Sugar - 840 Reviews

Join me on a rocket ride to Russia! Oh wait this soda is actually made in California. Well that makes things a lot easier. Join me on a regular airplane ride to the west coast so we can stop off in Camarillo for some tasty soda pops.

The apple of the eye of nearly every bar patron who chooses not to imbibe alcohol is a little lady by the name of Shirley Temple. She is generally composed of a lemon-lime soda and grenadine (aka cherry syrup). I can't even tell you the quantity of these bar tenders have prepared for me over the years. The only pre-bottled version I have ever seen before is made by Saranac and it is way, way syrupy. Rocket Fizz didn't make that mistake. Instead of sweetening their soda with HFCS they used straight up sugar, which was a wise decision. It's not nearly as syrupy, which makes it way more enjoyable. It's a light and flavorful cherry-citrus soda. It actually has a vague cherry Twizzler taste to it, which is strange because the Rocket Fizz licorice soda was a big disappointment.

Bartenders everywhere are raising their glasses in salute to this soda for being as good, if not better, than any version they could have concocted.

Today I spent another day tracking in the studio for the "new" album Failures' Union has been recording for almost two years. We apparently work slow as can be. I was early getting to the studio, so I hit up a supermarket that was close by and I bought a bunch of strawberries and this lemonade for everyone to enjoy. As it turns out everyone else were fools and I ended up eating all of the strawberries myself. It was really a whole mess of strawberries. Surely more than one person should eat in a single day.
I also apparently cannot be satiated when it comes to berries. I ate obscene amount of berries and then very happily delved into 64oz of berry flavored lemonade. I have no regrets. My lack of regrets could also be do to the fact that this is a spectacular beverage. The lemonade flavor isn't lost under the added fruit flavor. In fact the berries let the lemon shine in a whole knew way. The label shows a picture of a strawberry and a raspberry, but neither are present on the ingredients list (unless it's under natural flavors). Instead chokeberry juice is listed. I have no idea what that is, but it's apparently delicious. This is a distinctly berried flavored lemonade, and it's perfect for a hot summer day, or for spending 11 hours in a climate controlled room.

Um, hello. I don't know how to say this, but when I was eating Mike, he told me that his final wish was to review this can of pink lemonade tea for him. I'm a chupacabra and what I do is eat people. I eat goats, too. Rabbits are pretty great but are often hard to catch. It seems that Mike and the Thirsty Dudes have a pretty big following so I feel that I owe it to his fans to explain what happened.

Mike was in Las Vegas looking for a root beer float and someone misguided him into going to the outskirts of town to a small ice cream shop. He made a wrong turn and ended up in the desert. He came across my path. I didn't want to eat him but he said something like "do you know who I am?" and that just ticked me off and I lost it. I had just lost $15 in Keno at Horrible's and was irritable. Next thing I remember is that Mike's legs were in my mouth. He told me while I was chewing his thighs that he had a backpack with this drink in it and he had to review it for the site. He gave me access to the site and just kind of let me eat the rest of him.

Now that you know what happened, I can review the drink for him and for you. I may be a desert dwelling creature, but I've been around the block a few times. I've had tea and I've had lemonade and I've had pink lemonade. This is a better pink lemonade than it is a sweet tea. The sweet tea has that partially diet taste, which distracts from the lemonade. The mixture isn't too bad on these hot summer days in the desert where I spend much of my time.

I'm not sorry I ate him, and to thank him for letting me do this for him, I've got a pair of ill-suited Cole Haan shoes and a gold Seiko watch someone can have. I'll be at the Golden Nugget all night. Just don't make me mad or I might have to eat you, feet first, of course. I can't have my dinner running away from me now, can I?

This drink is the equivalent of dumping a whole mess of grapes into a blender with an obscene amount of sugar. Sure the grapes get cut up, but there are stuff a whole mess of chunks left over. That's okay though, we love chunks in our drinks. Okay, that sounds gross. I feel like I just said that we love vomit in our drinks. I'd like to go on record by saying that I have never drank vomit in a drink, and I hope that I never end up drinking vomit in a drink. If I did the result would just be the creation of more vomit to put in drinks, and as we already mentioned no one wants that, so it would be a waste of effort and time.

