Sparkling - 501 Reviews

With Xmas rapidly approaching little Bobby grew more nervous by the second. While other kids his age were ecstatic about all the presents that were about to be gifted upon them, Bobby suffered from a deep-set fear of his family dinner on the 25th of December. It wasn't that his family was crazy (they were), or that they were prone to squabble over the most trivial of things (they would). His nausea stemmed from the fact that he knew that he would not be able to leave the table until he finished all of his cranberry sauce: the quivering gelatinous mound of bitterly sweet garbage that passed as food only on holidays. Last year he sat at the table until 2:30 on the morning before he was able to get it all down. Ugh. In order to better acclimate himself with the taste of this garbage he had begun drinking a class of cranberry juice every day. Each 24-hour period would result in him sneaking a tiny glass from his mom's stash and forcing it down his throat. After a couple of days he was actually okay with it. It had a weird taste but once he got used to it, he even liked it a little. One would think that he would be ready for the big day, but he knew in his heart of hearts that a glass of Ocean Spray was in reality no comparison to the maroon mound that would be set before him.

His aunt was visiting a couple of days before the holiday to help his mom set everything up. She was the cool aunt. You know the kind that doesn't have any kids of her own. They listen to cool music, maybe have a piercing or two. That was aunt Jeanie. She could sense something was up with Bobby, so she cornered him and asked what was up. He told her his fear, and she said not to worry and that they were going for a little adventure. They jumped in her crappy car covered in stickers of bands that no one who wasn't a teenager during the 90's even remembered and drove to Whole Foods. She didn't say a word, and only bought a single bottle of soda. She poured it into an old Taco Bell cup and handed it to Bobby and told him to drink up. He loved it! It was amazing! It was sweet, fruity and nicely carbonated. After his praise slowed down, Aunt Jeanie showed him the bottle. It was Kristall Cranberry soda. She then told him to take another sip and think of the cranberry sauce they were going to be eating in a few days time. Didn't it taste exactly the same, except with some bubbles? As much as he wanted to deny this claim Bobby looked up to his aunt too much to lie to her. She had him this did taste like cranberry sauce, but how was this good and the sauce like a "festering bowl of dog snot?" She told him to just close his eyes and think of this pop when he was eating his dinner. That's just what he did, and you know what? It was still completely disgusting. Bobby realized the problem with cranberry sauce wasn't the flavor. It was that godforsaken texture. He managed to scarf it down by 10PM that night, but he really couldn't wait until he was old enough to prepare his own plate of food on Xmas so he could skip it altogether.

Ronald Washington Knudsen was a soda fiend, or so the tale goes. The boy drank soda until his teeth began to rot. They literally fell right out of his head. Just turned black, full of holes and plop there they are sitting delicately on his tongue (just typing that makes me want to throw up). With all of his natural teeth rotted away the dentist/barber of the times gave him some dentures. They were made of wood though and if Ronald drank anything too sugary they would simply begin to dissolve. As a result he started carbonating some straight up fruit juice so that he could still drink bubbly beverages. He had some up and some downs with his experiments. One thing that cannot be disputed is that he struck gold with his sparkling apple cider. He took a wholesome down home Western New York style cider and simply added carbonation. It was a little strong and he feared for his wooden teeth so he added just a touch of water to even it out. The result was perfection in liquid form. Folks around his area were known to drink whole bottles at a time, even though he claimed each bottle was three servings. There were happy taste buds, happy stomachs, happy drinkers and most importantly happy teeth. It was a Christmas miracle.

'Round these parts, we call it "Spicy Water." That's the water you make with your carbonation machine and just don't add flavor. I'm talking about that pop machine that looks like a penguin that makes pop for you when you want it in cool, 1 liter bottles. My girlfriend always gets "soda water with lemon" which is just carbonated water. It's strange though. I drink water all of the day and enjoy it but once it's carbonated, it gets a bit of a gnarly taste to it. She loves the stuff. I don't know what her problem is. I sneak sips periodically and find it quite vile.

