Derek Neuland - 489 Reviews

O Canada!
Our home and native land!
True raspberry soda love in all thy sons command.
With carbonated hearts we see cans rise,
The True North cold and delicious!
From far and wide,
O Canada, we drink the soda for thee.
God keep our soda glorious and free!
O Canada, we drink the soda for thee.
O Canada, we drink the soda for thee.

Translation: This blue raspberry soda is amazing, one of the best I've ever had. Other countries take note: Canada knows how to make delicious soda.

The Mighty Morpin Power Rangers were just after my time. My brother who is 3 years younger than me was into them, but I had no interest in the show/toys. I'm assuming I was "too old" for it, even though I knew of at least one friend of mine in my grade that watched the show and bought the action figures.

I haven't heard about the Power Rangers in a long time, a decade or so probably. I attribute this to not watching TV, not frequenting Toys 'R' Us, and not paying attention to the toys my younger cousins play with. I found this juice box at Big Lots, the store where drinks go to die. I just assumed it was 5 years old and would probably make me puke. Like a true Thirsty Dude, I obviously bought it.

I totally forgot I bought it until December 25th when I saw my cousin opening a new Power Rangers toy. It was puzzling to me, and reminded me of the juice boxes I had purchased. So I did a little research and found out Power Rangers have continually been on the air in one form or another since it first aired in 1993. Power Rangers Samurai, which is what series this juice box is from, is the 18th season. Eighteen! That is ridiculous. Seinfeld only had 9 seasons, so Power Rangers has been on twice as long.

Anyways, this juice box taste like every other "berry" juice box I've ever had. I don't know how I enjoyed these things when I was a kid. It's bland and has a bitter/sour aftertaste. No thank you.

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 have been duped. I walked into my local convenience store today and saw this 2 liter of Faygo in the cooler. While there were lots of flavors to choose from that we haven't reviewed yet, this one caught my eye because it has holiday packaging so I assumed it was a limited edition flavor. Limited edition flavors are what we love to find because: a. they are usually a weird flavor a company is trying out and b. they aren't around for a long time so it's best to review them ASAP.

When I saw this I immediately thought of Pepsi Spice. Sadly they stopped making Pepsi Spice before we started Thirsty Dudes, but it was basically Pepsi with nutmeg in it. They didn't have any small bottles of this St. Nick's Cola. I really didn't want a whole 2 liter, but I needed to try it in hopes it was like Pepsi Spice.

Boy was I disappointed when I tried it. It tastes exactly like the normal Faygo Cola. After a quick search and reading the bottle, it turns out Faygo makes "St. Nick" versions of some of their sodas and money from the sales goes to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. On one hand I'm sad this didn't taste like Pepsi Spice, but on the other I'm glad it's going to a good cause.

For straight edge kids such as us, sparkling grape juice is like champagne. No it's not as expensive, but it's what we buy when we want a fancy drink. I'm used to the big bottles of this, and had never seen it in a single serving bottle before. To the untrained eye, I almost thought this was a wine cooler on the shelf.

I've had some sparkling juices that are more sparkle than juice, but this is not the case with this bottle. The grape juice is really good and has the perfect amount of carbonation. It has a bit of a thick aftertaste, but most likely due to the grape concentrate the drink is made with. I probably should have saved this for New Years, but I prefer the big bottles because they are good for sharing. This serving size is like a personal drink for a fancy dinner.

Devotion. Courage. Sacrifice. That is the tag line for this company, but I feel like it should also be the Thirsty Dudes motto.

Devotion: We've been reviewing drinks since 2009.
Courage: We have tried some utterly disgusting drinks
Sacrifice: Do you know how many calories we have probably consumed? Not to mention all the sugar we have ingested. I personally recently had to have 6 cavities filled, and 2 teeth pulled. While I'm not blaming that all on Thirsty Dudes, but I'm sure it was a contributing factor.

Apparently this is one of the most popular energy drinks in Thailand. It's non-carbonated, which threw me off at first. I was expecting it to taste like Red Bull, but instead it's like a pineapple-peach juice taste. It's actually not that bad.

Dear Grandpa Lundquist,
I know we haven't seen each other in many, many years, but I needed to write you about something important. Despite being family, I think it's important that I am completely honest with you. I found a bottle of your "Christmas Soda" in the basement last night and drank it. Well, tried to drink it. Mom said it's called Julmust in Sweden and you used to trick her with it when she wanted a treat. I wish she had warned me before I took a big swig. If I knew it had barley and hops in it, I would have never taken it off the shelf. To quote a friend who I let try it, "it tastes like cough medicine, flat beer, and diet coke". While I've never tasted beer myself, I agree completely. My question to you is why would you make something so gross?

