Jason Draper - 2709 Reviews

Deep in the heart of the rainforests of Canada the Black River flows. It is an anomaly of the country. Every fruit ever imaginable grows on the banks of this river. Who knew that tropical fruit could grow just north of Moosejaw, Saskatchewan? On the southern banks of the river is where the guava orchard exists. Unfortunately the ground isn't very suitable for this plant, so the fruit it bears is not as wonderful from that that grows in reality. The Canadians aren't ones to waste anything so they still decided to bottle the mediocre juice.

I wish that were the actual case, but the downfall of this juice is that it is more of a mixture of grape and apple juice than it is guava puree. The other juices take away from the exquisiteness that is guava. It's a shame for sure.

A few months ago when Dr. B's emailed us to tell us about their microbrewed teas I was very excited. It's no secret that Mike and I love a good tea, and if microbrewing could do to iced tea what it did for root beer, then everyone was in for a good time.

Dr B's obviously cares about the quality of their tea. They took the effort to use quality ingredients and brew them in a special way. By all means this should have been one heck of a beverage. The thing is the company had a lapse in their judgment. They wanted a healthy tea, so they went with a zero calorie sweetener. In that instant all of their hard work went out the window. I understand wanting to have a healthy drink available, but I wish they would have taken it the other way and not added a sweetener at all. There is monk fruit in all their teas and that would have given them a slight sweetness, which is all it would need. Unfortunately they went the Xylitol route and that cold sweetness is the most prevalent flavor in the mix. I really have nothing against natural zero calorie sweeteners, I just think that when companies decide to use them, they should use a smaller amount so it's not so overpowering. This could have been great, but instead it's hard to finish.

It seemed like everyone was either out of town or had plans yesterday so I started my winter ritual of wasting my time playing video games a bit early. Since my ladyfriend was one of the people that were out of town, the cats and I had the apartment to ourselves. I played far too many hours of Final Fantasy, until I got a call that Mike was available and he wanted me to come over and play even more video games. I swear outside of a couple of winter months I rarely if ever play these things. We ended up playing Home Run All Stars Derby for far too long and laughed way too much.

Since the day was filled with electronic fun I decided I needed to imbibe an appropriate beverage. My good friend Kevyn gave me this soda and this seemed to be the perfect time for it. The description of the can proclaims it to be a “citrus wired cherry soda” aka cherry soda with caffeine in it. I suspected it to taste like Mountain Dew Code Red, which it did, but much better. The base is like a cherry soda with a light Mountain Dew taste to it, but the kicker is that there is also orange in there as well. That's what sets the drink off, and gives you these weird orange burps afterwards. I was just struck by the vision of actually being able to see burps exiting someone's mouth and them having an orange tint to them. Strange times.

You would think that a drink that has little slimy chia seeds in it would have a lot to say about itself, but when I put my ear to this bottle all I hear is faint murmurs. The flavors in this line are tame at best. I guess there is nothing wrong with that. Some people want something that is only lightly flavored and this is a drink for them. Hell, I love lightly flavored unsweetened tea; it's one of my favorites. I just can't seem to get behind this. It's like you got a glass of water at a restaurant and they squeezed lemon slices instead of one, but instead of lemon it was equal amounts of strawberry and orange juice. That's about the extent of the flavor. If you take that and dump in a couple hundred chia seeds (that are essentially flavorless) you get this drink.

Would you look at that bottle? Seriously, just look at it. It's a work of art. This is the type of bottle that draws me into the fancy beer section even though I don't drink. Now Mike hands me a sparkling cider (that is pumpkin flavored no less) and tells me that it's safe for consumption. Well I am one happy camper. My letters home to mom won't be full of tears this time around. The kicker is that Mike found this in the most unlikely of places: Aldi. That's right, a budget, cost effective store has the fanciest bottle of cider I have ever set my eyes on.

When I popped the top, oh and how the top popped, I took a big sniff and was concerned to note that it smelled of Worchester sauce with some spices in it. My expectations fell through the floor. I had a friend smell it as well and he said he had a similar reaction. Oh well, down the hatch it went. I felt weird drinking this from the bottle, as I felt like I should pour it into a fancy glass, but you do what you have to do, and I had to try this instantly. Luckily the scent had nothing to do with the flavor at all. It's labeled as a pumpkin cider, but it's really just a nicely spiced apple cider with a tiny bit of pumpkin flavor mixed in. It's probably for the best, as I could see too much pumpkin being over powering. The best part of the flavor is that cinnamon isn't the prime spice like it normally is in cider. It's there, but it's not the all-powerful Oz or anything like that. If I had to pick a prominent “spice” it would have to be ginger. There's no burn to it (oh god that would have been the best. Simply the best. Better than all the rest.) but the flavor of ginger is there and I love Nature's Nectar for it. I also love them because I would expect this to be around the $4/$5 mark, but I looked online and it's only $2. I'm going to have to pick a couple up before the season is over.

