I know we're broke, but tea is my eternal gift to you. I don't even care if you finish it. I enjoy making it, I enjoy drinking it, I would enjoy if you enjoyed it instead of that grocery store cola you're always slamming. I put lemons in it, yes. I don't expect you to cut up lemons like I do if you make it but it's a nice little treat to have a lemon tea. Oh, you need more in there? Well let's spruce it up a little bit. What have we got in the cupboard here. Oh, awesome, mint leaves. I don't know when else I would use these. Let's put these in here, go get something to eat, come back and drink some tea.

A LITTLE BIT LATER...

You know what, Charlie? I don't care what anyone says about McNugget's. I love them and they've always been delicious. Let's get that glass of tea, right? It's pretty good. A little hint of mint and not at all toothpasty. The lemon just kind of adds to the flavor but it's all good. I'm going to have to do this with the mint more often. Thanks, Charlie, for your inspirational recipe additions. Now I know why I keep you around. What? It was a joke. I don't care that you hang around the house all day playing my Xbox, as long as you make rent and bills, you can do whatever you want. We're young. Now is the time to do this. Give me more of that tea. We've got video games to play!

Don't fear the chia. Embrace the chia. It's good for you. According to the label it's good for hydration, endurance, heart health, brainpower, and fun. The last is one of the most important ones because one bottle is not going to do much for the other ones. Having people try a drink with chunks in it is fun, I should know. I do it all the time.

If you don't know, no, you can't taste the seeds if you're just drinking it. If your mulling the drink around, you can taste it a little, but they're so small and slimy that it just makes the drink taste a little thicker. It's not at all gross, but it's enough to scare people away. Wimps.

It's not all good, though. This is "lemony," which is the point. Like if I squirted a lemon in your mouth flavor, not candied lemon. I didn't get a whole lot of blueberry, which is the "B Meyer" part of the flavor, whatever that is from. Even though it's not the number one sweetener, this drink has Stevia in it and, as Jay mentioned earlier, it's getting old. It's kind of overpowering because it mixes with the lemon leaving you with a kind of undesirable sour-tartness.

I do look forward to the other flavors. I just think that the lemon flavor melds poorly with everything else that's happening in this bottle.

Black. The first and greatest thing that I thought of was this clip from Don't Be A Menace with the late, great Bernie Mac. I poured this into a class so someone could drink it and it was pitch black. It's iced coffee and it has sugar in it but sugar was no match for the darkness of the coffee. No match. It's a no-joke, black coffee with sugar in it. According to the expiration on the bottom of the can, it also expired almost two years back. Honestly, I think that this coffee can beat things like estimated expiration dates. I think this coffee could beat nuclear war, poison, the common cold, and SAT prep tests. Black and strong like women like their men and men like their women. Black and strong like Bernie Mac. Vietnam makes a strong coffee, man. If you like it, like this, this is for you without a doubt.

A high quality tea is not hard to make but rather hard to come by. It seems this day everyone is a wimp and a half. The teas that are readily available are pretty mediocre at best and the good stuff, the top shelf iced teas, are few and far between. The difference between the two is typically that the high quality teas use less and real sugar and have a bit of complexity to them. I don't know what the general public is scared of. Adult flavors? Dude, if you put a can of Brisk next to a bottle of this, or any Argo tea, you would never drink that swill again. I mean it. That tea stings and no tea is supposed to sting. High fructose, overly sweetened garbage. I'm not saying that only Brisk is and sometimes Brisk is good but as far as "good" iced tea is concerned, anything in a can should stay in the can.

This tea is bold and bitter. It's a red tea so it's not as smooth as a black tea and actually tastes a little bit like a mate. The pomegranate is a nice, fruity taste that is with you the whole time but is no overshadowed or overshadowing. It's the well-behaved dog that we all want that knows what "heel" means. Red tea and pomegranate; neck and neck the whole time. No bad aftertaste and just a whole lot of loud flavor. There are four ingredients in this tea, too. It couldn't be simpler: water, red tea, cane sugar, and pomegranate juice. That's all it takes. That's all it takes to shelve literally dozens of gross teas to never be drank again.

