Ginger - 217 Reviews

If you ever find yourself in Providence, RI, stop whatever it is that you were planning on doing and head directly to Tina's Jamaican Caribbean Restaurant, or the Whole Foods where I found this. Get yourself some of the spiciest food your human form can handle and cool it all down again with a bottle of cucumber ginger beer.

I have to be honest here; while this was an amazing drink, I wouldn't consider it a ginger beer, as it was not carbonated. If it had been I don't know if I would have been able to handle the sheer joy it would bring me. What it actually consists of is cucumber, ginger and lime (a very, very light lime) in a highly sweetened water base. It's so sweetened that it has the pseudo grittiness of a southern sweet tea. Actually that is the best description I can think of. Think of a sweet tea, minus the tea and add cucumbers and ginger. There is not enough ginger to give it a slow burn, but the flavor is very much present. As for the cucumbers, they taste earthy in all the right ways. It's not the crisp cucumber flavor that Mr Q Cumber has, but a slightly dirty flavor like the ones you would find in raw juices.

This would have gotten a perfect rating, but the lack of carbonation in relation to the name, and the fact that I find it to be a bit too sweet the more I drank, made me deduct a bottle. I assure you it is still an amazing drink that you should not pass up if you are ever in that area of the country.

I recently spent a week in Kentucky. I know that sentence sounds weird, but it's true. A good friend lives there and I have never spent much time in Kentucky so I decided to go. Little did I know that Ale 8 One is a staple of Kentucky and it was everywhere. By everywhere I mean you could purchase it at more places than you can in Buffalo. We had already reviewed the original so I took my hand at the diet. I should have known by my friend's reaction when I picked up the bottle at the grocery store that this wasn't going to be good.

She was right. It was pretty gross. Even for a diet soda it was bad. So bad that I got 3 sips in and had to dump the rest. Sorry Kentucky, I don't like your diet soda.

Detroit is one hell of a town, and by that I mean it's kind of hell. It's a burnt out city (not unlike Buffalo), but it doesn't have the nature side to it that my hometown does. It's just endless neighborhoods that look like they should appear at the end of some apocalypse movie. I'm not one to generally feel unsafe in my surroundings, but I'm always looking for an escape route in any given situation in that city. On top of that it has the most torn up highway that I have ever experienced, but I guess that's most of Michigan and not just Detroit-centric.

A shining light through the dreariness that is the Motor City is that it is the home to Faygo. Now I know this company gets a lot of bad press outside of Michigan, because of the culture that has co-opted it, but let me tell you there are certainly some gems in their lineup ad Faygo Gold is one of them.

The company has a long running ginger ale in their repertoire, and it is not that bad. It's a general ginger ale like you would find in any generic brand. This though, this is something different. They don't even call it ginger ale. Instead it is “bubbly sweet ginger soda,” and I can think of no better description. It's not exactly a ginger ale, it has more of an actually ginger taste to it. It's also not a ginger beer because it's not intense. It has a subtle burn that it greatly appreciated, but it also has a very specific sweetness, that just does it for me. This is way sweeter than I normally like my soda, but something about the little bit of burn and the amount of sugar works perfectly. Faygo has done well in giving hope to the citizens of Detroit. Now we just need Robocop to clean up the city so civilization can begin anew.

I am a simple man, and I enjoy the simple things in life. Logic dictates that since they contain very few ingredients and no attitudes that I should enjoy Blue Print's juice beverages, and I'm not one to argue with logic. This drink is wonderful is it's simplicity. Let me break this down for you. It's essentially lemonade that is made from filtered water with organic lemons squeezed into it. Since that would be a bit on the tart side, a healthy dose of agave nectar is added to the mix. I have no doubt that this would be a fine lemonade indeed, but Blue Print wanted to take things a bit further, so they also added in some limejuice. I've obviously had lemonade before, and I've even tried a few limeades, but I have never had them combined, and I must tell you they work much better in this fashion than when combined in a soda. The folks at Blue Print still weren't completely sold on their beverage. Sure it was delicious, and the marriage of the fruits made it stand out a bit, but what this drink needed was a bit of a kick. The only logical solution to this dilemma was to add our old friend ginger to the mix. That my friends is how Blue Print hit a home run with this beverage. The ginger is right up there with the lemon. It's got a little bit of a burn, but I don't believe it's enough to turn anyone off from the drink, it's just enough to make you go “OHHH!” and dive right back in for another sip.

