Zevia Ginger Root Beer (Fan Review!)

       The last time the sweetener Stevia & I met it was not a pleasant experience. Me & Mrs. G were on a sugar substitute diet at the time & were trying everything. Let’s just say we & Stevia went our separate ways leaving on non-speaking terms. So you could imagine my apprehension when Mr. A asked if we could review the Stevia infused Zevia Ginger Root Beer drink. But I believe myself to be a man of second chances especially since Mrs. G has been giving me those second chances since 1997, so why couldn’t I do the same for this drink? (Not exactly the same, but it is…)

       First I gathered the group & popped open the can. Before giving each of them a sample, I took a whiff of the drink & found it to be surprisingly pleasant. It was a nice blend of a ginger & root beer scent, which apparently is the flavor the can says they’re going for, so that’s a good start. Now let’s get to the group’s reaction.

       Five year old Miss S’s initial reaction to the drink poured into her glass was:

       “Ooh, it’s so bubbly!” So far so good I guess.

       “And how’s the taste?” I asked.

       “It’s spicy & sweet. I like it!”

        I was surprised. Was this the same sweetener that left such a terrible taste in my mind I swore I wouldn’t touch the stuff again? Maybe my kid’s got a different set of taste buds. Let’s turn to three year old Miss P & see what she thought.

       Once I poured it into her sippy cup, she started to drink…

              …& drink…

                     …& didn’t stop drinking till it was all gone. “Can I have some more?”

       I was getting the sneaking suspicion this drink might be pretty good.

       However, Mr. Little O was next. He’s in the copycat stage of his two years so though he may have said,” It’s sweet,” like his sisters, his scrunched up face told me the story. To top it off, he shoved the drink right back at me & wouldn’t drink another drop. I guess that’s a no for him.

       Next were Mrs. G. & myself. When I mentioned to the missus that we were doing this, she wasn’t too thrilled. We braced ourselves. The first sip hit me with a strong ginger taste. Then the root beer flavor was next. “Exactly as advertised” I thought. I looked over at my wife & saw the same reaction. Now we waited for that dreaded Stevia aftertaste...& we waited...& waited. To our surprise, it never came!

       So to sum up we were pleasantly surprised by the taste of this Stevia flavored drink. Little O may not have liked it too much, but four out of five of us found it quite nice & flavorful.

- RGSPO

Not even Twist could compete with the level of adorable this review has now reached.

Zevia Lemon Lime Twist (Fan Review!)

This is the first review of any soda/pop I’ve ever done so please go easy.

I was excited to get a chance to review the Zevia zero calorie soda. I admit I don’t drink many sodas. I’m more of a water guy and treat soda as a guilty pleasure, so when I do drink soda, I don’t just grab a Coke or Pepsi. I enjoy the pure cane sodas such as Jones, unique flavors, or an ice-cold moxie. I’m always looking for a zero calorie soda such as Zevia so I can enjoy one more often.

I received the Zevia Lemon Lime twist the other day and put it in the fridge to get it ice cold. I was hoping it would be a refreshing change on a sunny day. I’ll have to keep dreaming. We haven’t had sun in a week, however this has potential to be very refreshing. First taste the carbonation was very crisp like a 7UP. The lemon seemed to be the dominant flavor of the very mild lemon/lime. It was more like club soda with a lemon. It had a very mild flavor, sort of a watered down 7up. The mild flavor quickly fades almost leaving that chalky club soda taste in your mouth.

In my opinion, this has potential to be a very good no calorie soda, but as it is, I wouldn’t buy it.

B

Dr. Zevia (Fan Review!)

  I just received my can of Dr. Zevia today.  I cracked it open and took a whiff and thought hey this is going to be an awesome soda.  It smells amazing right away.  I’m thinking of an all-natural healthy soda that is going to taste like the real thing.  At first I was right and then this medicine after taste hits you kinda like a bad tasting sparkling water like a flavored club soda.  A few minutes in after drinking i had a horrible stomach.  It’s too bad i am a health nut and I love diet sodas so i was stoked to try this.  Over all it’s not the worst soda i have ever tasted but def not the best soda of all time.  I like the can I like the "health" factor   I like zero calories and all that and it’s just the after taste that I’m not to fond of. 

J.W

Zevia Cola (Fan Review!)

