Jason Draper - 2709 Reviews

I called this house meeting because I believe someone has been snooping around my room when I'm not home. My reasoning for this is that someone has obviously been reading my dream journal and then selling the information to the various companies that it would benefit. I mean how else would anyone know that perhaps the product I want most in life to exist is a hibiscus yerba mate seltzer? Yet here I sit with a bottle of Sound in front of me. Yes, I know they mean for it to be more of a sparkling tea, but in my world if it's carbonated with no sugar, it's a seltzer. I also see that they have somehow improved on my dreams and added lime and lemon to the mix. If I weren't so furious that one of you has been going through my things I could weep with happiness. This is one of the most wonderful tasting things I have ever experienced. It's a mixture of yerba mate, white tea and guayusa that has some hibiscus flowers brewed with it. The whole thing tastes like a slightly floral yerba mate with just a twist of citrus. It's obvious that if any company had made it this far into such a wonderful product they would knock it down a few pegs by adding some sugar, or…€¦ick…€¦stevia. Here it sits though, completely unsweetened, just like I always dreamed. You two have a lot of explaining and apologizing to do, especially since you are both cats and I don't know how you even read my journal.

Probiotics have been all the rage over the past few years. We, as Americans, tend to have terrible diets and our digestive system gets all out of whack. To combat this, companies started putting out probiotics, which are living bacteria, similar to those in our bodies to help with digestion and immune defenses. Canvas thought this was all nice and all, but they took things in a different direction and put prebiotic fiber in their shakes that feed and support the bacteria that already exist in your body. Basically it's like saying, “Why give up for yourself and call in reinforcements when your troops just need some provisions to get them through the great digestive wars?” I don't know which way is more productive, as I'm not that kind of scientist. What I do know is that Canvas makes some delicious shakes.

I have to admit that it probably would help you enjoy these beverages if you already had somewhat of a healthy diet. This is “real” food and it tastes as such. If you are used to fast food and soda, and don't necessarily eat a lot of fruits, vegetables or other natural foods, this might be hard to gulp down. If that is the case you are also the type of person who would benefit the most from this, so hold your nose and chug away to force it down. This drink is thick and gritty. It is mostly made up of spent grain isolate (let's just say grains) and cashew milk. It is also sweetened slightly with coconut sugar. The base of it tastes very much like liquid nuts and grains, what weren't quite blended all the way. That probably sounds like a turn off, but I think it's great. For extra flavor that put in some matcha (aka green tea) and it makes it all so very wonderful. If you've never used matcha powder before it has a very specific taste and is like concentrated green tea flavor. It's one of my favorites and as a result I love this shake. My guts love this shake too. I bet yours would as well if you would just put down the liter of cola and chicken nuggets and eat like you were sitting down to dinner in a 1950's sitcom. (I can only imagine food was healthier then).

Have you ever tasted the liquid gold that is Starbucks Passion Tea? Are you like me and love ever second of it but something about buying it from them makes you feel dirty? Sure I probably buy a ton of stuff from much worse companies, but I grew up in a time when coffee shops weren't so sterile and we're actually pretty seedy a lot of the time. They were a haven for artists, musicians and junkies. I miss that. I blame Starbucks for the homogenization of them. I'm sure most people see that as a plus, not this guy.
Anyway, so I've bought the tea leaves myself to make it at home and then never comes out the same. It's tasty, but not nearly as delicious. This is hibiscus with cinnamon, apple, licorice root, and lemongrass. It's how I dream anything hibiscus should taste, yet few do. So here I am, brewing tea that never turns out as good, cursing my inability. Then Teavana releases these ready to drink versions. Sure they are sweetened (not too much) and I'd prefer them to be unsweetened, but I will take what I can get when it comes to this incredible spiced floral tea. Now I need to work on not downing the entire bottle so fast and learn to sip and not gulp.

If you just happen to be a sadistic little so and so, may I recommend forcing people to drink this energy drink. The reason being that it may just be the single most diet tasting drink that I have ever had the displeasure of drinking. I mean I knew this was diet when I was going into it, but woo does it taste so damn diet. I want to say it tastes like a diet mountain dew with the sucralose increased 300%, but it's a slight different citrus taste to it. It's actually hard to make out the actual citrus taste through the insane amount of sucralose that I can only assumed is in this can. So, if you want to see people do a spit take in disgust feed them this. Otherwise I don't know who this is for.