My only complaint about this drink is the hefty price tag. It's $8 for a 16oz beverage with low cost ingredients. I know that their other beverages have a bunch of different fruits and vegetables in them, and that they are raw, and as fresh as prepackaged juice can be, but I could go to a juice bar and not spend that much on a drink that I watch them juice before my eyes. As much as I enjoy this I just can't justify paying that much, so there is very little chance that I will return to this flavored well.

Welcome to the 24th Annual Drinky Dranky awards show. We're happy to be your eyes outside the event to give you an update as to what celebrity beverages are wearing this year. It looks like the first to arrive is a nice peach ginger black tea, which is wearing a sash proclaiming itself to be a “Celebri tea.' A fitting name for any tea that is important enough to be invited to this event.

This Celebri tea is in essence a not very strong black tea that is wearing not one, but two sweeteners. We're talking the unusual pairing of organic cane sugar and organic stevia extract that result in 22g of sugar per bottle. If you were to ask me I would say that the stevia is unnecessary, and just showboating a bit. If they had stuck to just a low level of cane sugar it would have turned out to be nicely semi sweetened, and it wouldn't have that very specific stevia taste to it. I don't know about our home viewers, but I for one would rather have an unsweetened tea than one with that aftertaste. In reality it still has a decent amount of sugar per bottle, so the stevia isn't really pulling that much of the load anyways. If anything it just works against the taste of the ginger, which you have to actively think about to taste at this point.

When we're in our 25th year I would hope that this Celebri tea will ditch the stevia without adding any more sweetener and what we would be left with would be a lightly peach flavored black tea with faint moments of ginger. That is a drink that would surely turn some heads on the red carpet.

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.

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.

Vegetable based juices can be fickle things. If they are made fresh it is wonderful. All of the subtle nuances of the vegetables pop out at you, and it just feels like you are doing something healthy and nothing can change that. On the other side of the coin, if they are prepackaged and mass produced to have a longer shelf life the glitter in their eyes fades away and you end up with something that tastes more like soup than juice.

With this product Odwalla is walking a tightrope between the two. It certainly doesn't taste like it was freshly juiced, but it's not quite in soup territory yet. It tastes mostly of carrots and beets, with the carrots giving it that slightly dirty taste, as they are prone to do. There is a slight hint of ginger flavoring, but there is no burn to speak of. Drinking juice that isn't very sweet will probably be a shock for a decent amount of people, and I can't really see this going over too well with the general populace, but there are people out there like myself who will enjoy it, and they should give it a chance.

There are a decent amount of breweries out that that make sodas along with their line of beers. I always wonder what prompts them to do so. I'm not complaining, but to be honest, I can't see there being nearly as big of a market for pop as there is for alcoholic beverages. Maybe they do it out of nostalgia, or perhaps they do it because being around so much consumable liquid all day every day makes for some thirsty employees. They certainly can't sit around drinking the beer all day, or things would most definitely get messy around the brewery. Whatever their reasons I thank them for following through. The soda that comes from breweries is generally of a higher quality than your everyday pops that you find at the corner store. They take more time in making their beverages and it shows in the flavor.