I knew what I was in for when I tried this and was actually proven a little bit wrong. It's got that strange bitterness or whatever goes on inside carbonated water, but the pomegranate taste is great. This is actually a drink that has no sugar or carbs or anything, tastes fruity, and for some might be quenching. I made a little face after every sip, but, as previously mentioned, I don't fancy “fancy water.” I do like flavored waters, which would basically be this sans "spice" but this is a world apart from a drink like Hint or equivalent.

When my mom reads this, she's going to be sore at me because she loves seltzer water, too. Seltzer water used to only be used for clowns but now it's used for clowns and moms. I'm not going to draw any lines comparing the two, but you can.

This should be something I love. Over the past year or so I've fallen in love with low sugar "dry" sodas. They provide the bubbles and the flavors that I need without being anything more than liquefied sweetener. The thing is I think that a very small amount of sugar may be needed when drinks are carbonated. I still don't understand it after 32 years on this planet; if you drink a glass of water it's cool refreshing and tasty (in a tasteless kind of way), but if you take that same water and carbonate it the flavor changes. It acquires this taste that is borderline bitter. Is it the CO2 that I taste? I can only assume it is, and it can ruin drinks for me. If that added taste wasn't there this drink would be perfect. It has a light pear taste and there is a nice mellow ginger aftertaste. This is the kind of drink that you could enjoy after a nice meal. It's just too bad that I can't get over the "seltzer water" taste it has. Seriously, if this were uncarbonated I would probably be raving about it. Dear taste buds, please start liking the taste of unsweetened carbonated water. There is a world of drinks out there that are way better for us that we are just not enjoying because of it.

Fizz Ed, the oddly punctuated and spaced, past tense of the verb "fizz" or "to fizz" is the title of this drink. "Dude, I was so fizzed last night after I drank all that pop." for example.

I have known many people to have gotten "fizzed" at parties. I'm pretty sure Derek drank like eighty ounces of pop one night. That, to me, makes we want to research a respectful and affordable dentist, and get my teeth checked out as I haven't had a dentist for about five years, and before that, it was my pediatric dentist. I'm pathetic, I know, but hey, he's got all my records and knows my teeth. I am quite sure that he would jump out the window of his dental practice, which wouldn't do much as it's on the ground floor, if he found out that I did this website and drank so much junk all of the days.

This would be a great drink if you were sick because it's fruity and doesn't taste too different from cough syrup. It's doesn't have a bad taste, but it does have a bit of a syrupy, thick texture to it. Drinks shouldn't have a texture unless it's blatant, like a chia seed drink, or an aloe, or anything with Nata De Coco, or something along those lines.

I wonder what my dentist is up to and if I am still the oldest person that goes there. I know it's wrong that a twenty nine year old man-boy is going to a child's dentist. Sure, I don't care as much about the balloon animals and don't care at all about the stickers and my mouth has grown beyond the kid's toothbrushes, too. I know it's got to be better than adult dentists, though. At least I can learn about cool things like pistachio trees in Highlights magazine in my dentist and I don't have to read magazines like "Time" or "People".

Marty wasn't like the other kids. He just could not get down with creamsicles. It just reminded him of when he was but a toddler and he tried to make an ice cream float with orange juice instead of soda. Just thinking about how the mixture curdled makes him want to vom all over the place. Ever since then he has stayed clear of those treats in ice cream and soda form.

The strange thing is that little Marty loves this Vio drink. You might say "but Marty that is the exact same thing as a creamsicle except the orange is switched out for lemon lime." You would be correct, but what you're forgetting is that Marty didn't dump cream into a cup filled with straight lemon and lime juice. When he drinks this, he just thinks about it being 7Up or Sprite that had ice cream added to it, and then it melted. No curdling involved. He's a happy camper. I'm a happy camper. You're a happy camper. Did I mention that we're at summer camp, sitting around a campfire sipping on these little treats? Well maybe I'm not a happy camper. While I love the way these taste, they do get to be a bit much to drink a whole 8oz bottle.

Ahh cascading ice. Nothing tastes better than a nice avalanche rushing over a citrus orchard. A nice, giant ice dam covering all of Florida and pulling forth all the natural juices from oranges and lemons sounds delicious. Mother nature doing her job. Moving millions of tons of ice downward, squeezing juices from fruits to make crisp, cool, fresh water.

