Jason Draper - 2709 Reviews

When things clearly say “Sugar Free” on them it makes me nervous. Artificial sweeteners should be filed directly in the filth bin and natural zero calorie sweeteners, while slightly more palatable, are really no prize. Typically I would prefer zero added sweeteners to something with zero calories. Hydro One has things worked out that make their products exceptions though. The beverages are sweetened with a mixture of Xylitol and Stevia, but for some reason they don't cut through the flavor of the drink like nearly every other “diet” beverage out there. I believe that reason is the addition of cinnamon. I don't know if it just happens to fall in the same taste spectrum, but where I would normally taste any variety of diet flavors, all I really get is a faint cinnamon taste. I am really on board with that.

As with the other flavors, to me this is a better version of a diet Vitamin Water. There is definitely a water base, as it is not thick like juice. The blueberry and pomegranate are not super strong, but are there more than enough to give it a proper flavoring. Of course there is that cinnamon riding through it all as well. This is a good option for those watching their sugar or calorie intake.

Polar's Seltzer Jr line is back (from what I hear, to stay) and this time they brought two new friends with them. One of them is this little fella that goes by the name Pixie Lights. From the picture on the tiny can one would assume that the New England based company is insinuating that fireflies are really just little pixies, riding around on tiny lightbulbs. Don't worry though, they wear itsy bitsy crash helmets so it's all done safely.

Due to the name I really wanted this to somehow taste like Pixie Stix candy or you know like Red Bull without any sweetener added to it. I knew I wasn't going to be getting what I hoped before I even took a sip. Could something really taste like flavored granulated sugar though that has no sugar in it? In reality what I got was a lightly floral citrus taste that I can't really pinpoint. It's not lemon, lime, orange or grapefruit. Maybe it's something exotic like starfruit. Is starfruit a citrus? It could maybe be the seltzer taste/bubbles that keeps making me think of citrus. Whatever it is it's light and refreshing , which is what I want out of seltzer.

This is simply not my speed. I originally wanted to say that it is simply not good, but there has to be someone out there who likes this weirdness and he tastes are subjective. I really want to like this, it's an odd twist on orange soda, in that it tastes malted and like someone dissolved a handful of all natural vitamins in it. It has a harshness to it that I really like and while it's in your mouth it tastes great, but as soon as you swallow and breathe it gets a bit gross. I feel like this is what orange beer would taste like if you removed all the alcohol. I do have a feeling that if there was a case of this just sitting around, I would keep drinking it because it was there and eventually grow to truly enjoy it. All hail the learning curve.
Ps. I just looked on line, since I can't read the can and it's a barley soda, so that's the flavor and not malt, apologies.

What sits before me is a healthy sports drink that doesn't taste like you are drinking the vat of chemicals that the Joker fell into. Sure, it has a slight diet edge to it, but it comes nowhere near the artificial taste of its contemporaries. Yes I know that their Bode line is their actual sports drink, but this is a beverage that falls under the same wheelhouse. If it makes you feel better, we can compare it to a Vitamin Water instead. Either way it has a great taste with zero sugar and zero calories. I believe their secret is that they have included a little cinnamon that really masks the stevia extract that is used to sweeten it. The cinnamon isn't very strong, but what is there sits right where the diet flavor normally hits me.

I wanted to say that the pineapple mango aspect of it could just be listed as “tropical,” but once I separated the cinnamon I can make out both specific flavors. It was formulated to support diabetic health, but against all odds, it's just plain tasty. I never thought I would ever find myself truly enjoying a zero calorie beverage of this sort, but here I am at 10am on Monday sipping away.