This is a re-branding of Bee Sweet and here is our review when it was called that:

Want to hear the most adorable thing you'll come across all day? This company is owned by an 11 year old lady named Mikaila. It started when she was trying to come up with an idea for a children's business competition. She got stung by a bee, twice and received her grandmother's cookbook with the lemonade recipe in it. Through that she became obsessed with saving bees and donates a percentage of her profits to organizations working to help bees. It kind of makes you feel like you've wasted your life, right? I wish I cared about anything as much as this girl cares for bees. In doing so she also produces a delicious beverage.

The ingredients in this are water, lemon juice, cane sugar, honey, ginger and flaxseed. It's simple. It's delicious. It has digestive benefits. You can also feel good spending your money on it because you're helping a child help bees. The ginger and the lemons overpower the honey a bit, but you can still taste it. I like when beverages taste heavily of honey, but I'm not one to argue with ginger (which has a kick that's on the mellower side in here).

I'm not going to spend the rest of the day staring at the wall trying to figure out how I can be a better person.

It seems that Starbucks is easing back on advertising their Refresher line as “Natural energy from green coffee extract.” I mean it's still in there, but it's just not boldly proclaimed on the front of the can. Instead they are leaning on the coconut water and real fruit juice angle. Whatever they are pushing it is still the same product, well with coconut water added. I think the result is supposed to resemble a natural Gatorade for adults. It has the coconut water and juice to help rehydrate and refresh you, with the added bonus of caffeine to keep you moving. Then again there isn't such sodium in this so I'm probably totally off base. It's also carbonated, so yeah ignore that comparison. I should probably go back and just delete that part, but it looks like I'm going to just keep typing out my thoughts and forgo any professionalism. To reiterate Refreshers do not equal adult Gatorade. They always have seemed like kind of a hangover drink to me. I wonder what percentage of their sales are used for that purpose.

I suppose I should tough on the taste of this thing. It tastes like a lighter black cherry soda. Makes sense right. That's not a flavor I'm overly fond of, but lucky for me there is some lime in the aftertaste and that is something I can get behind. It is all improved through the use of real juice and not just some syrupy mix. I think it might be the coconut water that is making it taste lighter. It just smooths is out a little. Oh wait I just saw that salt is an ingredient so I'm back on the adult Gatorade kick. Nothing but staunch professionalism here.

I have been on a huge tea kick lately. Drinking it hot, brewing mass quantities to put in the fridge to complete the transformation to iced, and just buying bottles and cans of ready to drink stuff. For the most part I have kept it unsweetened to give myself the illusion that I am not treating my body like the town dump, but I've developed a soft spot for the Inko's energy teas. I mean it's not like I'm polluting myself with all the junk in the energy drinks that would initially cross your mind. These are simply flavored white teas (with all the caffeine that involves) with some ginseng and guarana added to it. If these didn't have sugar added the amount that I drink would increase drastically. I probably wouldn't need all of that energy, and by probably I mean definitely. So let's look as this sugar as a benefit since due to it I can actually sleep.

These are some of the few beverages that mix sugar with stevia for lower calorie count that actually don't taste diet (at least if you drink it cold). It's just a not-overly sweetened tea that has a nice mango flavor. This is something I feel other companies should strive for. Inkos knows how to make a good product and I look forward to seeing what they put out next.

Welcome to a very special episode of Tales from the Teahouse. This week there is a new exotic stranger in the town of True Brew. At first the townsfolks write him off because he is formerly a citizen of another country where things are kept quite hot and they feel he has no place in such a cool place as True Brew. Things come to a head when the stranger walks up to the front of the town hall meeting and implores the townsfolk to give him a chance saying that he's not like the other people of his kind. His spice is brewed right into his tea. He knows how purity is so important to the town and that is why he wanted to live there so badly. He is tea, ginger, cinnamon, cloves, and cardamom all brewed into one magnificent form. If they would just partake of him they would all find that True Brew was truly where he belongs. Some of them partake of his body and find that he is right. He should have been a mess but he was close to perfection. Spiced Chai then became not only their neighbor, but also their god. If Vulture were to review this episode it would go something like ”True Brew is seriously a messed up town and this week a whole racist/Jesus thing went down and when you think about it the racism wasn't really cleared up and it actually ended up more engrained that you originally thought. A must see!”

