Jason Draper - 2709 Reviews

Down in North Carolina natural streams careen down from the peaks of the Appalachian Mountains. Arcadia Farms uses that fresh water to make their personal take on southern sweet tea. It's too bad that they use the water directly from the streams and don't take any measures to “clean it up.” There is just a pump that sucks the water directly from the stream out back on the Arcadia land into the vat that they make their tea in. Don't they know that squirrels, coyotes and various other fauna do their business in that water? Maybe I can't prove that they actual do that, but I think I might believe someone if they told me that after having tasted this tea. It doesn't really taste like tea at all. It tastes more like extremely heavily sugared dirty water. I can get by the insane sugar taste since it is sweet tea after all. I cannot get past the fact that it doesn't taste like tea; you know the main ingredient in “tea.” The strange thing is that the ingredients list …€˜brewed tea,” which generally means that you're in for a good beverage. Somehow the Farm got it all wrong.

Generally when pop is blue you are in for one of two things: a cream soda based beverage, or something that is so overly sweetened that you can't believe it's still a liquid. When I took a sip of this and I didn't feel like my teeth were going to fall out from liquid candy, I awaited the cream aftertaste. It never came. I have to admit that I waited longer than I should have. I even took another sip and concentrated on trying to taste it. I got nothing. Capone has succeeded in beating the odds. They have created a blue soda that just tastes fruity. Well, it doesn't actually taste like raspberries. It actually kind of tastes like a Bahama Mamma Slush Puppie (aka my favorite). It tastes tropical in a berry sort of way. It's not something that I would want all the time, but this would be great on a hot summer day, too bad we're having our first snow storm of the year.

What I have in my hand is perhaps one of the most uniquely flavored drinks I have ever tasted. Let's start with the base of aloe shall we? Aloe the plant that is used to sooth burns is absolutely disgusting in its raw form. Seriously, just take it from me save yourself the taste of poison in your mouth. Just use it on burns caused by the sun or other. Processed aloe, or whatever they do to it to make it into a beverage is one of my favorite tasting drinks ever. So we have this vat of delicious aloe juice, what should we put in it? Oh how about the most refreshing of flavors of all time: the cucumber. Cucumber flavored drinks sounds ridiculous, that is until you try it and then you want it constantly. Every cucumber beverage I have tried tastes exactly like the vegetable, and as I said it's the peak of refreshment; move over lemonade. So we have some cucumber aloe juice now. Truth be told we could stop right here, but why not see how far we can take it? Why don't you throw some mint into the mix? Not enough to give it that toothpaste taste, but just enough to make it crisp. You know, so you don't really realize it's there until the aftertaste. To top it all off, why not pump some CO2 into it and give it some bubbles? Bam! Done! Perfect! It's crisp, it's refreshing and it ends on a nice cool note. It's a combination I have never tasted before. Why this company is not huge I have no idea. This is a base that other beverages should be modeled after.

When I was in junior high there was a girl who briefly lived down the street from me. She was a terrible excuse for a human. She was such a hood rat that I'm surprised her parents didn't name her Holly. Now for some reason this girl took a shine to me. I have no idea why as I made it perfectly clear that I thought she was horrible and wanted nothing to do with her. Even so she would show up at my house every day and just walk in. One day I was in the basement putting my trucks on a new deck, and she wandered down offering…€¦well I'm sure you can guess. When she wouldn't leave after me screaming at her, I grabbed a fire extinguisher and fired it in her face. That solved my problem, and she never came back.

This juice requires no screaming or C02 cannons. I expected it to be budget, because of the look of the can. That is a design from several decades ago if I ever saw one. Luckily it is anything but. This is a great tasting juice that spotlights some of the best that the tropical islands have to offer. We have mango, papaya, guyabano, pineapple and calamansi. This could have been solely any of those juices and I would have been a very happy boy. When you take a sip of them mixed together you can almost hear the tide coming in. It creates one of those flavors that just tastes tropical, but if you stop and think you can make out each of the individual flavors.

A word of advice to the youth of today: always keep a fire extinguisher and a can of juice handy and you'll have nothing but smooth sailing.

Question: If this is supposed to be flavored water then why are there any sweeteners in here at all? There is both agave nectar and rebiana. That is two unnecessary sweeteners for “water with a twist.” This could have just been lime juice in water and it would have tasted fairly comparable. I certainly would have enjoyed it more. It's not sweet enough for the rebiana flavor to be justified. It takes away from the flavor of the limes. Those aren't just any limes either. They are West Indies limes. Those little bits of citrus traveled a long way to make it into this bottle and that dumb natural zero calorie sweetener is ruining it for them. There should have been a red carpet rolled out for them and teams of reporters. Instead they are walking over the old tattered rug into a by the hour motel that they are now sharing with a complete stranger. The glamour of the exotic is long gone my friends.

