Jason Draper - 2709 Reviews

If logic means anything anymore than the Mate Fusion company has a stockpile of syringes. It's the only logical way I can think of them getting this beverage to taste the way it does. I'm not talking about using said syringes for drug use; well actually I don't know anything about the employees of the company. Maybe some of them do enjoy spiking a vein every now and then before brewing some tea. How am I to know? I think the employees, sober, high or drunk brew up huge vats of yerba mate tea. Once it's ready they fill the syringes with the tea and then inject it directly into nearly overripe peaches. They shoot so much tea into the fruit that it almost bursts. Then they let the peaches sit for a twelve-hour period before dumping them in a giant juicer that filters out the pits, skins and chunks. All that is left is what you find in this bottle. It's bitter yerba mate tea mixed with some nicely ripened peaches. Just picture biting into one of those tea infused peaches before it goes into the juicer. So much sticky juice/tea would pour down your face and it would be delicious. I just hope they properly dispose of those needles. We don't want an epidemic on our hands.

Do you want to talk about Batman? I can talk about him and the world of Gotham all G.D. day long. What do you want to talk about: The Killing Joke? Year One? The Long Halloween (aka the best story ever put out in comic form…€¦well excluding Sandman)? Perhaps you'd rather keep things up to date and talk about the Knightfall storyline seeing as that is the basis for a good chunk of the upcoming Christopher Nolan movie The Dark Knight Rises. Spoiler alert: Bane is going to “break the bat” so to speak, and I can't wait. You see for the most part I have a complete disinterest in superheroes. I find them boring. In fact I flat out hate Superman. Oh he can do pretty much everything and anything as long as kryptonite isn't around? What a cop out. Batman will have my support every time. He has no supernatural powers just a dude with conviction and a bunch of fun toys. I love the detective. There I said it. I have a giant bat tattooed on my chest (it's not the bat symbol, but it is in homage). I love science and logic and that is the basis for the bat. With all of my love why do I want to see him get the crap beat out of him by Bane? It humanizes him and makes me love him even more. It's also going to be fun to watch Azrael lose his cool.

To celebrate the release of the movie (and my birthday for those keeping track) Mountain Dew released a limited edition flavor called Dark Berry. In reality it could have just been called berry Mountain Dew, but maybe they were going for the dark, brooding that is Batman, or maybe they were just playing off The Dark Knight…€¦yeah that's probably it. It's one of the better Mountain Dew flavors. It's very sweet, and has a quasi energy drink taste to it, but not too much. It mostly tastes like Bruce Wayne was chilling, bored out of his mind after Bane broke his back and started mixing things together. He had some Pixie Stix, Kool Aid packets and Mountain Dew left over from Tim's stay at the manor so he threw them all together in a glass. He is a detective and a scientist in his own right, so that all makes sense to me.

Remember midnight on July 19th (well the 20th) the movie comes out, so spend all day celebrating my birthday and then end your day with the best movie of the year.

The Canadian government has recently shipped hundreds of koalas into their country. Originally they wanted to give the country a make over. People were getting tired of being associated with moose and beavers. They wanted a cuter image. Unfortunately the koalas tried to wage war on the beavers, and even though they were tired of the image, beavers are still are a sacred creature up north, so they couldn't allow the war to happen. As a result they moved the koalas to warehouse buildings where tropical fruit was grown under unnatural conditions. The koalas were trained to pick the fruit and to prepare it for juicing. This didn't work as well as the officials had hoped since the animals spend a majority of their day sleeping. There was not nearly enough fruit prepared to make a straight up juice, so a brainstorming session took place and it was decided to use the fruit they had to make flavored sparkling water.

Now I certainly would have preferred juice to flavored sparkling water, but I can't blame koalas for doing what comes natural. I can blame them for adding too much sugar and this tasting more like cheap soda than a sparkling water. It does have a guava/raspberry taste, but the added sugar takes away from it and leaves you knowing that if you spilled it all over the place you would have one hell of a sticky mess on your hands. Since this couldn't be juice I wish it had been subtler. As it stands I can't get through more than a couple of sips a sitting.

