It's been sad times out on the old horse farm. You see horse thieves have come by and done what they do and now the farm is horseless. I know horse thieves in this day and age? It's a sad but true reality in the world that we live in. Without the ridiculous amounts of money that the owners pulled in from all of those 4H shows at county fairs, they don't know how they are going to make ends meet. The mortgage is due, the electricity is in fear of being shut off and everyone's bellies are rumbling. One would think that a farm would have some sort of food growing, but you would be wrong. The only edible things on the entire farm are the bins of oats that were once used to feed the horses before they were thieved in the night.

They have been staving off hunger with a steady diet of oatmeal, but Teddy decided to use the oats to add a little something-something to his beverage. To begin with his drink was really nothing more that water, stevia and some natural peach flavoring (aka the ruminants of a can of peaches that he has been stretching for weeks. He was getting no nutritional value out of the drink, so he pureed a bunch of oats and mixed them in for fiber. As we all know fiber is a very important thing when your life is on a farm.

The results of his experiment were shocking. He had expected it to be a thick drink, with chunks of oats in it, kind of like the milk at the end of a bowl of granola. Apparently the house had a super blender, because it was pure liquid; there was not a single chunk to be found. The oat flavor was to a minimum as well; perhaps it was because it had been drying out in the bins for so long. It really just tasted like peaches and stevia albeit lightly. There was a slight oat flavor that could have been turned up a little bit more. It would have been nice for it to taste a little bit like oatmeal. Even though it was not what he expected Teddy proclaimed it to be “Oatstanding!,” to which all of the rest of the farms hands just shook their head and continues to bale hay for the ghost of horses past.

I do believe the trickster has been at it again. He certainly must have come in the dead of night and drank my Odwalla orange juice and then replaced it with a lesser juice. That is the only conclusion I can come to since there is nothing spectacular about the contents of this bottle of juice. It's not bad, in fact it's on the higher side of average, but for the cost of it, and the power behind the brand I expected more. In fact I could buy a half-gallon of comparable orange juice for the same price.

When I go out and get one of these “special” juices from companies like Odwalla, Naked or Bolthouse I expect a little pizzazz. I know there are more, better companies, but these are the big names for people to have a point of reference. I expected this to taste like I was biting into a perfectly ripe orange on a warm summer morning. Instead it tastes like every other 100% juice orange juice. Give me more or give me death! Wait, I take it back, I would rather drink this instead of death, because like I said, it's pretty good, just not over the top good like I had wanted/expected.

All right fellas, it's time to make a batch of our mixed fruit juice. What do we have extra laying around? Okay, we have guavas and red guavas. Well that's not very eclectic. Sure I love guava as much as the next guy, but we already have these cans printed up and they say mixed fruit. If we just go with guava, even though it's two different types, we should really just call it guava juice. So, what else do we have? Tomatoes? Seriously Bonny? Tomatoes aren't a fruit; they are a gross vegetable! What do you mean they are a fruit not a vegetable? You know what I will Google it! Well, would you look at that, tomatoes are officially considered a fruit…€¦ who knew? You're all telling me that you knew they were considered fruit and not a vegetable? You're all a bunch of dirty liars, that's what you are. Anyway it looks like tomatoes are the only other fruit we have, so throw it in with the guavas.

Well that turned out much better than I thought. We may have gone overboard with the sweeteners, but I really didn't want this to taste like V8 at all, and we succeeded with that. People will never know that the other fruit involved is tomato, as no one ever reads ingredients anyways. Taste wise this ended up being a really thick guava juice. Actually, I would say it tastes like sugar water with guava juice mixed in. It's not the finest work that we have done here at Hey Song, but it could have turned out a lot worse with the ingredients we were left to manage with.

Sparkling waters are generally not my thing. The carbon dioxide in the bubbles does something to the flavor that does not work well with my palate. It just makes the water dry and I want to say bitter, even though I know that is not the right word.

Knowing what my body does and does not like I went into this expecting to drink a few sips and then discarding the rest. The actuality of it is that I ended up drinking the entire bottle and really enjoying it. This is not your normal sparkling water. It has a nice light black currant flavor that is a little more than a hint, but nothing close to overbearing. I've had flavored sparkling water before and it still always has that distinct flavor that I can't get down with. Since that flavor is very underplayed in this beverage I have to attribute it to the Buchu Oil. Of course you've never heard of it before, neither had I. It's an extract from a South African Herb that is packed with antioxidants. It works wonders.