Argo is not setting out to destroy the competition, but they could easily do it if they used cheaper bottles and lowered their price. The great bottles house great tea and they know it. It also sets them apart so keep those bottles. You're modest, Argo and you deserve it.

Poor Teddy used to love his root beer. Everyday after herding cattle, he would come back to his modest house and sit in his favorite chair and enjoy a nice tall bottle of root beer. Then one day the doctor told him he couldn't have any more sugar. Teddy was obviously very sad. Suddenly his life wasn't as great as it used to be without his daily root beer.

That's when he decided to make his own root beer with a new "fake" sugar called sucralose. People were skeptical at first, but once they had a sip they were sold. Sure it wasn't as sweet as real sugar, but it was a great substitute for those who can't consume sugar but still want the delicious taste of root beer.

I have never seen X Factor. I know what it's about. Do I need to watch that to review this? I hope not. I don't hate Simon Cowell. I think that his role in television in unnecessary because the people who aren't good enough to be on television shouldn't be on television. I think, yes, he tells people what they need to hear but his role was created to solve a problem that didn't exist. That man is a heck of a driver, though, brother. Skills. He's good. So, for the wheelman Mr. Cowell, I will review your drink.

Simon, this is a nice drink. It's the first I've seen a major corporation utilize such a unique product as dragonfruit. I couldn't drink this entire bottle because I enjoy my teeth, current weight, and don't have dental insurance to fix them. I know you always sit on television with the world's largest glasses of pop but you and I both know that it's not pop in there all the time and that it's merely an advertising piece. You are a true Englishman and are probably drinking tea. It's in your blood. That's not to say that you can't drink pop, but your body craves a nice Earl Gray. That's not me creepily telling you that "I know what you want, Simon." but it's just a broad, blanket assumption.

Simon, I don't know what role you played in the planning of this drink but you didn't a good job and should take credit for it if you did. It's better than lemon Pepsi was. Vanilla was pretty good but this is a completely separate animal as far as I am concerned. This is Pepsi with a fruity taste. I'm going to get in trouble for saying that it's good because companies that more properly utilize dragonfruit are very passionate about it and get upset when companies much smaller and less influential misuse their precious, favorite fruit. They've got their own market and you've got yours. "You" in that previous sentence was you, Mr. Cowell and Pepsi.

I hope/trust you have a good season on the X Factor this year. I hope that it allows you to buy wonderful new cars. That's sincere, from one gear head to another.

Is this what honeybell oranges taste like? Really? Do people want this? They do? Well, jeez. I don't know what to say other than your opinions on "good tasting" fruit is terrible. This tastes like orange flavored powder mix sweetened by an overly sweetened massacre of Stevia's crappy, younger brother Xylitol. The time I spent with orange flavoring was promptly annihilated by the time I spent with a strange, overly sweet drink.

I don't know if I could correct this. Half the sweetness? Twice the tea? That might make a taller bottle. I think less sweetness could have saved this. It's not that I don't appreciate the fact that I've never had a honeybell orange before because I do, but this is no honeybell orange. Believe you me.

This is an energy drink that is put out/sponsored by NASCAR driver Robby Gordon. Is that even close to a good idea? I feel like driving in a circle at high speeds requires intense concentration. All of the garbage in energy drinks tends to make people jittery or jumpy, at least I know that's how I get. This doesn't seem to be a specially formulated drink that helps with concentration like NERD (aka the steroids of NASCAR). It's the opposite actually. This was the cheapest energy drink the gas station had, and I was expecting the taste to reflect the cost. I was happily wrong and this has a decent citrus taste. It's reminiscent of the Monster Khaos drink, except this one has no actual juice in it. It has a flavor that I would describe as orange drink and tangerine drink mixed together, but not as thick. There's something about citrus flavor in energy drinks that helps to block out the chemical flavor in them. I'm very surprised that I liked this as much as I did, and I would drink it again if I found myself in a gas station needing a pick-me-up. Let's just hope the number of crashes in NASCAR isn't proportionate to the spike of energy drink use. I know the crashes are probably the only exciting thing about a race, but there are real people in those cars and I don't want to see anyone getting seriously hurt.