Let me introduce myself by telling you that I am a female who doesn’t normally drink sugar-free or diet soda. Thus, I am a good reviewer of Zevia Caffeine Free Cola for those who don’t like “diet” drinks, but I am a poor reviewer for those who prefer such drinks. Keep that in mind.

Zevia Caffeine Free Cola is advertised as an “All Natural Soda,” which may appeal to those who don’t care to drink chemical concoctions. In addition to being caffeine-free, it also purports to be gluten-free, calorie-free, and sugar free. I could not imagine gluten being in sodas, but after a little research, I discovered that a few dark sodas use a gluten by-product to make the soda carmel-colored.  Luckily, Zevia Caffeine Free Cola is NOT one of those drinks.  Zevia is sweetened with Stevia, and a serving contains 20 mg of sodium.

The can design is very plain: I suspect that the manufacturer’s aim is to convey an idea of sparseness for the serious dieter or avoider of sugar and/or caffeine. 

Upon the first sip, I thought, “Diet cola. It tastes like a diet cola.” However, I didn’t hate it, and after several sips, I established that Zevia Caffeine Free Cola has a softer, gentler version of that bitter, “off-spec” taste shared by all sugar-free drinks. It whispered to my taste buds rather than screamed. I could almost pretend that my beverage really included that nectar of the gods: sugar. 

The “fizz” level is average or slightly less. There is a bit of a Stevia aftertaste from each swig.

If I drank diet sodas, I would try it. If I were desperate for a cola and could not have caffeine, I’d buy it.  According to the manufacturer, “It’s what soda should always have been.” You decide.

RLK

Twist comes in all shapes and sizes... actually that's just a cat.

Zevia Orange (Fan Review!)

   I never thought in my entire life that I’d be reviewing soda. Honestly? It’s like a dream come true. I love soda, always have. I drink it like the average person drinks water. I love trying new soda, bizarre flavors, little known brands, imports. I just effing love soda. Get it?

   And I love reviewing things. I review video games, music, films, so getting to review soda is basically like a dream.

   I guess the first thing I’ll say is this soda, Zevia’s sugar free all-natural orange soda, is pretty good. Underwhelming? Okay, it’s absolute carbonated pleasure wrapped in a folly of decadent flavorgasms hitting you one-by-one in rapid succession with the ferocity of a trillion lions made out of lightning. It’s pretty good.

   The first thing I noticed was how tame the carbonation was in contrast to how pungent the flavor was. It was interesting, I suppose I’m so used to pure cane soda that I’ve become accustomed to the hard hitting bite of Jones Soda, for example. It’s certainly not that intense to the mouth but the flavor is all there. There is a subtle tang to the drink, one can assume that’s the orange in there, but it’s also kind of masked behind the sugar substitute used.

   The substitute is…lemme make sure I get this right…erythritol. It’s a sugar alcohol derived from fruits themselves. It’s certainly not bad, and unlike most substitutes I’ve tasted in my time the aftertaste is actually almost more pleasant than the sip, but it is strong enough to make you wonder where the orange flavor went.

   All in all the drink tastes wonderful, it’s got a sweet kick to it with a unique tame sort of texture and a nice aftertaste. It’s all packaged nicely into a vibrant orange can with a sort of style that’s reminiscent of the cans Fresca comes in. It’s simplistic and stylish and even has a little symbol that lets you know it’s vegan. Vegans get their own soda?

   Overall I think Zevia’s orange soda hits a really great mark for sugar free sodas. It doesn’t taste like they tried to make up for the fact that they were using an alternative sweetener, it taste like they really worked with what they had and it shows. It’s sweet and pleasant. I’ll always say pure cane sugar is king but if you’re going the sugar free route this is about as good as it gets.

~K

Mountain Zevia (Fan Review!)

   Let me preface this by saying "Mountain Zevia" is not the worst soda I have ever had.  But it is definitely not the best soda I have ever had either.  Perhaps that is because Mountain Zevia, made by the people over at Zevia contains neither sugar nor high fructose corn syrup.  Well what’s the big deal, neither does coke zero or pepsi max, or even diet mountain dew right?  Well this doesn’t have aspartame or sucralose either.  This has a new "artificial sweetener" I suppose would be the term, called Stevia.  The ingredients list is very short: Carbonated Water, Erythritol, Natural Flavors, Citric Acid, Reb A (Stevia Extract), Caffeine, and Beta Carotene.

