This drink tastes a bit thicker than other drinks, sweet, and a little sour. You can smell the sweet strawberry aroma coming out of the bottle when you open it. When you drink it, you can’t really taste the true strawberry flavor; instead it’s the carrot flavor that dominates. In the beginning, you can’t taste the sourness in the drink, but later on after couple sips, you can feel it in your tongue. What puzzles me is that where did the sourness come from. There’s no sourness in carrot or strawberry. After looking through the list of ingredients, I found acidity regulator in the drink and that makes the drink taste sour. Once you finish the drink, the bottle still contains a strong smell of the flavor and it’s really hard to rid of the smell from your mouth. Also, if you can’t finish the drink, you might want to put it in the fridge because it helps to keep the drink fresh and healthy.

This is my first time trying out a fruit and vegetable mix beverage. I think this drink is pretty good in terms of the taste, I prefer not too thick and it shouldn’t be that sweet. Other flavors from Ralph and Charlie’s are Carrot Cranberry, Green Apple Kiwi Pineapple, Carrot, Ruby Red Grapefruit Pomegranate, and Multi-Vitamin Fruit Infusion. On the Ralph and Charlie’s website, they showed Carrot Apple Strawberry, but no Carrot Strawberry flavor. I guess they improved on that juice drink.

Information

Price:  $1.99

Size:  18FL OZ (532mL)

Flavor:  Carrot Strawberry

Smell: Fruity Sweet

Nutrition:   Vitamin A, C

Where:  Your local supermarket

Website: www.ralphandcharlies.com

For every new drink that I want to try, I always try to smell it first before I just start drinking it because it helps you to expect what taste you will be getting. So when I smell the drink, it was all sweet peach flavor aroma, and there wasn’t any other flavors that I can identify.  Well, probably the main reason I didn’t smell other flavor because I didn’t know what the mangosteen tastes like and what the smell should be. The first few sips weren’t that bad, after while the peach flavors taste kind stuck in your mouth and difficult to get rid of because of the strong peach scent. Also, it’s not that sweet and this drink wasn’t that special compares to other drinks that contain peach flavor, but the mixture with mangosteen makes it taste so good. The mangosteen contains vitamins C & E that helps to support your body’s immune system. Since I’m sick and coughing like crazy and thought this drink might help to boost my immune system.

There’s one thing that I do not understand is why would they have different bottle wrapper design for the same drink?

Information

Price:  $1.49

Size:  17.5FL OZ (547mL)

Flavor:  Peach Mangosteen

Smell: Fruity Sweet

Nutrition:   Vitamin A, C, E

Where:  Your local supermarket

The Starbucks iPhone iPod Touch Applications provides a lot of useful and cool features that will make your experience of getting a coffee a lot easier.  One of the features that I consider most useful is the store locator because it provides not only the closest location of the store, but also shows the direction, store hours and stores with drive through service.  I hope Starbucks will not hate me for this because sometime I use the app to find a restroom. Hey, when you need to piss, nothing matters right?

Apart from the store location feature, there are servers more useful ones. The drink builder in the app allows you to build your own customized coffee drink. You can make either a hot coffee drink or a cold one. For each different drink that you want to make, it comes with many options for you to adjust to the drink. For example, you can adjust how much milk you want to add to your drink and add the kind of toppings, syrups, shots and add-in you want from default. After your drink has been made, you can give it name and shared it with your friends. The food menu provides a whole list of food items that Starbucks sell in the store and each item contains nutrition information and the allergens.  Another feature is the coffee menu, it shows many categories on brand coffees and each has a description and photos for the specific coffee.

This app helps so much for those who constantly looking for place to buy good quality coffees when traveling because they will always know where to go buy coffee.  From Starbucks addict customer point of view, the app should be constantly updating the latest information on store locations and let their own employees know that there’s an Starbucks iPhone app so that they will know what customer are talking about when comes to ordering a drink.

Information
Platform: iPhone and iPod Touch
Cost: Free
Rating: 5/5
Size: 5.6MB
Website: www.starbucks.com

Here’s the description provided by Teavana for their iPhone and iPod Touch app.

Description

Make the perfect cup of tea with our Perfect Tea Touch App! It features everything you   need to blend and steep your favorite teas including a musical tea timer.

Features

• Tea timer with specific instructions for Teavana teas or generic tea instructions. Tea timer is a visual and musical delight offering unique sounds depending on which type of tea you are steeping.
• Tea blender tool that suggests other teas to blend with your favorites. Great way to discover new tastes!
• Detailed information on Teavana teas including ingredients, steeping instructions and health benefits.
• Mark your favorite Teavana teas for quick access anytime.
• Store locator that finds the Teavana stores nearest you.
• Share your favorite tea blends on Facebook, Twitter or via email with friends.

The app tells you how hot the water should be and how long you should steep your tea for each different kind of teas, but it did not provide different methods on how you should brew the tea. There are many approaches or methods to brew the tea and if you didn’t brew it correctly, then you won’t be able to get the true taste out of it. Also, they didn’t mention if the tea is common or rare in each category. By the way, you can use the music in the Tea Timer to help you relax and put you to sleep. It’s better to taste the tea first in the store before you buy it and try it out for yourself.

