Jason Draper - 2709 Reviews

When you go into a small local beverage store and see a soda called “Buffalo Birch Beer,” and you are me, the first thing you think is “How the hell is there a new soda company in Buffalo and I didn't know about it? I'm a consummate professional and I should really be up on these things!” a quick label then informs you that it's actually from Rochester, NY (a little over an hour away) and that it's made by College Club, a company you are very familiar with. That is twice that I was duped today. I was also told that Boss Hogg from Dukes of Hazzard was from Buffalo as well, which broke my brain. I then found out that he's actually from Olean which is even further than Rochester. I guess the lesson here is that Buffalo is great and everyone wants to pretend that they are a part of it in some way.

I have nothing bad to say about College Club. They make delicious soda that is ridiculously cheap. Their normal line comes in reusable glass bottles and cost about 35 cents each. You just can't beat it for a family gathering, especially with their selection. It appears that Fiz is their venture into cane sugar sweetened sodas that come in normal glass bottles. This does taste similar to their other birch beer. It's dark and rich, the cane sugar makes this way better though. It's obviously less syrupy and the wintergreen really seems to shine a lot more. This is great. I wish it really were from Buffalo, but Rochester isn't that far, and I'm glad to see that things are going well for College Club. They have always treated Thirsty Dudes well and it's nice to see them expanding.

Here's an idea, let's take a less than stellar beverage and make it somehow worse by taking out the sugar/stevia mix and replacing it with sucralose. Seriously why would they not just use all stevia? It may not be the best, but it is way better than the poison taste of sucralose. Nothing tastes real in this beverage. The peach tastes artificial and even the tea flavor seems fake somehow.. It's not undrinkable, but it's by no means enjoyable by my standards. It's like there was a science fair and a kid decided to make a soda in his home laboratory. Oh yeah, that kid is a super scientist in the making, just don't let her near anything you want to ingest. I really wanted to like this line and it just wasn't meant to be.

You have to appreciate when a company makes a large effort with their presentation. The size/shape of bottles and cans has become so uniform and standard that when a company mixes things up it's hard not to take notice. Sure, Galvanina didn't create something new, but their embossed glass bottles with minimum label are just classy. They could have easily thrown their sparkling juice into any old bottle and it would have just blended in with the scenery, but the way they present it makes it stand out and makes it special. It's similar to the way that San Pellegrino stands out because of the foil they put over the top of their cans. You feel a small specialness when you drink them. Just one glance at this bottle and I could tell it was most likely made it Europe. It feels old in the best possible way.

On top of having all the right looks this also tastes pretty fantastic. Normally when beverages are made sparkling carbonation is just added to regular water. In here mineral water is used and it does give it a bit of a regal feel. Also involved are clementine and carrot juice concentrates as well as orange and lemon pulp. It does fall on the sweeter side of how I like my sparkling juice, but it still mostly tastes like juice and that is the important thing. This wins all around.

Remember when you were young and you would make chocolate milk from the Hershey powder that came in a tin. No matter how much you mixed it in that powder would never fully dissolve in the milk and it always seemed like it was chocolate and milk and not a complete cohesion of the two? Well this is the coconut water version of that. I've had chocolate coconut water that tasted like it could have come right off the tree in that form, but this tastes like two separate thing that just happened to get put in the same can. Lucky for us they are two enjoyable things and they don't ruin each other at all. I enjoyed this, but it feels like they rushed to get it to market and didn't make it as good as it could have been.

Before I go into some incoherent rambling, I'd like to make it known that I really enjoy the art of the label of this bottle of soda. Those orange slices look perfect, and I could only dream that I could draw like that. My art skills are at a minimum, so I always appreciate when someone puts time and effort into a label that wasn't just done in Photoshop. Those slices are just my style.