For those of you out there like myself who's body craves carbonation to scratch their throat at times, and don't want all of the sugar from soda, yet have a distaste for seltzer and tonic waters, this is the solution you've been looking for.

Espresso. It's life super caffeinated coffee. Also, so that I may be the voice of all baristas, there is no "X" in "Espresso." Although it will allow you to go faster as in "express mode," it does not get its name from that. As a matter of fact, no one really knows the origin or definition of the word "Espresso." It was made up as soon as someone tasted the stuff. It was born from an accident, you know, like Silly Putty. Someone improperly trained worker at a coffee shop in the 1700's went to go make a coffee, put the ground up beans in, poured someone else a cup of coffee, forgot he had already put beans in, crammed more beans in, idiotically couldn't figure out why it was so hard to close the machine with the normal amount of ease, and made a double batch of coffee.

That drink, an incorrectly brewed cup of coffee, birthed the espresso and also birthed Master Cafe. You see, the worked, having sold a couple dozen cups of his new, super strong blend, declared himself "Master Cafe" because people wanted his drink. Eventually that worker moved on to leave the company and just make this coffee. He handed it down from generation to generation until today where it is the same blend just with more sugar. When you put coffee in cans, you put sugar on it. It's a rule. It is a stronger than coffee, coffee drink with enough sugar to make it so people that don't completely love the bitterness of coffee enjoy it.

I enjoyed this and I think it is a fine homage to that faithful although misinformed employee that simply forgot what he was doing and turned that mistake into an empire. Here's to another three centuries, Master Cafe.

I'm fairly certain there was a mix up with shipping at the plant where 989 is made. You see each week they normally get a shipment in of the oddly tasty Flintstone chewable children's vitamins. They then dump them into this gigantic electronic pestle and mortar that they have in the back and it turns them into a nice fine powder to which they add their personal blend of ionic minerals and electrolytes. From the smell/taste of this I think someone screwed up in the shipping department and ordered a bunch of old people vitamins instead. You know, the kind that always smells stale, and you don't want their taste on your tongue at all. Whoever accepted the shipment must have just shrugged and loaded them in anyways.

The rest of this line has ranged from acceptable to tasty, with very few real complaints from us. This grape unfortunately does not cut it. It smells like a mixture of white grape juice and Centrum. Actually that's pretty much how it tastes as well, except there is also a more than heaping serving of stevia in there as well, so you have a cooling adult vitamin flavor. It's not something that I can say I enjoy.

I would also like to point out that I was with a three year old when I drank this, and they were so completely excited about it. The twisting of the cap so that the vitamin powder mixed it elicited cheering and clapping. She could not get this drink to her lips fat enough to drink it down. Then as soon as mouth contact was made, she immediately stopped, handed the bottle back to me, whilst making a grossed out looking face and simply said, “I don't like that.” Even kids can tell there is something wrong here.

I saw a twelve pack of these at a barbecue I was at today and decided I would drink it to review it. I normally don't mix the two, social drinking and reviewing, but I couldn't possibly drink any more Arizona Sweet Tea. I had one glass and it was just one glass too much. I cracked it open and wanted to enjoy the ride but the only place it took me was right on down to the crappy gates of Dietburg, a town that, for reasons unbeknownst to me, is guarded by gates. I looked at the ingredients and there it was: the dreaded Aspartame.

I thought we were done with that one. This with a slew of other diet sweeteners both artificial and natural could have potentially saved this drink. I mean, cherry and grapefruit could have been a wonderful match but instead it tasted like cherry and tart diet generic citrus. Aspartame really took a dump all over this drink. Wegman's, I thought you were better than that. I was wrong. Now I know what a disappointed dad feels like twice today because my son threw a handful of rocks at another kid with simultaneously disobeying me as I cried out "Don't throw those rocks." Giant bags of sadness and disgusting drinks for all!