Guayaki is a company that knows what they are doing, and what they are doing is making yerba mate based beverages that are nothing if not delicious. This is the 9th product of theirs that we have reviewed and so far they have all received either 4 or 5 out of 5 bottles. That is a rare thing indeed in the world of these Thirsty Dudes.

For those of you not familiar with it, yerba mate is essentially a tea. Does tea have to be made from a specific plant, or is it just any plant that is steeped in hot water? I think I'm safe referring to this as a tea. I've heard others do it, so I'm going to follow suit. As with all teas it has its own distinct taste, that is hard to describe, but once you've had it, you'll always be able to place the flavor. It's been compared to green tea, but I don't really see it at all. Both are a tad on the bitter side, but yerba mate has an earthier flavor to me.

Guayaki has been making this tea for years and recently has started producing a sparkling line. I for one love it. Tea based sodas are always hit or miss, but this is an inner circle bulls eye. The yerba mate flavor is right in the center and it's softened up a bit by some sweetener and a mixture of cranberry and pomegranate juice. What we have here are three bitter flavors, which could easily take all of the moisture out of your mouth, but instead blend together in a perfect way. Both of the juices are easily recognizable in the taste, but they are living in harmony together instead of fighting to see who will solo in the spotlight. I suppose that is because they both know that they will only ever be supporting characters in this drink; yerba mate is taking them all the way to Broadway.

Here's a not so subtle hint to America: A good majority of you are overweight. Okay, that wasn't so much of a hint as it was a flat out statement. Regardless, it's true. I'm not saying that I think people should be emaciated and the skinniest things ever. I am saying that in the days of our country when people had to work on farms and such, everyone was in much better shape. Think of how we could run everything if we were all in that same shape with today's modern medicine. We would be unstoppable.

The first step to getting there is to stop eating so much damn fast food. Sure it's delicious but it does nothing but hurt this cause. Secondly, and possibly most importantly, cut out drinking so much pop. I have way to many friends who tell me that one of their parents drink a two-liter or more of soda a day. That is ridiculous. I run a drink review website, and the thought of that makes even me sick. Do you even know how much sugar and other garbage you're putting into your bodies? How do you expect to hand plow the fields for ten hours a day while doing that? You won't, that I promise you. Hey, I understand the love of bubbly drinks. I'm just saying there are other options out there to get your fix in a way healthier way. One option is Hint Fizz. It's just sparkling water with a little bit of peach flavoring in it. There is no sugar, no fat, no sodium, no nothing. You essentially could be drinking a glass of water and it would be 98% the same health wise.

Sure when you first start drinking seltzers the taste is a bit weird, but the more you drink the quicker you become acclimated to it and then it doesn't taste bad at all, it tastes normal. Even though there is no juice in here, this does leave the memory of having just eaten a peach in your mouth. I urge you to make the switch from your soda pop to this sparkling water. The fate of our empire depends upon it.

Remember when Andy Kaufman went up on stage and awkwardly acted out the Mighty Mouse song, well just the “Here I come to save the day!” part. That was hysterical. If the man were still alive, hurting for money and forced to do product endorsement, I would hope that he would back Naked Juice. I mean if you gotta sell yourself for the man, you might as well back a product that is actually great, and not hurting anyone. Hell, even with him dead his estate could sell his rights to them. I don't think Naked actually makes commercials, but I can see it now. It could be the original footage of the Mighty Mouse bit, except instead of taking a drink of water they could edit in a bottle of Naked and at the end the screen would say, “Naked's Mighty Mango: It's here to save the day.” Marketing genius right here.

Nothing in that ad would be a lie either. Whenever I feel myself getting the old scratch in my throat that is a telltale sign that sickness is on it's way, I get myself a large bottle of this stuff and just pound it. More likely than not the sickness will pass and I will be just fine in a day. It's essentially a mango puree with a bit of orange flavor to it. Sure there is also apple and banana juice in here, but you can't taste them at all. There is so much vitamin C in here that it could fight off an army on oncoming illness, just like a little mouse…€¦wearing a cape.

I will be the first to admit that I am a complete snob when it comes to ginger ale/beer. When done properly it can be one of the finest beverages to ever grace your mouth. When done improperly it's just a bubbly sea of mediocrity (yet I've never tasted one that I would call bad). Due to this snobbery I tend to stay away from the “big names” of soda for this flavor. I get real annoyed, real fast when a ginger drink doesn't even have any real ginger in it. Luckily Canada Dry still uses ginger in their mix, so I decided to take it for a little test ride. Sure I've had it before, but it's been over five years, and in actuality it has probably been closer to ten. Seriously, since I had a real ginger beer I hardly ever go back to the light stuff, well except on flight. I always drink ginger ale and apple juice on planes for some reason.