It feels like it has been years since I drank and orange cream soda. While they are not my favorite, I do enjoy them to some extent. The first thing that always comes to mind is that they taste like a carbonated, melted creamsicle. This soda does a bit more than emulating dripping ice cream. It starts off with a 70/30 split of orange and cream, after you swallow the percentages switch and the cream takes over most of the flavor. It's almost like you are drinking two different sodas and it keeps things interesting. While it's not quite like adding vanilla extract to soda water and then squeezing an orange into it (think of how good that would be) it is on the better side of these types of sodas.

What a bummer, all I have to drink is this delicious soda that tastes like it was made with real grape juice, and it's only lightly sweetened with real sugar. What would really make this better would be if I could just dump a whole mess of erythritol and stevia in it to give it a weird fake taste that no one really likes. Man that would be just perfect. Oh , you have some of those natural zero calorie sweeteners that I can use. Thanks man, I really appreciate it, now that I mixed it in this is perfect. It's exactly what I didn't want. Dreams do come true.

I've been holding onto this seltzer for a while now, just waiting for the perfect time. I am a sucker for all things blackberry, as well as all things cucumber, so this sounded like a dream. When I purchased it there was only one can, and for fear that I would never find it again I wanted it to be special. For weeks it has sat in my fridge, just staring me down, daring me to drink it. Today was the day. The thing is that there is nothing special about today. I was just sitting there reading and thought to myself, now is the perfect time for that drink. I was not wrong. This is fantastic, and perhaps the best seltzer I have ever tasted. While the flavor is mostly blackberry, it does have the crispness that only cucumber can bring and its flavor was pleasant underneath the berry.

This is a beverage that I can just imagine sweetened. It has the potential to be an incredible soda, just by adding a little cane sugar. The thing is that it is just as wonderful without the sugar. This drink could exist in both worlds and get top marks. I hope this flavor makes it into the multipacks soon, because I will devour it like there is no tomorrow and not horde it like a sucker.

III Dachshunds is a brewery in Milwaukie, WI, which also makes this delicious root beer. I've heard it claimed that they chose the name because the owners had three Dachshund dogs and they were their entire world. I'd like to submit that there is a different reason. This brewery is located in Wisconsin. The official food (pretty much) of the state is bratwurst. While brats and hotdogs are not the same thing they are close enough and another name for a hotdog is a wiener, which also happens to be a common name used to describe dachshunds (wiener dogs). I'd like to propose the ridiculous theory that the company actually named their company after their love of sausage and not for dogs at all. They just have a little shame over their Wisconsin pride (not that anyone actually would, it's a magical place).
Wherever the name is from this is a quality soda. It is certainly no generic “mix” or store brand root beer. It is dark and bold. All of the flavors that were originally used to make root beer, that have since been watered down to homogenize it, all stand up tall proclaiming their stake in the soda game. There's wintergreen, vanilla, caramel, sassafras, licorice and all of the others. On top of a great flavor it also is very carbonated, which is something that I always enjoy in a soda.

Grab your dogs. Grab your brats. Hell, grab some cheese even. Get it all together pop open a bottle of this and sit back and enjoy yourself. You put in a long day at work and you deserve to relax, Wisconsin style.

I understand the allure of lower sugar content and saving calories. After decades of ingesting pretty much anything, Americans are finally becoming more health conscious. We're sick of the garbage we eat and drink contributing to our eventual demise. The only problem is that I have yet to come across a low calorie sweetener that hasn't affected the flavor of the beverage it is used in in a negative way. There is a reason people love sugary drinks. They are delicious. Sugar is basically a drug and we all like to get our fix. Drinks made with sucralose, aspartame, and stevia are like giving a junkie a beer when their body just needs a dose of heroin. It just doesn't give you what you want. I admit that the use of monk fruit in here is closer to the end goal, but it's still not there.