I've had this drink spilled on me and I've spilled this drink. I handed it off to my girlfriend to try and she thought that handing it to me at mach 3 with the lid off was a good idea. That was how it was spilled on me. I spilled it on myself because I over chugged. I didn't know what my mouth limit was and just kept chugging until I overflowed. That's a good thing for good ol' Rob. I simply couldn't get enough and threw limits out the window like an unwanted apple core. That is the only littering I do is apple cores. You will never see me throw as much as a crumpled gum wrapper out of the winder of my car. Yeah, this is the only planet we have, for now at least, but more importantly is that I'm not a scumbag.

Anyhow, this drink is good: a little tart, as advertised, and a solid juice throughout. It's quite laden with that Stevia taste that I like and if you do, too, you'll be down with this drink. If I hadn't just brushed my teeth, I would have slammed the rest of that leaving my face, torso, and floor beneath me all sticky.

I think I've reached my limit with stevia. I know it's healthier because it's a zero calorie sweetener and it tastes much better than the dreaded aspartame and sucralose, but I feel like it's in 80% of the new drinks that have come out this year. I'm just getting sick of it.

I really wish I could try this drink with real sugar. I think I would absolutely love it. A lightly passionfruit flavored water drink with some vitamins added to it sounds great. Unfortunately the stevia cuts through a little too much. I've heard that stevia helps bring out the natural flavors in a drink, but to me it has a very specific flavor that can combat the actual flavor of the drink a bit too much for my liking. The aftertaste of this is too stevia for me. The entire passionfruit flavor is lost after you swallow. It's unfortunate. Minus the stevia this is a great drink. I would truly enjoy this other than that.

You've slurped down a bunch of packets of “Prime” Gatorade to get you pumped for the big game. You downed gallons of “Perform” on your breaks from the big plays to keep you going. It certainly was a big day all around. You're sports team scored big points and made big moves. Now it's time for the big celebration, but you want to take big precautions to ensure that you aren't big-time sore tomorrow. Now is the time to drink some “Recover' Gatorade.

The base of this is your general berry Gatorade flavor. Added to that is the weird thick/semi chalkiness of whey protein to help your muscles recover. It's thicker than the Perform line, but not as thick as the Prime. It's sweetened with sucralose, but it doesn't have an overly diet taste. It's not something I can't see anyone drinking this for enjoyment. It's a functional beverage and it tastes such in a big way.

Every couple of days when I finish up printing t-shirts I find a nice package waiting in my front hall for me. The drink companies of the United States have been very kind to us and we whole-heartedly appreciate it. Today was one such day and as it turns out there were two boxes waiting (This and one from Mountain Dew). Normally I'll bring the boxes inside, put them on the table and get cleaned up/make some food. After I'm all settled in and fed I'll see what gifts came in the post. I'll open them up, take some pictures and then put them in my “to-drink” pile. I'll usually get to them within a week, but I have such a backlog of things to review that occasionally it takes a bit longer. Today was a very different day. I saw that the box said perishable so I opened it as soon as I got inside. When I saw that what the box contained was hibiscus tea I was stoked. We had gotten an email about this drink and I knew that it also had ginger in it; I started salivating. It was in a cooler, and the drinks were still very cold, so I quickly took some pictures and opened one up before my camera could even save the file to it's memory card.

As soon as I took a sip I was filled with a deep sadness that could very well lead to a dark depression. You see this drink is so ridiculously good that knowing that I have so little of it, and that my willpower is weak, that it will soon be gone from my life. You see I can't get this drink around me. It's made in Georgia, and I believe it's only available in that self same state.

It's a fairly sweet tea that has the faint hint of floral hibiscus. Mike and I have argued over whether we love hibiscus or not. I kept telling him that in fact we were not we just had one hibiscus drink that blew our socks off and the rest were merely mediocre. I hereby take back everything I said. This drink showed me that when prepared properly hibiscus could be a gift given by the gods. You know what another one of their gifts was? That's right, ginger. I love ginger. I can't get enough. Mixed in with this already wonderful tea and I'm in heaven. This is real ginger, so it has the faintest of burns and the greatest of flavors. Throw in a few other spices and it's almost more than I can handle.

