Jason Draper - 2709 Reviews

My first thought when I saw this was “Dammit, why doesn't this exist in a non diet form?!” Seriously white cranberry-apple green tea? That just sounds like a wonderful treat. It is always the diet drinks that have the extravagant flavors though isn't it? They are probably trying to make up for the lack of calories, and more importantly the gross diet flavor.

I ended up taking this with me to a party, because I was assuming I wouldn't like it all that much, due to the sucralose, and it would help me to not down it all instantly. As you can probably guess, that didn't work out well for me. While this does have the sucralose undertones, it is played down by the other flavors. It's one of those drinks that you can tell is diet, but you still like it anyways. Arizona is not trying to trick you into thinking that this isn't a zero calorie beverage, they are just saying, “So what? It still tastes great doesn't it?”

Arizona was my gateway into green tea, but the thing is their green tea has a very specific taste that other companies' versions don't. I don't know if it's the excessive sweeteners or what, but they do it their own way, and it is enjoyable in its own way. So that is the sucralose-laden base here. Then, they added a soft cran-apple flavor to it. I say flavor, because there is no juice whatsoever in this bottle, but I can forgive them that. Before I knew what was happening I had polished off the bottle, and I was left wishing I had more. It was pouring out, so I was left to drink a lone bottle of Coke that was meant for mixer drinks. I planned that out poorly.

Children of the 80's please enter the collective unconscious and conjure the image of Mr. Yuck. His disgusted looking face was once the sign to children of the United States that whatever was contained inside was most certainly poison and would more than likely kill you instantly, so you know…€¦stay away from it.

Like most energy shits, I am completely surprised when Senior Yuck isn't staring up at me from the label artwork. The harshness of this concentrated, fake fruit flavored, sucralose laden shot sure tastes like it should kill me on contact with my bloodstream, but that's the way the game is when you're dealing with energy shots. They are a beverage that are not meant to be ingested for their taste, simply for their long lasting effects. I can assure you that the effects certainly do what they claim, so at least it has that going for it.

Is it possible the Naked is trying to usher in a new industrial age? They have too many drinks with the word machine in their names for it to be a coincidence. Oh I get it, the owner of the company is a Steampunk of sorts, or should I call him a “Juicepunk?” That's right the CEO of Naked has a vision of a world where everyone dresses like they did during the first Industrial Revolution, except all of the contraptions and machines will be powered by juice. It seems a bit excessive to me, also not very cost effective. I mean steam is at least basically free.

In this utopian future there will be different grades of juices for different qualities of power, hence the different flavors/names of his current juice line. Since acai is known as a superfruit, I can only assume that this is the premium line. This is the kind of juice that will power your new flying Model T cars, not your dumb low class floating K cars.

Since the technology has yet to be created to allow us to power machines with juice, I will simply drink this right on up. I mean stockpiling it is pointless, as it would just spoil, and you certainly don't want to pour spoiled juice into your engine, or it will get all sorts of junked up. Acai is known as being a pretty intense fruit. It has a very specific taste that a lot of people dislike. It's almost like when a friend in high school bought a bottle of Hawiian Punch and started to chug it before he realized it was a concentrate. Naked has taken the power of the acai and mixed it with other fruits to mellow it out a bit. The result is a juice that still has a little tartness from the 178 acai berries involved, but overall everyone could enjoy this. It's a bit on the thick side, but I enjoy it that way. I mean it's billed as a smoothie, and that is how those beverages should be.

If you told me this was a simple tea with lemon I would tell you that Herbal Mist did a great job with it. I mean it's sweeter than I normally like, but I can't deny that it tastes great. It has a nice tea taste and the lemon is the way that I like it, you know the way it doesn't taste like cleaner, but like real fruit.

All of that comes tumbling down when you add the words yerba mate into the mix. Yerba mate is wonderful, it's one of my favorite types of tea, but like all of the flavors in their line, the tea doesn't taste like mate at all. It tastes like black tea with a little something extra in it. It doesn't taste earthy or like the woods though, and that is what I love about yerba mate when it is done correctly.