This drink is just as overly sweet and weird as I thought it would be. Here's a rule you can go by; if a beverage this this bright of a green, it will more than likely be sweeter than you want it to be. The thing is that this really tastes like honey dew though. I mean it tastes like if you cut up a melon and dumped the same amount of sugar on it that your grandmother would dump on her morning grapefruit (or was that just mine?). The thing is that the melon flavor is artificial, yet it doesn't taste like candy as things like this tend to do. The basil seeds really do nothing. As far as I can tell they have no particular taste, and they tend to slip down your throat without you even realizing they exist.

I've been waiting patiently for a proper melon beverage to make its way to me (other than watermelon). This is a step in the right direction, but I really want straight up cantaloupe or honey dew juice. I guess I will just have to make do with this until my dreams come true.

I find it strange that while arguably being the largest coffee company in the US, Starbucks certainly seems to have a lot of ready to drink products that taste very little like coffee. I will admit that this has more of a coffee flavor than the vanilla Frappuccino, but any of their products that have milk in them seem to goa bit overboard with that particular ingredient. While I said the other beverage mentioned here tasted like a melted vanilla milkshake with a shot of coffee in it, this would be that with the number of shots doubled to a whopping two. It's like dessert in a can. I just wish it has a slightly less milky taste to it. I want more coffee in these drinks and less cow sustenance. At least it doesn't taste like someone mixed a Red Bull into a cup of coffee that would be Barf City, USA population me. It shares a lot of the same ingredients to give you a kick of energy, luckily it doesn't share a flavor. In this order this is milk, vanilla, and coffee. Switch that up a bit and this could have been a very, very pleasant beverage, instead of being a notch above serviceable.

You absolutely know what you are getting yourself into when you grab one of these. If there was any question as to whether this was going to taste exactly like grape soda with melted candy in it, that goes out the window when you crack it open and that unmistakable scent floats up your nostrils. So the magic is not in the taste but in the calorie content. How is it that a 16oz can can (not the dance) contain 48g or sugar when it is sweetened with sucralose as well as sugar? What is the point of the sucralose at that point other than to distract from the grape sludge taste when it's starting to warm up and you're getting to the bottom third of the can? This is an odd product because it certainly feels like it would be enjoyed by children, but please don't feed this stuff to kids. They are annoying enough as it is and I don't need to deal with the mall hopped up on Grape Death (street name).

If you are offering me hot coffee, it better have some sort of fancy flavoring to it, or else I am more than likely not going to drink it. Well, that just sounded rude. I'm not going to slap the mug out of your hand, or throw the hot liquid onto your person. I will simply say no thank you. If pressed I may add that I'm not a big coffee drinker. The thing is that while I'm not a fan of hot coffee, I do enjoy iced coffee, especially if it is cold brew. To me they are beverages that are in the same family, but have chosen different paths in life. Cold brew is simply a smoother coffee that even when unsweetened isn't as bitter and harsh as its hot sibling. It's a more pleasurable experience for me, and it shines a light on the aspects of coffee that I enjoy and hides the others in the shadows. Sail Away takes things one step further and uses nitrogen in their brewing with makes the coffee which makes it frothier/foamy. It gives it a texture similar to a latte, but without the “milk” in it. That certainly helps with my drinking experience. Also, it apparently gives the illusion of sweetness, or so I've read. Anything that tricks me thinking something is sweet without sugar (or more importantly zero calorie sweeteners) is a plus. Overall it magnifies the coffee's actual flavor, or so I see it.

I'm not a huge caramel fan, so lucky for me that flavor isn't very strong in here. Nor is the sea salt. Both are there in hints only, letting the coffee itself carry most of the workload. That's the way I want it. For someone who isn't a huge coffee fan, I still want my coffee drinks to actually taste like coffee. It's the base and I want it to shine in a glorious way and that is what Sail Away has done with this product.

