Iced Tea - 901 Reviews

Sometimes we really just can't believe that we haven't reviewed some drinks. On a drink shopping spree the other day Mike and myself were completely dumbfounded to realize that we have not reviewed Arizona's green tea and sweet tea. It really seems like they should have been some of the first reviews we did for how often we see them/used to drink them (well the green tea).

I have to say I was probably better off not reviewing this. It's a fake version of sweet tea, meaning that it doesn't taste like sweet tea at all, but instead a over-sweetened tea. To me one of the main things in sweet tea is the cane sugar. It always has a slightly grainy quality to it, that lets you know it was made with real sugar. This was made with HFCS, so it wasn't grainy, but rather syrupy. It tastes like they took a regular sweetened black tea and doubled the HFCS. I couldn't make it through an entire can over a couple of hours. I don't recommend you to see if you can.

I bought one of these while I was in Vegas. I had planned on drinking it on our last day, on a trip to Red Rock Canyon, but the temperature was so high that by the time I opened it the drink was almost hot. Bummer. I took a couple of sips and then dumped the rest, as we were flying out in a few hours and I had no way to cool it down. Cut to a couple of days ago when Mike and I found a bunch of Admiral teas in Buffalo. I was excited to try it while actually cold. Hansen's makes it, so my hopes were high. I did find it odd that they sweetened it with HFCS since their sodas all have cane sugar in them. Tall boys of iced tea are usually an exception for me for HFCS. There are a lot of them out there that have it that are still tasty. This wasn't bad, but it wasn't great like it could have been. The sweetener made it a little syrupy and the mango flavor tasted like some other product that is very specific, but I just can't put my finger on what it is. It's driving me crazy. I liked it, but a tall boy was too much of it for me (and I'm a drink glutton). If it had come in a 16oz can I think I would have enjoyed it more, but I was over it by the time I was getting to the bottom of this big fella.

The consistency of Vita Lina drinks is so strange. From the look of it sloshing around the bottle you wouldn't think that it flowed any different from a random drink. You don't really notice the strangeness until it's in your mouth. It's not syrupy. It's more like a watered down gel, but the viscosity of it is not something that is normal in drinks. I would like to say that I got over it and that it makes the drink fun, but this is my third bottle of their products and I still am hesitant to drink them. I know they taste great, but the consistency just throws me off. It's not gross. It's just weird.

As far as the flavor goes, this has a real pineapple flavor to it, without the harsh edge of the fruit. It tastes like of like it should be a pineapple “drink” and not juice. I don't mean that in a bad way though. Sometimes pineapple juice can be far too acidic to drink a lot of. Once you convince yourself that you're over the texture of this, you can drink this all day long.

Jay doesn't like lemon tea. I don't know if he doesn't like lemons or what manufactured lemon tea has become. You've got about a 50% chance of getting something that tastes like an actual lemon. Lemon tea is becoming the grape of the drink family. Candy grapes taste nothing like real grapes but all candy grape things taste the same. Lemon tea is the same. Well, almost always. This has that tingle on your tongue that you get from letting a lightly sweetened sun tea with a few lemon slices in it gives you. That being said, it reminds me that we have had one gnarly, sun-filled summer and I haven't made sun tea once. Part of me just died inside.

This tea is a nice, honest tea; no pun intended. It's low calorie but you would just think that there simply isn't as much sugar as in another tea. It's no lemon Southern style sweet tea so get that out of your thick skulls. If that is the tea for you and that's all you drink, you will consider this unsweetened. If you like unsweetened tea, you might be able to make the leap. Never downward, always upward.

Remember back in the day where the only half and half we had was Arizona Arnold Palmer? I seriously think that people don't realize that there are options aside from that. It's been a long time since those days and I've got to say that I don't miss that at all. There is nothing wrong with competition and since those days, there are dozens of better half and half's out there that surpass Mr. Arnold Palmer's drink. It's not a dis as much as it just a changing of the times. Better ingredients, smaller companies, easier distribution channels, and so on. Sure, Gold Peak is owned by Coke but it wasn't always and their tea has consistently been good. This intro paragraph is a wake up call to those who drink gallons of Arnold Palmer. Hey, friends. Wake up. There is more out there that was made specifically for you. Stop being lazy and complacent and try something new.

Lemonade and iced tea are a touch mix. Iced tea is a soft taste and lemonade is sharp and stands out in the crowd. This, in my opinion, is an uneven mix of the two. This leans way heavy towards lemonade. It's not bad but it almost cuts down the iced tea so much that if you didn't know better, you would think that this is a weak lemonade. I do not think that was the intention of Gold Peak. This probably came out just as it was supposed to but this is how I think about the contents of this bottle.

This was a nice surprise, as I don't remember the last time Gold Peak came out with a new product. Everything they have put out is good and if you are a half and half fan, try this out. As it stands, I still think it's better than Arizona but if you've been drinking that stuff for as long as I think you have, you've become desensitized to the fake sweetener that I can't stand.