Information
Platform: iPhone and iPod Touch
Cost: Free
Rating: 5/5
Size: 6.9MB
Website: www.teavana.com
Social Media: Twitter

The design of the drink bottle is almost the same as the Vitamin Water bottle, except a little skinner and I think it is a pretty smart move in terms of marketing. When I open the cap, there was a fruity sweet smell coming out of the bottle and it’s similar to Vitamin Water. I did not smell any passion fruit or lemonade from the drink itself.  According to the information on the bottle, there’s no sugar in the drink, but I still tasted a bit of sweetness in the drink. Also, you have to finish the whole bottle in order for you to actually realize that there was a lemonade flavor in the drink. To me, the smell was way better than the actual taste of the drink. Imagine a bottle with only fresh aroma and no liquid in it.

I haven’t tried other flavors from Skinny water, but the one I kind of lean toward trying is the Peach Mango Mandarin. If anyone has tried already, let me know what the taste is like. For those of you who sit’s in front of computer all day and don’t want to move and want to be skinny, I think this drink might be for you because it tastes better than regular water, help you to get skinny and it will force you to get up and go to the restroom.  Also, for those who are tired of drinking plain water, you might want to give Skinny Water a shot.  Hala back!

Information

Price:  $1.00

Size:  16fl oz/473ml

Flavor:  Lemonade Passionfruit

Smell: Fruity Sweet

Nutrition:   Vitamin A, B, C, E, Calcium, Potassium and EGCG.

Where:  Your local supermarket

Web: www.skinnywater.com

The app basically offers three main functions and it comes with minimalist interface style design. The first function provides a list of nearby places where they are having happy hours based on your current location detected by the app. The second function allows user to search by zip code or address and the result will give you a list of happy hour places based on that search. The third function provides a map that allows you to see where they are located and how you can get there by car. The list that generated by the app can be sorted by miles, by alphabetically order, by time, or by the price.  For each bar in the list, the app tells you whether they accept credit card or not and I think it’s very important since everyone uses credit cards.  You can also search for future date and time for happy hours and you can send suggest changes within the app if you think the current information is not up to date.

If you are a regular happy hour kind of guy, then you will know if the information provided by the app is useful or not. This app is also great for those who travels very often and loves to drink.  Also, if you think that bar you usually go to is not on the list when you do a search, then you should visit boomtown apps website and add it to their database. Maybe they should add a recommended feature based on your current location or search because it will help new visitors to the town or city to find a good place to get drinks.

Information

Platform: iPhone and iPod Touch

Cost:  $1.99

Rating: 5/5

Download: You must be legal drinking age to download it.

Size: 1.2MB

Website: www.boomtownapps.com

Social Media:  Twitter Facebook

I’ve never tried any pomegranate drinks before and not sure what to expect from the drink in terms of the taste.  After I opened the bottle and pour it into the glass drinking cup, there’s a strong fresh fruity sugary aroma coming out of the drink. The first sip gave me a sweet taste, but after few sips, I felt a combination of sweet and sour flavor in the drink. Maybe that’s how the fruity diet drinks suppose to taste. It just doesn’t taste like pomegranate, but maybe more like fruit punch flavor. While drinking the beverage, I felt like drinking sweet sour chicken soup with some fruity taste in it.  Personally, I didn’t like the taste and I had to finish the drink because it was for a good cause and it was expensive too.

Since everyone has different taste and preference, you might as well try it out yourself and see if you like it or not.  I think for any good cause you should support it.

Information

Price:  $1.50 – $2.00

Size:  18.5FL OZ 547mL

Flavor:  Pomegranate Acai Berry

Smell: Fruity Sweet and Sour

Nutrition:   Vitamin A, C, E, Chromium, L-Carnitine, Citrimax, Apple Polyphenols

Where:  Your local supermarket

Just recently, Starbucks featured a new holiday beverage and it’s called the new Caramel Brulée Latte. According to Starbucks, the drink is a decadent espresso drink. It’s made of fresh Starbucks espresso, steamed milk, creamy rich caramel sauce, and whipped cream with pieces of crunchy caramel topping. They make it sound really good and it’s a must have drink for those who are coffee addicts. Now the question is does it really taste as good as it sound? Well, I heard from people who have tried the drink, they were saying “OMG, Ever since I tried, I’ve been having it daily” “Oh my gosh, it tastes so good” “It’s Amazing” I guess they went wild with this drink?

So I went to Starbucks and bought a grande Caramel Brulée Latte.  The drink was a bit too sweet for me since I’m not a sugary drinker kind of person. However, it’s very easy to drink and after you mixed whipped cream with the drink, you will see a lot of creamy stuffs attached around the cup after the drink gets cold. Also, it’s hardly to smell the fresh coffee aroma coming out of the drink because of the creamy rich caramel sauce and the smell actually makes the drink better. The drink was also a bit oily, but not as much as the Hot Pumpkin Spice Latte drinks.

I wonder how much time did Starbucks spent on to come up with this drink. It is a good drink, but not that mind blowing. It seems very popular among coffee drinkers and they even have a Facebook page for the drink.  For those who have tried and don’t like this drink, what changes would you make to this drink so that it will taste delicious?

Information

Price:  $4.50 – $5.00

Size:  Grande -16 oz

Flavor:  Caramel Brulee Latte

Smell:  Creamy Rich Caramel

Nutrition:   350- 450 Calories

Where: Your local Starbucks store.