Out of the Organic Energy line that Inkos puts out this is the only flavor that I didn't absolutely love. Perhaps that's because it's the one that tastes the most like something was added to the tea. The tea flavor is there, but there is definitely something else floating around in the brew as well. Maybe it's the stevia, but I have a feeling it's more of the ginseng or guarana, as it's less familiar. The flavor is not enough to ruin the drink for me, as I still enjoy it enough that I bought a case when I found it for ridiculously on sale. I just wouldn't pay full price for it very often, with the other flavors available.

One of the things I appreciate about these Inkos drinks is that they are non-carbonated, organic energy drinks. So not only do they avoid all of the chemical garbage that other companies use that make me feel all crazy, but they also keep things different by not introducing bubbles to it. This is energy you can feel okay about. It's made with white tea with just a splash of citrus in it. The more I drink, the more I enjoy it and think that hey, maybe I would buy this at full price on a normal basis afterall.

Dear Tiesta Tea, I love you. We have a problem though. This is the same problem that I'm sure exists in many a bottled coffee drinkers relationships. You are truly delicious, but your price point is fairly high for something that I can approximate at home for a much lower cost. Sure it takes time and preparation, but at any given time I have a container of brewed tea just waiting for me in my fridge, and yes I have upgraded and I make it with loose leaf tea that has bits of fruit in it. Like you, Tiesta, it is delicious and I love to sip it on nearly any occasion for pennies on the dollar. I understand that not everyone takes the time to prepare like I do, and that you have your place. I mean even as I write this I am completely aware that I will buy more bottles of you in the future. Hell, if you were available in gas stations and mini marts that I frequent, I'm sure I would get lazy and get you on the regular, as you are a wonderful thing.

Let me say it's me and not you. Taste-wise I don't know what else you could do to improve. You are a high quality black tea that is brewed with pieces of apple, papaya, mango, orange, pomegranate, marigold pedals, and guava. You went as far as to add guava and that takes a special type of dedication. You truly are thinking of me and are trying to win my heart all for your own. Your unsweetened tropical fruity goodness tickles my taste buds in a way that I don't think the majority of Americans would honestly appreciate as much as they should. You taste like tea was meant to be made, in that you taste like tea and not sweetener. Perhaps I should just shut up with my complaints and love you for what you are; a near perfect tea. Perfection comes with a price and I should be happy to pay it. I'm a fool Tiesta, please take me back.

Doubleshot has a double meaning apparently. It can either mean coffee and energy, or as with this product coffee and protein. I think I would have preferred the former. I was really into the idea of dark chocolate coffee. I mean I've had dark chocolate mocha before and it's nearly always great. The thing is Starbucks tends to go a bit overboard for my tastes when they introduce milk into their prepackaged beverages, and the addition of protein amplifies even that. This really just tastes like a dark chocolate milk with a splash of coffee in it. The opposite would have been more appreciated. I suppose you know what you're getting into when you are drinking a whey protein drink, but I was just hoping for something that didn't taste like it came directly from a dark brown cows udder. The upside of this is that it is sweetened with a combo of sugar and erythritol and I drank the whole thing without realizing there was a zero calorie sweetener involved. That always gets a thumbs up from me.

For some reason I decided to give Mountain Dew Kickstart another chance. Oh yeah, that reason is that it's my job of sorts. Well, I pretty much feel exactly the same about this product as I did with the first handful of flavors when they were released; it's pretty meh. The combination of high fructose corn syrup and sucralose leaves it too diet tasting to care about the calories it's saving you, but also it has too many calories too deal with the chemical taste. Also, the juice content is still very minimal (5%). If this were a regular or a full fledge diet blood orange Mountain Dew I could enjoy it more, but the way it is presented now just feels like the company is trying to pull a fast one on consumers. I know they aren't and I get where they are going, but it's just not working out.

The version of me from a previous time would be mighty pissed off at current me now, but I just need to come out and say As a culture why do we even bother giving “cheap” iced tea the time of day? That's right I am reformed and this might be the most adult thought that has ever crossed my perpetually 15 year old mind. Long gone are my days of guzzling Brisk or downing can after can of Arizona tall boys. In my current world it's quality over quantity, and to be honest the price point isn't that drastically different. Even if it were I would happily pay a little extra for a product such as this that actually tastes like tea and my just syrupy sludge that we have convinced ourselves tastes like tea. It really doesn't and we just need to accept that and move on.

