The beverage world is clamoring trying to make a healthier soda for the consumers who think that they are too good for diet drinks, who are sexist and think that diet drinks are only for girls, and more than likely those who just think diet drinks taste gross. I myself fall in the last category. I just can't get down with normal zero calorie sweeteners. Sometime I find a stevia sweetened drink refreshing, but even that gets old fast. Dr Pepper Snapple has found a middle ground. They use three sweeteners: aspartame, acesulfame potassium, and high fructose corn syrup that result in a drink with only 10 calories and only 2g of sugar that doesn't have a very strong diet taste to it. I don't understand how they worked it out that HFCS is the second ingredient and kept the sugar amount so low. I can only assume that there are especially low amounts of the other ingredients as well, but it still has a strong flavor. It doesn't just taste like soda water.

This tastes surprising like the real deal Canada Dry. It's by no means a top of the line ginger ale, but it still somewhat tastes like real ginger, which they brag about on the label. You could hold this in your mouth all day long and it wouldn't taste diet one bit. The thing is that once you swallow, you get a bit of the diet in the aftertaste as you take a breath. It's a huge step up from normal diet drinks, but the world has a long way to go before they develop a diet soda that I would drink on the regular.

Mike Thirsty Dude (or should it be Thirsty Dude Mike?) called me last night pleading with me to review this. Okay, maybe it was actually just asking me nicely. Mike was under the impression that this was going to be a coffee soda, but in actuality it's just cold pressed coffee. He admitted that he likes coffee drinks, but not straight coffee so knowing that I love coffee he thought it was best that I take a shot at this.

While I normally drink my coffee with a little soy/almond/rice/coconut milk and sugar, I know good coffee when I taste it. I lived in Portland for almost 3 years where it's mandatory that you fall in love with Stumptown Coffee. While normally I would add the aforementioned things into this, for science I will drink it without.

The awesome thing about cold brew coffee is that you get a richer coffee flavor from the beans. Because the beans are never subjected to hot water, it has a much lower acidity in the taste. Anyone who has had gas station coffee that's been sitting out for hours knows that taste. It's super easy to cold brew at home, especially if you have a french press. All you do is course grind the beans, put them in a mason jar and fill it with cold water. Mix it well and put the lid on it. Then place the jar in the fridge for 12 hours, take it out and press the coffee in the french press. Now this is coffee concentrate, so you can add milk or water to taste to dilute it. Or if you love REALLY strong coffee, you can just drink it straight.

Now back to La Colombe. I haven't had many bottled cold brew coffees before, but what I have had been nothing short of awesome. This was no exception and they definitely give cold brew/pressed coffee a good name. It has a really awesome and complex rich taste. Since I don't normally drink black coffee, this is a sipping coffee for me (much like espresso) and it's a great way to savor the flavor. (Note, that rhyme I just wrote was 100% unintentional and I'm kind of embarrassed by it but decided to leave it in for some unknown reason, then write this big long unnecessary apology that brings more attention to it).

Honey, why is all my stuff on the front yard? What?!? I would never try and poison you. Where is this coming from? What do you mean we're breaking up? We were looking at houses yesterday. I don't get it. Please! Slow down and tell me what's going on here. I see that my favorite fish vase is broken so you must mean business because you know how much that means to me. No, I promise you, my love, I didn't not try to poison you. Spider eggs? Where? In the drink? No, those weren't spider eggs. They were chia seeds. I saw that drink at the market and though you would like it. It's supposed to be good for you and I know how much you like blackberries. Didn't you read the ingredients? You just assumed that it was spider eggs and I was trying to kill you? No, that's crazy talk, baby. Do you have the bottle? It's in the garbage? Hold on a second. I'll get it.

Alright, right here, read this. It's chia seeds. It's chocked full of good stuff that is good for you. I thought you would appreciate it. It's low in calories and actually tastes good. It's lightly sweetened with a pretty good blackberry flavor and you get a nice lime aftertaste. Yes, you can taste the Stevia in the aftertaste, too, but it's hardly a make or break. It's just kind of reminding you that it's in there helping a sister out. Honey. Please. We've been through so much together. I can't believe you thought I would try to serve you spider eggs. I can't believe you thought that I thought that I would get away with it. Maybe we should break up. The trust level just isn't where I feel comfortable. Thanks for getting all my stuff out of the house. This actually makes it easier. That backfired on your part, didn't it? Nice knowing you sweetheart. I'll take that bottle of Chia Star since you're clearly not going to drink it.