   Two things about that list stand out.  First, what the hell are Erythritol and Reb A? I mean do I need to worry about priapism or growing a third armor hearing RebA songs in my head?  The answer to this (thank you Wikipedia) is no. Erythritol apparently is a sugar alcohol discovered in 1848 by a chemist.  Apparently it occurs naturally in fruits and fermented foods.  I am not a doctor, nor do I play one on TV, so I am not going to say that it is 100 percent safe or natural, but from the little bit I have read, I have no fears about it.  So that’s good.  Now Reb A appears to be the same thing as Stevia, which is a in the sunflower family.  So again, I am not going to worry too much about it.  Now on to my second question.  Why the hell is there Beta Carotene in my soda?  Well I have no idea, so lets go with a random government conspiracy to subsidize the carrot industry.... because let’s face it, corn was so early 2000's.

   Now that all of the thinking is out of the way, let’s talk flavor.  I would have to surmise from the name that Mountain Zevia is going to be in the citrus soda family a la Mountain Dew and Mello Yello.  I grew up drinking both of those (thank you Days of Thunder, and damn you Tom Cruise) and they are, to this day, some of my favorites.  I haven’t had a very good run with "diet" sodas, but Zevia isnt a diet soda, its an "All Natural" soda.  

   The color is a yellow/green which further validates my theory that it is going to be an "All Natural" version of Mountain Yello.  The smell, well the smell makes me think that this is going to taste like a combination of baking soda, and fail bucket.  Time for the first sip.  Okay, it tastes absolutely nothing like Mountain Dew, or Mello Yello.  HOWEVER, the initial taste is actually really good.  It’s very crisp, very refreshing.  The carbonation level is absolutely outstanding.  It provides a great bite that compliments the initial flavor very well.  Now if you were wondering what that initial flavor was, the best way to explain it is a lemon/lime combination, but without the orange juice that makes Mountain Dew what it is.  Sounds like a pretty good deal right?  A crisp, refreshing lemon lime soda that is all natural yet contains no sugar or HFCS.  Well hold on.  I haven’t finished.  There is an after taste.  The after taste is the absolute deal breaker for me.  It lingers for a very long time, and the sweet citrus taste slowly dissolves into a very powerful bitter after taste that reminds me of eating baking powder/baking soda.  In fact the after taste is worse than most diet sodas.

   When it is all said and done, Mountain Zevia is nowhere near as good as Mountain Dew or Mellow Yellow.  However, it is all natural, so for those of you concerned with the calories of soda, there are none, and personally, I enjoy it more than most diet sodas, plus.  I love the fact that it is all natural, and for the millions of diabetics that can’t have regular sodas due to the sugar spikes, this APPEARS to my non trained, uneducated eye to be a safe alternative.  In the end, all that matters is Mountain Zevia as it stands.  

P.S. If you pour Zevia over ice, it seems to cut the after taste a good bit, unfortunately the outstanding initial flavor is also reduced.

To the people at Zevia, Keep trying.  I think you are on to something, you just need to find a way to counterbalance the after taste.

D. Dub

Natural Brew Vanilla Crème Soda (Fan Review!)

Hey fellow Cream Soda fans, Steve W here, and it's time for a guest review. This week, we're gonna be reviewing Natural Brew Vanilla Crème Soda. Now, if you've had or read the review for Natural Brew's Ginseng Cola, you may remember that a key factor in the soda's unique flavor is the Bourbon Vanilla. Well, it makes a return as you may imagine with this Cream Soda, and it's of course much more of a prevalent flavor this time around.

Upon opening the bottle, my nose is quickly welcomed to the soft smell of Vanilla and what seem to be one or two other spices. It's a sweet smell, but it is faint. However, we're not here to smell this stuff. Now, for the moment you and I have been waiting for. *insert swig here* Well, I'll definitely say that the Vanilla doesn't hide with this soda. It's a relatively strong flavor, but it's not too strong, though it does have a bite. It's a complex taste, with the Bourbon Vanilla certainly standing out, but not letting whatever the other spices may be go by unnoticed. The various ingredients certainly complement one another, giving way to a unique Cream taste. Even after swallowing, the flavor lingers on the palate for a few seconds, before gradually giving way to a very smooth aftertaste.