I hate to always bring reviews of drink such as this back to this company, but this tastes like a diet Vitamin Water. Sure there are dozens of other companies I could compare it too, but I think most people are more familiar with Vitamin Water than those other companies, so it gives them a better base for comparison. Well that was completely unnecessary and boring.

I will say that while this is a fruit punch, it's not the type of drink I think of when I hear the words fruit punch. I think companies should avoid that phrase because it makes me think of Hawiian Punch and the like, which no one really needs to drink. This is not just a bog bottle of red syrup. This is pretty light and has a more adult fruit punch flavor. I think it's interesting that they still sweeten this with cane sugar, just not as much. They make up the difference with sucralose. The mixture doesn't give it that deadly 80's diet flavor that I dread. It tastes diet, but not like poison.

The thing that differentiates Agua Enerviva from Vitamin Water is that their drinks have guarana in them, which is a natural source of caffeine. There's not enough in here to make you crazy and jittery, but it's a nice slight push to get you through your day.

I'm not the mix guy here at Thirsty Dudes. The person you would want to talk to about that is Mike. He loves being a participant in the completion of a beverage. Personally I just want the finished beverage handed to me. Proof of that is that it has more than likely been over a year since Oregon Chai sent us this concentrate and I have yet to try it. Tonight the drink gods decided to shine on the northwestern company because my apartment is freezing and I'm a stubborn so and so that refuses to turn on the heat yet.

The carton tells me to just mix this and milk (almond milk in my case) in equal amounts. I did so and decided to give it a try cold. It's really sweet. So much that the sweetness overpowers the chai-ness and I think I even put in too much concentrate. Every Chai beverage I've ever had has had an overpowering spice to it, but not this. The spiced flavor is there, but it's pretty mellow. After I heated it up the sweetness subsided a bit and it was more balanced out with the spice. The more I drink it the more I realize how much I appreciate the lighthandedness of it. Now I'm a bit warmer and I can sit around reading feeling nicely terrible due to the amount of Indian food Mike and I downed at dinner.

Every morning I get up, use the facilities, pour myself a bowl of store brand Cinnamon Toast Crunch with unsweetened almond milk and check the internets. It's a ritual that I need in my life. When I'm out of town I try to mimic it as best I can, and if my body is not satisfied, it's going to be a rough day. I need to change up this ritual a bit and add a glass of juice to it. How great is juice? It tastes great, and if you drink the right kind it can be great for you.

I decided to start this change today with this can of mango nectar. Unfortunately this isn't the healthiest of juice due to the unnecessarily added sugar. It's also only 25% juice. When a company brags that their juice is not from concentrate I feel like it should be 100% juice. Oh well.

Mangos and pineapple both have this weird thing where they occasionally smell vaguely like vomit. I don't know what causes it, and I don't know if anyone else has the same reaction as me. One would think that if something has that scent it would be absolutely disgusting, not me. I love both fruits and all their juices. This falls on the average side of mango juices. Sure it tastes like mango, but it doesn't taste like you just bit into the fruit, which is what I'm always looking for in a juice. I guess you shouldn't expect much when juice comes in a can.

In 1998 Public Enemy released the album “It Takes a Nation of a Million to Hold Us Back.” In the lyrics of the second single from the album Chuck D very emphatically tells to listeners not to believe the hype. Very wise words from a wise man. Listen to Chuck because he knows what he's talking about when it comes to socio-political topics and those same sentiments can also be used when reviewing energy drinks. Hype Organic was great, this one, not so much. It has a traditional energy drink flavor (aka Red Bull/every generic energy drink ever), but it has less candy flavor and more “energy flavor.” It makes sense because it is their maximum energy blend. I could have used more on the flavor side of things, but if I had to trade off some flavor for an energy drink that works well, I can handle that.

Hype will probably focus on some particular lines from the previously mentioned Public Enemy song: “All the critics you can hang'em, I'll hold the rope.” Lucky for me they are in the Netherlands.

Last night was the US Presidential Election, and Barack Obama will be our president again for the next four years. I was half-heartedly watching the election coverage on my laptop as I read last night. Watching states turn blue was a treat. I was waiting for the swing states to switch over (mostly Ohio, Florida and Virginia). I had decided that when Florida went blue I would celebrate with a nice orange soda to pay my respects to the people in that state who made the right decision. Time went by and Florida stayed grey. I got to thinking about that orange pop and I really wanted it. In my head I justified that by drinking it I would help usher on the counting of the votes. I think I messed things up guys. Luckily other parts of the country picked up the slack and the blue won, but I'm pretty sure the fact that I picked such a lack luster soda was what delayed the count (it's 11am now and it still isn't done).