If that were the case, awesome, but there is one more step to make this drink do what it's supposed to do and that's to be carbonated. I suppose, at some state, man has to come in, bottle it, and put it on shelves. Using the previous scenario, all would happen as described, then man would break off chunks of this citrus ice into clean wheelbarrows, take them to the carbonation factory where they carbonate whatever is poured into "the hole" and then it bottles it and it's off the consumers everywhere.

The result? An unsweetened Sprite. People, it is just seltzer water with orange and lemon. I guess it would be like an unsweetened Ski. Wait, does Ski have lime or lemon? Now I don't remember.

Before I even begin to think about describing the flavor of this drink I have to mention the packaging. Is it necessary? I don't know, but I can tell you that it is really, really cool, even if it is a bit impractical. It's like someone took a 20oz bottle, but it in half and put the top of a can of pop on top to seal the goodness in. I really don't see any benefits of this, besides looking awesome. The joy of plastic is that it is resealable, which this is not. Also, I don't know how well it would work for stacking the cans. It seems like they would fall over a lot easier with that bottom. Oh well, I'm not a stock boy so it's not my problem. I'll just sit back and admire the strangeness of it.

Now on for the purpose of this site, to let the public know how different beverages taste. I shockingly really enjoyed this. Flavored sparkling water isn't really my forte (I can't stand the seltzer taste), but I guess when you add a bunch of sugar to a carbonated water it technically becomes a pop. This tastes like a very light pop that actually tastes just like mangoes. There is no seltzer flavor in this can at all. My only issue is that by the time you get towards the bottom of the bottle/can (should we embrace "bottan" or "cannle" for it's name?) you get a slight hint of the aspartame that is hiding towards the bottom of the ingredients list. Other than that this is great with about half the sugar of normal soda.

Our fuzzy little friends the kiwis (no I'm not talking about the indigenous people) are always a nice little treat in their fruit form. I don't know anyone who would ever turn down a kiwi if offered. The problem is that when this little guy gets transformed into a soda it's flavor somehow gets transformed into something resembling green apple. It's not 100% green apple, but the similarities are definitely there, and it only vaguely resembles the great fruit it once was. It comes in waves. First a very brief kiwi taste, then the apple and then a milder kiwi flavor returns in the aftertaste. I don't understand the science behind it and I'm wearing a white lab coat and everything. My hypothesis would normally be that it has something to do with the hibiscus in it, but I've had a different kiwi soda recently that had a similar taste. I guess the answer was lost hundreds of years ago with the ancients. It's sad too because I really like kiwi, and I'm not a big fan of green apple flavored things so this was kind of ruined for me.

Johnny was a masochist. He would go to S&M clubs many nights and would enjoy being hit by whips. It might not make sense to you, but you're not Johnny. He would come home battered and bruised three to four days a week. He would always wear collared, long sleeved shirts so no one was the wiser. He worked as an accountant in the big city and didn't want others to know what he did in his personal time.

On his way home from Whipped Into Shape, one of his frequent clubs, he was a bit parched and headed into a small corner store to get something to drink. He was going through a bit of a passionfruit kick so when he saw Kahe's passionfruit drink, he had to get it.

He went home, checked out his new gnarly bruises and welts, and then cracked open his new drink and had at it. It was like a free admittance to another S&M club because this drink was bad, but he kept going back for more. It was tart, didn't taste like passion fruit, and was poorly, artificially sweetened. Every time he took another sip, he would make a strange face of disgust, but for reasons beyond his knowledge, he kept drinking it.

Although he prefers the clubs, he now knows that anytime he can't make it, he can pick up a bottle of that sparkling fruit juice and have twelve ounces of sadomasochism.

My grandparents had a small apple orchard in their back yard. I loved apples. When I was a kid they were my absolute favorite. As a result whenever I was visiting them and apples were ripe I would gather up as many as I could and devour apple and apple until I got sick. I was a dumb kid. I liked the game of seeing how many I could eat. The best part about their orchard was that they were all green and yellow apples. As much as I love apples I would pick one of those over any red apple any day. I tip my hat to Juicy Juice for going the uncommon route and using green apples in their sparkling juice. This could have turned out just like any other sparkling apple juice, but they mixed things up a bit and I thank them for that.