I came across this while looking for drinks to gift to Engineer Jay Zubricky at GCR audio while my band was working on our new record. I saw it and though, “Awesome, a green melon cream soda. Jay loves honeydew and while I'm sure it will be super sweet, it will probably also be tasty.” Little did I know at the time instead of it being a typical vanilla cream soda, it was actually a “creamy soda” meaning that it is soda with milk in it. Now that is strange. It certainly tastes like a regular, cheap, cream soda that has some melon flavoring added to it, but the milk adds another dimension to it, that I can't 100% get behind. It leaves a weird taste in my mouth and it also changes the viscosity of the beverage and makes it a little thicker than I was expecting. I was able to drink a few sips. Jay drank more than I did and seemed to enjoy it more as well. I guess all drinks are not for everyone.

Let's get things sorted, shall we. First off, this is a company with a French name, which means “beautiful.” Secondly, it is not a French company, and they actually reside in the United Kingdom. Finally, this is a flavor that leads my mind to not drift to neither France, nor the UK, but instead to the American South. This is something I could imagine being sipped on the porch of a fancy plantation in a time when racism ran rampant. Wait, am I talking about the 1800s, or 2018? Garbage humans aside, this is one hell of a beverage. It's as refreshing as anything on an oppressively hot summer day.
Something about the cucumber and mint gives it an almost pickle smell, but trust me that is nowhere to be found in the taste (as pointed out by recording engineer Jay Zubricky). This is pure luxury in a sipable format. It is mostly cucumber and mint, in a good way that does not resemble chewing gum one bit. I had thought that just being at that point would be wonderful, and the added lemon seemed like overkill, but I was wrong, it adds something wonderful to the mix. It hides around the edges and gives it the little bump it needed to become an ultimate summer beverage.

I learned today that hibiscus is often used in rituals to protect against evil, invoke divination, and clairvoyance. You would think with the amount of hibiscus I consume and the fact that several people have told me that my house looks like it should be somewhere a fortune teller runs their business, that I would be in the know of that information. Well, I suppose I am now and that makes me love it even more.

This is the most “pink” tasting beverage that I've ever tried. You know there are flavors that you associate with blue, orange, and purple that aren't necessarily the flavor of the fruit they pretend to be and instead have just become the flavor of the color? Well this should be the taste associated with pink, and for an added bonus it isn't even overly sweet. It's sweetened, but not in a mouth rot kind of way. This is not a spiced hibiscus, so if you were hoping for that you will be disappointed, but then excited once you realize that it may not be what you had wanted, but it's pretty great in its own way. It is simultaneously both vaguely floral and vaguely fruity.

My only complaint is that it is the lightest carbonation I have ever had in a beverage. My ladyfriend says she loves it that way because more bubbles would detract from the flavor. To me it feels like it's about to go flat. That didn't stop me from getting a great deal of enjoyment from it though.

If you looked up the opposite of a Trigger Warning, I'm pretty sure the returned result would simply be a picture of this beverage. I mean maybe it comes up with different results for different people, but the list of ingredients hear could very well be a secret code to break into my soul. Ginger is one of the greatest things that has ever graced this planet. I sure do like to go overboard with it. The other night I got a meal that was just shredded ginger and scallions with some fake chicken. You know when you get a bag of shredded carrots, well it was like someone dumped the full bag on my plate, but instead of carrots it was ginger, and a complaint didn't even cross my mind because it was amazing. Jasmine may be my favorite type of tea and vanilla, well it's vanilla and it's delicious. The only red flag here is coriander, which is the same plant as cilantro, you know pure soapy garbage. Luckily there is not a trace of that dirty dishwater taste I associate with the plant in this drink.

I'm going to say something crazy here. I feel like my friends are going to be concerned and perhaps I will come home to an intervention later, but I could actually do with a little less ginger here. By no means does the ginger taste bad. The only reason I say this is that it is so strong of a flavor that it doesn't really let the other flavors shine. Sure they are there, but I want them to have equal billing with the ginger. It's slightly floral with hints of vanilla, but how great would this be if those flavors were stronger?

I love this, but there is room for improvement via my imagination. I want this to be to summer as chai is to winter.