Blue sky was one of the first organic sodas that I remember seeing on the market. In 2000 or so I remember going to the local health food store to get a nice seitan sandwich and I grabbed my first can of Blue Sky (not Orange Divine). I remember thinking it was good, but nothing spectacular. That's fine, not everything needs to be over the top. I thought I knew what I was getting into with this can. It has natural orange flavor in it, so I was expecting it to be a lesser tasting/more sweetened Orangina. I ended up getting something that was between a sparkling orange juice and your everyday orange soda, except it had been filtered through the general taste of a health food store. Something was definitely off about it. It tasted as if it had been lightly spiced for some unknown reason. There is nothing listed in the ingredient list that should give it such a flavor, so I'm stumped.

Again, I apologize to the folks of Florida for delaying the count of their votes. If I had chosen a better orange soda I bet this would be all wrapped up.

First things first with a name like Chin Chin this makes me think that monkeys either make it or they serve it. I don't think I've ever watched or read anything with a monkey names Chin Chin, so I have no idea where this thought is coming from, but I just can't shake it.

If there is a monkey that makes this juice, he/she needs to step up their game. This is a decent enough juice, but most guava juices are through the roof good. This is just decent. It's just a bit more watered down than others and there is a tad too much sugar added for my liking. I urge someone who knows sign language to tell this chimp to fix these issues or else they will be shot into space. No one wants to be shot into space. It's scary there.

We recently realized that a handful of our friends haven't really hung out in awhile. As a result Saturday afternoon was a dudes hang of gluttony. We started it off with the dirt mall aka flea market where we sifted through piles of people's garbage looking for a clock for Mike whilst eating soft pretzels, hot dogs, cinnamon rolls and a single cannoli. From there we went to look for a coat for Mike deep in the bowels of hell and come up empty handed. Then we went to another circle of hell that is more commonly known as Guitar Center so I could try out an amp that I thought (correctly) that I wanted. The important part came next. We hit up a few Asian markets for groceries and new drinks. I bought such a variety of weird tofu that I couldn't be happier. Our main market also got a new shipment of drinks and this was one of them.

I have no idea what “common selfheal fruit-spike drink” is, but it sounded more interesting than I could handle. As soon as we walked out I ripped this bad boy open and we all shared it. We all decided that it was okay, but that is had a decent licorice aftertaste, and I'm not talking about Twizzler. Along with never hearing of the fruit that is the namesake of this beverage it also contains grosvenor momordica fruit, that I'm sure 99.54% of American have never heard of as well. Along with that there are dates in here. When mixed together these ingredients have a taste that is something between a sweet tea and a flat herbal root beer (minus the wintergreen). At first I thought this was great, but with each sip my interest wanes. BY the end I really had lost all interest in it. From the name I'm assuming that there is some medicinal properties to this drink, but who knows since the label is in Chinese.

After our shopping spree we decided it was time for a yearly trip to the only sit down chain restaurant that is worth a damn: Chilis. Their real food is nothing to write home about, but they have incredible unsweetened blackberry and mango teas. Also the endless chips and salsa are enough for us to go gaga. You should have seen how many baskets of chips we housed. Mama would have been proud.

Is it wrong of me to assume that when something is organic that it is just going to be solely what it is labeled as? I feel like ten years back that was the case, but not so much these days. I wanted there to be nothing in this bottle except for juices that came from mangos and oranges. Oh it would have been so delicious, perhaps a perfect drink. That is not what I received. While it still is better than 90% of the juices available to the world, there are other elements at work in this beverage that lessen its quality. Sure there are orange and mango juice in here, but right along side them, and in greater quantity according to the ingredient list, are their friends apple and grape. It's like orange and orange arranged this wonderful little get away together and then their two overbearing friends invited themselves along and rearranged the entire trip to suit their own needs. Jerks. What would have been the vacation of a lifetime ends up being more of an apple juice that is orange and mango flavored (grape got food poisoning and spent the weekend in bed). As I said I do really enjoy the drink a lot, and it's fairly unique tasting, but it's not what I was expecting, nor what I really wanted. Knowing what it is I think I would enjoy it a lot more in the future.