I recently met up with Night Birds to do a mid-west tour. I took a bus to meet them in Cleveland, which caused me to get to town a couple of hours before they were to arrive. When you're in that town with some time to kill and an empty stomach they only viable option is to make your way to Melt. It's a gourmet grilled cheese bar/restaurant with a ton of vegetarian/vegan options and a soda list that rivals a lot of bars beer list. After a public transportation mishap and a two mile walk, I found myself sitting at the bar eating one of the largest sandwiches I have ever handled and drinking this wonderful bottle of ginger beer. At first I thought it was really tame, but the more sips I took the greater the ginger burn. I wasn't disappointed in that department. Actually, I wasn't disappointed at all. It had a nice natural ginger flavor with a slight burst of lemon. It had more lemon than any other ginger beer I have tried, but it worked ridiculously well with the ginger. It's also on the sweeter side of most sodas of this flavor, but you know what? I'm totally okay with that.

Someday I will actually make my way to Ithaca. It's in NY only a couple of hours from where I live, but for some reason I've never been there, even though it sounds like a place I would totally love. When I go I shall drown my non-existent sorrows in bottle after bottle of their ginger brew.

I think that the chronology of it happens like this:

1. Thirsty Dudes is created.


2. Some dudes read the reviews and decide they know the key to our hearts.


3. Joia is created solely to please us.


4. We find Joia drinks and review them all highly.

All of these drinks are wonderfully handcrafted and include a fantastic blend of ingredients that no other companies let happen. Allspice in a drink? That's crazy. Well, lame drink companies, it's not crazy. It's fantastic. Even if it is crazy, it's done with a logical base and really delivers. You get a little ginger, more flavor that spice, but it's there. The apricot really blasts through but the allspice hangs out with you like the faithful friend. Beginning to end the drink keeps on delivering.

Joia, we know that you used us as a cheat sheet to make "the perfect drinks" but we don't care. Keep up the good work. If this was math class, we would lean over and let you cheat off our paper and sorry about our poor penmanship. If all else fails, answer "C."

Anyone who can get this drink at their leisure is a lucky person. This is a complete treat. Spicy, sweet, tart, and bitter all at the same time. You can't get this close to an even distribution of wonderfully blended flavors easily. You take a sip and it's sweet, fantastic lemonade. Then you get the burn of the ginger followed by a little bitterness of the mate. To make something like this you have to be a mastermind of flavors and concoctions. I think that this, if put in the hands of the masses, would blow up as a company. We've become too safe with our beverages and no one wants a little bit of bang. "Oh a spicy drink? Who wants that?" Oh, I don't know. The millions of people who purchase hot sauce, jalapenos, or put ginger on their sushi. It doesn't taste like chicken wings, you idiot. Things can be spicy and sweet. Have fun with your drinks. Don't be scared.

Editor Dan is a photographer. Mainly he shoots abandoned buildings. He's surprisingly good at it. The point of this is that he told us over the summer that he had access to a building that had a room with a glass wall. On it's own, that is not exciting in the least bit, but then we learned that behind that glass wall the entire room was a giant bee hive. It sounds so creepy and awesome. I had just bought this bottle of Honeydrop and I knew I wanted to do a video review in front of that window.

It's now seven months later, and we never got around to getting Dan to take us to that magical bee place, so I decided to just drink this bottle. As I'm doing so I realize I really should have done it in front of the bees, because it has such a ridiculously strong honey flavor. It is called a tea, but there is really no tea in it at all. It's like someone had a sore throat, so they boiled some water, cut up some ginger in it, added a splash of lemon and then for every two parts of “tea” they added one part of honey. It's definitely a drink that would traditionally be served hot, but it's kind of nice to drink it cold. I could do without the lemon, like I could with most things that flavor. The ginger more than makes up for it though. It has a bit of a burn to it, which I always approve of. If you ever have a sore throat in the summer, you should drink this, because who wants to drink a hot beverage in the blazing sun.

Now that I think about it more, maybe it's a good thing we didn't drink this in proximity to a giant beehive. I know they would be separated from us by glass, but this smells and tastes so much like honey that I bet they would have found a crack to sneak through and the next thing I would know I'd be wearing a beard of bees. That is something I just don't need.