I am an all or nothing type of person. I would rather have completely unsweetened seltzer water if cane sugar isn't available. Actually I would prefer that seltzer over even the cane sugar a lot of the time these days. I understand that not everyone is like me, and that others need some sort of “sweetness” even if it isn't the real stuff. While I would never go out of my way to drink this, I would certainly choose a can of 2B Lemon Lime Fizz over a can of Diet 7 Up any day. It may have an aftertaste, but it doesn't taste chemical or unnatural. I'd have to say that the flavor here is probably 50% lemon, 10% lime and 40% monk fruit. If you're okay with those percentages, give it a go.

I know a lot of people who say things like, “Well obviously I would prefer organic, but without all of the chemicals, energy drinks just don't work.” Okay maybe no one has ever said that to me, but it's basically the message that comes across. I'm here to day to tell those people that they are very wrong, and I have a restless night to prove it to them. I knew I had to stay up late last night, so around 8PM I drank 2/3 of this can. At 4:30AM I was still tossing and turning for no other reason than I partook in this beverage. That's right, I didn't even consume the entire can and over 8 hours later I couldn't rest no matter what I tried. To be fair I am more sensitive to caffeine than your average person, but that is a ridiculous amount of time for it to still be effecting me. All of its energy comes from green coffee beans and guarana seed extract, butI promise you that these Rockstar Organic energy drinks do work, and you can down them without feeling terrible about putting a bunch of chemicals into your body.

As an added bonus to the effects, this tastes pretty great as well. It may not contain any juice, but it has a nice passion fruit flavor mixed with a general exotic tropical fruit amalgamation. I'm pretty sure there is guava involved in there, but maybe that is me tasting what I want to taste. It doesn't matter if it's in there or not, it's one of the best tasting energy drinks I've ever tasted.

Things got rough for the members of Guns and Roses after the mid 90's. I mean just take a look at Axl Rose. Most of the members wallowed in their former fame and fell into the gutter, but guitarist Izzy Stradlin worked with his money and invested in beverages. He hung up his Gibson for bubbles and slowly started an empire. Wait…€¦Oh…€¦his name and the company name are spelled differently. He has nothing to do with the beverage company, huh? I'm just having another one of my fever dreams brought on from boredom. Sorry about that. Imagine is a guitarist with that fame, from that era had the restraint to use such simple packaging on his beverages. That would be the real miracle. If what I said had been true I'm sure this bottle would have been covered in Ed Hardy style design. Let's count our blessings that the two are not related and sit back and enjoy this sparkling water.

The Izze sparkling waters are essentially seltzer with the smallest amount of cane sugar added to take away a little of the bitterness. There are only 2g of sugar and that leads to 10 calories. Not bad at all. The lime is definitely a bit stronger than the mandarin orange, but it's still in there and this is quite pleasant. I imagine it would make a great mixer for some sort of alcohol, but what do I know. I'm just going to enjoy it the way it is. It gives me tropical feelings. I need those in this snow.

I know there is a whole culture out there of people into infantilism (grown people pretending to be babies) and while I don't think they were the intended target audience for this beverage I'm guessing that they are responsible for a good portion of Plum Vida sales.

If this juice came in a bottle I feel like I would be writing a glowing review here, minus the fact that I think they went a little heavy on the pear, but it coming in this pouch just makes me think that I'm savaging for food and they only thing I could find was baby food. I'm sure there is a reason they chose this packaging, probably something environmental as everything in here is organic and it is BPA free. I just keep imaging a room of grown men, hairy sweaty grown men, sitting around in diapers and bonnets just slurping away at this juice. I'm not judging, it's just what comes to mind.

Never mind my fever dreams for the moment and let's discus taste. Serve this to me in a glass and switch out that pear puree for boring old apple and you've got my attention. This is cherry, raspberry and beet juice with a bit of ginger in the mix All four of those flavors are present and very accounted for, so I have no complaints (well seriously I'm just not a fan of pear, can we swap it out?) I'm not exaggerating when I say that if a glass of this was served to me at a juice bar I wouldn't think twice about paying $5 for it. Seeing as these are about $1 each that is pretty astounding.

