Bai Natural Sweetener Blend (Erythritol and Organi - 4 Reviews

I think if Thirsty Dudes could have one sponsor it would be Big Lots. I believe that I speak for both Jay and myself when I say that for drinks, it's a great place. They never have the same thing and you could go once a month and find new stuff. It's not the best stuff, sure. It's not the most high end stuff, sure. Sometimes you find a lot of the same stuff but anything that's there a lot is truly and undeniably garbage at best. Recently they've been getting some nicer stuff though like Bruce Cost, Illy and Belvoir. Maybe they know we're going there.

This last time I went with my brother who has never "Thirsty Dude'd" with me and he just watched as I nonchalantly knocked drink after drink into my handcart. This being one of them and I'm glad I did because it's pretty darn good. Somehow the lime does cut through and ruin everything. The watermelon flavor was light and first followed by the lime. They're also doing a good job at taming their array of sweeteners because it no longer tastes like Stevia threw up in your mouth. It's also in a nice, small can so you don't get overwhelmed by the flavor. It's sweet. Not too sweet but I think anything larger than this there would be remainders.

Big Lots, if you're listening, we're accepting offers.

It looks like the storm is clearing up. I mean there's still some ominous clouds in the sky, but at least it's stopped raining and if you look to the west you can see the sun peeking out a bit. Bai, that is exactly how I feel about this drink. After the less than stellar coconut and guava version of this I feel like you're finally getting some things right. This is a diet sparkling blood orange drink in which the diet taste isn't punishing your taste buds. The blood orange flavor comes first and it tastes great. It's a hard flavor to mess up, but then again so is guava and look where that got us. The taste of the erythritol/stevia is still there in the aftertaste, but it's fairly subdued. The orange flavor is breaking through those dumb sweetener clouds. I'm glad this is good because up until this carbonated line came around I was really into this companies work.

I would like to speak with whoever was in charge of deciding how much sweetener was to be put in this beverage? Did they have a cold the day the decision was made? Were their collective noses stuffed, so that it affected their sense of taste? I don't know what situation would make me not want to fire them, but I hope something is brought to my attention, because this is just ridiculous(drinkers of a product have the ability to fire employees of the company right). Normally when stevia/erythritol are used in a beverage it's towards the bottom of the ingredients list. In here it's the second thing listed; carbonated water then zero calorie sweetener blend. It's so overly fake sweet that it's hard to make out the intended flavor of the drink. Guava is generally a very strong flavor, like passion fruit. In here it gets lost and it seems like an afterthought.

There are people out there who will really like this. I personally just don't understand using that much zero calorie sweetener, just use less. No one will complain.

From the get go I wanted nothing to do with this beverage. My interest in coconut water is still relatively new and a carbonated version sounded absolutely terrible to me. Just as I feared this drink fell on the sunscreen side of the spectrum. It wasn't to the extent that it tasted like someone watered down their Coppertone and then introducing it to a Soda Stream, but it is close enough. If that wasn't a bad enough description for you, take into consideration that the all-natural, zero calorie sweetener is ridiculously strong, and nearly unbearable. Simply put, this is not for me.