I'm in the process of dealing with what I can only describe as week-long carsickness that other people are telling me is vertigo. Whatever it is, it sucks and is unwelcome in my head. I've got constant spinning and slight nausea, which is enough to make me just sick enough in the head and stomach that my days totally suck. In order to combat this, I decided to recruit good old ginger ale to help me. Is it helping? No, unfortunately not.

For a ginger ale, this is as average as they come. "It's a mixer." you are wishing you could tell me but in reality, it's a drink all to itself and it is average. It's sweet and tastes like ginger ale. Ever since I've found ginger ale that has an essence of actual ginger, everything else is "just" ginger ale. Basic ginger ale is becoming increasingly difficult to review, as like orange juice, it really tastes the same.

I don't know what I'm going to do about this barrage of nausea, as it's exhausting. This ginger ale isn't helping. Sleep isn't helping. I might just have to taco it out. Honestly, it couldn't hurt at this point and sounds like the best treatment at this juncture.

With a name like 'Royalty', I was expecting this to be a fancy ginger beer. Okay, maybe not THAT fancy since I got it for $1.30 at Spice Bazaar, but still. If ginger beer were as common as cola or root beer, I would call this a 'classic tasting ginger beer'. Mike and Jay will probably know what I mean since they are some of the few humans who have tasted around the same amount of ginger beer as I have. With that I'm saying that it has a good ginger taste, but a very minimal burn. While I prefer a good burn with ginger beer, this is still pretty tasty.

I will be the first to admit that I am a complete snob when it comes to ginger ale/beer. When done properly it can be one of the finest beverages to ever grace your mouth. When done improperly it's just a bubbly sea of mediocrity (yet I've never tasted one that I would call bad). Due to this snobbery I tend to stay away from the “big names” of soda for this flavor. I get real annoyed, real fast when a ginger drink doesn't even have any real ginger in it. Luckily Canada Dry still uses ginger in their mix, so I decided to take it for a little test ride. Sure I've had it before, but it's been over five years, and in actuality it has probably been closer to ten. Seriously, since I had a real ginger beer I hardly ever go back to the light stuff, well except on flight. I always drink ginger ale and apple juice on planes for some reason.

With the exception of their choice of sweetener, Canada Dry makes a ginger ale the way it should be made. It's bubbly and crisp. You can taste the ginger in it, but it's not enough to have any sort of burn. This is a dry ginger ale after all. (For those of you not in the know, pale or dry in reference to a ginger drink means that it doesn't have any kick.) This is of higher quality than most big name sodas. I appreciate that they took a little bit of time with this one instead of just cranking out generic soda.

I found myself at P.F. Changs a few days ago. The food was mediocre, and the service was horrible. But this review isn't about how the waitress brought out our appetizer 1 minute before our meal or how she brought us the wrong check. Nope, this is about their homemade ginger beer.

How have I gone this long and not heard that P.F. Changs makes their own ginger beer? I blame myself for not being friends with people who frequent the establishment.

Unlike most ginger beer's I've had so far, this has a very strong lemon taste to it. Based on the description, it's mixed with lemon juice and you can definitely taste it. As far as the ginger goes, it's mild at first but has a nice sharp after taste. Another interesting/unique aspect of this ginger beer is that it was served with a mint leave in the glass. I couldn't really taste much mint, but maybe if I had submerged it in the glass it would have been more abundant.

P.F. Changs: bottle this ginger beer and you will sell a lot.

(Note: All my photos of the glass didn't come out so I opted for a photo I took of the menu listing).

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

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

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

Frankenstorm. Is that what they're calling it? Frankenstorm? All of the Thirsty Dudes are from Buffalo and we know a thing or two about storms. "The October Storm" is a storm that locals refer to as "The October Storm" but in actuality happened like six or seven years ago. We still call it that. I know there was "The Blizzard Of '77" but that has a year attached to it. "The October Storm" hit like nothing anyone has ever seen with warm, then melt, then flash freeze and then it just rained branches and snow simultaneously.