This is exactly what I want from an iced tea. It's brewed, and not made from a powder. That is step one in the right direction. Step two is that it is sweetened with real sugar, and it's not overdone. I would say this is mediumly-sweetened and that is the limit of where I want my sugar level. It allows you to still be able to taste the other ingredients and not just an overt sweetness. Perhaps most importantly taste-wise is that the added flavoring isn't a syrup or a powder. The strawberry and spearmint are brewed with the tea; you know how it is when you buy some nice fancy tea that doesn't come in teabags. I admit I end up eating some of that tea dry because of the dried fruit, but I'm a maniac what do you expect. This is nicely lightly flavored and the mint doesn't leave you feeling like you brushed your teeth just before consuming the beverage. Everything here is done right. Lipton has evolved and now so do we.

Oh, a mango and chia probiotic smoothie. That sounds pleasant enough. Wait, the base of this is cashew milk? That sounds a bit odd, but I'm willing to give it a try, I mean I really like almond milk.
*one spit take later*
Okay, I was wrong that is not what I want to taste. I still think I would like cashew milk on its own. Hell, I think I would probably even like it if it were just that and mango juice. It might be a little weird, but I have a ghost vision of it on my taste buds and it's not bad. The problem lies with one, some or all of the other ingredients. I'm looking at you orange juice, dates, lemon juice, and bacillus coagulans GB1-30 6086 whatever you are (it's a probiotic strain). In your ranks is the think that makes this taste very vegetable juice like and not like something I want to drink at all. It tastes like it's the gross beverage that I would have to force myself to drink on a juice cleanse. Lucky for me I'm not cleansing and I don't have to force anything. Wait, why did I just chug the whole thing then?

I went to Target last week to get some supplies for the sudden cold that overtook my body and saw that they were having a sale on a bunch of their beverages (buy $20 worth get a $5 gift card). I decided to use this as an opportunity to fill in some Thirsty Dudes gaps. I was pretty surprised to realize that we had not reviewed this one yet. In fact, I just checked our Master List for the third time, because I swore I had written about this little one before.

Let me start by saying there are two ways that I really like coffee; a nice smooth cold brew and a dessert coffee. This falls into the later. I like to see coffee as a treat and not just a daily routine. That may be because I would fall into the large percentile of Americans who are obese if I were to drink it all the time, since I generally like it sweet. This is like someone made a nice vanilla milkshake and threw in a shot of espresso. Just as they did so the phone rang and it was their mother, whose calls that kept forgetting to return and it turned into a long conversation about how well their siblings were doing and when are they going to meet someone nice and settle down. By the end of this exhausting conversation the milkshake had gone and melted on them. Whatever, they'll drink it anyways. Now you don't have to go through that whole ordeal to have this treat. You can keep dodging those calls and just grab a bottle of this from the store. It's milky, It's sweet and it lightly tastes like coffee. It's a dessert drink.

Have the tides changed for taste buds? Have I just been told what to like and accepted it? I never used to like seltzer until a couple of years ago, then I tried the Polar vanilla and my life changed. It seemed around that time, or shortly after, that new brands started popping up and it started showing up more places. Was that all coincidence, or were darker forces at work? I mean I'm all for dark forces if they are working to make people consume healthier things. I would just like to know if my thoughts are my own. Let's be honest here, seltzer is the new iteration of the pomegranate phase. It's everywhere and no one really remembers asking for it, but we enjoy it. Whatever, It's zero sugar and it has bubbles to scratch my throat. I'm on board.

I had never heard of the Cabo company until I came across a four-pack of these cans on sale for one dollar. That's not a deal you pass up. The grapefruit flavoring is on the lighter side of a bunch of other companies I have tried similar products of, but there is a vague almost floral taste that lays underneath it. It's makes it a more unique flavor, but keeps it refreshing. Everything about this carbonated bottle is fairly laid back, just like I imagine a vacation would be in the tourist haven of Mexico. Man, that sounds horrible. I simply do not do well with laid back and relaxing. I need to always be on the move. How about you go to Cabo and I'll head to Mexico City and we can exchange stories afterwards. I'll be the one covered in sticky mango juice from eating three times my body weights' worth.