This is the last flavor we had to review and I will leave you with these parting words Herbal Mist: Keep the mate in the mix, but don't advertise it so boldly. As of now you're not following up with what you promised, but if I went into these teas thinking they were normal tea I would be pleasantly surprised. It's all about meeting expectations, and you need to aim a bit lower.

If you are like us here at Thirsty Dudes you have probably drunk some pink lemonade, looked at the ingredients and said to yourself, “Wait, there is no berry juice in here, why is it pink? What makes pink lemonade pink?” Fear not, we have done the 30 seconds of research for you and here are our results.

First off, a lot of companies do use strawberries or raspberries to tint, and flavor their lemonade. That makes perfect sense. It's what I always expected to be the construct of pink lemonade. Over at the Huffington Post website they had an article about the origins of this delicious summer treat. Instead of paraphrasing, here is the exact text:

According to Josh Chetwynd, author of the book, "How the Hot Dog Found Its Bun," there are two main claims to the title of pink-lemonade inventor -- and neither of them sound very thirst-quenching. The first attributes this beverage to a salesman, by the name of Pete Conklin, who sold concessions at the circus. When working a shift in 1857, he ran out of water to make his lemonade (with no access to a nearby well or spring).
Rather than lose out on business, "Pete sprinted into the dressing tent and came across Fannie Jamieson, one of the show's bareback riders. She had just cleaned her pink tights in a vat of water, leaving the liquid looking a deep pink hue." He used the water without a second thought, and sold it as "fine strawberry lemonade." It's reported that he "did double the business of ordinary refreshment and, allegedly, ushered in a new style of the drink."
The second claim to pink-lemonade fame is also a result of a lemonade mishap. According to a 1912 New York Times article, Henry E. Allott -- a circus promoter, saloon-keeper and gambler -- was the originator of this drink. "One day while mixing a tub full of the orthodox yellow kind he dropped some red cinnamon candies in by mistake,” the newspaper wrote. “The resulting rose-tinted mixture sold so surprisingly well that he continued to dispense his chance discovery.” This article, written after Allott had passed away, claims that he invented this drink as a teenager, which would date it to roughly 1872-1873 -- 20 years after Conklin's story.

The first of those sounds absolutely terrible. The second has me intrigued. Those cinnamon candies have a very specific taste that isn't exactly like the spice, but it would go amazing with lemonade. Someone please point me in the direction of a company that makes their lemonade like that, or I'm going to have to try and make some myself.

I'm guessing that modern day companies, don't really use either way, and simply settle for food coloring, if they aren't adding fruit juice. That lemonade is a cop out if you ask me. All flash, no substance. Luckily, Snapple went with fruit juice, mostly for color, but it has a bit of flavor to it. A blind taste test proved this. The testy (get your mind out of your pants) could tell that this was not normal yellow lemonade. It's has a nice sweet, refreshing berry flavor that compliments the tartness of the lemon. For a prepackaged lemonade, that you can find in any city across the US, you could do a whole lot worse than this.

Here we have the five calorie aka diet version of Bai's Jamiaca Blueberry. I'm sure if I drank this and the original back to back I could tell the difference easily, but from memory I sure could be fooled. Bai has done a great job of making a sweeten beverage with only 2g of sugar and 5 calories not taste diet. About that, when did the word diet become such a no-no word? Everything that would have been called diet ten years ago is now referred to as “light,” “zero,” or “low calorie.” They all amount to the same thing, but companies seem afraid to label their drinks diet. Was there some vocal backlash that I am unaware of, or are they afraid that the word diet is too closely tied to aspartame and sucralose (you know the devil's sweeteners)?

Bai uses both erythritol and stevia in a way that it doesn't distort the flavor of the juice. Even though there are zero calorie sweeteners and other berries in here as well, the blueberry really shines through and tastes like fruit. That's really all you can ask for in something diet (I'm still not afraid to use the word).