Seeing as Derek is vegan and Mike doesn't believe in strenuous activity I have become the de facto protein shake reviewer here at the offices of Thirsty Dudes. Of course by offices I mean my computer room in my apartment, Mike's desk at his day job and wherever it is what Derek does his writing. We live the glamorous lives of the beverage reviewer and there is no one that can take that away from us.

I got done with my work for the day early, but no one else was around, so I decided to go on a bike ride. I meant to just ride around for an hour or so, and maybe check out some neighborhoods that I've never been to around my house. That led to a much longer ride that took me over nearly 30 miles of road. Did I mention it was ridiculously hot and humid as well? I don't know if I have ever sweat so much in my life. I was literally able to ring sweat out of my clothes after I got home. After bringing my bike into the house I dragged myself to the kitchen and grabbed this out of the fridge, because of course what you want when you're ridiculously dehydrated and are so tired that you don't think you'll be able to move much more is a nice milkshake that has bananas in it aka the worst fruit ever.

The protein gods were shining down upon me as this is the first beverage that I have ever had that contains banana that didn't taste exactly like the grossest of all fruit. This has more of a creamy base with a nice strawberry flavor added to it. It's light in flavor, but for some reason the banana flavor is hardly there. I certainly wish it would have been just strawberry in flavor, but I can't complain about the minimum banana that I was presented with. It's also sweetened with stevia, so perhaps it was that natural zero calorie sweetener that hid the banana for me. It also didn't end up tasting very diet at all. This was actually down right enjoyable for a protein drink. I'm sure I would have liked it even more had I had more moisture in my body.

Of course as soon as I was done with this I downed a gigantic coconut water to rehydrate. It took about a half hour after that for my muscles to work again and then I was ready for new adventures.

I don't get it. I just don't get it. Arizona is a company that makes decent beverages. Sure, most of the time they taste a little cheap, but you know what you're getting into, and for the size to price ratio, it's great. They decided to move into the soda world, and did a nice job with their Lime Rickey line. Then they decided to make a variety of cream sodas that are endorsed by Shaq. They even used real sugar to sweeten them, which is rare for the company. Actually it's an all natural soda. All of these things pointed towards a truly enjoyable drinking experience. So, what went wrong?

I've tasted a plethora of cream sodas in my day, and I think this may be the first one I've ever met that I just couldn't finish. Of course this is a much larger quantity, but I couldn't even make it through a third of the can. That's less than 8oz. Like the blueberry variety I thought it tasted nice enough of the first few sips, but then I just couldn't handle any more. Also like the blueberry I blame the honey, which is strange because I love honey in pop. The problem with it is the aftertaste of the honey is almost as strong as the initial vanilla flavor. Maybe it's just that the vanilla flavor is too weak. If they increased the vanilla, the honey wouldn't stand out so much. It's also doesn't taste as sweet as cream soda normally does, which is strange because there is a decent amount of sugar in here (way more than one should ingest in one sitting).

This is a soda that had me excited, but in the end it just left me wanting more. Well, not wanting more of it, but wanting a better version of it. Shaq retired from basketball, and not perhaps it's time for him to retire from soda as well, after a very short time in the limelight.

I don't remember these ever being in stores. They were always just on sale at a "bargain basement" type place. I love those places. It's like the graveyard for forgotten drinks. Well some are forgotten, some are overstock, and some are plain gross.

I have also drunk three of these without reviewing them. Why? Because I had them and the timing wasn't right. No, the timing wasn't right. Yeah, I just quoted Big D and the Kids Table. Warped Tour is tomorrow and although I won't be there, they will and kids will (hopefully) enjoy them.

Sure, Warped Tour is what made me fall in love with Hansen's, I guarantee that this Arizona Tea Water would have been better for me. It's super low in calories and really, without exaggeration, just tastes like really watered down, sweet green tea. I found it refreshing and it had just enough flavor that it wasn't like I used an old cup of something and didn't have time to clean it out, an action that is pretty my speed.

All you kids have fun at Warped Tour this summer. It's going to be hot and everyone is going to be sweaty. Drink lots of water and have a good time. Also, you are running out of time to listen to the back catalog of Goldfinger, Reel Big Fish, The Aquabats, and The Ataris so you can successfully sing along.