Snapple was one of the first “big” companies to make the switch back to real sugar from high fructose corn syrup. I for one was a happy camper. As you may know if you are one of the three people who actively read this website, that aren't me (I'm looking at you Mike and Neuland), HFCS destroys my stomach if I drink more than one bottle of something with it in it within a week. Snapple was a savior for me on the road. It some something that I knew would be in every rest stop and gas station. It allowed me to mix things up from water and straight up apple and orange juice. At that point there were maybe only 4 or 5 flavors in their “All Natural” line, but since then they've been cranking them out. In an age when there is a decent selection of non-corn sweetened beverages regularly available I started taking them for granted. Trying this drink I realize I'm an idiot. This is pretty darn good. Sure it's sweet as all hell, but sometimes you get “the tooth” and you need to serve it as your master. Would this be better with less sugar? Of course it would, what juice wouldn't be?

The weird thing about this is that pear juice is one of the main ingredients, above any other juice. Now, a lot of companies use apple juice to stretch the juices they use, but I've never run across a company using pears for that self same thing. It's one of those things that you would never taste if you didn't know, but once the knowledge enters your mind grapes you can taste it. Luckily the peach flavor overpowers any other flavor, with raspberry riding shotgun. The pear juice is nice and tied up in the trunk where unsuspecting people would have no idea…€¦just where pears belong.

The essence of Hawaii has been captured and is now available in can form. From my brief stay there I believe I have gathered enough information to make the scientific assumption that it is impossible to be stressed out there. Everything about the island that I was on was just peaceful and beautiful. Lanilai wants to share that inner tranquility with you, the mainlanders, so you can know their joy.

Unlike many relaxation drinks, this is not meant to be a sleep aid. It is simply there to help you “relax, refocus and rejuvenate.” Basically it just calms you down so you can enjoy the little things that are going on around you. It is also non-carbonated, which is nice because harsh bubbles don't really scream relaxation to me, yet a lot of these types of drinks use them. It's something I will never understand and at this point I don't care, because I'm just chill.

The flavor is a mixture of purple muscadine grapes, peaches, mangos and herbal passion flower. I tastes quite sweet and tropical, the way you would expect an island non-adventure to. The peach flavor really stands out the most, but you can detect the other flavors as well. My only complaint is that they used stevia alongside evaporated cane juice, and it left a slightly distracting taste. I don't think they needed to add another sweetener, the amount of cane juice in here would have been just fine.

You could do hours of yoga to relax, or you could be lazy and drink one of these. Guess which one I chose.

If I know anything about the Greek alphabet, which in actuality is very little, then this is the end drink. The drink that will either bring about the end of humanity, or else it will be the only drink that survives the impending apocalypse. Hopefully it's the second option, because besides the fact that it has a very nice light berry flavor, it also has a lot of health benefits that would prove to be beneficial in an end of the world type scenario. It's chock full of omega 3, fiber, calcium and antioxidants, and we all know that the lack of antioxidants is what is going to bring on the decimation of our planet.

This is the first chia drink I have tried that does not have whole chia seeds in it. This is nothing but liquid, so I've you're concerned about chunks or texture, this won't be an issue for you. It also has salvia in it. I think you have to smoke it for it to have hallucinatory effects, so don't go wasting the world's last source of fluid trying to get high. It just won't work kids, and then you'll dehydrate and die…€¦a dried out husk.

The scientific community has been shocked that the great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandson of Ben Franklin strived to do for most of his life; capture the energy in a bolt of lightning in a can for human consumption. It was not widely publicized in the day that those were his true intentions with all his experiments and inventions, due to the fact that not that much time had passed since the Salem witch trials and no one wants to be drowned or crushed by a ton of rocks. Our Founding Father never succeeded in his quest, but each generation of his lineage has since added to his work. It wasn't until Stevie Franklin reached a 100% achievements in Skyrim, took a gigantic rip from his 4-foot bong and took a cursory look at his ancestor's work that everything fell into place. Being the consummate stoner, Stevie knew how to make any household items into a smoking device and he took that knowledge, skewed it a bit and by the next thunderstorm he had a can of lightning.