This drink is absolutely perfect. I just mapped it out and it would take me 14.5 hours to drive to Florida. If I leave now I can get there around 9am tomorrow. I also have two bottles left to give me a fix along the way. I may have to rent a Uhaul because I don't think I can fit as much as I would need in my tiny hatchback.

Flavored cream sodas have become my new favorite sub genre of drinks. If you think about it, you can add almost anything to cream soda. I wonder what a cola cream soda would be like? This is my first strawberry cream soda and I must say, I'm sold! This soda is delicious, and I'm not usually a fan of strawberry flavored drinks. It's the perfect mixture of fruity and creamy. I see that Lost Trail makes a root beer too. If it's half as good as this, we are in for a treat. I found this lone bottle in a Whole Foods in Utah so hopefully we can find it available somewhere in Buffalo.

Here's what I want you to do. Put me in a room and take all my clothes off. No, this is not a sexual thing. Now put a clean white shirt and a clean white pair of pants on me. Now put a pair of goggles on me. Now fill T-Shirt cannons with de-pitted cherries and an assortment of berries. Take aim and fire. That is a literal "cherry berry blast." It's fun. It's messy. It's unsuspecting. This drink, though, has a lot of the fun taken out of it. Allow me to explain.

This drink is not bad but it's too flat. It has a good berry flavor but not a real strong cherry flavor and almost no bite. If I have to judge by way of percentage, I would say that there is 9% bite in this drink. I don't get the sense that this was ever derived from real fruit. The main ingredients, as with most juices, is apple and grape juice. It's juices way of watering down juice. That's fine, but it really just tastes like berry flavoring more than anywhere in the creation of this drink did it ever encounter real fruit. It's simple. Kids will love it. Idiot adults will love it. People who care about fruit or want something a bit more natural will think this is boring. I didn't even say "organic," just natural. Corn syrup and artificial flavors could do anything poorly. It's a recipe for mediocrity.

I've always had a great dislike of Powerade. No, that's not right. I have always had a great disinterest in Powerade. When it first hit the market in Western New York I was in high school and I remember getting one and thinking that it tasted like Gatorade, with even less flavor. Back then there weren't many varieties of Gatorade and I wasn't a huge fan of it to begin with, as it lacked in bursting flavor that my teenage taste buds craved. I curbed that craving by making my own iced tea at home with a mix and about seven times the recommended amount of sugar. I should have a giant hole in my head where my teeth should be. Back to the point though, I had Powerade once, wasn't impressed and this may be the first time since then that I've had it. You know what? I was wrong. This tastes pretty much exactly like blue Gatorade. It's a watery berry drink with a bunch of sugar in it, but not enough to think that it's insanely sweetened. I can assure you that there is probably 1/20 the amount of sugar in this than what I put in my high school tea. God, I'm so disgusted with myself for that. Ugh. I'm lucky I don't have diabetes.

I'm sure the company is sick of references to gangsters when it comes to their products, but how could you not with a name like Capone, and they are based out of Chicago? I for one am a sucker for movies on the subject. There is something about Chicago in the 20's that is insanely alluring to me. The decade as a whole is fascinating to me. I blame that mostly on the writings of F. Scott Fitzgerald. You couple that with organized crime and you have a romance that I'd love to be a part of. In reality it would probably have been terrible to live in that time, but if my current self could visit there I would do it in a second. I would especially do it if I had access to the stash of soda in the Capone warehouses. If this is bottle I have is any indication of what the original was like, I would be in heaven.

At first this seems like a very general root beer. It tastes how most people would describe the flavor of root beer when asked. The more you mull it over though, the most flavors seep out onto your taste buds. This has one of the strongest caramel flavors I've ever tastes in a soda. It doesn't taste like you're pouring caramel ice cream topping in your mouth, but it is smooth and flavorful. It also has some spices in the mix. I'm not sure exactly what it is, but it works well with the caramel. The aftertaste is where the vanilla gets to shine and then the sun sets and you're finished with the bottle. That would be a sad time if I hadn't used a time machine to go back to the 20's and party down during prohibition.

