Mike Literman - 1759 Reviews

Chai. I got into it too late. It's good and I love a nice spicy, hot tea. This isn't half bad, either. Should I think less of it because it is an Aldi brand? No. It's probably something else branded to look like an Aldi brand, actually.

This had a good, strong anise taste to it mixed with whatever other magic was in here. I promptly drank it and, presumably ruined it, adding a packet of sugar. It was the morning and daddy needed a little pick-me-up.

To whomever I stole this from that works in my office, thanks. I'll pay you back in whatever the equivalent of one bag of tea is. Pretty sure that's a wet T-shirt car wash.

This tastes better than it smells. It smells like...listen...I'll be honest with you. I haven't always been straight edge. Back in the late 90's, it was a difficult time for everyone. I snuck, a bottle of red wine out of my parent's basement over to my friend's and we hid it in the drop ceiling and took sips of it. It was disgusting then. Two, maybe three baby sips. Tops. This smelled like that but sweeter.

How did it taste? Not that much better but good enough that I drank a fair amount of this bottle. It tastes like the fruity part of wine mixed in with a can of Pepsi. It had a bit of a burn to it which was probably from "Christmas spices." It did taste like it could have been alcoholic. It wasn't but if you pulled the wool over my eyes and told me a week later, I wouldn't call you a liar. I'd call you a jerk and probably puke on your car, but I would have had my hunches the entire time.

Is this the long lost Arnold Palmer pop? Kind of. In its most core sense it is until you realize that some time and love went into crafting this syrup. Taken directly from their website:

Bold, black tea from India the Nilgiri Blue Mountains of India blended with lemongrass and lemon myrtle

That's not messing around, man. That's not some garbage, every day black tea and some lemon squeezed over a cinder block into a cup. This is real. You can taste that it's different, too. This is not me being a snob, you actually can taste that it's different. It's not "just" anything.

You want to impress someone who likes to drink Half and Half, you buy them a bottle of this. Sure, they've got to have seltzer on hand but it's a small price to pay for such a quality drink.

I seemingly only drink Gatorade when I'm sick. Everyone except me is getting over a gnarly case of the 2016 GI bug. If it hasn't gotten you, it's gotten someone you know and it's a real sonofabitch. I'm just suffering from massive fatigue which is miles better than what everyone else has dealt with.

What does this taste like, though? I don't know. Mystery fruit? Does any Gatorade taste like anything? There might be some arbitrary melon in there but as far as anything I can pinpoint? Nope. "Fruit flavored" and that's as far and as much as I can do. Is it bad? Nope. It's not the best Gatorade I've ever had but it's far from the worst. This went down smooth and I'd like to think it gave me what plants crave, electrolytes. My body is fighting whatever atrocious virus the Western New York region is currently plagued with and I need whatever help I can get. Soup and Gatorade. Help!

I just got married a month ago (pause for applause) and ate passion fruit for the first time. What a magical experience. What a strange, goopy fruit. It's so weird. I mean, I ate a ton of it but I don't think in a million years I could get my son to eat it. So slimy. It's like all slime and seeds. Strange that anyone would eat it to begin with but they do and it's wonderful.

This drink, sans goop, tastes just like it. I was surprised. La Croix does the flavor justice. I feel like that one is hard to nail. They might use real fruit juice or whatever "essence" is but whatever science they're doing in there, they've pulled in the right people.

What did I expect? This is just as bad as I thought it would be. It tastes like cheap, powdered cinnamon and fake sweetener. Whether or not it's authentic sugar, who cares? The best sugar couldn't save this drink. I don't think I finished the whole thing and I was tired and I got a small. It was a little coffee flavored but the syrup, my main complaint with Tim's is too thick and strange and throws off the viscosity of the rest of the drink. I want a cinnamon bun writing this and, like I said, I didn't expect much and I was still let down. Shame. Shame.

What is that, a raccoon? Hyper, those raccoons. Them washing all that cotton candy in the stream. Calm down, raccoon. Man. Stop eating all that sugar and drink some of this tea. It's good, subtle and calming. Like chamomile but less on-the-nose. This dude who works here has been sweet enough to let me drink some of his tea and drink it I did. Sure, he's not breaking the bank buying a box of tea from Trader Joe's but who's bringing money into this? No one. He's generous. Let him be.

That raccoon had the right idea with this. Sure he's tangled up in Christmas lights probably doing something he shouldn't be doing but he's at least chilling with a nice, hot cup of tea. The cinnamon is subtle and the vanilla rounds it out. Think of this like the biggest dandelion. You could lift it without even thinking about it. This is like that, as strong as it is, it's still calm and smooth.

Also, for those of you not "in the know," this is the video I am referring to:


Sad, right?