Thanks for the proverbial lump of coal.

Your disgusted grandson,
Derek

I think the median price for energy shots right now is around $3. I rarely/never buy energy shots, but I'm always noticing them at checkout counters and if they were cheaper I would probably buy them more often to review. I'm guessing $3 is what they usually are because that's the price that makes me hesitate with drinks. If it's a root beer, cream soda, or cola that we haven't reviewed this hesitation goes away.

There wasn't any hesitation with this energy shot because it was 99 cents at Aldi. For those who don't have Aldi grocery stores in their town, it's the cheapest store around. If Dollar Tree expanded their food selection by 6 rows and added a cooler and freezer, it would basically be another Aldi store. Don't get me wrong, there's sometimes some great food for cheap there, but more often than not it's bottom of the barrel as far as quality.

With that said, I wasn't expecting much from this energy shot. It tastes exactly like cherry Nyquil. I recently was sick and had to take some so it's taste is fresh in my mind. It's not as thick (thankfully), and hopefully won't put me to sleep because I have a lot of work to do. I thought it was going to taste a lot worst, so I'm pleasantly surprised.

The wonderful establishment Village Beer Merchant in Buffalo has put on tap another delicious soda from Flying Bison. My awesome partner surprised me with this growler and I couldn't have been happier. This is easily one of my favorite sarsaparilla's I've had so far. I wish it had a little more carbonation, but the sweetness is perfect. It has a great licorice taste, which prompted me to buy some black licorice the next day.

Good work Village Beer Merchant/Flying Bison, you've done it again. Thank you!

It's a good thing 7-11 isn't known for their lemonade, because this is a sad excuse for one of my favorite drinks. I don't know why I thought this would help my craving, high hopes perhaps? Nevertheless, I think I figured out 7-11's lemonade recipe:

10 parts water
1 part lemon juice
.005 sugar

The only thing I hate more than watered down lemonade, is flat soda. That doesn't make me dislike this lemonade less, but it makes me thankful that I'm not drinking flat soda.

I'm surprised Jason hadn't already reviewed this, seeing it's made in his backyard. Well not literally his backyard, but his stomping grounds of West Seneca. New York has the best cider in the country (that I've had). I don't know what it is about the apples here, but they make incredible cider and I moved back at just the right time, when gallons of it are everywhere and on sale.

Blossom Valley is no different either. This cider is a prime example of how delicious apple cider from Western New York can be. I may be biased since I grew up here, but I stand by it.

Now I know we previously reviewed the Bawls G33K B33R, but in the name of beverage science I had to give this a try since they dropped the 1337 speak and simply named this "root beer". Were they confusing people? Did they finally realize talking in numbers was kinda lame? Or did they completely change the formula and make it 100% less geeky?

Unfortunately a representative for Bawls could not be reached to comment on this matter. Ok, to be honest I didn't try. But I can comment on the last question: the taste. Is it different? Not at all. It's still delicious. Am I glad they changed the name on the bottle? Meh. I could care less really. I wasn't bothered by the 12 year old gamer talk on the bottle. What I would have loved to been a fly on the wall for is the meeting(s) where they discussed whether to keep the bottles as "G33K B33R" or change them to the traditional and less annoying "root beer". Maybe someday companies like Bawls will conference us in for our "expert" opinions.

Buffalo used to have a chain of convenient stores called Wilson Farms. They weren't all that incredible, but they were a staple of Western New York. A year ago, 7-11 swooped in and bought the franchise and has converted them all into their homogenized storefronts (as best they could given the various building sizes). A legacy is gone, but now Buffalo has a lot more 24-hour stores, which is great.

I will admit, I did not buy this bottle here in Buffalo. It was actually purchased in a 7-11 in Salt Lake City. But I recently (as in yesterday) moved back to Buffalo and have more to say about 7-11 here than a random one I went into in SLC. I remember I bought this because I hadn't had orange soda in a while and had a craving for it. While this wasn't the best orange soda ever, it definitely satisfied my craving. I would put this in the middle range, where most generic orange sodas lie. They're good, but not amazing.

I worked at Fun Fun Fun Fest again this year and one of the big sponsors was Red Bull. Big as in you couldn't walk 5 feet without being handed a can of Red Bull. It was 80 degrees in Austin all weekend long so instead of hot coffee I drank cold Red Bull.