I had a true taste comparison with this one. As I've previously mentioned Arizona was my gateway into green teas. It was the first I've ever had and for a longtime it was my benchmark. How stupid I was. Last night I went to a show with my friend Dave and he brought a can of the classic Arizona green tea and I brought this bottle of Urban Zen. We were both happily drinking our respective teas when he needed me to hold his for some reason. Being the sneaky so and so that I am I took a sip. Wow, the two drinks while having essentially similar makeups were light years apart. I had never realized how cheap Arizona tasted before. It's essentially a sweetener with some green tea flavoring in it. This on the other hand was the real deal. It's properly brewed whole leaf green tea that has been infused with jasmine flower. It has a real green tea taste, and it's mostly sweetened with honey, which gives it's own twist to the flavor. All in all this has only 10g of sugar in it, which is all you ever really need in a sweetened tea. I'm pretty sure that Arizona has about 4 times that. The comparison made me realize how much of a kids drink Arizona really is, and how this is a tea of a pseudo sophisticated adult. It's slightly bitter with a nice light floral taste. Jasmine tea, it's not just for fancy Asian restaurants anymore. Arizona, I don't know if I'll ever look at your green tea the same way again.

If you've never had the joy of trying bubble tea, let me try and explain it for you. It starts off with a nice black or green tea (I personally always go for the green), then a shot of syrup or powder flavoring is mixed in. These flavors can be all over the map, there are fruits such as kiwi and guava, there is chocolate, there is even taro root. I've never had a flavor that I haven't liked. There are some that are milk based as well, but who really needs to mess with something like that?

One would think that this would be enough to have a nice flavored tea, but one would also be wrong. The true joy of bubble tea is the “bubbles,” which aren't bubbles at all but pearls of tapioca. I understand that it sounds completely disgusting and I was hesitant to try it at first myself, but they are wonderful and incredibly fun. The tapioca balls are fairly flavorless, so they just add a texture and entertainment (they make the best spit balls you have ever seen). The first time I had bubble tea I didn't realize you were supposed to chew the pearls, so like the idiot I am I swallowed them whole and felt terrible afterwards. After a whole lot of mocking from my friends I tried it again and with some chewing I grew to love it. I bet you will too.

Why am I talking so much about this Asian delicacy? Well that would be because this tea tastes exactly like my flavor of choice at my local bubblery. 95% of the time when I get bubble tea I'm going to go with the passion fruit. What can I say? I have a weakness. I was shocked at how much this tasted exactly like bubble tea, which tastes slightly different than just normal flavored tea. It probably has something to do with the way they flavor it. If this had been poured into a glass with some pearls in it and served to me I would never have guessed that it wasn't from a bubble tea place. It's a very sweet green tea, with a flavor that tastes exactly like passion fruit. It's one of my new favorites. Too bad I've only found it at a market in Toronto.

Also, when I was entering the company information for this review I saw that the web address www.bubbletea123.com was listed on the packaging. It's good to know that my taste buds are working just fine.

Did the association of purple/grape things and apes start with the Hanna Barbera character? I mean it makes sense due to rhyming, but I feel like I've seen more than a handful of things with primates tied to the flavor grape that don't use the word “ape” so the whole rhyme thing is out the window. A quick internet search also tells me it's a strain of medical marijuana. Is it possible that this gorilla got so high that it started to mistake grapes as its beloved bananas? It got so into the grapes that the juice dyed it's once glorious coat and gave it a purple hue? I think I'm on to something people. Think about it, when a primate that is wacked out of its gourd gets loose in your grape fields and ends up juicing them all before grape juice season (I say it exists, so it does), what else are you going to do but make soda with it? I mean, sure you're going to have to boil it down to get rid of all of those gorilla germs (great potential band name that I'm allowing you our readers to use), but why not just give it a little marketing twist and call it “Fire-Brewed?”

I think this hippy gorilla has done the world a favor. This is a nice soda that falls on the higher end of the grape line. It's a bit light on the carbonation, which I would like to see more of, but I won't hold that against it…€¦much. As I mentioned it's made with grape juice and not a bunch of artificial flavoring, but it falls in-between a sparkling grape juice and your traditional grape soda. It's a good place for it to be. It also has honey in it, and between that and the fire brew, it gives it a very special flavor that is unique to the Sprecher company. Like all their sodas the only problem with that is that although the flavor is delectable when it's nice and cold, as it gets warmer that flavor starts to take away from the overall greatness of the beverage. It becomes more pronounced and is too distracting. The solution for that is to not dilly dally while you drink this and don't forget to bring some snacks for our primate friend; he's got the muchies like you wouldn't believe.