What a nice man, Craig is. He always holds the door for people, even if they're half a parking lot away. He's thoughtful. He cares. He's a caring, thoughtful man. Everyone loves Craig. One time he went to a kid's school and they didn't like him. Why? He brought in a case of melon grapefruit sparkling water. Problem is that kids do not love grapefruit. Every kid there was either crying because it was too "spicy" or they didn't like the taste of grapefruit. Craig meant well. Melon. Kids love melon. So it had grapefruit in it. It didn't have the bitterness of grapefruit, just the flavor. It's sparkling water. What did the kids expect? The kids didn't like Craig and now, Craig didn't like kids. The streak of Craig being nice to everyone had ended all because of a couple snot nosed brats. Great job, kids. You broke Craig.

Sparkling mango water. My wife might have just found her mecca. She loves La Croix and rightfully so. I mean, it's just sparkling water but it's good stuff. Polar is more than readily available and we buy a fair amount of that. They have some cooler, experimental flavors but she's been hard into this lately.

This is an accurate mango flavor, too. They really nailed it. I'd like to know what sorcery they used to do that. Are sorcery and magic the same thing? Sorcery might involve more potions. I wouldn't say that a witch performs magic. Stirring cauldrons is sorcery. Wizards perform sorcery. Is magic just another word for "illusions?"



The end.

Back from a long time off on a thing called a "honeymoon" but I'm back and what do I start off with? A sparkling pomegranate joint. It's good, too. I didn't get a lot of apple but the pomegranate was nice and honest and sparkly. It wasn't too sweet and, according to the promises of the company, all that is in this lil' bottle is sweetening this is the fruit juice itself. There are some natural colors from fruit and vegetable and some preservatives but it's good. I would give this to a child. I think that's pretty telling. Sure, I gave my 9 month old half a sugar cookie which he promptly dropped half on the sidewalk and some mini marshmallows yesterday but he was being good and good kids deserve little treats. I might not be the world's best dad but my kids would like me because I gave them sweet treats.

You know what happens when you use good ingredients? You get a great tea at any temperature. Temperature?! Why are you mentioning temperature? Well it's because I didn't finish this yesterday and came back today to polish it off and review it. It was better today than it was yesterday. This uses real sugar and not corn syrup so after fourteen hours, it was not a syrupy mess. When it was cold, the temperature kind of made things different than today when it's neat I could taste the blackberry and the hint of sage. It was very nice, too. It was fruity and you could tell there was something. Not specifically sage but "something" herbal.

I think I'm going to have to befriend a bodega employee to sell me back stock so that it's warm. I think I'm going to have to befriend a bodega employee so that I can go hang out at bodegas. My dad used to own a Convenient store but I was too young to work there. Alas.

This tastes like a candle and also tastes like it sucks. No stars. Wait...I can't do no stars? This website sucks almost as much as this drink. I said, "Could I have an iced coffee with vanilla, please?" and I think they misheard "vanilla" and thought I said candle wax. Three sips. There goes $2.16. Cripes. Grozz. Ugh. These are the sounds that I am audibly saying at work aloud as people try to work. "Try to work" is code for "fantasy football" so it sounds like everyone has a hearing impediment today.

My brother finds drinks sometimes and thinks he's going to be mean and buy me stuff he thinks might be gross. This isn't the gross one but is part of the group that he bought me. This one was actually really nice. It was sweet and really spicy, the way that ginger beer should be. It most certainly still had its feet in ginger ale territory but was dabbling in the ginger beer world. The spice was nice and it burns in all the right places. The fact that it was unfiltered means that it was laden with stuff at the bottom and you know how the Thirsty Dudes love stuff in their drinks. A+. Would drink again.

Oh how I wish I had one of these now. No, not a 48 ounce bottle as that would be suicidal but the smaller, equally available 10 ounce bottle. Long nights, friends. Long nights. I know it would make me sick and dizzy but anything over this underslept feeling, which is garbage. I took a shot or two of this over the weekend, you know, just to get by, and it was nice. It was smooth, and although advertised as "not too sweet" it was definitely sweetened and possibly more than many people would like.

I don't have a preference as far as coffee goes, as you may well know, but sweet and usually with some sort of syrup is preferable. This met the criteria just fine. Lucky for me, there is a 48 ounce bottle with two shots missing at home waiting, for a girl like me (to come into my life).

"Nutritious Plant-Based Milk" isn't really milk at all, is it? I mean, you could argue that almond milk or soy milk isn't milk but I guess it's all in your definition of what "milk" is, now, isn't it? One thing I can say is that whether you call this milk or a plant-based milk, I can tell you that it is one thing, it's not that great.

It most certainly tastes like something is "up." It doesn't have the smoothness of milk. I don't want to say gritty but there is definitely some stuff up in there. I get that it's a nice alternative to dairy and for vegans, if you had the strength, you might do a backflip to hear that you've got another alternative to murderous milk.