I don't know a thing about this beverage. The only words I can read on the label are “Fizzy Drink.” From the picture on the front I would assume that “Uzum” means grape, but when I tasted it I wasn't so sure. You see it tastes more like blueberries to me than grapes. I kind of get a little grape, but there's something in there that reminds me of blueberries. Dear folks of Turkey you make strange drinks that are strange, but decent. They are also almost candy like, but yet still like real fruit. I don't get it. I'm not sure I'm supposed to get it, and I'm okay with that. I'll just sit back and enjoy the ride. It's a tiny bottle, but it encapsulates a big flavor.

The Italian community in Montreal had had enough of the sodas that were available to them. They did not represent their tastes and needs. As a result Brio was born. This is really just the Canadian take on the San Pellegrino drinks. Sure the can lists: Milano, London, New York, Paris an d Tokyo, but the only place I have ever seen this drink on the shelves is in Canada. An internet search comes up with little to no information as well. There is much that we don't know about the Brio company, and by much I mean we pretty much know nothing. For all I know they could have been an extremist movement who used the cans to smuggle contraband. I doubt that, but hey anything is a possibility.

This here is their blood orange flavor. As I said this is basically another version of the San Pellegrino Aranciata Rossa. It's very light tasting, but not dry at all. It's kind of like a nondescript soda with small waves of blood orange flavor. It's nice and it seems like it would be a nice healthy alternative to other sodas. That is until you look at the ingredients and see that there are 42g of sugar in here. I believe that might actually be more sugar than a can of Coke. Well, that was completely unexpected. I like the drink, but I think it could have done with less sugar.

A wise man once said, “Martin Short better watch out cause here come the bees.” Well Mr. Short that bodes well for not only your character in Pure Luck, but also if you have a fear of energy drinks. Killer Buzz has updated their look and released a handful of new flavors. I was on the fence about their original two flavors, but I have come around to this new line.

What we have here is “a mongrel mix of beneficial berries.” I don't know about you but to me that sounds like they somehow found a way to splice bees, stray dogs and raspberries together and then milk them for their energy source. That is just sick and it is something that Martin Short should truly be afraid of. Flying rabid dogs with huge stingers that smell like sweet, sweet raspberries. The little blurb on the can does nothing to refute this thought either. If anything it confirms it. While the idea of these creatures is enough to turn your hair bone white, the resulting energy drink is very tasty. It tastes like a mixed berry pop with only small hints of the energy drink taste. I downed this can pretty fast before I realized it was gone. That could just be dangerous. Part of me feels like energy drinks shouldn't taste good, so that people don't abuse them. Who am I kidding people are going to do that no matter what.

As long as the company keeps them locked up I don't think we have anything to fear, but let's just hope that they are not asexual reproducers. If they do escape make sure you down a can of this as it will give you the energy you need to escape unscathed and unstung.

If the labels on can and bottles are any indication everyone in Jamaica ingests nothing but ginger beer all day long. Okay, sometimes they mix in a little pineapple pop, but other than that straight ginger beer. I think that is a place I would like to visit. You wake up in the morning turn on the tap and out flows ginger beer. Even the “water” in the toilets is actually ginger beer. It's heaven for those who crave the burn. For those who are babies and can't handle the spice it's akin to the lake of fire in Hades.