With the exception of their choice of sweetener, Canada Dry makes a ginger ale the way it should be made. It's bubbly and crisp. You can taste the ginger in it, but it's not enough to have any sort of burn. This is a dry ginger ale after all. (For those of you not in the know, pale or dry in reference to a ginger drink means that it doesn't have any kick.) This is of higher quality than most big name sodas. I appreciate that they took a little bit of time with this one instead of just cranking out generic soda.

I will start this review off with a quote from Editor Dan, “Holy crap it tastes as good as it smells!” Let me tell you people this is one of the most nasal cavity pleasing I have ever took a sniff of. Well that doesn't sound appealing at all. Seriously though the fruity vanilla aroma that emits from this bottle is what I imagine the perfect island paradise to smell like. It smells wonderful, but it's not too strong like those candy perfumes that your younger sister wore in the 90s. This is a classy island smell.

It also tastes like it smells: classy. The secret here is that this is not your everyday black or green tea in this bottle. It is an “herbal extract” that is a combination of hibiscus, rosehips, vanilla beans, raspberry leaves and lemon peel. To be honest Good Drink could have stopped right there, and I would have a drink that I loved. The folks at the company had a larger vision though. Theirs was a vision of a national takeover of the teas of Canada (to be fair, not a large take over at all) and they did the unthinkable, they added mango to an already stellar drink. The result: magic in a bottle, well almost. Everything about this beverage would be absolutely perfect if they slightly changed but one thing. There is a tad too much vanilla in this tea. It smoothes it out more than a tea should be and it pushes it almost to the dangerous level of potpourri taste. Luckily it doesn't reach that line and it still tastes delectable. This tea will easy run the tea empire of Canada, but if the vanilla were a little less, I'm thinking Good Drink could take on the world. Think about it George, you could be a global power. Doesn't that sound appealing?

Whenever I think of peach nectar a very specific idea is floating around my skull. I think of a very thick, sweetly perfect juice that tastes like I have shrunk down a million peaches so that I could fit them all in my mouth at once. That is what Looza peach nectar tastes like, and it's what I think that all drinks that bear this name should as well. Unfortunately Kerns does not share my belief. First off this is sweetened with high fructose corn syrup, which can be okay in sodas but is a big no-no when it comes to juice. The result is that instead of tasting like glorious fruit, it's a bit on the candied side. The consistency of this is fairly thick, but it's the wrong kind of thickness that you get from a syrup and not from blending the fruit for a shorter time. At least they used real peach puree in this. It's not horrible by any means. I would happily drink a can of this, but when you're beverage is being compared to the big guns you have to reach for the stars. Kerns apparently though that reaching for the lowest branches would be enough.

Yes, I am here as a guest of the Underhills. Mr Underhill said to just apply any charges I accrue to their account. With that being said I will be needing the largest yacht you have available, a whole mess of towels, some scuba gear, a barrel of peanut butter filler pretzels, a case of ball bearings, a couple of bottles of your finest root beer, a bloody mary a steak sandwich, and a steak sandwich. No you may not inquire what I need all of these items for. The Underhills had told me that this club was all about digression and the privacy of their guests. I certainly hope that they were not wrong.

Yes, I understand it may take a short bit of time to get all of those items together. I will be waiting down by the dock. Say, can I get one of those root beers and a steak sandwich while I wait?

Well twenty minutes sure was a long time for you to gather everything I needed. I will most certainly have a talk with the Underhills about the promptness of this club. I will say the root beer was quite delicious though, and those seagulls certainly seemed to enjoy the steak sandwich. I'm a vegetarian you know, so I don't put death into my mouth. Those birds though, they went crazy for it, so their compliments to the chef. About that root beer though, I saw that it was called Yacht Club, is that this clubs own brand? Oh no, it's a company that caters to all yachting aficionados? Oh it's actually made by Yachting Aficionados magazine? Who'd have known? Well my compliments to that rag for finally doing something right for once. I had expected a regular, run of the mill root beer, but what your crew is serving is top notch. I see that the ingredients list it as just “root beer flavor,” but you can really taste the high concentration of wintergreen and licorice without them being distracting. There's a nice hint of vanilla in there as well. I also see that it's made with Artesian water. You got lucky with that one friend. I solely drink water from Artesia. If water from anywhere else on this planet had passed over my lips you would be in for a world of hurt.

