Jones Turkey & Gravy Soda: Carbonated Turkey Gravy Exists Because Someone Committed to Ruining Thanksgiving in Beverage Form
Also available in Brussels Sprout, Dinner Roll, and Antacid — the last one is not a real flavor but should be, given the first three
Every year, Jones Soda releases a limited-edition Thanksgiving pack. And every year, the Thanksgiving pack contains flavors that would constitute a violation of the Geneva Convention if served to prisoners of war.
Turkey & Gravy Soda. Brussels Sprout Soda. Dinner Roll Soda. Cranberry Soda (the one mercy). Wild Herb Stuffing Soda. Green Bean Casserole Soda. Mashed Potato Soda. These are real. These are sodas. These were manufactured, bottled, labeled, and sold to human beings who then drank them — not because they wanted to, but because Thanksgiving is a holiday built on bad decisions and Jones Soda understood the assignment.
Turkey & Gravy is the flagship atrocity. It is a carbonated beverage that tastes like someone liquefied a Thanksgiving plate, strained it through a dirty sock, and force-carbonated the result. The first sip is confusion. The second sip is regret. The third sip does not occur because no human being in recorded history has taken a third sip of Turkey & Gravy Soda. The third sip is theoretical.
The carbonation is the part that makes it truly unhinged. Gravy is not a beverage. Gravy is a sauce — a warm, thick, savory liquid designed to be poured over solid food and consumed in combination with that food. Gravy that is cold, thin, carbonated, and in a bottle is not gravy. It is a crime against thermodynamics, culinary tradition, and the concept of beverages. Carbonating gravy is like freezing soup and calling it a popsicle — the state change doesn't convert a sauce into a drink. It converts a sauce into an abomination.
Jones Soda has released these packs since 2003. Every year. For over two decades. They know the flavors are terrible. The customers know the flavors are terrible. The product exists not to be enjoyed but to be survived, shared as a dare, and posted to social media as evidence that you participated in a holiday tradition more traumatizing than your uncle's political opinions.
The Vision: Thanksgiving Dinner, but You Drink It
Jones Soda's Thanksgiving packs are marketing genius disguised as flavor terrorism. The company doesn't expect you to enjoy Turkey & Gravy Soda. They expect you to buy it, open it with friends and family, dare each other to try it, film the reactions, and share the content. The product is not a beverage. It is an experience. It is a shared moment of collective revulsion that brings people together through their mutual disgust.
This is the only Jones Thanksgiving product that has sustained a two-decade run: the Turkey & Gravy Soda is purchased with the same enthusiasm and consumed with the same horror every single year. The purchase is joyful. The consumption is violent. The gap between expectation and experience is exactly the same every year, and people keep buying it anyway, which means the experience IS the product. Nobody is surprised. Everybody is appalled. This is the tradition.
The Brussels Sprout flavor is, impossibly, worse. Brussels sprouts are divisive as food. As soda, they are a war crime. The carbonation of Brussels sprout essence produces a beverage that tastes like someone farted into a SodaStream. There is no charitable description of Brussels Sprout Soda. Charity has its limits.
The Glorious User Experience
Every Thanksgiving Party Since 2003 — ★☆☆☆☆
"Someone brought the Jones Thanksgiving pack. We arranged the bottles on the counter. We looked at them. 'Turkey & Gravy' stared back at us with the calm confidence of a beverage that knows it will ruin you. We opened it. We poured tiny amounts into shot glasses because drinking a full glass of carbonated turkey gravy is a medical decision, not a beverage decision. We toasted. We drank. The room made sounds that I can only describe as the audio equivalent of a car accident. One star annually for two decades."
Jeff from Portland, OR — ★☆☆☆☆
"Turkey & Gravy Soda does not taste like turkey and gravy. It tastes like the IDEA of turkey and gravy as interpreted by someone who has never eaten turkey and gravy but has read a description of turkey and gravy in a foreign language and then tried to recreate it using only carbonated water and sadness. It is the Platonic shadow of a Thanksgiving meal projected onto the wall of a cave made of bad decisions. One star."