If someone had poured this into a glass and then given it to me, I would have assumed from looking at it that it was an aloe drink. Then after drinking it I would have thought that I had confirmed my earlier thought. I obviously would have been wrong. It's just water, grape juice and grape chunks, but it really does taste and feel like it is an aloe drink. The grape flavor is a bit stronger than any aloe I've ever had, but the similarities are there. I'm shocked that there is only 27g of sugar in here, because it tastes like someone dumped an entire sack of sugar into this little can. While my health would not appreciate that, my taste buds certainly do.

If it was Sobe's mission to take two of the most potent fruit juices this word has ever seen and use them to flavor water in a way that makes them not potent at all, well job well done. I actually don't get much pomegranate out of this. It's mostly just cherry and I'm okay with that. To be frank I'm getting pretty sick of our friend the pomegranate. He's infiltrated far too much of the beverage world, and I could use a break from him. To get back on track, this like every Lifewater is just Sobe's version of Vitamin Water and it's completely apparent in the taste. Sure Sobe has been around longer, but their drinks didn't use to be so “water based.” The only thing different between this and Vitamin Water is that this has taurine in it. I'm pretty sure no Vitamin Waters do. If I did a blind taste test I would guess this was a new flavor of Vitamin Water, which I suppose isn't a bad thing. Billions of people, including myself, love their products and drink them all the time. Here's to competition.

Fact: This is the slowest glass of chocolate milk you will ever drink. The slowest. When you drink this chocolate milk, you drink it much like a fine wine. You swirl it, aerate it, sniff it, and compare it to things like wood and old books. Now you can drink it in stealth. You can go to a big meeting with regular, white milk, and smuggle in these straws and be a kid disguised as an adult man who makes six figures. Here's the thing, though, back to what I said about this being slow. The chocolate comes in these little, compressed chocolate flavor balls stuffed from tip to tail in this straw. You pour a glass of milk, you put in your straw, and it melds together, forming one from two. It's almost romantic from a cannibalistic type of way. I mean, you're drinking the beautiful thing these two made together and we're all complaining about how slow we were doing it. Savages. Anyhow, you take a nice sip and you've got a nice, sweet chocolate milk. You take another sip and you've got white milk. Wait...what a second. You were drinking chocolate milk a second ago and now, all of a sudden, you're drinking regular milk. What...did someone pull the old switcheroo on you or something? No. It happens. Here comes science.

The milk dissolved the chocolate balls at a certain rate. You drinking sucks up all that dissolved chocolate along with the milk creating chocolate milk on the go. This erosion of chocolate only happens so fast so you have to take a sip and then wait. Take a sip and then wait. Yes, if you wait this is good chocolate milk but to milk, no pun intended, an eight-ounce glass of chocolate milk is hard work. Patience is a virtue or a great glass of chocolate milk. In these fast times, there isn't a lot of time to take an evening to drink a glass of chocolate milk.

Western Pennsylvania is Tea Cooler Country. There are more dairies there that produce non-brewed iced teas than I have ever come across anywhere else. I must say that they are all delicious. Most companies that make teas like this overly sweeten them with HFCS to a point that it seems like it's flavored sugar water and not tea at all. PA knows how to do it correctly.

I would really like to visit one of these dairies. I wonder if it would be interesting, or just a bunch of barns filled with cows hooked up to those weird hose things. They are proof that technology can be terrifying. Other ways that technology is terrifying is that this drink is made with "instant tea solids." It just doesn't sound right. It sounds like it should be chunky and completely disgusting, but the drink is completely liquid and delicious. Sure it's on the very very sweet side of things, but it's a tea cooler and that is how they are supposed to be. What I found to be surprising about this drink is that it actually tastes like raspberries and not the weird sweet syrupy fake raspberry flavor that a lot of teas have. Well done Schneiders. I think Mike works for one of your relatives. Well Zach, are they your kin?