Up until I went to the UK a few years back, I had never put milk in my tea. I was strictly a honey man. Then when there, someone (ie everyone) made us tea and made it with milk and a little sugar. It wasn't how I would normally drink tea, actually I don't think I've ever made hot plain black tea at home ever, but it was enjoyable and it seemed fitting. I've still never added milk to my tea when on native soil but the couple times I've been back over seas I always drink it that way.

Cut to a couple of months ago when I was introduced to green tea lattes via the new Bolthouse Farms drink. It was great and tasted like melted green tea soy ice cream. I then got one at Starbucks and it was kind of gross. Okay it wasn't gross, but it just tasted like soymilk with a little green tea. It was perfectly drinkable, but just not what I was hoping for. Now Tea's Tea has released a latte line, and lo and behold there is a matcha one. Luckily it's much better than Starbucks, and closer to the Bolthouse side of things. I would prefer that it was made with soymilk, but for something that is mass-produced and doesn't need to be refrigerated this is more than okay. It's vaguely grainy (in a good way) with a strong matcha taste. It has all of the flavor of green tea without the bitterness.

I don't think I'll go and make this for myself, but it's a nice treat. I wonder if the folks of Britain drink their green tea this way, or if they are a strictly black lot.

Ladies and Gentlemen, a few days ago brought in the summer of 2013. I am pleased, but what I want to know is how the hell did I get a cold in the summer? I'm stuffy, my nose is runny and I feel like garbage. I should be outside frolicking and running through sprinklers or some such thing, instead I'm inside napping and reading.

I know this is more of a precautionary shot, but I'm willing to try anything I have on hand to kick this as soon as possible. This little guy contains noni, mango, pear, apple, lilikoi, goji, pineapple, and acai juice, as well date puree. We got a bunch of these sent to us to review. I had one a couple of days ago, and I just downed it. It tasted like the most concentrated form of a handful of super fruits that I have ever tasted. It was harsh and you could certainly taste the dates. Now as I sit here about to drink another I discover that they suggest mixing it into a glass of water. Well, that makes a lot of sense. When I mix it with water it's much easier to drink and the flavors spread out a bit now that they have room to flourish. It becomes more refreshing and not something you are glad comes in a shot bottle so you can down it nice and quick. It now tastes like something that should be drunk in Hawaii. Perhaps I will get to do that some time.

Our dear Michael hates reviewing apple juice. Don't get me wrong, he likes the actual juice, but he hates writing about them because he claims that they all taste so similar that it's impossible to write anything new and interesting about them. Normally I would agree with him, but with their Premier line Everfresh has taken the game to a new level. Normally apple juice is just a hodgepodge of random apples, that when mixed together nearly always tastes the same. When I was a kid I thought there were red, green and yellow apples, that's it just three flavors. As I grew older I learned that each color has it's different versions with their individual attributes. Everfresh uses only one those varieties for each flavor they make. Only Honey Crisp apples were used to make this juice, and it has a very distinctive taste that other apple juices lack. Being that Honey Crisps are my red apple of juice this drink tastes great to me.

I propose that Mike goes to the grocery store and try a handful of different apples and then revisit this juice line, so he can taste the rainbow.…€¦you know without Skittles being involved.

It was recently pointed out to me that the time from the release of Dazed and Confused until now it longer than the time when the movie is supposed to take place until it was released. That seems crazy and it makes me feel so damn old. I remember when that movie came out. It was so long ago that it was pre straight edge me, and I hung out with a bunch of stoners all the time, who always wanted to watch The Wall high. You can all breath a sigh of relief that I didn't participate in that, but I did remember agreeing with everyone that we all needed to be stoned to watch Dazed and Confused. I don't think anyone had any weed, so it never happened and we just watched it sober…€¦I think.

This is all way too much information that only seems relevant due to the fact that both the movie and this drink's names contain some form of the word “daze.” I'll tell you where it comes in, I love that movie now even more than I did when I was a teenage dirtbag. The story of teenagers starting kicking off the opening night of summer break is wonderful and heartwarming. What way to celebrate summer than with a nice cold lemonade? Snapple thought the same thing and released its new line just as summer was coming around. Some people, the characters in the movie included, would probably prefer to down a frosty beer, but I'll stick with my lemonade…€¦especially one like this.