Now I've had a good deal of Cream Sodas in the past (Virgil's, Henry Weinhard, etc), and this one definitely stands out. I can't say it's my favorite, but its flavor is unique enough that I'll certainly pick it up again at some point. Natural Brew really did another good job with this soda, and I'm eager to try more of their products after my experience with their Cream Soda.

[Steve W]

Hotlips Raspberry Soda (Fan Review!)

   So as a friend of the Jerks and an avid soda drinker I was extremely excited about having the opportunity to submit a fan review.  When the jerks came to me and said "We know you like fruit sodas would you like to try Hot Lips Raspberry?"  I got even more excited.  I love all soda, but fruit flavored soda's always stand head and shoulders above the rest for me.  Now take into account that raspberry soda is not all that common and I could hardly wait to get my lips on Hot Lips!

   The bottle art is fun.  The pictures of the raspberries and the lipstick kiss seem to imply that it will be a smooth soft raspberry flavor.  For some reason, it actually reminds me of Hot Lips Hoolihan and MASH.

   The ingredients list is very small but one that stands out from them is lemon juice.  As someone who does alot of cooking, I dont typically associate lemon juice with subtle flavor so that concerns me.

   The smell is absolutely divine.  As close as you can get to fresh raspberries in a bottle, but with a gentle touch of lemon.  The smell leads me to believe that this experience will end in epic glory or epic fail.  I am really hoping for epic glory, and as I take my first sip the taste of raspberries fills my mouth and a feeling of epic fruit soda glory touches my senses. I swallow only to notice that the taste of raspberries evaporates rather quickly and is replaced with that pesky lemon flavor that the ingredients list and my nose warned me about.  It is almost a faux lemon flavor.*  In fact the after taste is almost an exact match to the packets of lemon in our break room at work that claims to be real lemon but if I ever bit into a lemon and it tasted like that, I would throw it back at whoever picked it.  Overall the taste is almost like a raspberry pie filling.  The carbonation is very soft, more like a sparkling water than a soda, and while that would normally not be a fun fact for me, it serves this drink very well.  This drink covers refreshment with tact and subtlety instead of the brutish force of high fructose corn syrup and loads of carbonation. 

* After talking with Jerk A I learned that Hot Lips had a problem with the lemon in this particular batch, and I feel that without the overwhelming lemon problem, this soda would be absolutely incredible.

Dan W, DW, DDub or whatever else you wanna call me

(Editor's Note - The folks at Hotlips sent us a more recent batch with less lemon involved in it... Dan Re-reviewed Raspberry below)

Alright so last night I got to pick up a bottle of the new batch of Hot Lips Raspberry from Aaron, and after letting it chill for about 12 hours, I decided I could wait no longer. Upon opening the cap I notice a difference in the smell from the first one. The assault of lemon is gone, as promised. Instead a nice smooth scent of ripe raspberries promise a taste that you will probably have never experienced before.

The first sip delivers on the smells promise! A perfectly smooth raspberry flavor fills my mouth and instead of the lemon-esque after taste, all you taste is more raspberries saying a soft goodbye as they travel further away from your taste buds. The flavor is a marked improvement from the first batch, however I feel like something is missing... The carbonation. It is there but it is incredibly light, so much so that I had to actually look for it. The first batch was a refreshing change of pace from the heavy over carbonation that most beverages offer, but this is almost too lightly carbonated. I say almost bcause it still manages to be incredibly refreshing and the light carbonation still distinguishes it against plain old raspberry juice.

I also noticed that it is bottled by Hot Lips Pizza Company. Now I have to wonder, if they take this much care and pride in their sodas, brewing each batch manually and adapting on the fly, I can only wonder how amazing the pizza would be!

Overall, I have to say that the folks at Hot Lips have left me incredibly impressed. Their customer service has been outstanding, I mean here I am some random guy in Texas drinking a hot lips, that I didnt even pay for because the jerks gave it to me, and they were so concerned about our satisfaction that they sent out a sample from the new batch for me to try. On top of that they offer some incredibly diverse and unique flavors like raspberry and pear (which I cannot WAIT to try!) that atleast to me are far more rewarding than most mainstream sodas.

Rating - Buy a pack because your friends deserve to try this too, and two very big thumbs up (Aaron=Aggie so this is a bit of deference) for the people over at Hot Lips!!

D.W.