Canada felt a little bit, too, I bet, being so close an I know that some people were stuck in their homes. One thing that can survive without a fridge is Canada Dry. I don't know why, but it's always carbonated. Industry secrets. I guess if I was hunkered down in some iced over bomb shelter Canada Dry as the refreshment wouldn't be too bad. One step better would be this cranberry variety. It's a nice blend of the classic taste and a new, fruity twist. It's not too sweet so when you're in your temporary concrete, windowless retreat, you aren't bugging out with too much sugar. I'm not sure why, but I'm thinking that the shelter is set up like one of those church rec rooms with all old, used furniture, dark, wood paneling, and just decks of pinochle cards and not a "regular" deck of cards at all. That decor mixed with cranberry Canada Dry is defiantly better than some have it, but it's only half ideal. It makes you wish you took that winter vacation to the Florida Keys like you were planning. Hindsight is twenty twenty my friend.

Sometimes you find yourself on tour with a bunch of your friends. You (they) play a bunch of shows and it's fun and awesome and everyone has a good time. Sometimes you don't have as place to stay at the end of the night and that is a bummer. Sometimes while you're standing around trying to figure out what you're going to do you get a call that friends are playing a show down the street, so you go to check it out. Sometimes you wind up on Lagwagon's tour bus at two in the morning. Sometimes you get handed a drink and you would normally turn it down because you don't drink, but then you look at it and you realize it's a ginger ale that you haven't reviewed on your dumb drink review website.

It was a fun night, and even though I don't particularly care about the band, everyone who was around was really nice and we had a good time. The ginger ale was fairly standard. It tasted like pretty much every no name ginger ale out there. If you've had a ginger ale in a restaurant or at a family party you know what this tastes like. The can is graphically appealing though. It's got a nice logo and a pleasant color scheme.

After high school all of Stan's friends went to college to become teachers and businessmen. He knew from an early age that he would not follow the same path. He wasn't dumb or anything. He actually got high marks in school, but he just had no interest in higher education. As soon as he got his diploma at the end of his senior year he enrolled in clown school. Clowning seemed like a dream come true. His classes failed to hold his attention though, and after a semester he dropped out. He then spent a few months just hanging out, working at his uncle's shop. Then one afternoon he was on break flipping through the local arts paper and he saw an ad that would change his life forever. He had been close with clown college, but he now knew that his true calling was to be a magician. He emptied his bank account and took a three week crash course in magicianery. It was there that his instructor gave his the stage name of Zevia the Magnificent, a title that the whole world would soon know.

While he loved being a magician, he really wasn't very good at it. His rabbit would always end up in an audience members purse instead of his hat, and he could never keep a firm grasp on those darn rings, what did they polish them with anyways, lard? One trick that he did master was to hypnotize people into thinking that diet pop tasted good. His secret was that he would make his own soda and sweeten it with a natural zero calorie sweetener caller stevia. This was in the late 90's when everyone was trying to keep the pounds off with aspartame and sucralose. They never knew what hit them. One flavor that he worked hard on was a diet ginger ale. Even though there weren't many diet ginger ales on the market, and people weren't familiar with it, he still thought it was integral to his act. It didn't really taste like the other ginger ales he had drank in the past. It was more like slightly sweet seltzer water with a slight ginger taste to it. He prided himself on using real ginger, but not enough to have any sort of heat to it. It was a completely non-offensive soda that he drank all the time, and why not when it had no sugar and no calories. Sure it could have used a bit more flavor, but who was going to argue with it' healthiness compared to the leading brands?

It was during the portion of his act when he was convincing people that diet soda could taste good when his infamy began. The prime minister of China was in the audience that evening for some unknown reason. Zevia's helper monkey became irate and flung his dung at the prime minister before shaking up a can of soda and spraying it in the foreign dignitaries face. As you well know that was the catalyst for World War 3. Zevia the Magnificent, and his monkey, were later tried for war crimes, and we all know the outcome of that.