Whilst browsing my local healthy-food mart I found a flavor of hint–one of our Best of 2008 winners–that I haven’t tried before, and felt like I needed a bit of a mental refreshment as well as libationary.  While doing my obligatory research I noticed that about a year ago hint began a ‘Mom’s Against Sugar Water’ campaign which I fully support, and now they are offering free ground shipping in the U.S. for cases of their products!  I should totally get a case of the cucumber flavor.

Honestly, the scent reminds me of an Otter Pop, but which chemically engineered flavor I’m not sure.  The tangerine is evident, but I’m having difficulty picking out the pomegranate.  With my first taste, the light, almost ethereal flavors whisper to my taste buds and travel into my olfactory center, drawing out sweet memories of these tangy fruits.  The water is clean and crisp, and the tenuous flavors never become a burden on your tongue.  A light sweetness seems to brush the back of my tongue, despite the lack of sugar.  The tangerine seems to take a stronger presence than the pomegranate, but it’s still there.

As always, you can chug a hint for its cool, fresh water, but I suggest sipping it to get the full effect of the subtle flavor combinations.  No calories, no preservatives, no unnatural chemicals of any sort, how can you not enjoy this beverage?  Not my favorite of the line, but still on of my favorite drinks all around.

Score: 4.5 out of 5. A refreshingly light, fruit-citrus combination with nothing it shouldn’t have.

– WiseGuise

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4-Star Reviews, hint essence water

You read that right, this is a beverage based off of the well-known cleaner and folk remedy vinegar.  Apple cider vinegar is supposed to have several health benefits and potential for aiding in weight loss, but can have negative effects if used excessively.   I’ve used it before in attempts to rid my throat of a stubborn cold, with dubious results, though I’m not very patient when it comes to experiments like that.  Anyhow, I spotted this at my local Sunflower Market and my curiosity overwhelmed my distaste for consuming vinegar, so I decided to give it a shot, all for you, our awesome readers.  Today, I happen to be feeling the effects from lingering illness, so it should be as good a time as any.

The label has a old-timey, folksy feel to it, which fits with the theme of this drink; there’s a Jesus-fish on the back with a fairly benign scripture reference in it, 3 John 2.  The first smell is a little overwhelming, strongly promoting its namesake ingredient, but with a pleasant overtone of concord grapes.  The first swallow slides over my tongue with little hints of the fruit juices it contains, and the vinegar marks its presence at the entrance to my throat.  It’s not a strong burn, but not entirely pleasant, either.  Subsequent mouthfuls go down easier, the vinegar not becoming as apparent.  The flavors are mild and almost not sweet, not something you would expect from a sugary juice like grape.  This is sweetened with stevia, and only has 10 g of carbs in the whole 16 oz bottle, so bonus points for that.

This drink rates a little more toward the extreme end on the drink-o-meter, not something I would personally drink all that often.  The power of the vinegar takes some getting used to, but when you do it isn’t a terrible experience.  This could have been much worse than it was, but wasn;t quite what I expected, even though I’m not sure what I expected, really.  The aftertaste feels a little on the dry side, like after  mouthful of wine, but has no unpleasantness to it (unless you happen to burp–don’t do this).  I didn’t think I was going to finish the whole bottle when I started, but I did anyway, I almost started to like it by the end of the bottle.

After some consideration, I would recommend this to anyone daring enough to try things out of their comfort range, anyone looking to cut down on the sugar content in their diets and anyone looking for interesting homeopathic remedies to their daily woes.  I wouldn’t recommend this to anyone why can’t handle acidic or non-sweet beverages, leaving their comfort zone or folk medicine.  The after effects of this remain to be seen, but my nose seems to be clearing up already and I feel fuller, another effect of vinegar.  Come on, you know you want to try it.

Score: 3.5 out of 5. A strange concoction bound to test the limits of your palate and might keep you younger!

– WiseGuise

User Reviews: (6 votes, average: 3.67 out of 5)
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3-Star Reviews, Bragg all natural, drink reviews, organic, Stevia

Hey faithful Libationers!  Now it’s time to have a look at one of the spirited soda entries from BlueSky soda.  Today I’m looking at Dr. Becker, BlueSky’s version of big soda’s Dr. Pepper.  How will it measure up?