As soon as you twist off the cap the most pleasant fruity scent enters your nostrils and you know you're in for a good time. The mango flavoring is perfect. Even though mango juice isn't listed on the ingredients list, they do a good job of making it taste just like the fruit. The lemonade base is nothing to scoff at either, although I could have done with a little less sugar in order to up the tartness just a little. I just looked and there are 45g of sugar in here, maybe “a little less sugar” should have been “cut the sugar in half.” Even with it's cavity creating powers this is a drink to be reckoned with and I will be enjoying a quite a few on the hot days and long nights to come. On those nights don't be worried about how many you drink when you climb the water tower. The only way they could make you fall is if you have terrible balance when you obviously pee off the top like any red blooded American would.

Life is rough when you live like common people. Life is exhausting when you do whatever common people do. When you stay out all night to dance, drink and screw there's nothing else but feel like complete exhausted hungover garbage in the morning. Jarvis Cocker left that out of his little life lesson that he gave with his band Pulp.

Fear not common people of the world, there is help for you and all the rich turds who are slumming it. The answer is the wonderful Coco Cafè. It's a carton of coconut water (to rehydrate you) with a shot of espresso mixed in (to help wake you up when you have a lack of caffeine in your blood stream and a lack…€¦wait wrong English lyricist.) The results are wonderful, and to make things better they have now added chocolate to the mix to improve the flavor to even higher levels. Oh did I mention that it tastes like dark chocolate, because it does and it's wonderful. The drink is a bit bitter because of everything involved, but that doesn't detract from it; it simply makes it seem more adult. Too bad a lot of adults are morons.

I myself am not a common person, nor am I a pretender in such matters. I don't need this drink for the reasons stated above, but I still enjoy the hell out of it.

In the life of a Thirsty Dude one drinks a lot of drinks. I mean a whole lot of drinks. There are gems and there are stinkers. One thing that has happened is that I have found myself drifting away from the old standards, you know the big guys that have been around forever. Instead I drink a lot more boutique beverages, which normally use natural sweeteners. I'm happy to do it, and so is my metabolism.

I couldn't tell you the last time I drank a Cherry Crush (one of the few brands who's flavor precedes their company name when people speak them). I can tell you that when I wore the clothes of an older man when I was a younger man (thrift stores, what can I say?) I really enjoyed this soda pop. Drinking it now, I'm borderline disgusted as to how thick it is. I feel like the syrup they used didn't have enough water added to it. I have no doubt that this is how it always was when I drank it before, but I was ignorant of the other ways soda could be sweetened. Seriously, the thickness paired with the fact that a lot of cold medicines are cherry flavored leaves me feeling as if I should be sick drinking this (Please don't drink this while you're ill, it won't help anything).

After all of that complaining, I have to say this is a textbook cherry pop. It was certainly the first one I ever had as a child. The majority of the populace of the United States would never think anything was wrong with this, as they are used to HFCS sweetened sodas. It's sweet, it's fake fruity, and you get exactly what you would expect from it. It's the standard, but sure the standard could use some updating.

Sometimes your at a time and place in your life where your nutrition needs to come from a shake/liquid. Perhaps you work out a lot and need to replenish what you lost whilst getting ripped. Perhaps things were a bit more sinister and some creep punched you out of nowhere because he thought you were eyeing his lady friend when in face you were trying to watch The Simpsons in closed caption on the television that hung behind her at the bar. Perhaps you are just an idiot and thought, “Hey I saw them try to jump the Springfield Gorge on that episode of the Simpsons I watched at the bar last night in closed caption, I'm going to try to do the same at my local gorge, except I'm going to actually make it.” Of course you didn't make it. You haven't set foot on a skateboard since you were twelve and now you're paunchy and 34, so you no longer have teeth to eat solid foods.