Well pardner, I just finished reading the last of the Preacher comics. I honestly don't know why it took me so long to finally get to reading the series, as it was great. There are few storylines better than one about a guy who gets "possessed" by the offspring of an angel and demon and then goes off with his ladyfriend and a vampire to go find God and make him own up to all of the crap he's put humanity through. If that wasn't enough there are also a whole mess of references to cowboys, and even John Wayne is a semi-main character. I'd like to think that if either Mr. Wayne or Jesse Custer (the Preacher) were to drink an energy drink it would be Junior Buffalo.

There isn't a single other energy drink on the market that is backed by the ideas of cowboys and the old West. I don't know exactly why a cowboy would need an energy drink riding through the prairies all day. Perhaps he would use it to keep his nerve up for a gunfight. That's what I'll go with, gunfights.

So if you have an upcoming gunfight and you don't think you have the focus you need to take down your opponent, grab yourself a can of Junior Buffalo and as soon as you crush it draw your gun and walk out of that place a winner. Well, if you can call shooting someone making you a winner.

Opposed to their normal like the Junior version that I'm drinking here has no caffeine or taurine. All of the energy in this can comes from vitamins and L-carnitine. It's supposed to be a healthier version for all of the little ones running around the homestead. So I guess they won't be needing this for gunfights, unless the Old West in my head is way more messed up than I think it is. I guess the grown cow folk could feed this to their younger kin to help them with their chores. I really don't even know what this taste like. It doesn't really taste fully like an energy drink. I guess it's kind of a citrus grape flavor. It starts off nice, but it goes out harsh. I guess it's something kids would probably like.

I'd like to state that I am completely against giving kids energy drinks. They should have all of the energy they need just from being young. It really freaks me out when I see 12 year olds downing the largest size Monster they can find. While I don't fully endorse feeding this to kids, it is less unhealthy than the other options on the market.

Pete waited too long to get his daddy something for Father's Day. Way too long, like the day after Father's Day too long. He had to make it up to him. After all, his daddy let him stay at home well into his twenties, fed him, gave him a job, gave him a car, and so much more. He really blew it this year. Last year he bought him a "Make Your Own Tie" kit, which sucked but was at least delivered on time. This year though? Nothing. He had to do something. Pete didn't think about it until he got back from work. He was one block from his house, totally empty-handed. He went to the corner store and grabbed the first thing he saw. Since it was a nothing corner store, they only had big name drinks and no name meats.

He ran home to try and get home before his daddy but it was too late. His daddy was sitting down with a mouth full of meatloaf. Now, not only did he not get him a Father's Day gift, but also he was late for dinner. His dad gave Pete a look and said, "Son, why don't you get me something to drink since you're up?" and that was the perfect time to give him his gift. Pete gave him a Natural Strawberry Kiwi Sierra Mist still cold from the store. His dad looked up at him knowing full well what Pete was doing. His dad took a sip, looked at his son, and said "Thanks, buddy. This is better than last year's Father's Day gift even if it was late." Pete sat down and his dad poured him some Sierra Mist. Pete took a sip and saw how it was redeeming. It was good. Possibly better than regular, original Sierra Mist. The strawberry and kiwi both shined and it was sweet, but not too sweet. They both talked about how they appreciated how it was made with real sugar and actually was the perfect compliment to meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and peas.

If the labels on can and bottles are any indication everyone in Jamaica ingests nothing but ginger beer all day long. Okay, sometimes they mix in a little pineapple pop, but other than that straight ginger beer. I think that is a place I would like to visit. You wake up in the morning turn on the tap and out flows ginger beer. Even the “water” in the toilets is actually ginger beer. It's heaven for those who crave the burn. For those who are babies and can't handle the spice it's akin to the lake of fire in Hades.