Scent: Welp, it smells just like Dr. Pepper.  (Fancy that!)  It has a berry-vanilla aroma with a rich cola background.

Taste: I can definitely see the resemblance, but this soda has taken it in a slightly fruitier direction.  It’s a combo of black cherry, cola, vanilla, with the cherry giving it a nice tart berry overtone.  It’s like a halfway point between Dr. Pepper and Cherry Coke

Health Factor: This whole can has 38g of sugar, which is just one gram less than a can of Coke. It’s sugar-sweetened.  (Actual cane sugar, not HCFS).  I like the steps that companies like Blue Sky and Jones Soda have taken towards more natural sodas by eliminating HCFS and going to regular sugar.  But just that isn’t enough!  In the end, this is still just a can of sugar-water, and that ain’t exactly healthy.  Let’s lower the sugar content, not just change out the type of sugar we use.  Let’s use fruit juices and real ingredients rather than “flavorings” (even if they are naturally derived).

And while I’m at it, let’s talk about BlueSky’s overall strategy here.  For those who aren’t familiar with them, they have a wide range of soda flavors that are marketed to “free-spirits” and “wanderers”, and are usually found in health food stores or alternative grocers.  But here is the reason I have never really taken them seriously: it just doesn’t feel original.  Rather than develop their own interesting flavors, for the most part they seem more fixated on making the same sodas that everyone else does.  Root beers and cream sodas, colas, Dr Pepper imitations, and all the other flavors that have been done to death in the soda world.  And they even go for flavors that are usually reserved for cheap grocery store knock-off brands, like grape and orange soda.  When I shop for soda, I’m looking for fresh original flavors and hopefully a significantly healthier composition, and I don’t feel that BlueSky offers either.

Overall Rating: 3 out of 5 – a decent Dr. Pepper-y flavor, but still a whole lotta sugar!

-Danithius-

User rating: (1 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5)
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3-Star Reviews

Bask in the tropicality!

Hey there liquid-lovers!  I’m excited to share another contribution from the fine folk at Purity.Organic: a little number called Mango Wonder.  It’s fresh from the box and ready to go, so let’s not waste any time!

Smell: OK, I get a nice citrus lemonade scent the instant the cap comes off.  But what’s that?  There’s definitely something else lurking in the scent – a hint of the tropics?  I want to say hints of orange or pineapple are popping up, too, but according to the ingredients list it’s purely lemon and mango goodness.  Intriguing.

Taste: Now that’s a lemonade.  In the past I have expressed my displeasure at the plasticine “from concentrate” flavor that abounds in most commercial lemonades, but I think it’s safe to say that Purity has cracked the code for delivering fresh citrus flavors in bottled form.  It’s tangy, it’s sweet, it’s citrus, it’s good.  And how about the mango?  Oh yeah, it’s there.  The mango has its own distinct tang that works well together with the lemon’s.  But it also adds a distinct body to the juice, filling out and giving depth to the flavor in places where the tangy/astringent lemon can’t reach.  Nice.  Very nice.

Health Factor: Mango Wonder gets a lot of its sweet tang from 17% fruit juice that is present in the bottle, and the rest of the sugar comes from organic evaporated cane juice.  Now I realize that it is the nature of a lemonade-esque drink to require a lot of sugar.  Lemon is very tart, and it requires a good amount of sweet to balance out the intense sour.  So just be aware when cracking this open – it contains 28g of sugar per 8 oz of fluid, which is a couple grams more than the average 8 oz serving of Coke.  That is my only issue with this drink, and that’s what keeps it from a 5.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 – Excellent flavor with a hefty portion of sugar.  Pour it over ice and sip it with a friend.  (Preferably on the porch of a Southern mansion on a hot Summer day).

-Danithius-

*****  Review Rebuttal!  *****

Danithius dropped a bottle of this into my hands the last time he stopped by my domicile, demanding my feedback.  I considered bringing it to fisticuffs for his nerve, until I saw what it was.  We have gained an adoration for the pleasant flavors concocted by purity.organic, so I squealed with delight and hid it in the back of the fridge.  I found it again today, and took it to work with me.  I smell the mango right off, and the lemon creeps up behind it like a sour stalker.  The taste is fantastic, sweet and mango-y evolving quickly into a delightfully sour lemonade still hinted with the flavor of the Mangifera.  This is definitely one of the better fruit juice combinations I’ve had in recent memory.  The sugar is pretty high, but necessary to combat the tartness of the lemon and mango, I’m assuming.