Whatever your reason, If you're into the taste of blueberries and vanilla and the consistency of slightly liquidy yogurt, this drink may be for you. To be honest, I could use a whole lot more vanilla in here. Had they used the same vanilla that is in their straight up vanilla shake and just added some blueberries to this is would be pretty magical. Instead it has a general yogurtness to it, that I kind of disliked at first, but didn't mid after a couple of sips. The blueberry taste is right where I want it to be though, so that is also good. Overall this isn't bad, but it could have easily been made great as I mentioned above.

It is a little known fact that in the offices of Blue Buddha they have a giant statue of the Buddha. I know that probably doesn't sound all that interesting, but I think you will change your tune, when I tell you that the insides of the statue are hollowed out, in order to make room for…€¦get this…€¦an iced tea dispenser. How cool is that? Oh you're offended? Well let me tell you this friend, iced tea is the key to my enlightenment, and I'm sure the Buddha is cool with me achieving it any way that I can. The gross part about all of this is that the only place they could think to have the tea come out of was the nose, everywhere else just made a mess. They are professional people, who entertain clients in their office, and a messy Buddha just wouldn't cut it.

So you're interested in trying their hibiscus raspberry tea, well then you'll step right up to the ole' enlightenment dispenser, place your cup under the nose, and pull the left earlobe. I said left! Great now you've got some raspberry lemon. No problem, I'll drink that one, you can get a new glass. What do you think? It's got a great flavor doesn't it? The hibiscus and raspberry blend in well together to create a slightly floral berry flavor that really isn't all that floral at all. In fact it's nearly perfect. It's really just a green tea, but since hibiscus is in the mix it can be called an herbal tea to make it seem fancier. Whatever you call it, it tastes wonderful.

The one thing that the folks at Blue Buddha wanted to get away from is the idea that you have to be fat like the Buddha in order to achieve enlightenment, so they mix in some stevia with the cane sugar. The result is only 8g of sugar in this whole bottle, and it doesn't taste very diet. If you didn't know, and we're familiar with stevia, you probably wouldn't even guess that there was a zero calorie sweetener involved at all. Low calorie drinks have come a long way since the days of aspartame.

Please don't stick your hand in the Buddha's mouth. It' the ice dispenser and it's very sensitive, we don't need your grimy hands monkeying up the works.

Is Shaq really that relevant in this day and age that he should be the spokesman for a drink? When was the last time this man made any sort of news? I mean it's been almost a decade since his Shaq Fu album came out and he's retired from basketball. I simply do not understand the reason for handing over a bunch of money to someone who is no longer in the spotlight, especially for a company that is already so established. I can only hope that the owner is just a huge basketball fan and Shaq was his favorite player of all time, so this is a dream come true for him (or her).

Even though I don't understand the endorsement, I was very intrigued by the idea of a blueberry cream soda. I've never tried one before, and it sounded wonderful. With one sip I knew that I had been correct. This was amazing. Then, about four sips later, I changed my mind. While this is great for a couple of sips, it becomes too much very quickly. Shaq is a big man, and this comes in a big can, and it's more than anyone would ever need. Everything was in place for this to be great: It's sweetened with real sugar, it has actual blueberry juice in it, the cream flavoring was from bourbon vanilla extract, and it had honey in it. I normally love honey in drinks, but I think it might have been the downfall this time around. There is something a little off with the taste that is not blueberry or vanilla and the only thing I can think of is the honey.

I let this sit twice and then went back for a couple more sips hours apart and each time I really enjoyed it for the first couple of sips, and then it would go south again. It's a shame. I will say that I do love the artwork on the can. It's goofy and wonderful, and it uses halftones in the best way.