One of the moments in my life when I was completely embarrassed for someone I was with was back in the late 90's when a handful of friends went to Denny's late night to hang out as teenagers are prone to do. One of us ordered some sort of chicken dinner and when it arrived he realized he hadn't read the description correctly, and he asked the waitress to take it back because it wasn't what he expected. Just typing that my spirits dropped and I got a pit in my stomach. I am of the belief that if you order something and it is what it says it is, you deal with it. Just because you come up with something in your head it's not the establishment's responsibility to meet your imaginary expectations.

I feel the same way about this beverage. When I grabbed it I saw the “rhu” and I expected some strange rhubarb soda. I completely ignored the second half of the title, which would have actually prepared me for what this tastes like. It tastes like someone made a soda from those little strawberry candies that come wrapped in cellophane that looks like the fruit. Once that soda was created that added a little bit of rhubarb flavor to it. This is certainly a candied soda, and that's fine, but it's not what I expected, and not what I wanted at this moment. That's on me. It's not Twig's fault. Don't be like me. Read into things. Life's no fun when you're a dummy.

We were sent so many different Claire Baie drinks to review. I don't know if we have even got through half of them and I'm running out of things to say. Most of them (this one) are flavored sparkling waters that are sweetened by sucralose. I am not a fan of this particular sweetener, so it kind of ruins the lot of them for me. The flavors of these drinks are pleasant enough, and they would have made for a whole mess of seltzers that I would have enjoyed had they just left out the sweetener. Unfortunately they did not and they all have that diet-death taste to them. It just changes the whole feel of the drink in a way that I don't see a need for. This would have been a great tangerine orange seltzer. From what I can gather of the flavor that is not sweetener I probably could drink a case of this if the sucralose were left out. Oh well. I mean this is pretty much on par with other brands doing a similar thing, but I'm not a fan of them either.

I want to ask a serious question here, who decided to name the “cherry” flavor? I've eaten an obscene amount of cherries in my life and not once have they tasted like what companies have been labeling cherry for years. It was like they created a flavor that was red and they said, “Cherries are also red. This must be cherry. Nothing else on the planet is red but cherries. All I see are cherries. Are you a cherry, because you're wearing a red shirt? You most certainly are a cherry, and I shall refer to you as such from now on.”

This soda tastes a little closer to what a cherry actually is, but it still borders on that flavor that is not really cherry. Also the sourness in here tastes like it was something added, and not just a tart fruit. It's not horrible, but I can't see an adult finishing a bottle of this. To be fair if it wasn't for the use of cane sugar I would probably have written this off as garbage store brand soda, but the cane sugar does give it a bit more legitimacy in my world.

Ten years ago I was sitting in a kitchen in Portland, OR and a mug of tea was placed in front of me. I took one sip and my world changed. Up until that point I had never had yerba mate before and I had no idea how vastly different it was from every other tea I had ever drank up until that point. It was earthy, woodsy, bitter wonderfulness with a nice boost of caffeine. Since that time it has become more prevalent and I couldn't be happier.

From my own gathering of intel Guayaki seems to be the longest running and most readily available producers of ready to drink yerba mate on the market. I have yet to try one of their flavors that I wasn't in love with and I drink them all the time. As someone who doesn't normally drink coffee, these beverages give me a nice little push of energy from their caffeine content.

With the Bluephoria tea they have mixed in elderberry and blueberry juice in with their already wonderful tea. The result is just as good as you would imagine. The juice kind of sits on top of the tea, flavorwise, so there's not so much a new taste, just the separate flavors hanging out together, and that is how I like my tea. It has aa decent sweetness to it without tasting like liquid candy. The fact that it tastes like blueberries and elderberries and not just some generic sugar-berry amalgamation is what makes this drink so great. Guayaki has done it again and I can't wait for their line to expand yet again.