“These were manufactured, bottled, labeled, and sold to human beings who then drank them — not because they wanted to, but because Thanksgiving is a holiday built on bad decisions and Jones Soda understood the assignment”
Click to TweetLindsey from Austin, TX — ★☆☆☆☆
"I tried Brussels Sprout Soda. The flavor enters your mouth as a question: 'What have you done?' The carbonation amplifies the vegetable bitterness into a fizzing, cabbage-scented eruption that your sinuses experience before your tongue does. I burped. The burp tasted like Brussels sprouts. The soda haunted me retroactively. A beverage that continues to disappoint after you've stopped drinking it is a beverage that has achieved sentience and chosen violence. One star."
Mark from Chicago, IL — ★★★★★
"Five stars. Five. Stars. I buy the Jones Thanksgiving pack every year. It's the highlight of our Thanksgiving. Not because it's good — it's TERRIBLE. It's the worst thing anyone will taste all year. And that is EXACTLY why it's the best. We line up the bottles. We dare each other. My father-in-law did a spit-take with Dinner Roll Soda that landed on the dog. My mother cried from laughing. The soda is awful. The tradition is perfect. Five stars."
The Truth: The Soda That Exists to Be Hated
Jones Soda's Thanksgiving packs are the most successful intentionally-terrible product in consumer history. They are designed to be bad. They are marketed as bad. They are purchased BECAUSE they are bad. And they've sustained a two-decade run that most genuinely good products never achieve.
The packs sell out every year. They generate massive social media coverage. They produce thousands of reaction videos. They create a shared cultural experience that transcends the product itself. Turkey & Gravy Soda is not consumed for pleasure — it is consumed for content, for tradition, and for the specific bonding that occurs when everyone at a table simultaneously gags.
This is intentional. Jones Soda knows what they're doing. The Thanksgiving pack is not a product development failure like New Coke or Crystal Pepsi. It is a product development triumph — a product that achieves exactly what it was designed to achieve: revulsion, laughter, and annual repurchase. The product is terrible. The business model is brilliant.
Jones Soda has accidentally discovered the formula for an evergreen consumer product: make something so bad that buying it becomes a tradition. The soda will never improve. The tradition will never end. The cycle of purchase, disgust, and repurchase will continue until Thanksgiving itself is discontinued, which, given the soda's contribution to the holiday, may be under consideration.
The Verdict
Jones Turkey & Gravy Soda is carbonated turkey gravy and it is exactly as terrible as that sounds. It has been exactly that terrible every year since 2003. It will be exactly that terrible next year. The terrible is the point. The terrible is the product. The terrible is why you buy it, share it, survive it, and buy it again.
This is the only product on No Want This that we rate 1 out of 5 as a beverage and 5 out of 5 as a Thanksgiving tradition. It is both the worst soda and the best holiday activity. It cannot be improved because improvement would ruin it. It is perfect in its imperfection. It is the holiday fruitcake of beverages — terrible, eternal, and beloved.
We rate it 1 out of 5 drinkable holiday beverages (and 5 out of 5 holiday traditions).
If you want a Thanksgiving beverage you can actually enjoy, see our alternatives below.
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✅What to Buy Instead
Martinelli's Sparkling Cider
The actual appropriate festive Thanksgiving beverage. Apple cider, carbonated, in a fancy bottle. Tastes like holiday. Doesn't taste like turkey liquefied.
Fever-Tree Ginger Beer
Premium mixer that pairs with holidays without tasting like one. Ginger flavor, not gravy flavor. A distinction that shouldn't need to be made.
Actual Turkey
If you want turkey flavor on Thanksgiving, eat turkey. The technology exists. The technology has existed since the Pilgrims. No carbonation required.
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