This tastes like chocolate but as far as chocolate milk goes, it's definitely lacking in both sugar and chocolate. I'm not saying that as an insult but you might want to think of this as not only dairyless milk, but also think of it as "chocolate milk light" but put "light" in double quotes because this 12 ounce bottle still manages to cram 220 calories in her. It's a difficult battle, milk, but I suppose we can't let them have all the fun in Mootown.

Whether or not there was coffee in this is another story, but this was fantastic, man. It had the earthiness from the chilies and the cinnamon. Really, I don't know if there was coffee in this and if there was, it was highly masked by the rest of the flavors. It wasn't spicy as much as it was the flavor of green chile. The chile and cinnamon were generously sprinkled on like a medium dusting from the spice fairy, a fictitious (presumably) creature that puts spices on food and drinks alike. The mocha was a good umbrella flavor. I don't go to Starbucks often but as soon as I saw this was out, I ditched whatever lunch plans I had and went there and was pleasantly pleased I didn't have to pull the old, "Do you have this? You don't? Welp, see you later." and walk out the door awkwardly. We've all done it. It's one thing to do it in a restaurant but have you ever done it in a drive through? Way worse. When the person wants you to pay for your meal and you have to say, "Oh, no. You didn't have what I wanted so now I have to sit in line with the rest of these buffoons." that's the worst. This was in stock and supposedly for a limited time, too so hurry on over and get one.

"I wish they would bottle the flavor of vanilla cupcakes so I could drink it all day." Yeah? I dare you to drink this for a whole day, dude. Two sips and I'm tapping out. It smells like a sixth grade girl, also. You remember when they all wore that temporarily good smelling cotton candy perfume? I liked it but for a limited time. This...I could be surrounded by six girls talking about Taylor Swift, Shopkins, One Direction, lip gloss, Gary from third period and Snapchat at the same time and take that longer than I could deal with the immense flavor of this.

Smell? Spot on. It's a cupcake. Taste? Sugar flavored sugar. It's so sweet and completely distracts from the flavor. The kid that you remember that used to sneak and eat sugar cubes from the coffee table wouldn't be able to drink this. This is turning into quite a "dare drink." Have at it, friends. Don't send me the doctor's bill, though.

Sometimes man, cherry cola is a perfect drink. When I would go to Mighty Taco, a local chain/franchise after a punk show, I would always get a cherry cola. I don't know why. It's one of the only times I drink the stuff. I like to keep it minimal because it makes me appreciate it more.

I thought this was "just" cola but oh no. Lucky cherry indeed. This is cherry cola and it's very good. It's very sweet and has a decent, candy-like cherry cola taste. It's a lot. I bet a lot of people would think this is too sweet and they most certainly would not be wrong. I probably couldn't and won't today finish this bottle myself. Twenty ounces is masochistic. It is good, though. I don't want my inability to drink so much cola to count against this otherwise delicious treat.

What a refreshing treat. This is kind of the perfect green tea for me. Little bit of bitterness and a subtle sweetness. It tastes like honey and you know that it's green tea. I think at this point, we ignorant Americans can tell the difference between "Far East" tea and good, ol' fashioned British tea. America, sometimes you can be real morons. I shouldn't even have to write that but quite honestly, and this is not part of the review, but this country is in a state of disrepair. How did I get here from a beautifully crafted green tea? Well your ignorance and inability to accept foreign norms with open arms because you're so close minded and worried that something is going to happen if you do. Open your hearts, you turds. Seriously, just be cool. Open your mind.

This is a great tea. If you see it, put down that cola and put down that energy drink, take a breath, and prepare to close your eyes and take sips while envisioning yourself with your feet dangling off a pier. In this vision, your feet can be in or out of the water. It doesn't matter. It's the place and state of mind that matters, not your wet toes. Relax. Be cool. Drink this green tea. Doctor's orders.

Twix, a cookie not a candy bar, is a wonderful cookie not a candy bar. Carmel, crunch, caramel and chocolate. If we're talking about "The Four C's," screw diamonds, dude. Twix is where it's at. How is this though? Sweet. I don't even know after all these years if there is any coffee in iced cappuccino, or as we in Western New York like to call them, "Iced Capps," anymore. They might be but it's so overpowered by sugar and cream and now cookie crumbles that what's the point anymore. This small was more than enough. There was probably the amount of a "fun size" Twix grinded up on the top which was fun to get through the straw at the end. The rest was just a sugary blur of cookie flavors and brown. I say that like it's a bad thing. Look, if you're the type of person to buy an iced cappuccino, you know what you're getting into and you know what you're doing to yourself. I'm not going to say it, but deep down you know what you're up to.