Most people have no idea that lighting is really made up of glucuronolactone, ribose, inositol, potassium citrate, caffeine and a whole mess of B vitamins. In its liquid form it can provide an individual with great amounts of energy that Stevie hopes to use in order to crush teenagers in Halo. Lightning has a strange chemical taste that is like most energy drinks, in a way that is similar, but with a berry flavor all it's own. The only thing is that it tends to be a bit tart. Stevie added 23g of corn sweeteners to combat that problem, but it still has that tartness to it.

This is a scientific breakthrough that could change the entire world, but in true form of his ganja freak friends, Stevie doesn't mind if others use his work, but he's just too lazy to write any of it down for them.

I have had these drinks where you turn the cap one way and magic comes out and then you turn it the other way and the cap comes off. I like them. They are fun. Until now the color of the dust that comes out is the color that you would expect. Strawberry drink? Red or pink dust. Lemon lime drink? Green dust. I turned this expecting a dust and was given a dark brown liquid. I'm not saying it was gross but it was unexpected. You know when you're at home and sometimes you turn on the water and the water is a little yellow and you have to let it run for a bit to clear itself out? It's like that except this won't poison you like old pipes might. The nice thing about the liquid is that you barely have to shake it. I know there are a couple Elaine Benes' out there that hate shaking things so I feel the need to point it out. Give it one quick jiggle and you're done for the rest of your life. The taste is a little different than I expected, though. If you sold this to me as an apple juice, I might say, this is a pretty fruity apple juice. It's the same color as apple juice and tastes a bit like apple juice. The more you drink it the more convinced you are that it is kiwi strawberry. It's hard to say if this tastes like "real" kiwis and strawberries or if it's something with the aftertaste of the Stevia leaving it with a bitterness that I actually like. This drink is a regular enigma. I like it. Keep it up, 989.


EDIT:
We got this note from the company, so that explains the color:
"I just want to explain the reasoning behind the coloring on Kiwi Strawberry. Out of all of our flavor, Kiwi Strawberry color changes the fastest. All of our coloring are ALL NATURAL and hence they do tend to change colors after some time. If you try any of the other flavor, you will see that their colors are much more vibrant."

You know what I like? Diet energy drinks that don't taste gross. See, we here at Thirsty Dudes consume a lot of empty calories everyday. Because of this, I have come to enjoy diet drinks because it means I don't consume more calories. The problem with this of course is the majority of diet drinks taste like someone mixed dirt and battery acid and made stew out of it. This is especially true for a lot of diet energy drinks.

I have been really tired this week, due to lack of sleep. It's starting to (finally) warm up here in Buffalo so drinking hot coffee in the morning isn't something I like to do. Because of this, I have been drinking more energy drinks than I'd like to. They do the job, but I'm trying to drink as little of them as possible.

All that being said, this drink is delicious! The lemonade is sweet and slightly tart, and the pineapple taste compliments it very well. It makes sense that UFC made this its official energy drink because it's a touchdown. Wait, UFC isn't football? Oh, fighting, hmmmm... It's a punch to the mouth? That doesn't sound too positive.

I recently wrote in a review that pineapple pop always tastes like a candied version of what someone thinks the fruit tastes like, and that person is always off. Sumol decided to call my bluff. While this doesn't taste exactly like carbonated pineapple juice it does fall more on the actual juice side of thing than that previously mentioned candy flavor. There is 8% juice in here, and to be honest it could use a higher percentage, but it's still one of the best pineapple sodas I've ever tasted. It's carbonated, but the bubbles aren't shoved down your throat. It's the kind of soda that one would enjoy on a warm sunny day. Oh look, that's exactly what it's like outside today. Well chosen me.

Think of every fruit you've ever eaten and then put it in a drink. Simple as that? No. I'm sure there are countless composition notebooks over at Ralph and Charlie's house filled with just the perfect ratio of all of them. Oh, you want a roll call? You got it, Chuck.

1. Banana
2. Orange
3. Apple
4. Lemon
5. Pineapple
6. Grape
7. Tangerine
8. Apricot
9. Peach
10. Passion Flower
11. Mango
12. Kiwi
13. Guava

Seriously. They're all in there. It's a great drink, too. It doesn't really have any star players which is a feat in itself. It's well sweetened and although I don't think I can drink any more, it's because it's a generous bottle, not because it's bad. It's pretty acidic but expected and welcomed. This is not a juice for wimps. If you want a serious juice, like juice with a tie on, this is for you. There is no messing around. Ralph and Charlie should be given gift cards to Jos. A. Bank since they are so fancy with their juices. Someone buy these guys a nice new pair of slacks because this just is oh so serious.