For those of you who grew up Southern Ontario, or Western New York any time from 1888 until 1989 probably remembers Crystal Beach (I can't believe it was around for a hundred years). It was a great amusement park, which was basically Coney Island on Lake Erie. Growing up in the 80's, the 1980's, we hand a handful of amusement parks within an hour drive of us. My favorite was always Crystal Beach. It had great rides, but on top of that it also had a beach, which gave the park a completely different feel than Darien Lake, Fantasy Island and the other smaller parks. It always felt like I was traveling back in time, or stepping into a completely different world when I was there. We would always go early, hit up some rides, and then head to the beach for a few hours before finishing up the night with some more rides. The world famous roller coaster The Comet was always ridden as much as possible. Every trip to the park would be concluded by getting one of the fancy suckers they sold there and going on the “umbrella ride” that carried us in a cart over the park and over part of the beach. Once I was on that ride I knew my day of fun was over, but it was always a fitting end to a great day.

Now I've hated coconut since I was a kid. I just recently started to like coconut water, but I did and still do despise the candied and toasted coconut flavors. For some reason I really liked the pina colada suckers they had at the park. I don't know if I just got them because I thought I was being a rebellious kid getting a sucker named after an alcoholic drink or what. All I know is for some unknown reason these suckers got a pass from my hatred. When I took a sip of this beverage my first thought was “oh gross candied coconut.” Then a second later I realized it tasted exactly like those suckers, and I was okay with it. It has a watered down pineapple flavor that gets overpowered by coconut at the end. It tastes nothing like coconut water though. In reality it has the coconut flavor that I can't stand in most cases, but it brought me back to some great family outings from my childhood, and I can't hold a flavor I don't like against it.

Apple vanilla juice? Did I read that right? I had never heard of such a thing before I stumbled upon this in New Seasons. I'm trying to imagine what it might taste like but my mind is coming up blank so I'm just going to dive into the bottle.

It has a REALLY strong vanilla smell, just like someone was burning a new vanilla candle they bought from the mall. Not a cheap one from Sears, a "nicer" one from Yankee Candle or something. I don't know, I don't shop for candles. Upon first sip it does have a vanilla taste to it, but not as strong as the smell. It complements the apple juice really nice though. I'm into this. If this were what all apple juice tasted like, I would drink it all the time. It's a lot better than that Mott's crap.

I find it odd that "drink" is appended to the title of this drink. Is this drink not a tea of the black variety? There are like four ingredients. There are so few ingredients that I will list each and every one. And I read: Water, sugar, black tea, and barley. Done. End. It seems odd that they wouldn't just call it "Black tea with barley" or "Barley Black Tea" like Uni-President did with one of my favorite drinks.

How does this taste? Like cereal. Like if you ate Cheerios with water and drank the milk afterwards. It's not that bad. Perhaps a little too sweet for me, but it's not bad. I don't get a strong black tea taste as the barley cuts right through pretty strongly.

I also don't particularly understand the "The Noir" title of this. Is it a sub-title? Black Tea Drink The Black like people would know what it is. Code name? I don't think there is a line of "Black Tea Drink" drinks that there is a need for another one. This drink is an enigma filled with unanswered questions.

Rough day, man. You can feel it immediately and that's when it's the worst. It's not that bad when you kind of have a bad day and around the middle of it you say, "Man, today blows." but the kind where as soon as your feet touch the ground when you roll out of bed. Sleeping, wake up, foot, big toe touches the floor, immediate depression. It'll be over soon, but it's not getting any better, man. Ugh. It's terribly exhausting but it's all my fault. I messed up some stuff and am overwhelmed at work. It's all my fault and I'm losing time I don't have, so I'm just feeling pressure. That's why I needed a nice, lightly sweetened iced tea.

I don't have patience for something that has chunks or even has the slightest bit of potential to suck. Clean stuff. This drink was just what the doctor ordered. A little lemon, a little sweet, a little black tea. Wonderful. It's a real pick-me-up. 16 ounces of happiness during an otherwise dark and gloomy day. Jay gave this to me because he hates lemon for some reason. I don't know what's wrong with that kid. He might actually like this, which is a clever way of saying if you almost don't like lemon, you might like this. I like it. It's nice. I thank it. Thank you, Nature's Promise for picking me up during and otherwise bad day.