Granola Milk
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Positive Energy Orange Juice
/Remember a while back when Mountain, sorry, MTN Dew tried their hand in the breakfast drink market with Kickstart? It all seemed rather forced, but then again I don’t work for Drink Co. and think of multi-million dollar ideas. Why are you trying to make a new breakfast beverage when the ones we have work so well. If you want to wake us up just add caffeine to what we already drink for breakfast. Segue. Positive Energy is the beverage ThirstMonger sent to me today and guess what it is, orange juice with caffeine. They also make a cranberry juice cocktail version, but I’ve been told that the OJ is the bees knees so it’s the one being reviewed.
Positive Energy Orange Juice is not made from concentrate, has no sugar added, and uses green coffee bean caffeine. I don’t really care what kind of caffeine they use, but green coffee bean caffeine is by far the most fun to say. Looking at the back I see that this little bottle has the same amount of wake up juice (why isn’t this called Wake Up Juice?) that your morning cup of coffee has. Positive Energy OJ has been visited by the vitamin fairy as well with giftings of vitamins A, B, and C. Now the task will be simple. Can you put all of this in orange juice and still have it be tasty? I just finished my bowl of Grape Nut Flakes (TheCerealJerks.net give it "Buy a Bowl") and I’m ready to be swept away citrusly.
Can't you see how wired Twist is?
Wow, they fill this bottle to the tippity top. Guess what it smells like? If you guessed orange juice you’re probably too far away for me to give you anything with minimal effort, but you’d be right.
Well that’s pretty dang tasty. It’d have been pretty amazing if someone could mess up OJ, but this is honestly good on the OJ spectrum as well. A lot of orange juice has an almost caustic feel, but Positive Energy Orange Juice goes down smooth compared to its brethren. Being orange juice this occasionally touches both the sweet and bitter spectrum of flavor. The initial sensation I get is indeed bitter, but this is mostly broken up by the savory side of the orange a few seconds into each sip. With that said there is a consistent bitter taste to Positive Energy. While you might think this would keep me from enjoying this beverage, as bitter tastes have in the past, it’s not strong enough to even make me consider stopping. I’m not addicted to it by any means, but it’s a delightful beverage. Positive Energy Orange Juice is doing right (with a much smaller budget I’m sure) what MTN Dew did so very wrong. Positive Energy took a flavor we already like and added a little “boost” to it without compromising the flavor much if at all. Great concept, great delivery. With that said it’s still orange juice so I’m not going to go crazy with the ranking.
~A
Golazo Mango-Lime
/Twist knew that snake and he's ok with the outcome
So the folks at ThirstMonger have filled my fridge once again with their drink of the week. This week’s brand is Golazo which labels itself as an “ALL NATURAL SPORTS HYDRATION DRINK”. They’re awfully fond of capital letters at Golazo, but who can blame them. Since it’s a sports drink I’m sure it’ll be chock full of hard to pronounce “natural ingredients”. Let’s take a look, shall we? Ok, color me wrong. Here are the ingredients for Golazo Mango-Lime: Water, Cane Sugar, Coconut Water Concentrate, Natural Flavor, Citric Acid, and Salt. I’m impressed and now even more curious about the Mango-Lime flavor I chose. Lemon-Lime was another beverage I could have reviewed by Golazo, but that flavor is so very common in the sports drink world I figured I’d give the odd duck of Mango-Lime a try. Hopefully this risk will pay off.
A stronger than expected aroma escapes the wide mouth bottle. True to its listed flavor the scent is easily identified as both mango and citrus. Once again I’ve doubted Golazo and once again they’ve proven me foolish for doubting them. Why would I even begin to doubt a beverage whose label clearly states that it’s “born to score”? Interesting use of lowercase letters here, yet another surprise.
The mango/lime combination is definitely unusual, but nothing that would be described as off putting. The initial sip can be described as a light mango flavored water, which is quite refreshing. When the lime shows up to the party it brings a little bit of a bitter taste with it, but I suppose that’s to be expected when you partner sweet with sour. Through the majority of the experience my mouth is pleased with the overall feel of Golazo Mango-Lime. It’s promised to be a refreshing beverage and it delivers that promise in spades. I am wishing I’d tried the Lemon-Lime version now as I bet it’d be one of the better ones on the market. The ingredient list of this was amazing, the flavor is enjoyable, and the mouth feel follows suite. So what is wrong with Golazo Mango-Lime? Well, going back to the bitter taste the lime seems to bring. That bitter taste, albeit small, interrupts the overall flow of the beverage for me. It’s like driving down the highway and every five miles you hit a speed bump. You’re still going to get to your destination, but the trip isn’t going to be as pleasurable because of it.
Even though I’m not sold on this particular flavor I will tell you that Golazo has made me excited to try other flavors by them and that’s saying something. They did too many good things with this “ALL NATURAL SPORTS HYDRATION DRINK” for me to ignore. Good thing I have another flavor chilling in my fridge.