Steaz pumps out more flavors that almost any beverage company that I can think of. I feel like we get packages from them more than anyone else, and I am certainly not complaining. They manage to work out new teas, but they also keep their quality high. My only complaints seem to come from their zero calorie sweetener lines, and that's not on them. There is only so much a company can do when they want to sweeten a beverage, but keep it zero calories. Also, I've had issues with their carbonated teas, but I'm simply not a fan of carbonated tea for the most part.

This is one of that flavors that stands out in a sea of greatness though. I love jasmine tea and I love all things hibiscus. I once drank multiple pots of jasmine green tea at an Asian restaurant because they kept bringing it. It was so good that I couldn't help myself, but of course I haven't slept since due to my caffeine intake. Mike and I have also been known to purchase obscene amounts of hibiscus tea for our pleasure drinking, which we don't get to do much of.

Steaz has combined both nicely. One might think that combining the two would make everything too floral, but that is not the case at all. Sure, you can taste florals, but it's not like you got into a fight at a funeral and someone shoved an arrangement down your throat. It's nice and subtle. The hibiscus is just that, hibiscus. There is no trace of the spices that sometimes accompany this flower, but even though I love them, I don't think they would have a place in this beverage. So it is classic hibiscus mixed with classic jasmine all of which is lightly sweetened cane sugar and just a drop of lemon juice. It's wonderful and if someone kept pouring it into my glass I could see myself drinking a case of it before I even knew what happened.

Point brewery makes a less than stellar root beer, but they certainly know their cream sodas. This is what I expect a product from the wonderful state of Wisconsin to deliver. It has a very strong vanilla flavor that is somehow improved by the addition of a little honey. Honey and vanilla certainly play well together and this soda gave me just what I was looking for this afternoon. It's fairly sweet, but it's not too much.

After drinking this I really need to grab another bottle of that root beer and give it a second chance the next time I'm in Wisconsin (actually that might be next week). This is one of the better cream sodas, sorry vanilla cream, that I've ever tasted and I hope that crosses over into their other sodas as well.

Look at you Sotea, you're moving up in the world. You've taken off the training wheels and have put out a flavor that is actually pretty decent. You may not be ready to go on a 40 mile bike trip yet, but you are moving out of the driveway and onto the sidewalks. This may be the dumbest analogy I have ever used and it doesn't even really make sense. My point is that while the other two Sotea flavors we have reviewed left a lot to be desired this one is actually pretty good. It tastes like carbonated green tea (always a bit weird, but sometimes enjoyable) with a fairly good (black)berry flavor to it. Sure, there is stevia in the mix with the cane sugar that is messing with the taste a bit, but it's nothing horrible and I can easily see past it. I feel like this is what they were reaching for (and missing) for the other flavors. I can only hope that with the other flavors we have on deck that they get even better.

What is the secret to making a good iced green tea latte? I've tried numerous times at home with mediocre success. When I get them in a coffee shop, or buy a higher-end prepackaged one, such as this, I really enjoy them. Maybe I'm just not using a high enough quality green tea. I'm not brewing bottom of the barrel stuff over here, but it's not super nice either. Oh well, I guess it's not all that important. It's not a beverage I often crave, so when I do I have options to purchase it.

Rebbl has put their hat in the ring with this latte that is made with coconut milk. Unlike the Maca Mocha the coconut in here does not taste toasted, and that is an improvement from my perspective. It's pretty creamy and I almost want to say it is too heavy on the milk, but that green tea flavor still cute through nicely, so I guess I really have no complaints. It's smooth and it tastes like the quality green tea that I am apparently not using.

In addition to the tea and the milk there is also honey ,vanilla extract, spirulina, quillaja, pink salt and stevia in the mix. First off I would like to note that I can't taste the stevia at all, so good for them. Other than that you might find yourself asking what need is there to add so many extra ingredients into this recipe. Well normally I would be right there with you, but Rebbl drinks are “Super Herb Elixers,” so they always add extra stuff to give you some health benefits in ways that doesn't mess with the flavor at all. I'm all for it. None of those ingredients are detrimental to your health at all, so I'll take the benefits and I'll drink the latte and I will like it.