There is something strange about carbonating green apples. They almost get a sour apple candy taste to them. At first sip I was disappointed because I thought it was sour apple candy flavored. Then I remembered it was juicy juice and they don't add sugar. After a couple of more sips I was completely on board. It is slightly sour, but then again so are green apples. The aftertaste specifically really tastes like you just at an apple. So far, this is my favorite in this line.

Dear Shloer, just look at what you've done! You should be ashamed of yourself! You created a quality product with your sparkling red grape juice and now you've gone and sullied your family name with this abomination. For shame! I can't believe you would let it leave your facilities with the way it smells, which is to say like a hobo's breath. It doesn't taste much better either. I was told it tastes like cheap bad wine. I wouldn't know, but I do know that I would now never in a million years ever try cheap bad wine, because this is just bad. It certainly tastes fermented and gross. Out of the 10 people I had try it 3 said it was decent, not good, but decent and everyone else was completely grossed out. I wonder if it did start to ferment somehow and it now turning to alcohol. I took two sips and I really can't drink anymore. It's a shame it was such a big bottle.

Somewhere in the Carpathian Mountains a thirsty scientist named Vigo has gone "mad." He was sick of having to choose between his two favorite drinks, which were green tea and root beer. He decided to take matters in his own hands. He would create a hybrid, a Frankenstein monster of sorts of beverages. He loaded up his ingredients on the platform. He was about to raise it into the storm brewing above when his assistant grabbed his arm and begged him to reconsider to think of how this would affect the future of the planet. The mad genius threw him off and yelled, "Back off man I'm a scientist!" With that he threw the switch and the platform was raised and instantly struck with lightening. If you know anything about science that is the only proper way to make an unholy alliance.

As the platform lowered Vigo scooped out a cupful in his chalice and took a big gulp. His mouth was greeted by three waves of flavor. At first it was just a nice sweet soda taste, it was actually almost a cola. Then a wave of weakish root beer flavor washed over him. It wasn't nearly as strong as he had wanted, but it wasn't bad at all. Finally as that faded away it was replaced with the bitter sting of green tea. He felt that his creation wasn't a complete success, but it was good enough to market to the public. He then vowed to spend the rest of eternity trying to improve upon his creation. It's a couple thousand years later and he still hasn't gotten it quite right. This is a nice hybrid, but it doesn't quite deliver as much as you would want it to in either the tea or root beer categories. Maybe someday Vigo will find a baby so he can return to the earthly realm and begin his work anew.

Chunks and bits. Chunks and bits. That's what on the bottom of this bottle of lemonade. You know what else is in there? Vegetable oil. Why? I don't know. I'm not the mix-master of this drink. It's in there nonetheless and you have to drink it if you want to drink this drink. It's also carbonated, but not much, and so little so that you don't know the real point of it being carbonated in the first place. If you're going to do something, go the whole nine and don't go half way, or in this case, one-tenth the way to actual, recognizable carbonation.

The bits are a nice touch. Man up and drink something with some substance. Man up? Who am I, your dad? "Man up, son, and get a job." Forget I said that. There is something I'm not crazy about in there, though. It's acidic and a bit sour but...something. What is it? I don't know. There might be an undesirable amount of bitterness.

If you like lemonade and see this, get it. It's fun, but when you buy something with bits and chunks and bits in it, you want them to really be there. Scare your friends. Scare your wife. Scare your kids. Do it with lemonade.

You don't need to celebrate only good things. You can celebrate when bad things stop, or apologies. I guess those are good things, but it's not like, "Sally got a raise! Let's celebrate." I'm talking about things like "The dog stopped peeing on the carpet. Cause to celebrate." or, in my case, yesterday was a rough one. My boss yelled at me. Yeah, I was to blame, but it was the client that was making unrealistic demands and calling him every ten minutes saying, "Why doesn't this work? Why doesn't that work?" Literally, every ten minutes for five hours. If it wasn't such a high-power client, we would tell them what's what, but because of that, I felt the brunt of his rage.

I tried to make it up to him, which I think was successful, by buying him a doughnut and letting him celebrate with me about it not being yesterday. After five minutes of trying to get the G.D. cork off, we got it and it was bottoms up.

