Live "Revive" Root Beer

So i'm on my holiday vacation visiting my family and i am driving through Sandy, UT and my wife tells me we have to stop at a Target to get some diapers. I run into the store and am drawn to the soda section by intuition which is where i find this "root beer". I put that in quotes because it's difficult for me to even believe this is really a soda, let alone a root beer. Live Root Beer is a line of soda out of Austin, TX. There is a lot of info on the site about the company, about the founder and his motives, and especially about Kombucha and it's benefits. In a nutshell, Kombucha is a healthy bacteria brewed from a tea with lots of health claims, none of which are actually substantiated by scientific evidence according to the source of all truth. The claims on the benefits of Kombucha range from slowing the aging process and helping prevent/reverse hair loss to fighting and curing cancer and helping protect against harmful radiation poisoning. Yeah, for real. Of course, some of the side effects include just a minor case of death. None of this can be factually supported by the FDA or, you know, science. But people have believed this tea to be beneficial for centuries. It's commonly an Asian tea, which is why i hesitate to even call this a soda. Even the website says you should replace soda with this for a healthier lifestyle. The founder of Live Soda also has a couple other lines of healthy energy foods and snacks. I think it's probably equivalent to Activia yogurt, which has a lot of the same claims with the benefits to your digestive system from the probiotics contained in the yogurt. All i know is that Activia gives my wife chronic diarrhea, and on the bottle of Live Soda it says not to consume if you are pregnant or nursing without a physician weighing in first, so i doubt my wife will give an opinion on this one. I could say a lot more about Kombucha just from what i read on the Live Soda website, but i'll let you dive into that if you care to.

The label looks professional and is well laid out to try and draw people in. It's well done, but still has the organic look to it. I bet this stuff is in Whole Foods. There are lots of benefits listed on the label, as well as the afore mentioned caution to pregnant ladies. And below the label it has the flavor listed as "Revive Root Beer". Gotta throw a healthy plug in there. But i will let you in on a little bit of my process. Normally before even starting a review i crack open the root beer and give it a taste, but i haven't done that with this one and there are a few reasons for that. One, it's in a 12 oz. clear glass bottle, so i have low expectations for it, especially since it's probably not even really a soda or a root beer. Two, i kinda have a big day today and i am a little worried it's gonna make me crap my pants. And three, on the label this stuff is listed as being both vegan and gluten free. Come on man. We already know it's organic. You gotta throw that at us too? This is the kind of hippie nonsense that drives masses of people away from so called healthy sodas like this.

Alright... moment of truth. Just cracked the top off... smells a little gross, and... yeah. This stuff is foul. Not good, AT ALL. The founder says on his website that Kombucha isn't good tasting, but he has strived really hard to make it good as well as healthy. That's why it's sweetened with stevia and not cane sugar or high fructose corn syrup. The website also claims a rich creamy vanilla flavor and a hint of sassafras. I don't taste any of that. I don't know what i taste, but it's not good. I mean, the more i drink it, the easier it is to palate, but it wouldn't call this a pleasant taste and i for certain would not call this a root beer, or a soda. It's naturally fermented, which gives it a slight carbonation, but it overwhelmingly just tastes like tea or a rotten fruit juice or something. I'm not pouring it down the drain like i have done with other root beers, but this stuff is definitely not great. It's like the founder of Live Sodas says on the website though... if it tastes this bad it has to be good for you.

My official review is that Live Root Beer gets 1 (one) IBC. They did it again. Hippies try and create an organic alternative that they claim is just as good as the original. I don't know what they are thinking or how their minds allow them to even attempt to say this tastes the same as root beer. If you want to make a "soda" out of tea, just call it tea soda. Or rotten fruit soda. But don't try and call this stuff root beer. I initially finished this review and published it with the rating of 2 IBCs, but as i finished the bottle and shuddered at the taste, i was convinced this only deserves a rating of 1. It tastes nothing like root beer and i'm most likely going to be tied to the toilet for the rest of the day. So thanks for that.