Did you ever wonder why Gargamel was always trying to get at the Smurfs? Some theories are that he wanted to turn them into gold, he thought they would be a delicious treat or that he just hated them and wanted to destroy them. Truth is that good ole Gargy just needed their blood to power his doomsday machine. He was actually quite upset about their eventual destruction. He spent many a late nights sitting up with Azrael, crying about how such innocent creatures needed to die just so he could completely destroy the rest of the human race. You see at school everyone picked on him for being bald and ugly. Oh, you didn't know that Gargamel was actually a high school student? Well he was. The entire Smurf world was really just a school shooting about to happen. It was sad really to see a boy so confused.

Eventually Gargy grew up and started a Fortune 500 company. He invested a lot and created this juice in homage to the creatures he once thought he had to destroy. All proceeds go to Smurfs all around the world. It's like reparations: reparations that are a mixture of blueberries, blackberries, apples and a banana. It mostly just tastes like blueberries though with some other flavors around the edges. Gargamel tried to list them as Smurfberries on the label, but the FDA wouldn't hear a word of it. If he had just reversed the percentages of blackberries to blueberries this would perhaps be the world's finest drink, but alas he did not and what we are left with is still delicious.

It took a lot of ground up baby lion cubs to make this drink. They should have waited for them to mature a little bit because this is one wildly strong drink. The thing about matured lions is that they kind of calm down and make better drinks. This is super tart. Super tart. Super tart. It sat on the back of my tongue for an uncomfortable amount of time. It's an energy drink. It's rough because it's so strong. Strong little cubs.

A great thing about Vuka is that they specifically formulate their different energy drinks for different activities. They know that if you're staying up for an all night study marathon, you don't need a bunch of taurine or other chemical garbage junking up your drink giving you the jitters. You want to stay awake and to be able to concentrate at the same time. For this Think variety they use natural caffeine, gingko biloba, panax ginseng, same bitartrate as well as niacin and B-vitamins. Their other flavors use different ingredients and it certainly shows. The Renew Mango Peach gave me crazy energy and a bit of the old jitters, but with this one I don't feel insane at all. I just feel alert, and it's helped me get through a bunch of things I was not looking forward to on my to-do list.

The functional side of this energy drink is absolutely perfect. Unfortunately the flavor side of it doesn't come through as much. I'm all for stevia being used as a natural zero calorie sweetener, but from the taste of this it seems like they went overboard with it. It's like whoever was adding it to the batch got distracted by a dirty joke and accidentally dumped too much in whilst laughing. It's supposed to be pomegranate lychee flavored, but the pom flavor is very mild and I don't really get any of the old lady flavors of lychee in here at all. Mostly it's just the cold taste of stevia. I will say that the more I drank the less I thought it was gross, but it's certainly not my favorite tasting thing by any means. I would drink it again and power through the flavor to get the functionality out of it though.

Mike gave the original version of this beverage a less than stellar review. The one line of his review that stuck with me, and also made me fear drinking the other flavors was, “It also smells like paint.” Nothing could make me want to taste something less than the smell of paint. Lucky for me when I finally gathered the courage to try this, the scent of paint was nowhere near my nostrils. They were only filled with the rich smell of chocolate.

Actually, maybe I wasn't so lucky that the paint smell wasn't there. Had it been I would have been more prepared for the way this tasted. I have never had cacao juice before, but I never would have expected it to taste like this. I mean it's the base of chocolate for crying out loud. This tastes like it's bitter, bitter dark chocolate mixed with acai or some such harsh fruit. It's sweet, but in all the wrong ways. I wanted to like this because it has a lot of health benefits and I love chocolate, especially dark chocolate. I couldn't bring myself to get further into this than three sips. I was hoping it would get better if I drank more, but nope it was still grosser than gross.

What is it about soda pop and fruit that just doesn't add up? To be more specific, why is it that when pop companies make a fruit flavored sparkling beverage nine times out of ten it ends up tasting like candy and not like the fruit it is meant to be? These sodas end up being like the actors that are used in true crime shows to recreate the events of a horrific ordeal for the world to see. They are kind of similar to the people who were originally involved, but there is something just not natural about them that is just off. In such shows, pineapple would be one of the better actors. Sure he still doesn't come across as true as a real pineapple, but he's a much stronger actor than banana and his cohorts. He may not play fruit the way we want him too, but I'll be damned if he doesn't take the character in a different direction and make us believe that it is the way things have always been.