Just as I was getting sick of the taste of Red Bull, I came across this can in a cooler. It's as if they really wanted to keep to the "limited edition" of the flavor and only brought one can for every 10,000 because this was the first time I saw it all weekend. Regardless of it being new, I was excited for something different in taste.

And it's definitely different, in a great way. It's lemon lime flavored! It's not as if they poured 7UP into Red Bull, it tastes nothing like regular Red Bull and everything like a delicious lemon-lime soda. If this were a regular Red Bull flavor, people would buy this in stampedes and leave the old cans in the dust.

I thought we had tried every flavor of Arnold Palmer. Then I saw this bottle, in a Fox News store, in the Houston Airport. Ironically just past this store was a PGA tour shop. This isn't my favorite, but the pomegranate is a nice change of pace to be mixed into the classic drink recipe. I wish this didn't have HFCS in it because it makes in unnecessarily thick tasting.

In my travels to the wonderful town of Austin, Texas, I found this bottle left in a co-op by Saint Arnold himself. It was an unexpected gift, but it was much appreciated for I hadn't had a new root beer in quite some time. Given that it is "old fashioned", I expected it to have a strong bite and rooty taste to it. On the contrary, it had a nice smooth vanilla taste to it. Saint Arnold brews a hell of a root beer and maybe some day he will leave a bottle somewhere else I'll be traveling.

I'm thirsty; can you bring me a bottle of Dr. Pepper? All you have is a generic Dr. Pepper? Alright, I guess that will do. Why did you...ok, I guess you opened it for me. Thanks! But why are you carrying a vile of battery acid in your other hand? Seriously??!? You're going to skateboard the bottle over to me!? Deny it all you want, I saw some of that battery acid splash up. Ugh, I wish I wasn't so thirsty. Sure soda isn't the best thing for thirst but it's the only thing available right now.

UGH... yup, some battery acid definitely made it's way into the bottle. It's not THAT bad, but still nothing I would go out of my way of experimenting with again.

Powell's is my favorite bookstore in the world. Sure, I haven't been to EVERY bookstore in the world, but it's my favorite of the ones I've been to. It is literally impossible for me to go there without walking out with a book (or 5). If you're ever in Portland, OR, do yourself a favor and go to their store downtown. It's huge (4 stories, and a full city block), and their used book selection is incredible (which are shelved right next to the corresponding new book on the shelf).

Last week when I was in the downtown store, I saw this bottle and my face lit up! This is a limited edition soda (made by local soda company Hot Lips Soda) made to commemorate Powell's 41st birthday. They picked the perfect flavor combination because this is incredible! I never thought raspberries and pears would go so well together, but they do. I used to dislike how little carbonation Hot Lips soda had, but I've come to love it. The lack of bubbles, and the fact that it's sweetened naturally by the fruit, really makes this taste great.

Books and soda, two of my all time favorite things together at last!

Fall is here and so is cider. I love apple cider! It's 1000 times better than normal/boring apple juice. If you disagree then I'm sorry, but we can't be friends. Cider in the Pacific Northwest (at least in Portland) isn't as common as it is in Western New York. This is sad, but don't worry I'm surviving.

Leave it to Columbia Gorge to come up with this beautiful bottle of deliciousness. What are even better are the ingredients: Apples, Ginger Juice. That's it! Two ingredients!! And it's organic on top of it.

The best part is that it tastes EXACTLY how I imagined it was going to. It's a really nice clean and crisp apple cider, with a great ginger burn in the after taste. It doesn't seem that strong at first, but once it hit my stomach, it was strong. Personally I would have love to have had more ginger in this so it was really intense, but I understand they are trying to please everyone and I'm sure most people don't have the ginger tolerance that me and the other Thirsty Dudes have. I hope more companies follow their lead and make cider with ginger in it.

Poor Teddy used to love his root beer. Everyday after herding cattle, he would come back to his modest house and sit in his favorite chair and enjoy a nice tall bottle of root beer. Then one day the doctor told him he couldn't have any more sugar. Teddy was obviously very sad. Suddenly his life wasn't as great as it used to be without his daily root beer.

That's when he decided to make his own root beer with a new "fake" sugar called sucralose. People were skeptical at first, but once they had a sip they were sold. Sure it wasn't as sweet as real sugar, but it was a great substitute for those who can't consume sugar but still want the delicious taste of root beer.