I missed about five minutes of fireworks to make this? Why? Well the Keurig we have at work allows all sorts of sizes of cups. This makes it easy when it comes times to brew over ice. When you do not have adequate cup real estate, you have to improvise and I don't know if it was because it was late or I was too excited to see fireworks but it took me quite some time to come up with the rather obvious solution that I ended up with; brewing it not over ice and promptly pouring it over ice once brewed.

As far as lemon sweet tea goes, this is good if you don't expect a "Southern Style" sweet tea. Celestial Seasonings, makers of entry-level tea as far as I'm concerned, did an alright job with this. They didn't want to overshadow the drink with sugar so they didn't overload it. It's as simple as that. It's black tea with lemon lightly sweetened. It still has some bitterness and a decent lemon taste.

After all was said and done, I had a nice, tall glass of iced tea to enjoy while enjoying fireworks, something my two and a half year old could somehow care less about. I don't think he's human.

Juice cleanses are becoming more and more popular these days. An old roommate did one a few years ago where for four days he only ingested water and a mixture of lemon juice and cayenne pepper. I have never seen someone's complexion go down the tubes so fast in my life, but he said that afterwards he felt great. It's something that I've always wanted to try, but I fear that I wouldn't be able to stick with it. I am fairly weak willed when it comes to food, and when I get hungry I get extremely irritable. I suppose if I ever do decide to suck it up and do it, I should wait until my ladyfriend is out of town for some reason, or she may kill me for being an ass to her due to hunger.

BluePrint's juice cleanse has made it's way to Buffalo from Long Island, and the company was nice enough to send us some vouchers so we could review their products without paying the hefty fee.

While I'm not completely investing in a cleanse yet, I can say that I am truly enjoying these juices. Those of you who are used to drinking juices from concentrate, or beverages that call themselves juice, but are mostly sugar water may be in for a shock when you drink these. They are a whole new world, and the only way you're going to get fresher is if you juice the fruit yourself. The only ingredients in this bottle are what is listed in the flavor and a little water. You can make out every single ingredient if you hold it in your mouth and mull over the flavor. It has a nice earthy flavor from the beets, carrots and ginger that I could see turning off some people, but to me it's excellence. There are no sweeteners added to this but it still has 37g of sugar from the natural ingredients, so it is still nice and sweet.

Okay, I will admit it I absolutely love this juice. I wish that there were lower quality versions of it that were in larger containers, and less expensive. I know the company sells them for a very specific purpose, but it's a juice I would drink for the taste, not even taking the healthiness into consideration.

Once I start my juice cleanse, I'm sure everyone reading this will be able to tell, as within twelve house of starting I'm sure anything I write would be extremely negative, but then again I won't be drinking anything that I can review, unless it's other BluePrint products, so it will more than likely be radio silence from me.

My first thought when I saw this was “Dammit, why doesn't this exist in a non diet form?!” Seriously white cranberry-apple green tea? That just sounds like a wonderful treat. It is always the diet drinks that have the extravagant flavors though isn't it? They are probably trying to make up for the lack of calories, and more importantly the gross diet flavor.

I ended up taking this with me to a party, because I was assuming I wouldn't like it all that much, due to the sucralose, and it would help me to not down it all instantly. As you can probably guess, that didn't work out well for me. While this does have the sucralose undertones, it is played down by the other flavors. It's one of those drinks that you can tell is diet, but you still like it anyways. Arizona is not trying to trick you into thinking that this isn't a zero calorie beverage, they are just saying, “So what? It still tastes great doesn't it?”

Arizona was my gateway into green tea, but the thing is their green tea has a very specific taste that other companies' versions don't. I don't know if it's the excessive sweeteners or what, but they do it their own way, and it is enjoyable in its own way. So that is the sucralose-laden base here. Then, they added a soft cran-apple flavor to it. I say flavor, because there is no juice whatsoever in this bottle, but I can forgive them that. Before I knew what was happening I had polished off the bottle, and I was left wishing I had more. It was pouring out, so I was left to drink a lone bottle of Coke that was meant for mixer drinks. I planned that out poorly.

Nothing says "America" like green tea. Wait...that's not right. That's China. That's not America. What am I doing drinking this? I should be drinking something like an apple pie pop or a Coke. I'm outside with a handful of people wearing red, white, and blue and I just ate hot dogs and hamburgers. What's more patriotic than that? Not too much.