Agreed, 4.5 out of 5.

– WiseGuise

User Ratings: (1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
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4-Star Reviews, Purity.Organics

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

Today I’m going to look at a libation from Reed’s, who pride themselves on brewing soda the “old-fashioned way”.   This entails brewing soda flavors out of fruit juices, herbs, and spices, and allowing the finished product to age.  To be truly old-fashioned, this would also entail using yeast to carbonate the beverage, but Reed’s site does not specify whether or not they do this.  But the phrase “naturally brewed” would lead me to believe that they do.

I dig old-school “home-brewed” sodas a lot, to the point that I have even turned my own kitchen into a soda brewery multiple times.  But I have also found that sometimes the brewing process can bring in less than ideal flavors.  Getting a naturally brewed soda to meet or exceed all your flavor expectations really is a master craft.  So I’m curious to see how this raspberry brew measures up.

Scent: Off goes the cap, and out comes a spicy ginger aroma with a background of tart berry and citrus scents.  There is also a significant honey presence.

Taste: This brew has some very deep and complex flavors going on.  First, there’s the ever-present ginger bite.  This fades into a big blend of fruit juice flavors that all want to stand up and be counted.  Perhaps the most prevalent fruit note is the tart lemon, followed by the various berry flavors.  It finishes slightly dry and astringent, without a lot of lingering sweetness.  Its curious combination of tart/dry lemon and fruity berry/apple/pear flavors makes this land right in the middle of the spectrum, somewhere halfway between a true dry and a sweet ginger ale.

Health Factor: Points for all-natural ingredients, 20% real fruit juice, and a generous dose of fresh ginger.  However, there is still a significant sugar presence of 37.4 grams per 12 oz bottle, just slightly under the sugar content of your average Coke can.  So use this occasionally as a refreshing tonic or pair it with a spicy meal, but don’t guzzle it like it’s water.

Rating: 4.0 out of 5 – A pleasing blend of natural flavors with a ginger kick

-Danithius-

User Ratings: (2 votes, average: 4.50 out of 5)
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4-Star Reviews drink reviews

Check out this clip as Stephen Colbert walks us through 7-11′s decision to reduce the Super Big Gulp’s size by four ounces.  (Which is still a hell of a lot of sugar, but hey, it’s a step in the right direction).  Then again, given the typical mindset of big companies like 7-11, this probably isn’t so much an altruistic move to improve Americans’ health as it is a simple effort to pinch a few extra pennies every year.  (Did I say pennies?  Because I meant hundreds of thousands of dollars).

**Skip ahead to the 5-minute mark (unless you want to see some sacrilicious Doritos action)**

Rants

Hey there Libationers!  Today I’m going to tackle a classic soda flavor that I first discovered long ago in Michigan: Birch Beer!  If you’ve never heard of it, it’s something along the lines of a root beer but with an almost wintergreen overtone.  I had to go for a few years without birch beer after coming to Utah, but then I discovered this contender from Boylan’s at the store.  They claim to be keeping it old-school since 1891, so let’s see how it measures up!

Aroma: Definitely wintergreen.  That’s the first scent that jumps to my nostrils, followed by a rich root-beery-vanilla fragrance.

Taste: Whooo-wee, that’s minty indeed.  The birch beer flavor that I knew from Michigan had a root beer flavor with wintergreen overtones, but this one has switched the two around.  It’s not a bad thing, though, and as you might imagine, it’s quite refreshing.  The mint and vanilla flavors come off very clean and fresh.

Health Factor: Obviously this uses real cane sugar and not HFCS, otherwise it wouldn’t be making an appearance on our blog.  It also uses natural flavors and extracts, which I like.  However, in the sugar quantity area it won’t get much love from me.  It packs 28 grams of sugar per 8 ounce serving, which is actually more than your Coca-Cola’s sugar content.  This beverage should be considered a nice occasional treat, a “dessert” item.