I find it humorous that I bought this drink in Canada by way of the United Kingdom. It's like playing Seven Degrees of Jamaica. I was up in Toronto with Night Birds, and I was the definition of a glutton. I don't think I stopped consuming food and beverages from the moment I stepped out of the car until I was driving back to Buffalo. At the point when I saw this I was already ridiculously full and had to pee like nobodies business, which is terrible in a city with no bathrooms. I'm shocked that Toronto doesn't ever really smell like urine. Good job guys. Anyway there I was walking around and I passed a candy shop that had a bunch of coolers inside. I really didn't have a chance but to enter. One of the coolers was pretty much all British drinks. Unfortunately I was almost out of Canadian money and I needed to save some for veggie dogs on the way home. Ever the sucker for ginger beer I went with this can. Sure I could have just held on to it, but the gluttony was calling my name, so I cracked it open the moment I finished off my bubble tea. It smells very spicy, but I thought it had a medium burn. I let (read: made) my friend Dave Dluga try it and he said it burned the hell out of his mouth. I guess I've built up a tolerance. It was extremely flavorful with a bit of a kick. It was actually a nice blending of burn and flavor. If I ever find myself back in the UK I'll be sure to drink a bunch of these, especially with a 49p price tag on it. I ended up paying $2.25 Canadian. Ouch.

Mark and Jeff had been lost at sea for about a week. They had rented a nice little sailboat to go out and chill out in the tropics for a day, just enjoying the ocean. Things were going well, and then suddenly the winds kicked up and it was too much for our beginner sailors. If it wasn't enough for the wind to blow them off course, it decided to be a real jerk and also blow away their map. It really wouldn't do them any good anyways as each had assumed the other knew how to use a compass. The first few days they fought, but after that they kind of fell into a nice routine. Luckily they had fishing poles with them, so they would catch their food in the morning and then just lounge in the sun during the afternoon waiting for rescue.

It was during one of their afternoon sun bathing sessions that Jeff announced that he really had a hankering for a nice Arnold Palmer. Mark said he thought he say a box of tea under the deck. He had no idea why it was there, as there was no stove, but he never really questioned it. He just took some tea bags put them in a jar filled with water and let it sit in the sun for a few hours. Then he took the lemon that was inexplicably on the boat and squeezed it into his brew. The result was okay, but it was hardly an Arnold Palmer. It really tasted more like a lemon tea with more lemon than one would typically want. It didn't have the zing of lemonade. Jeff held back his complaints while he drank his mediocre beverage. He just sat back and sipped as the sun bronzing his skin.

What I would like to know his how our friends cooked their fish and where did all of this fresh water come from? I smell witchcraft!

To come up with some dumb story about this drink would just be too easy, and obvious. Yes the 16 year old that lives inside of me giggled a bit when I saw this can in the store and no I am not ashamed. I just hope someone was trying to make a joke and started a fake argument, which they were planning on escalating to a fake fight in which they would taunt the other person in juvenile ways and then pull out this can as the punch line. I would also hope that jokester would get punched in the face, because that is cheesy and not funny.

This is made by the Jones company and it definitely has that specific Jones sweetness to it. All of there sodas have it, so why wouldn't their energy drink. It actually tastes like they took a raspberry/pomegranate soda and mixed in the extra ingredients that would make it an energy drink. I'm not too crazy about the flavor, but it's not horrendous.

I remember when this used to be a joke drink. There was a caricature on the can, and it was supposed to be funny. It seems Jones decided to give their look an overhaul and the iron cross looks like they are trying to appeal to the biker crowd. I would put my money on the idea that they were trying to appeal to the MMA crowd, but just got it wrong, and now it just catches the eye of grizzled bikers. Hey, everyone needs energy sometimes.

Legend has it that Adam and Eve were kicked out of the garden for tasting the fruit from the tree of knowledge under pressure from the great snake. The fruit they ate is commonly portrayed as an apple, but that isn't accurate at all. In fact the fruit they ate does not exist in this world. What they ate was basically a strawberry, a mango and passionfruit all rolled into one. While we're clarifying things here, they didn't need Satan pushing them to try the fruit. I mean if you were there wouldn't the allure of such a fruit be enough for you to risk getting kicked out of paradise? I'm actually surprised they lasted as long as they did. No, it wasn't the snake's fault, they just tried to lay the blame on him to get out of trouble and pull a fast one on the man upstairs.