This tea is pretty good but that doesn't come without any caveats. It's listed as a green tea but tastes more like a white tea. I don't care and am not at all disappointed. The hibiscus, for the first time in a long time, tastes like what I wanted. It's "mostly" sweetened with sugar but there is some Reb-A in there that leaves you with a little bit of a bitter taste. Combined with the bitterness of the "green" tea, you get a good amount of bite.

If you don't like Reb-A, you might still not like this drink. If you are still cool with that guy, you should like it. It's got a nice flavor all around and is forty calories for the whole bottle. I wish I had another iced cold one right now. That would be America. Ice cold green tea with herbal essence in it; the flower, not the shampoo. That would be absolutely gross. That is not America.

Children of the 80's please enter the collective unconscious and conjure the image of Mr. Yuck. His disgusted looking face was once the sign to children of the United States that whatever was contained inside was most certainly poison and would more than likely kill you instantly, so you know…€¦stay away from it.

Like most energy shits, I am completely surprised when Senior Yuck isn't staring up at me from the label artwork. The harshness of this concentrated, fake fruit flavored, sucralose laden shot sure tastes like it should kill me on contact with my bloodstream, but that's the way the game is when you're dealing with energy shots. They are a beverage that are not meant to be ingested for their taste, simply for their long lasting effects. I can assure you that the effects certainly do what they claim, so at least it has that going for it.

Yesterday, after many months of looking, I got myself a spinning bike. I love riding bikes and in the time I can't go out and ride for one reason or another, I always wanted to ride in the privacy of my own house. I hauled that thing in the basement, put on a record, turned on the fan, and started pedaling away. I put in a good half hour before I started to get uncomfortable for I am not as fit as I once was. I watch what I eat but I still eat things I shouldn't, which brings us to today.

On this fitness thing, I've got to watch what I eat so I thought what better way to watch my caloric intake than to intake no calories? Queue Fruit Water. It's fruit punch and watermelon, sparkling, and zero calories. Win? Well, almost. Initially it tastes like a good gum but soon thereafter comes the rush of "the catch."

What catch? Well with anything diet, you're almost certain to get something disappointing. As the years go on, science is catching up and making good diet drinks. This one just went on it's own and did things the old fashioned way, with a terrible artificial sweetener. Sucralose is awful in every way, shape, and form. It kills a lot of otherwise good drinks. This initially had the promise of being good but, once again, sucralose killed it. Sucralose, you are the Hitler of artificial sweeteners.

Is it possible the Naked is trying to usher in a new industrial age? They have too many drinks with the word machine in their names for it to be a coincidence. Oh I get it, the owner of the company is a Steampunk of sorts, or should I call him a “Juicepunk?” That's right the CEO of Naked has a vision of a world where everyone dresses like they did during the first Industrial Revolution, except all of the contraptions and machines will be powered by juice. It seems a bit excessive to me, also not very cost effective. I mean steam is at least basically free.

In this utopian future there will be different grades of juices for different qualities of power, hence the different flavors/names of his current juice line. Since acai is known as a superfruit, I can only assume that this is the premium line. This is the kind of juice that will power your new flying Model T cars, not your dumb low class floating K cars.

Since the technology has yet to be created to allow us to power machines with juice, I will simply drink this right on up. I mean stockpiling it is pointless, as it would just spoil, and you certainly don't want to pour spoiled juice into your engine, or it will get all sorts of junked up. Acai is known as being a pretty intense fruit. It has a very specific taste that a lot of people dislike. It's almost like when a friend in high school bought a bottle of Hawiian Punch and started to chug it before he realized it was a concentrate. Naked has taken the power of the acai and mixed it with other fruits to mellow it out a bit. The result is a juice that still has a little tartness from the 178 acai berries involved, but overall everyone could enjoy this. It's a bit on the thick side, but I enjoy it that way. I mean it's billed as a smoothie, and that is how those beverages should be.

I somehow remember this being better. I don't know what it was. Is there a non-nonfat version of this? This taste like that and less chocolaty than I remember. It's not bad, but the entire time I was drinking this I was thinking that I could do it better at home. Look, that's the way it is with a lot of things. Let's be honest ourselves. Half the time we say that it's not true. You cannot cook intricate meals that you get out and you know it. You say it because it's either a rip-off or it tastes like something your mom made. You don't make stuff that good. Just be honest with yourself.