Rating: 3.0 out of 5 - great flavor, but loses points for high sugar content.

-Danithius-

User Ratings: (2 votes, average: 3.00 out of 5)
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3-Star Reviews, Boylan's drink reviews

Hello libation loving folks!  After another brief delay, I have returned with reviews.  Today, I have decided to venture back into the hit-and-miss world of low/no calorie beverages.  My last SoBe lean review taught a valuable lesson; that even large, adored companies like SoBe can screw up on occasion, and produce something few customers like. I’m still cautious, but hopeful when it comes to the new Lean line, so here goes nothing.

I crack open the plastic bottle  and give it the standard smell test.  The berry is the most evident scent, with a hint of lemons.  Good so far, but now comes the most important test.  The taste is mild and lightly sweet, lacking the sour tang of most lemonades.  The raspberry is there, but fades quickly.  The sweetness lingers, something I’ve picked up before on drinks using erythritol, is seems to stick to the back of your tongue.  This sports a paltry 2 g of sugar per 20 oz bottle, and a dash of vitamin C rounds out the benefits.

I find this an unoffensive,  but lackluster -ade, light on sugar but also on flavor, though it avoids the atrocious taste of the SoBe Honey Green Tea reviewed previously, an opinion our readers have reinforced in droves.  I can’t say I would ever go out of my way again to drink this, but the light flavor and low sugar may appeal to others, particularly those watching calories and looking for sweet refreshment.  SoBe did a better job of blending in the sweetness of the erythritol and reb A (stevia) than our previous encounter, which is good to experience, but it covers the sourness looked for in lemonade,and that I cannot forgive.

Score: 3.5 out of 5. A lemonade that gets an A for effort, but a C for execution.

– WiseGuise

User Reviews: (3 votes, average: 3.67 out of 5)
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3-Star Reviews, SoBe Lean all natural, drink reviews

Stare into the Apple-Jasmine Nexus...

Howdy there, Libationers!  Today I’m getting into the holiday cheer by indulging in Honest Tea’s new line of Kombucha.  (What does that have to do with Christmas?  Well, Jesus was honest, right?  And maybe he likes Kombucha, you don’t know.)

I was excited to see this new step taken by Honest Tea without really even knowing why.  I’ve tried Kombucha once or twice, and the idea of it is interesting to me.  I just didn’t fall in love.  So now it’s nice to see Honest Tea (a brand I already trust to do tea and juices right) taking on the Kombucha dragon.

Honest Kombucha’s tagline is “LIVE, ORGANIC, AND RAW”… sounds like a porno produced by Whole Foods, doesn’t it?  But it really is an interesting concept – the “live” and “raw” come from the live probiotic cultures that are used to make this stuff.  It is actually fermented by those cultures, which gives it both a tangy-sweet taste and various purported health benefits.  So enough talk, let’s crack this open!

Fragrance: Wow, this stuff smells tangy indeed.  It’s like apple juice that’s gone hard – not a bad smell, but pungent and tangy.  (And slightly fizzy).  Here goes nothin’.

Taste: Whoo! Taste bud assault!  It’s such a rush of flavors that it’s difficult to describe.  It has whiplash tang with a subtle sweetness to cushion the blow.  The fizz adds another intriguing element on top of this, making it tingle on the back of your tongue.  Or is that the live probiotic cultures?  I can detect the apple flavor, and it holds up decently well with the pungent kombucha.  The jasmine is detectable as an herbal overtone in the aftertaste.

From a health standpoint, this stuff is golden.  Real probiotic cultures, low sugar (7g per 8 oz serving, which is next to nothing), and real tea and fruit juice.  It also passes the hippie test with flying colors, due to its entirely organic and/or fair-trade ingredient list.  And as for the flavor?  Well, I’m halfway through the bottle, and I’m finding it increasingly addictive.  It’s different, but I like different.  I could really see myself trying the other flavors in the near future…

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 - uber-healthy with a unique (and increasingly addictive) flavor.

-Danithius-

User Ratings: (2 votes, average: 3.00 out of 5)
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4-Star Reviews, Honest Tea drink reviews