Since the banishment scientists have been working on recreating the holy fruit, with no luck. They just couldn't get it to graft together properly. There are rumors that sometime around the 14th century someone created a blueberry, mango passionfruit, but really that's not the same at all. Even modern day scientists are stumped on the genetic makeup of such a fruit. Then in 2006 a tiny juice company thought of the thing that no man of science had been smart enough to comprehend: why not just mix the juices of the three fruits? You may not get the texture, but it sure as hell tastes the same. They took about 4 hours of experimenting with the amounts of each fruit before they thought had it perfect, and perfect it was. All three fruits are distinguishable in the juice, yet when you think about it they also all combine together into some sort of new superfruit, the kind of fruit that you would risk paradise for. In an homage they named their company Apple & Eve and scientists have scorned them ever since.

Arnold Palmer has a lawyer, right? I would hope he does for being a famous golfer and all, but more than that I hope he has a team of crack lawyers to make sure he gets his fair share of every lemonade/ice tea hybrid that is on the market. Everyone knows the combo as being an “Arnold Palmer” so I hope the man gets his cut. I hope his legal team is also good enough to get him “royalties” from all of the fringe flavors. Traditionally the drink is lemonade mixed with black tea, but in reality it could be any type of tea. By switching the tea type, does that make it not an Arnold Palmer anymore? Would say mixing it with a green tea make it a Robert Palmer? I hope not, because that guy is terrible. His cover of “Bang a Gong” is one of the worst things I have ever heard. For the sake of this review I will say yes. I will also say that this drink is in essence a Robert Palmer with some strawberry added. I wish this wasn't a Robert Palmer, because besides hating the man I think the lemon juice in this is too distracting. The ratio is completely off and it overpowers the tea flavor, not to mention the strawberry. The first sip I took of this had a great strawberry taste to it, but the more I drank the less berry I got and the more the lemon Gestapo took over. There is also something very plastic tasting about this. I think it's the combination of the bottle and the lemon juice. It just doesn't taste right.

Oh! I got it! Let's make an Arnold Palmer with white tea and we can call it the Leiland Palmer. Also, if you take that and add some blueberry to it, it becomes a Laura Palmer. You know…€¦because she's dead…€¦wrapped in plastic.

I was on tour with Cheap Girls this past week. I hadn't been on the road much lately, so when my friends asked me to tag along on a mini tour I decided a nice little vacation was exactly what I needed and hopped in the van for a few days of music and stupid fun.

Lately I've been eating less garbage food and have been trying to take better care of myself. My normal tour lifestyle is not very conducive to that. Living out of a van leads to eating at gas stations and Taco Bell way too often. This tour was short and for once in my life I actually had some extra money, so I bought healthier snacks and actually ate at restaurants. It was a nice change, and I definitely didn't feel like garbage for once.

To add to my health I decided to drink a bottle of juice every morning to start my day. I tried to keep it to 100% juice with no sugar added, but the neighborhood I was in for our stay in Baltimore wasn't very helpful with that. I found this can of pineapple nectar at a little bodega and decided that it would just have to do. Sure it wasn't only juice in a can, but at least it had chunks of fruit in it. It was actually the least acidic pineapple juice I have ever had. There was no trace of that pineapple vomit smell, and it was very smooth. As I said it had chunks of pineapple in it. In fact I would say that ¼ of the can was actually the flavorless stringy pieces of fruit. I had shaken the can up before I opened it, but the chunks still mainly resided at the bottle half of the can. By the time my drinking took my to that portion, it was mostly chunks and it was a bit off putting. Had the amount of chunks been consistent through the entire drink I would have liked it a lot more. Also, if you drank this warm it would probably be one of the grossest drinks I can think of.

