Better Libations | Healthy Drink Reviews

Hi all!  Today I’ll have a look at this sparkling number from Santa Cruz Organic.  I’ve tried out their line of lemonades in the past with some success, but I had no idea they did sodas until this number caught my eye at the grocery store.  Let’s see if them California hippies know how to do root beer!

Scent: A lightly spicy scent with a hint of licorice. 

Taste: Wow.  What’s the best word to describe this?  Flat.  Yes, I’ll go with flat.  It’s limp, it’s weak, it’s just not a lot of anything.  It’s like a weak root beer aftertaste in some sweet fizzy water.  And the aftertaste isn’t even a true, satisfying root beer flavor… there’s something “off” about it, like it’s slightly musty or stale.  This is just not doing it for me.

Health Factor: Nothing special here, except for the natural/organic angle.  Sugar content-wise, it’s about the same as a typical can of Coke.  (Of course, this uses evap. cane juice instead of HFCS.)

Rating:  1.5 out of 5 – Organic is nice, but it’s not enough to carry a weak root beer flavor.

-Danithius-

User Ratings: (2 votes, average: 1.50 out of 5)
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1-Star Reviews, Santa Cruz Organic drink reviews

Somewhere in St. George

This was another bev that came along for the ride home from San Diego, and happened to be another energy drink I pounded on top of the previous one, and a 24 oz can of tea, and a Snickers Charged.  I really do not know what I was thinking.  I should have attained a higher level of awareness after all this, but I didn’t.  I merely became annoying.

We’ve been kind of hit and miss with Talking Rain‘s products in our reviews here, but I attempted to let no past experiences color my review.  However, I feel I was let down.  There was such a lack of any recognizable taste resembling anything like passion-fruit/guava that I find myself agreeing with this perturbed review as opposed to BevNet’s smiling one.

Although ActivWater uses erythritol (my second favorite alternative natural sweetener) in conjunction with cane sugar, it’s not very sweet, more an unpleasant sour taste (from citric and ascorbic acid, methinks).  It had a vague, citrus smell to it, more like a watered-down Sunny-D than the tropical mixture the drink claims to be.  According to their site, they may have discontinued this flavor, but I suspect you will continue to find it appearing in discount bins and places like BigLots for a while.

Only 15 g of sugar per 20 oz bottle, 62 cals and no enjoyment whatsoever.  This comes of as basically a poor imitation of the much more enjoyable ‘fortified’ waters as Cascade Ice and SoBe LifeWater.

Score: 1 out of 5.

– WiseGuise

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1-Star Reviews, Talking Rain enhanced water, Talking Rain

I successfully avoided the temptation to yank the tab off and throw this before I actually drank it. I purchased this grenade-shaped bottle at my local BigLots, more out of curiosity and amusement than actually hoping I would enjoy it, as I have sworn off energy drinks for well over a year. Also, they tend to not fit our guidelines, so you wont see many of them on here. That being said, this was the ONLY energy drink I found there that contained just sugar, which finally won me over. I found their quirky website (Warning: sexy PG-13 images), and learned BOMBAenergy is located in Austria, so how in the devil a box of these made their way to Utah is strange indeed. Possibly through their Arizona distributor. If you happen to see where these are sold, let me know.

Anyhow, after I resisted tossing this bottle through the window and diving for cover, I took a whiff. Oddly, it smells like Smarties, with a weird cheap-chocolate scent underneath. *shrug* And wouldn’t you know it, it tastes like Smarties too. Very sweet and tart, it’s also slightly carbonated. I vaguely reminds me of a certain crimson male bovine drink, but not tasting so much like rodent urine.

This small bottle (8.4 ounces) contained a whopping 33 grams of sugar (no HFCS), and excessive amounts of caffeine, taurine and several vitamins. Here’s the rest of the contents, even of the bottle itself. I had to stop drinking this less than halfway through, it was just too much sugar for me. Being merely curious, this didn’t break my heart too much, and I will never drink another one again.

Score: 5 for clever packaging, 1 for taste and sugar content.

– WiseGuise

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1-Star Reviews, BOMBAenergy

I was hoping to be able to find a decent bottled iced tea, that didn’t contain HFCS like my formerly beloved Arizona Sweet Tea, so I scored this bottle sitting all by itself in the drink isle, a sign I mistakenly took to be good. You’ll see where I’m going with that.

I opened the bottle, full of expectations, and could right away smell the instant tea, with a disturbing undertone of plastic. Being here for your service and disregarding my own safety (the bottle is PETE plastic, it should be safe, right?), I took a few sips and put the bottle down. Not only did it have the most bizarre flavor of lemon-flavored tea I have ever experienced, I could taste the plastic too. A few more hesitant swigs and I was done. It has been a while since I haven’t finished a drink, but I just couldn’t bear this anymore. The phrase ‘Epic Fail’ comes to mind.

This was one of the biggest letdowns in my history of libations, ranking up there with diet sodas. Whether or not I got a bad batch or it had just gone over (hint: don’t print your expiration dates on the side of a bottle with dark fluid in it), I don’t think I could ever get over this experience enough to enjoy any of their tea again.

This one is caught up in a corporate web as well, the company is owned by Dean Foods, and distributed by Meadow Gold.
Ingredients: Water, sugar, instant tea, citric acid, sodium citrate, and natural flavors.
Sugar factor: 42 grams a 20 oz bottle.

Score: 0.5 out of 5; pending my death from plastic-leeched tea, they will lose another half point.

– WiseGuise

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1-Star Reviews, Swiss Premium

So I see a case of this stuff at CostCo, and I’m like, “Hey, cheap water”, so I decide to try it out. (I had a party coming up and I needed beverages). It doesn’t have sugar, so I was anticipating some kind of carbonated MetroMint. If only I could be so lucky.

Where to start? This stuff has an intense carbonation, like some kind of bubbly fruit-flavored acid. Oh, and the fruit flavors. The flavors in the case I got were Tangerine, Berry, Lemon-Lime, and Natural…usually I’d do a review of each one, but this case is a special exception.

All of these flavors tasted like they were formulated by someone who got fired from the Kool-aid corporation. Seriously, flavor scientists at the Blo-pop lab would be insulted by this. Even the “Natural” flavor tastes like it was artificially flavored to taste like water.

So, long story short, it was a big hit with all of my friends, who only managed a couple sips of their bottles before throwing it away. I dunno, if you’re one of those Tonic Water people, you might like this, but we had a real hard time choking it down. So, we had to find other ways to get rid of it…

Ingredients: Carbonated water, death.

Rating: 1/5 (1 point for not killing me)

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1-Star Reviews, Talking Rain