Inko's is a company that for years has been known for its use of white tea. Well, they decided to branch out into the realm of other types of tea as well as into aluminum cans. I can firmly announce that these folks know what they are doing no matter what the tea medium. Upon opening the can the air in your immediate vicinity instantaneously reeks like Teavana or some other high-end teashop that you would find in the mall. It's a magical scent that is fruity with a strong under base of tea, which I feel other companies should strive for. I've spent way too much money in such shops and I have never been disappointed with the products I received in return. While the contents of this can are not completely up to those standards, it is one of the closest ready to drink teas that I have ever tried. It tastes like mango and passionfruit were dried and mixed into the tea batch pre-brewing and not like it was an added flavoring after the fact. That is the sign of a good tea. My only complaint is that it's a tad sweeter than it needs to be for my liking. There are only 13g of sugar per serving, with two servings per can, but as someone who loves unsweetened tea, it's just not needed and it detracts from the greatness of the natural flavor of the tea and the fruit. Don't let that deter you though, for your average drinker it probably won't seem all that sweet at all. I'm just becoming more and more of a tea snob every day.

Cheribundi has expanded their line and is stepping up their game. First off that is one great looking packaging. Sure the bottle itself is really nothing too crazy, but everything from the colors to the typeface to the tasteful picture of cherries is absolutely perfect. It's so simple and esthetically pleasing. Lucky for us the taste of the liquid it contains is also just as pleasing.

The jasmine tea base in here is not as floral as others I've tried, and I think that is for the best. Don't get me wrong, I love a nice floral jasmine, if that is all that it is, but once you add other flavors to that, a toned down version works much better. Since this is a company who is known for their cherry juice, I had expected this to be exploding with cherry flavor. A lot of companies overdo things that way, but just like with the design, they knew that less would be more with this. There is a nice cherry flavor that is a little tart, but overall it's pretty subtle in the mix, and it intermingles nice with the tea. The one thing I would change about this is that it is a little sweeter than it needs to be. I personally enjoy my jasmine tea unsweetened, but I understand that the tartness of the cherry also has to be taken into consideration. It is my opinion that if the amount of added sugar were cut in half the drink would have greatly benefited and would have earned a full five bottles. Hey, four bottles on Thirsty Dudes is nothing to scoff at, but I always hope drinks will win the whole pot.

How to the people at Brisk sleep at night, knowing the damage they have wrought to the world of iced tea? Brisk is to iced tea what sour apple flavoring is to apples. They are about as far removed as you can be from the original and still share a base name. It just gives iced tea a bad name for those out there who haven't (for some reason or another) tasted real, decent tea.

While I disagree with this line, I have to admit that this flavor is a little bit of alright. It is not amazing, it's not even really all that good, but I did have a one liter bottle of it, and over two sittings I drank the entire thing. None of it got dumped down the drain, like I had expected. White it definitely has their classic “iced tea” in there, the lemonade makes up for it. It gives it a nice balance, and on a nice hot day like today I will begrudgingly say it hits the spot.

I am concerned that the ingredient list reads: water, high fructose corn syrup…€¦. Seriously, the sweetener so high on the list? That's just kind of disgusting. Shockingly there are only 44g of sugar in this entire bottle. I expected it to be in the 60s, but that is still a lot.

Little. Yellow. Different.
…€¦or is it Wet. Bubbly. Standard.
I'm not exactly sure.
This was sent to us, and as I'm not a connoisseur of sparkling mineral water, it tastes like every other one that I've ever had. This really isn't our forte, but it seemed decent enough. I don't know what else to say about this.

It's a beautiful day out, so you decide to lay out in the back yard, while listening to a little Air Supply and get your self a tan. Oops, you almost forgot two crucial items before you walked out the door; your tanning oil and a nice refreshing glass of pomegranate juice. As you sit down in your weird plastic tube lawn chair that has existed since the same year you bought that Air Supply cassette, you start lathering up. It's been so rainy and cloudy lately that you haven't been able to work on your tan as much as you wanted. You were so excited that you didn't even notice that a huge glob of your coconut scented tanning oil fell right into your cool refreshing beverage.

There you go. Now you have a vivid image of what my ladyfriend told me this drink tasted like. I can't argue with her. I had high hopes for this, but unfortunately the coconut in here falls too close to the toasted coconut taste that I despise, which leaves it tasting like your at the beach and you licked your lips after the tanning oil you slathered on your face dripped down a bit. I really wanted this to taste more like classic coconut water, but it wasn't meant to be. At least it has a great tasting pomegranate base.