Summer is upon us and a wave of new lemonades is rising to a crest. If there ever was a seasonal beverage then lemonade is it. I've never once even given a thought to drinking lemon water unless the temperate was over 80 degrees. The more the temperate rises the more my brain thinks about it. This weekend held the first ridiculously hot days of the year and being the idiot I am I was in NYC wearing jeans because I thought I wouldn't need shorts. I was sweating like crazy unloading gear from the van to bring it into Webster Hall and all I wanted was the perfect lemonade. A quick search of bodegas brought me to this little treat. The only thing that would have sounded more perfect to me at that moment in time would have been a blackberry lemonade, but I will happily take what I can get.
I was so hot and this was a great refresher, but there was a problem. This is great as a passionfruit drink, but it could use more lemonade flavor. I want more tartness. The whole reason to drink lemonade is the nice tart refreshment. This is more like a passionfruit juice with a splash of lemonade. It's quite enjoyable and it tastes great, but I feel off calling it lemonade.

I may have mentioned this before, but there is a major plot hole in the film Smokey and the Bandit. The whole premise of the movie is that Big (and Little) Enos hire/bet Bandit to drive to Texas and return with a truck full of Coors. Bandit gets Snowman to drive the truck, while he drives a Trans AM and speeds ahead to lure the cops off of the truck. It's a great concept for a movie except for one thing. They are driving through the southern heat and arrive right at the party, and it is a standard semi truck, it's not refrigerated. That means all of these people are stoked to be drinking hot beer. So gross, but other than that it's flawless.

I personally think with all of the great tea companies in Texas (Sweet Leaf and True Brew) they would have been better off bringing some great tea for everyone to enjoy. Okay, that wouldn't make for a very good party, but I would have loved it.

So yeah, I had a very positive outlook on tea from Texas so when I saw that a great company like Peace Tea had a Texas style tea I was floored. Unfortunately it's not very special. It tastes like they took a batch of their southern sweet tea and cut it with some regular black tea. They really could have called it sweet tea or just iced tea and I would have believed it. I don't know what about it makes it Texas style. It's a decent tea, but nothing special. Tea like this is not worth Bandit's time, no matter how much Big Enos will pay him.

The weather reports are in and boy are they strange. If you're going outside boys and girls, don't forget to grab an umbrella as it's really coming down out there. The thing is that the precipitation isn't rain, but little chunks of mango. Meteorologists were highly confused until it became known that one of the canning facilities for Chabaa exploded earlier this morning, sending it's reservoirs of mango pulp high into the atmosphere. It's just now that it is finally making its way back to the Earth.
While it is a strange thing to behold it is causing the sale of Chabaa to skyrocket (no pun intended). People are looking outside, thinking how much of as pain the cleanup is going to be, and then they suddenly get as craving for some juice. Even though Chabaa puts out a fairly tame nectar (it's slightly thick, but the added sugar takes a little away from the mango flavor), they include little chunks of mango pulp that give the beverage the little push it needs to be great. Pulp and chunks do nothing but make drinks more fun and enjoyable. These are fairly small, maybe 1/8" cubed, but they squish up nicely in your mouth.
So follow your whim and go out and grab yourself a can, just remember to bring your umbrella and your galoshes or you'll be in for some trouble. This is Steve Saginaw signing off for Imperial Weather.

You know how in Canada they use a sound frequency that only young people can hear to keep kids from congregating in certain areas (at least I think it's Canada)? Well I think a similar thing goes on with Mountain Dew. When I was a teenager my friends and I loved it, but now that I'm older I takes some effort to choke down a bottle. I think there is something in the flavor that is only enjoyable to those under the age of 21. Perhaps it's a conspiracy. Or perhaps the Mountain Dew company made a deal with the devil in order to make kids crave their product. If so, I think they found a loophole in their contract with the Dark Lord and started producing other flavors. I know tons of adults that love the flavored Dew, but hardly any that like the original anymore.

Personally Voltage is the only flavor I am really a fan of, but I really love it. I actually started drinking far too much of it a few years ago, and I had to start limiting my intake. It tastes like a raspberry flavored energy drink, minus the chemical garbage that is found in actual energy drinks. If you are weary of trying the other flavors of Mountain Dew because you think the original is garbage, put your prejudice on hold and give this a try. It's candy like in the best possible way.