I find it humorous that I bought this drink in Canada by way of the United Kingdom. It's like playing Seven Degrees of Jamaica. I was up in Toronto with Night Birds, and I was the definition of a glutton. I don't think I stopped consuming food and beverages from the moment I stepped out of the car until I was driving back to Buffalo. At the point when I saw this I was already ridiculously full and had to pee like nobodies business, which is terrible in a city with no bathrooms. I'm shocked that Toronto doesn't ever really smell like urine. Good job guys. Anyway there I was walking around and I passed a candy shop that had a bunch of coolers inside. I really didn't have a chance but to enter. One of the coolers was pretty much all British drinks. Unfortunately I was almost out of Canadian money and I needed to save some for veggie dogs on the way home. Ever the sucker for ginger beer I went with this can. Sure I could have just held on to it, but the gluttony was calling my name, so I cracked it open the moment I finished off my bubble tea. It smells very spicy, but I thought it had a medium burn. I let (read: made) my friend Dave Dluga try it and he said it burned the hell out of his mouth. I guess I've built up a tolerance. It was extremely flavorful with a bit of a kick. It was actually a nice blending of burn and flavor. If I ever find myself back in the UK I'll be sure to drink a bunch of these, especially with a 49p price tag on it. I ended up paying $2.25 Canadian. Ouch.

Mark and Jeff had been lost at sea for about a week. They had rented a nice little sailboat to go out and chill out in the tropics for a day, just enjoying the ocean. Things were going well, and then suddenly the winds kicked up and it was too much for our beginner sailors. If it wasn't enough for the wind to blow them off course, it decided to be a real jerk and also blow away their map. It really wouldn't do them any good anyways as each had assumed the other knew how to use a compass. The first few days they fought, but after that they kind of fell into a nice routine. Luckily they had fishing poles with them, so they would catch their food in the morning and then just lounge in the sun during the afternoon waiting for rescue.

It was during one of their afternoon sun bathing sessions that Jeff announced that he really had a hankering for a nice Arnold Palmer. Mark said he thought he say a box of tea under the deck. He had no idea why it was there, as there was no stove, but he never really questioned it. He just took some tea bags put them in a jar filled with water and let it sit in the sun for a few hours. Then he took the lemon that was inexplicably on the boat and squeezed it into his brew. The result was okay, but it was hardly an Arnold Palmer. It really tasted more like a lemon tea with more lemon than one would typically want. It didn't have the zing of lemonade. Jeff held back his complaints while he drank his mediocre beverage. He just sat back and sipped as the sun bronzing his skin.

What I would like to know his how our friends cooked their fish and where did all of this fresh water come from? I smell witchcraft!

I've eaten a lot of almonds and I've drunk a lot of chocolate milk. Put these two things together and I've got high hopes. Why? I like both things. I don't know the crazy behind the idea of getting "milk" from almonds but I guess a "hats off to you" should come your way because not once have I chewed or squeezed an almond and gotten milk from it. Unless I'm misunderstanding something, which I probably am, I didn't know that almonds contained any sort of moisture let alone drinkable, containable milk.

I have drunk soymilk and rice milk but I've never had almond milk. I suppose I'm stupid to assume that it would taste like almond flavored chocolate milk. That would be great. If you could make this drink but leave some of the almond flavor, I would buy the daylights out of it. Inside this carton is a smooth and creamy, as advertised, chocolate milk. Real smooth. Silky smooth. It tastes different than something like a delicious Nesquik and tastes more like generic corner store chocolate milk. That's not bad, but I just want to set you up right so you know what to expect.

I don't know if I've ever had bad chocolate milk and this certainly doesn't break the mold but if you're vegan, I may have just made your day. Let me know if I've made your day. In the meantime I'm going to eat some pepperoni pizza and think of how you're probably drooling.

I was on tour with Cheap Girls this past week. I hadn't been on the road much lately, so when my friends asked me to tag along on a mini tour I decided a nice little vacation was exactly what I needed and hopped in the van for a few days of music and stupid fun.

Lately I've been eating less garbage food and have been trying to take better care of myself. My normal tour lifestyle is not very conducive to that. Living out of a van leads to eating at gas stations and Taco Bell way too often. This tour was short and for once in my life I actually had some extra money, so I bought healthier snacks and actually ate at restaurants. It was a nice change, and I definitely didn't feel like garbage for once.