Go grab your stocking cap and your eye mask because when you drink this you are going to want to melt into whatever it is you are sitting/laying on. You might as well pop on those novelty pajamas you got for Xmas a few years back that have “Nemo” embroidered on them, because you are going to be taking a trip to Dreamland. Okay that may be a bit of an overstatement. It's not like this drink is a magical potion that just knocks you right out, but it surely did make me feel relaxed and ay trouble I would have had falling asleep about an hour after I drank it were out the window. It wasn't like I was counting down from 100 before some dental surgery, but it got the job done.

The main ingredients in here are passion flower and mulungu, both of which have been used for hundreds of years for their sedative properties. They are the type of ingredients that would have been considered magic in olden times but nowadays are just herbs. Man, the world was, and continues to be a crazy place. People were possibly murdered for witchcraft, just for knowing that these plants could be used to help someone get to sleep. Magic is science and I embrace it all. Oh yeah, and on top of this being a bottled magic that works it also tastes delicious. It's perfectly sweet and floral tasting without any added sugar. It tastes like a more floral passionfruit mixed with apple juice, but not nearly as sweet. I could drink a gallon of this without batting an eye, but then I would probably fall into a wonderful, dream filled coma for an extended period of time. Actually, that doesn't sound like a bad way to spend next winter.

Well, we have this new energy drink that we need to name that is made out of cannabis. Oh wait let's use the word hemp instead. I feel like that won't be so obvious for all of the suburban moms that like to complain about everything. Holy…€¦stop the presses, I have it! What are we serving these in? That's right, cans. It's a can of hemp, but to go back to our original word cannabis, we can have some wacky word play and go with Cannahemp. Sure, we may have to deal with more uptight people, but that is a pun that is too good to pass up. Now it's me, the reviewer breaking the 4th wall. Yes I made fun of the name, but honestly it's great. It is clever in a goofy way that I love and I support it. Also, anyone who wants to complain about hemp use in a thing like this is a moron. Of course something sold in a mass market that you don't need a prescription, or a “weed card” for is not going to contain THC and you are not going to get high from it. So you can calm down and if any of you youngsters out there have friends who drink this and they say it gets you high, let it play out so that they do some dumb stuff that they think is what being high is and then after a bit call them out and embarrass their lying asses.

This is not the first hemp/cannabis beverage that I have partaken in. Most of them tastes kind of like rope, except for the one I had from Canna Energy, which I believe is the old branding of this company, if the logo is any indication. Reading back on that review I found it to be pretty gross. If it is the same company they have either reformulated, or something was wrong with that original can I had. This does not taste spoiled, but it also does not taste like rope. It tastes like a very sweet green candy that is perhaps a mix between a green apple Jolly Rancher and some other green Wonka-esque confection. It is not my favorite, but I am also not grossed out by it. It gave me the energy I was searching for and I was easily able to get it down without complaining. That's a win in my books. There is still some room for improvement, but it's better than my last dalliance with the beverage.

This, this is not what I was expecting and it is so much better. I was expecting something akin to a Vitamin Water that had a hint of honey in it. IN reality it tastes like someone put on a kettle to make some tea, poured it into a mug, put in an extremely healthy amount of honey and then forgot to put in the tea bag. By the time they realized their folly, the water had cooled too much so they added some blueberry juice instead and magic happened. This is the most honey tasting thing I have ever ingested that wasn't just straight honey. It really tastes like I am just licking the honey off of a spoon. It is simply wonderful. The blueberry flavor also tastes real, so I can't imagine anyone ever complaining about that. There is also grapefruit, coriander, rosemary and peppercorn in here for reasons that I do not know, but it tastes incredible, so I'm not going to question their inclusion.

If you don't like honey I don't know why you would try something called honey water, but if you do you cannot go wrong with this. It's pure bliss.