In my world this is a classic standard in Western Pennsylvania. Whenever I'm heading down to Pittsburgh, like I am now, I always pick up a few bottles. In my younger years I definitely liked it a lot more than I do now. I will always have a soft spot for it in my heart, but to be honest it's really nothing special. It's made with instant tea powder instead of brewed tea, and it's sweetened with high fructose corn syrup. That on it's own makes it fairly standard fare for cheap local gas station "tea." What gives Marburgers a little bit of an edge is that they flavor it with raspberry juice solids. I don't know why they would cheap out on the tea in order to use real juice, but it does improve the flavor. It tastes like "ghetto" tea with a highly potent (nearly harsh) natural raspberry flavor. It's a strange combination, but that's probably what keeps me coming back for more.

I've been waking up a lot earlier than normal for the past month or two. I'm sure my early is sleeping in for most people, but I've been getting up without an alarm at 9/9:30 and for me that is a miracle. I'm used to getting up at 11 or noon. What can I say I live a life of leisure? I blame the gym for this. Damn getting healthy making me wake up early. I'm actually more than okay with it. I've been getting more things done in the morning and that works for me. The only downfall is that when my ladyfriend and I have our nightly Venture Bros watching, I've been nodding out by one (which may also late for most people). I'm also okay with that for the most part, but tomorrow morning I'm going on tour with Cheap Girls, so I feel like I should be awake to hang out while I'm home. My solution was to drink this coffee drink at 10pm. Yeah, I'm not going to be sleeping tonight, but I can sleep in the van so who cares?

My solution drink is exactly how I like my coffee drinks: overly sweet and tasting of chocolate more than coffee. Before I shook this up there was actually a layer of chocolate at the bottom that needed to be mixed in. In reality this tastes more like chocolate milk with a splash of coffee in it than coffee with a hint of chocolate. If you ever wanted to start to get a child hooked on coffee I suggest starting them out with a nice bottle of Frio!

Okay we've got O.J., purple stuff, some soda, Sunny Delight…€¦…€¦oh wait that's not Sunny D at all. Actually it's called Big Burst, but it looks pretty similar. Is that okay? Well it might as well be Sunny D. It tastes pretty much exactly the same, except that the consistency is much thinner. I see that as a positive thing. Sunny D tasted okay, but the syrupiness of it destroyed me. Oh and for the record it is no substitution or orange juice when you're sick.

This is nothing I would ever purchase myself, but I'm not a kid so why would I be drinking fake juice? If I want juice I'll get the real thing, not a sugar water version of it. The same company that puts out Little Hug Barrels and Guzzlers makes this, so 98% of their demographic is kids under ten. I may be well over the age of ten, but I have to say it tastes much better than I expected. It's definitely a superior option to Sunny D. Big Burst just needs an iconic commercial now.

So far we have not had good luck with the Coco Exposed line. I have to blame the coconut for our disinterest. Alo makes incredible aloe drinks, and this line is basically those same drinks with coconut water added to them. The only difference I can see is that dumb coconut water. I've come around to coconut water for the most part. I don't mind the chalkiness and it can be extremely refreshing. There is something different with the coconut water in here though. In another review Mike described it as tasting like the powder left over in the bottom of the box when you run out of Cheerios. I don't think he's wrong about that. It has that same wheaty/grainy aftertaste. It's strange as the other coconut waters I've drunk did not have that flavor. In reality it could be because this drink has no sugar added to it.

I was hoping this flavor would be better than the others because it's passion fruit and pineapple flavored; two of my favorites. Unfortunately the non-coconut flavor in here just tastes like a vaguely fruity aloe drink. Neither the passion fruit nor the pineapple stands out in any way. It's a shame, but at least I was able to get through this whole bottle without being completely disgusted. That's further than we got with the other flavors.