Push's pineapple is at the top of his acting game. It's not fruit by any stretch of the imagination, but he pulls off a compelling performance that is as good as any fake pineapple I've ever tasted.

Are you an elderly rabbit? Do you have a sweet tooth, or two sweet front teeth for gnawing? If you have answered yes to these questions have I got a drink for you. Ralph & Charlie, whom I can only assume wear giant bunny costumes all day due to their love of carrots, have released this beverage to honor said love. It's all an aging rabbit, who practiced poor dental hygiene could ask for (cause you know it's a juice, so they don't have to chew the carrots, did you really not understand that? Wow.).

Now, I've drunk a handful of carrot juices before, and I have strangely enjoyed them all. Every time I purchase one, I always question why am I doing such a thing, but when it hits my tongue, I am reminded that carrots are delicious and actually make a good juice. The thing about this drink that makes it stand out from the others I've had is that it has added sugar to it. It still had that classic carrot flavor to it, but it has an added sweetness, that almost makes it taste like a treat served at Thanksgiving. It doesn't taste as fresh as the other juices, but I think the added sugar would make it enjoyable to more people. You know, the people who think that vegetables and health food are for pansies. I think even those people would enjoy this juice. Them, and that geriatric rabbit I mentioned earlier.

I don't hate the idea of working out but there are one hundred things I would rather be doing or have to do before I go work out. Therefore I never drink protein drinks because drinking them with no need for additional protein doesn't make much sense. No one is going to prefer the taste of a protein drink to a regular drink. No one. People that drink them have an understanding of the way they taste and that's fine. It's what they expect. This though, this kind of holds hands with both parties. It's not a bad drink as far as drinks go and although it has a lot of protein in it, it's only slightly dense. The flavors are good. There is a little bit of bitterness from the pomegranate and sweetness from both. It's got a bit of a tangy aftertaste that I am going to attribute to the protein but hey, 80% isn't that bad. It passed its math final. Now if it can only make sense of pro-nouns, adjectives, subjects, and predicates it can pass the language final.

Things are starting to warm up. The internet weathermen tell us that it's supposed to get up to 70 today. While I'm sure that won't stay consistent, theirs is no doubting that in the relatively near future lemonade season will once again be upon us. The weather may get hot, but the drink will help keep us cool. Now regular lemonade is great. It's simple and it gets the job done. Fruit flavored lemonades are even better. I was recently exposed to the Passion Lemonade at Starbucks and let me tell you it was a treat. Big Island Organics decided to go all the way to the top of the mountain and make a lemonade so great that they had to change its name as to not hurt the feelings of the lesser drinks.

They call it gingerade, but it is clearly flavored lemonade. The ingredients are water, lemon juice and agave nectar. That there are the makings of one hell of a lemonade, but why stop there when you can ad glorious Hawaiian yellow ginger. With it in the mix you get a great taste as well as a nice burn that is sure to turn a lot of people off, but those people aren't us are they? We love the burn, the more the better. Well, maybe not in this case, since this is a sippin' drink for a nice hot day in the sun. In that case, this has the absolutely perfect amount of burn to it.

I'm sorry this is not what you expected sir, but in all honesty did you really expect to be handed a scotch and soda or some such libation? I mean we are at an elementary school music recital. It would be more than a little irresponsible to serve alcohol at such an event. I'm actually shocked that these Hi Ball energy drinks were available in the vending machine. I mean why would kids grade K-6 have any need for energy drinks? Actually, why would kids so young have access to a vending machine? Shouldn't they be learning the basics of their educations, not chugging away at a soda?

Anyways, stop your complaining and try the drink. It's like tonic water with a splash of grapefruit flavoring in it. It's like a grapefruit seltzer, and it's not bad at all. It has organic caffeine, guarana and ginseng in it, and you would never be able to tell from the taste. I know you wanted to get drunk to make it through this night, but at least this will save you the embarrassment of your child seeing you fall asleep during his/her solo.

Sir I will not get you another. I'd like to point out for the third time that I'm not a waiter. I'm actually just another parent who's seat you have taken. Don't give me that garbage about not having assigned seats. You clearly moved my jacket that was on the chair when I went to the restroom. You also dumped my wife's purse out when she asked you to move. Now that I think about it, your trench coat leads me to believe that you're child isn't even in this production. Security!