To add to my health I decided to drink a bottle of juice every morning to start my day. I tried to keep it to 100% juice with no sugar added, but the neighborhood I was in for our stay in Baltimore wasn't very helpful with that. I found this can of pineapple nectar at a little bodega and decided that it would just have to do. Sure it wasn't only juice in a can, but at least it had chunks of fruit in it. It was actually the least acidic pineapple juice I have ever had. There was no trace of that pineapple vomit smell, and it was very smooth. As I said it had chunks of pineapple in it. In fact I would say that ¼ of the can was actually the flavorless stringy pieces of fruit. I had shaken the can up before I opened it, but the chunks still mainly resided at the bottle half of the can. By the time my drinking took my to that portion, it was mostly chunks and it was a bit off putting. Had the amount of chunks been consistent through the entire drink I would have liked it a lot more. Also, if you drank this warm it would probably be one of the grossest drinks I can think of.

Summer is upon us and a wave of new lemonades is rising to a crest. If there ever was a seasonal beverage then lemonade is it. I've never once even given a thought to drinking lemon water unless the temperate was over 80 degrees. The more the temperate rises the more my brain thinks about it. This weekend held the first ridiculously hot days of the year and being the idiot I am I was in NYC wearing jeans because I thought I wouldn't need shorts. I was sweating like crazy unloading gear from the van to bring it into Webster Hall and all I wanted was the perfect lemonade. A quick search of bodegas brought me to this little treat. The only thing that would have sounded more perfect to me at that moment in time would have been a blackberry lemonade, but I will happily take what I can get.
I was so hot and this was a great refresher, but there was a problem. This is great as a passionfruit drink, but it could use more lemonade flavor. I want more tartness. The whole reason to drink lemonade is the nice tart refreshment. This is more like a passionfruit juice with a splash of lemonade. It's quite enjoyable and it tastes great, but I feel off calling it lemonade.

I may have mentioned this before, but there is a major plot hole in the film Smokey and the Bandit. The whole premise of the movie is that Big (and Little) Enos hire/bet Bandit to drive to Texas and return with a truck full of Coors. Bandit gets Snowman to drive the truck, while he drives a Trans AM and speeds ahead to lure the cops off of the truck. It's a great concept for a movie except for one thing. They are driving through the southern heat and arrive right at the party, and it is a standard semi truck, it's not refrigerated. That means all of these people are stoked to be drinking hot beer. So gross, but other than that it's flawless.

I personally think with all of the great tea companies in Texas (Sweet Leaf and True Brew) they would have been better off bringing some great tea for everyone to enjoy. Okay, that wouldn't make for a very good party, but I would have loved it.

So yeah, I had a very positive outlook on tea from Texas so when I saw that a great company like Peace Tea had a Texas style tea I was floored. Unfortunately it's not very special. It tastes like they took a batch of their southern sweet tea and cut it with some regular black tea. They really could have called it sweet tea or just iced tea and I would have believed it. I don't know what about it makes it Texas style. It's a decent tea, but nothing special. Tea like this is not worth Bandit's time, no matter how much Big Enos will pay him.

The weather reports are in and boy are they strange. If you're going outside boys and girls, don't forget to grab an umbrella as it's really coming down out there. The thing is that the precipitation isn't rain, but little chunks of mango. Meteorologists were highly confused until it became known that one of the canning facilities for Chabaa exploded earlier this morning, sending it's reservoirs of mango pulp high into the atmosphere. It's just now that it is finally making its way back to the Earth.
While it is a strange thing to behold it is causing the sale of Chabaa to skyrocket (no pun intended). People are looking outside, thinking how much of as pain the cleanup is going to be, and then they suddenly get as craving for some juice. Even though Chabaa puts out a fairly tame nectar (it's slightly thick, but the added sugar takes a little away from the mango flavor), they include little chunks of mango pulp that give the beverage the little push it needs to be great. Pulp and chunks do nothing but make drinks more fun and enjoyable. These are fairly small, maybe 1/8" cubed, but they squish up nicely in your mouth.
So follow your whim and go out and grab yourself a can, just remember to bring your umbrella and your galoshes or you'll be in for some trouble. This is Steve Saginaw signing off for Imperial Weather.