Taste? Fruity, but it didn't have a certain sharpness that I like in my non-alcoholic champagne. I know, I know. I'm hardly a connoisseur, but I've had my share of celebratory celebrations and I've had my share of faux champagne. It's got great flavor, as I mentioned, and is just right for two people to celebrate something like a dental cleaning, B on a science test, or good meal.

The first couple of sips of this I absolutely hated it. It's not its fault though. Let me lay it out for you. I love water. Seriously love it. For as much garbage as I drink for Thirsty Dudes, I drink at least 5x more water. The thing is something happens to the glory of water when you carbonate it. The simple act of adding air bubbles changes the flavor in a way that I wish it didn't. What can't carbonated water taste just like regular water, but make you burp? I really want that.

So I took a couple of sips, got kind of grossed out and put it in the fridge because I didn't feel like writing a review. Cut to a couple of days later I came home from band practice and decided to finish off the bottle. At first it was still gross, but the more I drank the more I became acclimated to it. I'm in no way a huge fan of it, but for a style of drink that I don't like, they did a good job with it.

One thing I find odd is that instead of flavoring it with a little bit of juice they used fruit oils. I guess that way there is zero sugar in this.

I had a flavor of Steaz awhile back and I've been turned off by it since I had one kind that wasn't good. It was a bad first impression and for that, I have taken a Steaz-free vacation. I don't recall what flavor it was, but I want to say that it had something to do with Acai.

This is completely different and actually good on top of the fact that there are no calories. It's like a crazy, alternate universe has emerged from the can. What an ignorant statement if I were actually serious. Like nothing that's good for you is good. Have you ever had corn? How about apples? Tacos grow on trees and guacamole doesn't, that's why guac is always extra.

It's been quite some time since I've had a solid and not something in liquid form, but for what I remember, the flavor is pretty good and honest. You get a sweet erythritol taste, but I've grown to like it so this entire can wasn't even shared by me.

Now all I can think of is a taco tree. I have a feeling that the window of opportunity between ripe and not ripe is very small.

Kristall has done it again. This is a light and flavorful top-notch soda. Carbonated orange juice is something I can get behind. It falls somewhere between juice and a soda in terms of flavor. It's similar to Orangina, but it really tastes more like oranges. I really wish this was available in Western New York. Unfortunately it is not, so I have to wait until I'm someplace there is a Whole Foods so I can buy a couple of bottles.

Tour ended a couple of days ago. Our last show was in Boston, MA (okay Allston). We showed up a bit early and no one was at the venue, so I decided to hoof it out to the local Whole Foods. My phone told me it was a mile away, and I thought that's no big deal. Let me tell you, that was the longest mile I've ever walked. The temperature seemed to be constantly dropping. I had to cross several thruway on and off ramps, go over some decent sized bridges and the neighborhood quickly went from nice to way shady to way nice. Strange times. I'm glad I made the trip though because the store had a bunch of drinks I had never seen before. I was the most excited about this one. It's a soda with actual fruit in it, which is a total plus in my book. On top of that said fruit is blackberry, my favorite.

Because it was made with actual juice I expected this to be pretty sweet. I was actually expecting something along the lines of an Italian soda. I was shocked, but not disappointed to find out it was rather dry. It still tasted totally like blackberries, but it wasn't overly sweet. It unfortunately also did not have chunks of blackberry in it. They must have filtered them out, which is a shame. Some small pieces would have been wonderful. Even with that being the case, this is a soda I can totally get behind. I like that more companies are making sodas with less sugar. We really need to wean this country off of so much sugar.

This review should go something like; Oops someone dropped an open CO2 tank into the vat of Vitamin Water blah blah blah. I'm tired, I'm sick and I don't have it in me right now.

When I first tried this it tasted exactly like a carbonated Vitamin Water. The more I drank the less sure I was. I did still enjoy it though. It's really light tasting, and that is something that is fairly rare in a sparkling beverage. It also didn't have a distinct melon or pineapple so much as it has a general tropical taste. I'm very interested in trying the other flavors. Now I will pass out in the van and wake up in another city, in another state.