~A
jC's Sweet Tea
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There are three types of beverages I’m guaranteed to like: whole milk, limeade, and sweet tea. I can thank my lucky stars that I have one of those three beverages in front of me tonight, courtesy of ThirstMonger. jC’s Sweet Tea (and yes the “j” is lowercase) is today’s beverage and I think I’m in for a good time. Immediately I looked at this bottle of sweet tea and the first thing I noticed is that it is “southern style”. Now, I’m perfectly ok with that because I probably have a bias in believing that the South makes the best sweet tea. The second thing I noticed is that it was made in Ohio. Somehow I my eyes skipped past the part that said “all natural” and straight to the contradiction on the bottle. How am I supposed to take a “southern style” sweet tea seriously if it was made in Ohio? For that answer I checked out the jC’s Sweet Tea website and read their history.
The long of the short of it is that a woman with the initials J.C., who hails from Alabama and South Carolina, eventually made it to the state of Ohio. She of course brought her family recipes with her and the sweet tea really struck a chord in her friends. Long story overly shortened… now we have jC’s Sweet Tea – made in Ohio, yet by a southerner. That’s a legitimate enough reason for me… on to the ingredients.
Unless you were taken aback by the earlier contradiction as I was, you probably noticed that this is an all-natural sweet tea. The ingredients are as follows: Water, Sugar, Pineapple Juice (a first for me in a tea), Fresh Squeezed Lemon Juice, Pekoe Cut Black Tea, Orange Pekoe Tea, Rinds of Oranges & Sweet Spice. Without even opening the bottle, that sounds absolutely fantastic. So, please allow me to open the bottle and prove to you that it is.
There is some serious spice in jC’s Sweet Tea. The aroma that comes off the top of the beverage is downright heavenly. It has a smell that I would like my entire house to share. A mixture of everything I just read off the ingredient list greets my nostrils as if they were best friends. Hopefully my taste-buds get the same treatment.
First off, I just let out an audible “Ahh”. I felt I needed to type that for honesty sake. I was afraid that this would be overly sweet, but jC’s Sweet Tea has a brilliant level of sweetness. It’s enough to make the drink a treat, but not so much that it would overpower a meal or become a liquid dessert. Each sip contains a harmonious mixture of sweet tea, lemon, spices, and even the orange finds its way into this description. It’s hard for me to tell you exactly which spices are used, but my best guess would be all-spice and maybe some nutmeg. Another area that I thought might be a weak point is the potential over use of the lemon, but let me paraphrase this again. The lemon gets an “E” in conduct for how well he plays with others. I cannot over emphasize enough how well blended this beverage is, so I’ll stop saying it from this point on.
The mouth feel is just at the entrance of syrupy, but this vanishes once the drink no longer resides in your mouth. After my gullet was emptied I was left with the slight taste of sweet tea, nowhere nearly complex as the actual drink itself, but a fond reminder of what I just experienced. Honestly I finished this about halfway through the review, it’s really good sweet tea. I can’t say that I’ve ever had anything like it in the South, but I really wish I had.
~A
A “Twist’s Choice” Recipient
Twist is called "Sweet T" in many iguana circles
Tamek Sour Cherry Nectar
/There’s an issue I’ve been tip-toeing around for a while here on the site and that is whether or not I should include non-carbonated beverages in the reviews. The response I’ve come up with is that I’ll take them on a case by case basis if they seem unique enough to test. First and foremost this is a SODA review site, but occasionally it may step off that path for a brief second. With that said, I’m not sure today’s selected beverage is carbonated. I can tell you that it’s a Turkish beverage given to us by a nice lady who works with me. The beverage at hand is called Tamek Sour Cherry Nectar. The can is 330ml and a rich pink color. There are no less than 26 cherries pictured on the can as well so you have to hope their taking this “cherry flavor” seriously. Another sign that shows how “real” this beverage is about to be are the lack of nonsense ingredients. Water, Sugar, Sour Cherry Juice (from concentrate), and Citric Acid are the only components of Tamek Sour Cherry Nectar. Again, I know this doesn’t fit our “soda definition”, but did you really think I’d turn down reviewing a Turkish beverage of any kind? Drinkin’ time.
I don’t know if my nose isn’t working properly or what, but I’m getting little to no scent coming out of this stout little can. My olfactory glands can only detect the slightest of aromas… to the point where my brain might be creating the scent for me just so I don’t feel insane. Hopefully the flavor is a bit stronger.
Well, the non-carbonation aspect took me by surprise even though I knew it had no fizz to it. I can sum the flavor of this beverage up fairly easily. This tastes like liquid cherry pie filling. If you like cherry pie (feel free to make all the innuendos you wish, I’m not doing your dirty work for you) then you’ll probably love this beverage. The only flavor difference between this and a cherry pie filling is that at the end of the road this veers more towards tart where a cherry pie might swerve towards sweet. Looking at the nutrition label I’m surprised to see that it only has 12grams of sugar because it tastes like it would have closer to 30. The cherry juice does produce a trivial burn in the back of your throat with the completion of each sip, but unless your throat is made of origami paper you probably won’t even notice. The aftertaste, which is exactly like the before taste and the current taste, sits in your mouth for a good while after your drink is complete. That seems to be the only downside to Tamek Sour Cherry Nectar, the fact that it sits rather heavy in your mouth for the duration of the consumption. I’m aware that nectar would be apt to do such a thing, but I still have to compare this to soda. I know this probably goes without saying but nectar isn’t the most refreshing of beverages so don’t expect your thirst to be quenched. Refreshing or not this can holds a good amount of deliciousness that might even be a bit too rich for some. Pretty much every word I wrote after typing “This tastes like liquid cherry pie filling”
~A
Twist only plays Turkish board games.