Jay doesn't like tamarind and thinks that it's hilarious when he makes me drink all the new tamarind drinks. I've got to admit, it is kind of funny. Tamarind is weird, though. If I had to describe it, I would say that it tastes like you strained apple juice through peanuts. Take a whole bunch of run-of-the-mill peanuts, crush them up, put them in a shirt, pour apple juice through it, and drink your new, strange juice.

It's not terrible. Let it be known. It really isn't, but it's just kind of...awkward. If I had to separate it into time, 80% of the time it tastes like apples and then it just grows this nutty taste to it. If that sounds like something experimental that you would like to try, this is a good drink to try as I feel that it's tamarind in it's purest sense. I know Jarritos makes a tamarind pop but the carbonation and extra sugar might throw off the taste a little bit.

If anyone can describe it better than that, please, be my guest. My boss really liked this and he is usually the first the turn down a drink.

I've been waking up a lot earlier than normal for the past month or two. I'm sure my early is sleeping in for most people, but I've been getting up without an alarm at 9/9:30 and for me that is a miracle. I'm used to getting up at 11 or noon. What can I say I live a life of leisure? I blame the gym for this. Damn getting healthy making me wake up early. I'm actually more than okay with it. I've been getting more things done in the morning and that works for me. The only downfall is that when my ladyfriend and I have our nightly Venture Bros watching, I've been nodding out by one (which may also late for most people). I'm also okay with that for the most part, but tomorrow morning I'm going on tour with Cheap Girls, so I feel like I should be awake to hang out while I'm home. My solution was to drink this coffee drink at 10pm. Yeah, I'm not going to be sleeping tonight, but I can sleep in the van so who cares?

My solution drink is exactly how I like my coffee drinks: overly sweet and tasting of chocolate more than coffee. Before I shook this up there was actually a layer of chocolate at the bottom that needed to be mixed in. In reality this tastes more like chocolate milk with a splash of coffee in it than coffee with a hint of chocolate. If you ever wanted to start to get a child hooked on coffee I suggest starting them out with a nice bottle of Frio!

I drank this for a long time and out of nowhere just stopped. I don't know what happened, probably nothing, but then I just stopped. Then I read that unfortunate article in either Men's Health or Maxim that put this drink in the "Do not drink" column versus something that has fewer calories. That being said, this has an abominable amount of calories. If you have an element of self-control, you will be fine. Half this and you're at a standard bottle of pop. Naturally, if you drink the whole thing because you're thirsty or weak you will ingest 240 calories. Vicious.

I do love this drink, though. It tastes nothing like green tea and everything like mint...something. If you took all the bite out of green tea, added sugar to cut it down even more, and then a secret ingredient that I think tastes like mint but half of the people that say that to disagree. Look I'm wrong about a lot of things a lot of the time and can accept this, but I have always thought it was minty.

This stuff rules. Drink it with a friend and don't get chunky together.

Is there a more perfect fruit than the guava? Side thought: what sort of contraption/green house would I have to build in my apartment in order to grow a guava tree that would bear fruit? I think the biggest allure of living in a tropical location would be that you could have a guava tree in your back yard. Imagine just waking up, rolling out of bed, strolling into the yard and picking some guavas for breakfast. If there ever was a heaven you now know how I would spend eternity.

The only way this drink could be any better would be if they cut out the sugar and had it be 100% juice. That's the dream right there. Since I'm from a climate that is opposite of tropical for most of the year I will take what is offered. This is sweet and wonderful, just like the fruit. It has the slightest bit of grainy texture due to the sugar, but I can overlook it. When are guavas in season? When is that one week out of the year you can get them in the grocery store in NY? I just want fresh fruit now.