Monster apparently decided to dip its toe into the world of caffeinated sodas and I'm pretty sure we all missed it. The only time I have ever come across this in the wild has been in discount or discontinued sections. My reasoning for this is that Monster themselves helped to make such products obsolete. Energy drinks are so common place now that I can't even tell you the last time I heard someone say that they were getting sleepy so they needed some caffeine and then have them grab a Mountain Dew. To be fair it seems like that particular company is doing just fine, but I believe that is because they are an institution and there is an extreme culture based around it. Even they have branched out into actual energy drinks though with Amp. I'm sure there are kids out there who I really hope aren't drinking energy drinks, which would down bottle after bottle of this on sleepovers or video game binges. The sad thing is that it's no longer out of the ordinary to see young teens downing cans of Monster, and yes, it always seems to be Monster with children.

As for the flavor is this, White Lightning is apparently code for really diet tasting. It reminds me of a diet version of Frosh by Faygo. I haven't had that in probably 30 years so I could be way off, but that's what my brain is putting together. It's kind of citrus, but really just diet.

I just looked up the Mutant website and did a product search and apparently every 711 everywhere carries these, so perhaps I was wrong and it was financially sound for them to put out this product. Fans of mini marts everywhere just may be celebrating this as they sit on the curb with their nachos and chili dogs. I may in fact be that out of touch and perhaps we should just hang out Thirsty Dudes.

What we have here is an elixir (aka juice) that is made from herbs and such that are found in the Amazon rainforest. The end game is to put healthier, functional drinks into the hands of the public, or so I assume. What do I know though, the owners could have some secret vendetta against an old colleague and they could have built this entire company as part of some revenge plot, but let's just say it's for health.

There are other things in this elixir, but the two ingredients that Amaz is trying to shine a light on are guarana (a natural stimulant) and catuaba (strengthen and balances body function). Basically it's a natural energy drink of sorts. It tastes very tropical. The guarana is the main flavor in the beverage, which is overly fruity and borderline bubble gum tasting. I do get a slight hint of banana as well. That I am not a fan of, but I know I'm in the minority with that one. Also included are cupuacu, apples, caja, suma root, beets, green coffee, marapuama and camucamu. Iwould be a liar if I told you I could accurately describe each of those ingredients. Mixed together they most certainly bring to mind something that I could envision being a customary beverage in the rain forest.

This is a different juice, and I don't think it's for everyone, but I enjoyed it. As a bonus the company support ethical sourcing of ingredients and 1% of their sales goes to seeding the forests in the Amazon.

Let's begin by looking past the fact that this is an energy drink and all that entails and the flavors that brings to your mind. Instead, let us concentrate on the fact that this is an organic beverage, an organic grape beverage at that, yet nowhere on the shockingly short ingredients list (five items) is grape juice, or anything grape listed. The flavor falls under the category “natural flavor.” I'm guessing that natural flavor is in fact grape juice as it tastes more like sparkling juice than grape soda, but that leaves me concerned about what other things can fall under that header and make it to market. “Natural” can entail a wide variety of things. I'm not saying there is anything nefarious going on here, but it makes me uneasy what companies can feed us without us knowing.

Anyway, as I said it tastes more like sparkling grape juice than soda and tastes nothing like a typical energy drink. It's just sparking juice, with unnecessary sugar added and caffeine thrown into the mix. It's not going to make you crazy, but it will give you a little boost and a whole lot of sugar (44g).

I've been putting this off. One simply does not enjoy bad mouthing Polar. They bring so much joy to my life and excitement to my taste buds. Unfortunately here I sit with one of the limited edition summer flavors for 2018, sipping away out of obligation and respect, but little enjoyment. Something about this just tastes artificial. It doesn't even have a medicinal cherry flavoring, it just tastes like some sort of chemical flavoring. It's not just the cherry either, the mango tastes off as well. There is just no bliss to be found in this beverage. Do yourself a favor and just grab a different flavor of Polar and enjoy. Lucky for everyone this is limited.