Come on baby slip off that rind, take off those pesky seeds and let's get down to business. No baby, don't be embarrassed, there is no need for you to cover yourself up with sugar. You're sweet enough as it is. You know I didn't think you'd be down for this, but I'm glad you brought your friends along. This is going to be quite a party. To tell you the truth I've never been with so many fruits at once before. Baby, this is the best birthday present you could have ever given me. You've invited the strawberries, apples, peaches and mangos to the party. I love your juice baby doll. Orange juice is a classic and a standard and I don't mean to put you down by saying that, but you know I have you all the time. When you mingle with all your friends you still shine brightly, along with the guavas and the mangos. The other fruits are just background in this party, and you three are all I see. You're thick in all the right ways and I wish I could partake in you all day and night, but I'm only a single person baby, and I need a break every now and then.

Nature, I just can't get enough of it. Well, I can't get enough of the awesome woods aspect of nature. I can do without the frozen tundra side of things. Sometimes I need to go out into the woods, like deep down need it to an extent that I know I won't be able to relax and settle down until I surrounded by the green (okay I'm reading Swamp Thing now, so that's a nod to classic Alan Moore with the phrasing). I have no doubt that when I get old I will live out in the country, preferably in the woods. The city is a young man's game and while I love it now, I know I won't want to be here in twenty years. So to the country I shall go.

It's late Fall now and it's getting cold and it's raining all the time. That means I'm going to be stuck inside for a few months without my precious green. I'll burn cut grass candles and pretend it's nice out but it simply won't work. This drink might help a bit though. It's a slightly sweetened yerba mate with the faintest hint of lemon in it. If you're not familiar with yerba mate it's a pseudo tea that has a bunch of caffeine in it. It tastes like everything in the woods was boiled down into a wonderful drink. If I ever had to describe what I think nature would taste like, I would hand the person a bottle of this. It's strong, herbal and wonderful. It's a Brazilian tradition by way of Canada. How does that even make sense? Oh well, here's to hoping we get a few more nice days in so I can go engulf myself in the forest. Then, hibernation.

About a decade ago my friends and I had a tradition of doing a scavenger hunt every Halloween. A friend who had moved out of town would make up a list of about 25 things we needed to get/do that were all fairly ridiculous. Thirsty Mike participated the one year and he can vouch for how much fun it was. The list changed yearly with things on it like: take a picture of yourself nipple deep in Lake Erie (you can't comprehend how cold that is), steal a table pager from a specific restaurant, break into a pet cemetery and find the name of the gorilla buried there, video tape two teammates dumping a gallon of milk down each others pants, have two team members kiss with tongue (yeah my mom walked in on me kissing Jerid “The Hammer”…€¦awkward), drink BBQ sauce out of a condom and various other dumb things. One thing that was on the list every year was to get a single can of Mello Yello. You see these were the times when Mellow Yello was scarce. Coke had replaced it with Surge and that had gone the way of the Dodo. No one ever got points for that one. My team went so far as to drive to Canada (okay it's only 15 minutes away) because someone said a store up there had it. They were wrong.

Since I haven't been in Buffalo for Halloween since 2005, and my mother was the “Mistress of Ceremonies” the hunt was called off. Every year no matter where I end up being I always wish I were back in Buffalo doing dumb things with my friends. I found this can of Mello Yello a few weeks ago, and I knew I had to save it for today. That's right, my team would have won if the game were still on.

I can't even remember the last time I had a taste of this soda. I can tell you that it doesn't taste like I remember it at all. In my mind it was just Coke's version of Mountain Dew and that's not it at all. It tastes like orange and lime sodas were mixed together. You know what that's what citrus soda should be, screw lemon. Who needs lemon-lime soda when you can have orange-lime? I mean this isn't mind blowing or anything, but I do enjoy it. Of course I also have that stupid song stuck in my head as well, “I'm just mad about Saffron…€¦”

I don't mean to bum everyone out, but I currently have no grandmothers, as mine have both passed on. It happened a long time ago and I have moved on and learned to live in a grandmotherless world. Now that I've tasted my fourth bottle of this brand of tea I realize I was wrong and this is a plea for Granny Squibb to adopt me as her own so that I can get my fill of her tea any time I so wish. You see it's not available in Buffalo, and waiting for her new flavors to come out so that we can get samples is simply not acceptable.

This tastes like a nice black tea that one of my past grandmothers might have brewed up, except they never would have iced it. It was hot tea or nothing with them. This is chilled and sweetened. If it were just black tea I would have loved it, but the addition of raspberry made it perfect. This may in fact be the best raspberry iced tea I have ever tasted. When a tea actually tastes like it was sweetened with real fruit, you know the company has done well.

So what do you think Madam Squibb, will you be my new grandmamma?