How about this? You help me load all of this stuff onto the yacht, go grab me another case of this brew and I won't mention any of these negative aspects of this little adventure to the Underhills. You wouldn't want to be on the receiving end of a tongue lashing from that group, I can tell you that.

Welcome to Tea Shop 168 where we have 168 different flavors of tea. I know it's a bit overwhelming making your choice, but I'll let you in on a secret: 142 of the flavors are different blends of green tea that pretty much taste identical unless you went to school for teaology. I don't really believe that's a real major, but the owners assure me they are teaologists. They probably went to Evergreen in Olympia…€¦hippies.

I know 27 different varieties of tea can still be a bit much to choose from, so may I suggest you try our aloe vera green tea fusion? It's an interesting ride. Some say that it is just green tea with aloe chunks thrown in. Those people are just dumb. I know. I make the tea and I can assure you that there is also aloe vera juice in it. It is mostly green tea, but you can still definitely taste the aloe juice. It's strange having a slightly bitter aloe drink, and the chunks have a fairly different flavor from what you're probably used to, assuming that you have had aloe drinks before. Oh you haven't? Well aloe essentially tastes like a light white grape juice with a little something extra to it. It's delicious, and I can't sing it's praises enough.

So yeah, this is unusual and fun. It certainly isn't mind blowing, but when you're choosing either this or some tea infused with raw meat, it's the choice to make. Teaology…€¦What a joke. The owners just soak random foods in green tea and act like they are scientists. They don't even wear lab coats or goggles. Lamers.

ps. I just discovered that Tea Shop 168 is an actual tea shop with a physical stores all throughout Ontario. AS far as I know they do not have 142 different types of green tea. Also, I can only assume that they do have roast beef tea, as their website does not explicitly state that they do not. Don't forget your horseradish.

In my head this drink was formulated specifically to help people cope with the theoretical impending apocalypse. Even the companies name suggests it: MALAVA = MAYAN LAVA that will destroy the world. Yeah it's a stretch, deal with it.

Unlike other relaxation drinks this is not full of melatonin and valerian root, which will just put you to sleep. The anti-stress medicine in this cane is just kava extract, which is used to relax without disrupting mental clarity. This way if you survive the initial impact of the unknown event that will end everything on Thursday, you will be calm and clear headed to figure out what you have to do to survive. Those fools who drink alcohol or something like a Marley Mellow Mood will be passed out somewhere for passing marauders to do with as they please. No one wants that to happen to them.

Since this is going to the taste to represent the end of the world we are lucky that it actually tastes decent. It's not carbonated, as I expected it to be. It tastes like some unknown tropical fruit. It's a little thick, somewhere between a juice and nectar. All of these are good things in my book. There is nothing chemical tasting in here. I could have been served this as a normal juice and not realized it had other effects until I drank it and they kicked in.

Stock up. Prepare yourselves. Make sure that you have the ability to numb yourself to the doom and destruction that is all around you so that you can forge on and rebuild the world.

Children, gather around the fire and I shall tell you a tale. It is the story of fruit tea. It is a tale as old as time and this is how it goes: some people were thirsty so they decided to brew some tea. They wanted to make it a bit more exciting than their normal afternoon beverage so them juiced some passionfruit into it. The end. I know it is a short story and not exciting in the least bit. There were no lions, or robots, or robots that turned into lions and breathed fire out of their butt, but it is a story nonetheless. If you have a problem with my story, then I shall offer you a sip of my tea and that will shut you right up. It is sweet and flavorsome. If you've ever had passionfruit bubble tea than you know exactly how this tastes. Green tea used in bubble tea has a specific taste and that is exactly what is in this bottle. If you're not a fool then you got it with passionfruit, because it is the king of fruits, or at least is in a Game of Thrones type war for the crown. How on Earth did a television show written explicitly for nerds gain such a normal audience? I think it's the promise of dragons and zombies. Perhaps there will even be an undead dragon. Or an undead robotic lion that shoots fire out of its butt. I would watch that and drink a gallon of this tea as I did so.

For those of you, like myself, who were unimpressed by the original flavor of Lucozade I urge you to try their tropical variety. While the sugar water taste of the original in just there, not offensive or great, this type I would actually go out of my way to drink. It has a nice passionfruit and pineapple combination of a taste to it. I expected it to taste like one of the more flavorful Gatorades, as to be comparable to their flagship flavor, but this is like a completely different product. It's very sweet, but sometimes that is exactly what you're looking for in a drink.

This is marketed as an energy drink, but as far as I can tell the only things in here that would give you energy are sugar and caffeine. In reality it's as much of an energy drink as a can of Coke. I guess that's way healthier than the amount of chemical junk Americans put in their bodies in the name of being a little more awake.