Normally I am on board with guayusa. It's a natural source of caffeine that I don't need to feel terrible about consuming. Sure, it's not my all-time favorite flavor, but it is by no means gross. It's just its own unique flavor. Normally the other flavors mixed with it mask it a bunch, and everything works out great. In here I would say this is 80% guayusa and 20% lime. For my liking it definitely could have done with more lime. Lime is a flavor that can be as strong as possible and I wouldn't complain. It's very faint in here and it seems to make the guayusa shine a bit more. It was weirdly a bit plain, which I didn't expect to use as a descriptor. I can imagine a world where this is what water tastes like and no one would bat an eye. There is absolutely nothing wrong with it, but it doesn't entice me to drink more.

This is simply not for me. I am fairly disgusted by milk and all it entails, unless it's in ice cream form, because I am a child. The protein powders I get are derived from plants or soy. This tastes like someone took powdered heavy cream (if such a thing exists) and then I reconstituted it with water into a thick milky beverage that I could not get more than one sip down. Had I been in a different location in my house I would have probably spit it out. The thing is I can't really complain because it is exactly what it advertises to be, and I cannot fault them for being something that I despise. They are what they are and I am what I am, and I will avoid consuming it again until the end of my days. Those of you out there who love milk get on this train, because it's protein that you will be happy about.

So after saying the name of this beverage several times aloud to a friend they still thought that I was saying it was called Gringo and not Green-Go. Was that an intentional marketing plan? Perhaps it was an inside joke, you know a play on how the white people who live in the suburbs of America won't shut up about how such and such restaurant is completely authentic Mexican, when in reality it's like an Applebees that serves tacos. Those same people probably will never step into the hole in the wall taquerias that look filthy, but taste amazing, serving things such as nopal. In case you didn't know nopal is cactus and it is what is used to make this beverage. The folks at Green-Go puree the paddles of the nopal cactus into a beverage that is ridiculously refreshing. Think of it as coconut water's long lost cousin. When I describe what cooked nopal tastes like to people I always say it's like a cross between green beans and green peppers. This tastes nothing like that, thankfully…€¦I think? This tastes kind of like unsweetened aloe vera, but you know without being overbearing and resembling poison. It tastes plantlike, but it is very mild. It's the kind of flavor that grows on you the more you drink, and you will want to drink a lot when you see how hydrated it makes you feel. Take it from this gringo.

All my life I thought I despised coconuts. As it turns out I just hate it in toasted form, and it has ruined many otherwise delicious desserts for me. Raw coconut and coconut water on the other hand are pretty tasty. Pina colada is a flavor that always eluded me. It sounded like, for those who liked coconut, it would be the ultimate tropical summer drink. Keep in mind these are the thoughts that came to me in my youth. Now that I am older and wiser I can say, ehhh it's not bad at all. I'll rather have a fruity tropical drink, but it does taste like sunny weather.

For all their energy drink promotion, and the association with Mountain Dew (I think they are trying to distance themselves from that) this really just tastes like a pina colada soda, and I am into it. It's very sweet, like your average soda, but there is no energy drink taste to it. The entire boost in here comes from organic caffeine, no other nonsense. I would drink this on a beach if I were ever kidnapped and forced to go to the beach during the day, which I believe is one of the circles of hell for someone as pale as I am. It's summer. This is tasty. What are you waiting for?

I took a little break from reviewing Polar's summer flavors, because let's be honest, as great as they are there really isn't much to say. Sure I could tell a story about a family of polar bears who each have very specifically flavored saliva and how a New England company offered them bundles of cash and fish to have exclusive access to their mouth juice in order to flavor there beverages, but we all know that story like we know about the birth of Christ. Instead I will just say that this is my favorite of the 2018 Summer limited edition. It's got berries and it's got citrus, and both turned out well, without a hint of bear spit. The flavors taste as true as can be in a seltzer and I have downed far too many liters of it over the past month.