This is fine. It's chocolate milk. Chocolate milk is fantastic. Oh I know it's terrible for you and this is no different but it's still good. I just tasted like they were a little stingy on the quantity of syrup they put into this batch. I drank it with no qualms but I just want them to know that I hope that it was an honest mistake and someone behind the scenes isn't peering through Venetian blinds thinking to themselves, "I put in half as much syrup and I'm taking the rest of the money and I'm buying myself a boat." because if they are, I am already on to them.

If you told me this was a simple tea with lemon I would tell you that Herbal Mist did a great job with it. I mean it's sweeter than I normally like, but I can't deny that it tastes great. It has a nice tea taste and the lemon is the way that I like it, you know the way it doesn't taste like cleaner, but like real fruit.

All of that comes tumbling down when you add the words yerba mate into the mix. Yerba mate is wonderful, it's one of my favorite types of tea, but like all of the flavors in their line, the tea doesn't taste like mate at all. It tastes like black tea with a little something extra in it. It doesn't taste earthy or like the woods though, and that is what I love about yerba mate when it is done correctly.

This is the last flavor we had to review and I will leave you with these parting words Herbal Mist: Keep the mate in the mix, but don't advertise it so boldly. As of now you're not following up with what you promised, but if I went into these teas thinking they were normal tea I would be pleasantly surprised. It's all about meeting expectations, and you need to aim a bit lower.

If you are like us here at Thirsty Dudes you have probably drunk some pink lemonade, looked at the ingredients and said to yourself, “Wait, there is no berry juice in here, why is it pink? What makes pink lemonade pink?” Fear not, we have done the 30 seconds of research for you and here are our results.

First off, a lot of companies do use strawberries or raspberries to tint, and flavor their lemonade. That makes perfect sense. It's what I always expected to be the construct of pink lemonade. Over at the Huffington Post website they had an article about the origins of this delicious summer treat. Instead of paraphrasing, here is the exact text:

According to Josh Chetwynd, author of the book, "How the Hot Dog Found Its Bun," there are two main claims to the title of pink-lemonade inventor -- and neither of them sound very thirst-quenching. The first attributes this beverage to a salesman, by the name of Pete Conklin, who sold concessions at the circus. When working a shift in 1857, he ran out of water to make his lemonade (with no access to a nearby well or spring).
Rather than lose out on business, "Pete sprinted into the dressing tent and came across Fannie Jamieson, one of the show's bareback riders. She had just cleaned her pink tights in a vat of water, leaving the liquid looking a deep pink hue." He used the water without a second thought, and sold it as "fine strawberry lemonade." It's reported that he "did double the business of ordinary refreshment and, allegedly, ushered in a new style of the drink."
The second claim to pink-lemonade fame is also a result of a lemonade mishap. According to a 1912 New York Times article, Henry E. Allott -- a circus promoter, saloon-keeper and gambler -- was the originator of this drink. "One day while mixing a tub full of the orthodox yellow kind he dropped some red cinnamon candies in by mistake,” the newspaper wrote. “The resulting rose-tinted mixture sold so surprisingly well that he continued to dispense his chance discovery.” This article, written after Allott had passed away, claims that he invented this drink as a teenager, which would date it to roughly 1872-1873 -- 20 years after Conklin's story.

The first of those sounds absolutely terrible. The second has me intrigued. Those cinnamon candies have a very specific taste that isn't exactly like the spice, but it would go amazing with lemonade. Someone please point me in the direction of a company that makes their lemonade like that, or I'm going to have to try and make some myself.

I'm guessing that modern day companies, don't really use either way, and simply settle for food coloring, if they aren't adding fruit juice. That lemonade is a cop out if you ask me. All flash, no substance. Luckily, Snapple went with fruit juice, mostly for color, but it has a bit of flavor to it. A blind taste test proved this. The testy (get your mind out of your pants) could tell that this was not normal yellow lemonade. It's has a nice sweet, refreshing berry flavor that compliments the tartness of the lemon. For a prepackaged lemonade, that you can find in any city across the US, you could do a whole lot worse than this.