One great thing about this label is that it is made in China, but the text is half in English and half Spanish. A lot of the text is there in both forms, but there is some that is only in one of the languages. It's not a big thing at all, but for some reason it made me laugh.

I can't get over how great it is that this company was started by a couple of surfers. Even better is that they decided to start the company after a surging trip to Brazil when they were given a bowl of acai juice to drink…€¦A SURFING TRIP TO BRAZIL! If you ask me I'm gonna have to wager that we have a Point Break type scenario here. These dudes pulled some bank heists in order to fund surfing expeditions (to this day this is still the greatest movie premise of all time). The thing is that instead of all either ending up in jail, dead, or lost at sea on the coast of Australia these dudes changed their lifestyle and put their heist energies into making juice. Now they just use their profits from the business to fund their surfing trips. I mean these guys aren't crazy adrenaline junkies or anything.

Not only do these guys have a great bad guys gone good life story, but they also know how to make one hell of a beverage. I think we can all agree that a lot of companies' acai juice can be a little much to handle. It always tastes like you're drinking concentrate. Sambazon knows how to smooth it out and make it an enjoyable, healthy drink. You can taste the acai, but it's not in your face with every sip. I think it's the apple juice that they mix in that solves the harshness problem. Either way this drink is great. It's smooth, fruity and all of the flavors blend together seamlessly. You can tell that there is yerba mate and guarana in the drink if you think about it, but if you were given a glass with no indication of what was in it, it would just taste like a general blended smoothie. You would have no idea of the caffeine kick you were about to receive.

Get yourself a quart of fresh red raspberries, put them in a cheese cloth (one with a small rip in it) and just smash the hell out of them. Gather the juice and the few chunks that found their way through the hole into a cup. Fill the cup up the rest of the way with bubbly water and mix in a bit of sugar. What you will have created is essentially what is in this bottle. It's strange how much it tastes like raspberries. I know it's supposed to taste like them, but normally any fruit flavored pop doesn't actually taste like the fruit, and if it does you usually have to concentrate to find the flavor. This tastes exactly like you're eating raspberries, and the little mushy chunks do nothing but help it.

This is the first time I have ever said this about a soda, but I think it could do with a little bit more sugar. There is something about it that is just the tiniest bit off from making it absolutely perfect. I think a bit more sugar would balance things out and give it the little boost it needs to stand tall at the top of the soda pop pyramid.

To paraphrase the popular children's song/game: “Bubble gum, bubble gum in a bottle, how many mouthfuls will you swallow?” The answer sadly is not many. I love bubble gum. When I was a kid I thought I was going to die when my dentist told me that I wouldn't be able to chew it anymore once I got braces put on. Guess what I did it anyways. I'm also a fan of bubble gum ice cream. My point being is that it is a wonderful flavor, but it just doesn't need to exist in soda form. Something about it is just all wrong. I doubt the makers of cola champagne were shooting to make a bubble gum flavored soda, but that's just what happened with the ingredients they used. This version by Rio Grande is worse than most. It tastes like someone rubbed a piece of gum into a pile of various spices.

I understand that this drink is very popular in the Puerto Rican culture. I guess that if it were something that you grew up with it probably wouldn't seem so bad. On the other hand, this is the same culture that embraced the undrinkable swill that is Malta Goya, so I have my suspicions about their tastes.

Do you know what I'm in support of? Kids being strong. Keep in mind that I'm not around children very often, except the four or five that my friends have, but it seems every kid I see now a days is a little chunker. I blame television, video games and the fact that there is so much garbage in food these days. Sure my friends and I had TV and video games when we were younger, but we also spent a majority of our time outdoors exploring and skateboarding. Perhaps the fault lies in the growing number of creeps in the world that make parents not want to let their kids wander out of their sight. Who knows for sure?

Anyways, yes I am pro kid health. This drink is essentially Vitamin Water that is formulated specifically for children. It has all the vitamins and minerals that they need to be healthy and strong. Well, those alone won't make them that way, they do also need to stop being so lazy and go build a fort by the creek or something like that, looking out for Chesters the whole time.

This orange beverage tastes like someone took some weak Tang and mixed in some ground up Flintstone's Children's Vitamins. It tastes like it was made from a powder mix, but I chalk (no pun intended) that up to the high levels of vitamins in it. It is in fact a bit too chalky for my liking. If it were anymore than 12oz, I doubt I would have been able to finish it. I had a brief struggle with the amount I had, as the chalkiness got worse as I reached the bottom, even though I shook it up. This is a good concept, but the flavor just wasn't quite there.