My aunt Linda loves honey. This summer she invested with a co-op of amateur beekeepers with the end goal of getting your own honey from your own bees. She went out and bought a whole bunch of equipment and an official bee suit and this past weekend harvest over 100 pounds of honey, a liquid, which for some reason decides to be measured like a solid. Those bee people, \they deal with bees, for cripes sake. Literally flying needles coming at you from all directions. You can measure anything any way you'd like. Why do I bring this up? Simple. Honeydrop uses honey as their primary sweetener and it's a wonderful treat.

If my aunt found about this, she'd be all over it. As long as I have known her, which has been my entire life, I have never heard her mention her affinity for honey but now she's all about it. I bet she would do fairly well in a bee related column in Jeopardy. Now a delicious tea comes along sweetened by her life's nectar? She'd be all over it, as I mentioned previously. What's nice about this tea is that it's got a nice, soft peach flavor and then a honey aftertaste. It would be like eating a peach that is, somehow, injected with honey. If that was how peaches were naturally created, I'd eat them all of the darn day. Since it's not, I'll stick with drinking peach tea and using honey on peanut butter sandwiches and not eating actual, strangely textured, furry fruit.

Editor Dan picked this up for us. I had no idea what guayusa was, but I'm not one to turn down any sort of iced tea. Seriously, I'll even drink Nestea if it's put in front of me. I drank this tea before doing any research on it, and I would have sworn that guayusa was just another name for yerba mate. It really reminded me a lot of Guayaki Pure Heart tea. The tea is very heavy on the hibiscus and berry (shockingly it's a combo of yumberry and blueberry), and it's great.

While I was writing this I did some research and guayusa is not the same as yerba mate, but it is another plant that grows in the Amazon. The article I read said that it does taste very similar to mate though. It's nice to know that after so many damn drink reviews my taste buds are still up to par. Guayusa also has as much caffeine as coffee and twice the antioxidants as green tea. It's a nice healthy energy kick. I'm definitely interested in getting some guayusa to brew myself. I'm sure I'll mess it up somehow though. Hopefully more companies will start using it, or Runa will become more popular so that my failure won't matter too much.

When a lemon winks in your direction it would be wise of you to pay attention. There is no telling what disaster may befall you if you chose to ignore it. Let's face it, lemons are bastards and you'll more than likely get a squirt of citric acid in your unsuspecting eye. No one wants that, well unless that is some weird fetish you have. I'm sure there is a community online for folks like you to meet up and ignore winking lemons. I'm just not a part of it.

As I've said in the past Hubert's makes fantastic lemonades. Nice and tart the way lemonade should be. Their raspberry half & half left a lot to be desired because the tea tasted watered down. They got things right with their peach line though. It starts off as a great tasting peach tea and it fades into nice sweet lemonade as it swishes across your tongue. The problem with the raspberry was that it tasted like raspberry lemonade with tea added to it. With this it seems more like a flavored tea mixed with regular lemonade and that certainly works much better for me.

So here I sit refreshed, with happy taste buds and clear vision. This is what reviewing beverages should always be like.

Hubert's makes lemonade that is to be reckoned with. It's the freshest tasting bottled lemonade I have ever tried. It's so tart and the little bits of lemon are an added bonus. When I saw that they started to make half & halfs I instantly bought a couple of flavors.

Unfortunately this drink didn't live up to their straight lemonades. It tastes like they look the base of one of their great raspberry lemonades and mixed it with a very watered down iced tea. There's no real tea taste and the mixture takes away from the lemonade. There is no longer any real tartness to it, a bummer indeed. I expected greatness, but what I got was blandness.

Here's what I like: the increase of the use of dragonfruit in drinks. Pitaya kicked it off in my book with their usage of it and now these other guys come along and start integrating it in. I can't help but think that something happened that prompted people to start using it. You know how people say that things "multiply like mice?" Maybe the dragonfruit started spreading out of control like mice trapped in a science classroom over summer vacation. One turns into two, into four, into eight, into sixteen, into thirty-two and so on. I would love a running fruit like this to take over my backyard, honestly. I might and probably am not in the correct zone, but if I was, it could be awesome until it gets out of hand and I've got to call in some big guns to take care of my fruity mess.

Lipton grabbed dragonfruit by the reins and choked the living daylights out of the jerk. This tea, mixed with the strawberry, which tastes like real strawberries and dragonfruit, which tastes like real dragonfruit is a fruit tea lovers dream come true. There is some sort of competition going on between this flavor and a honey peach, which just came out. I don't have to taste that one to know that this will win in my book. You'll probably see that review soon as I purchased both yesterday and actually look forward to proving myself one way or the other.

Oh boy. The entirety of the South is going to be upset. Celestial Seasonings, the entry-level tea company that we don't have any reason to hate, is going to get themselves into trouble with this little guy. I've said it a lot, but I'll say it again. The key to a good sweet tea is the lack of ingredients. Celestial Seasoning knows what time it is and they know tea but for some reason, they never made the jump from regular, inexpensive hot tea, to cold brew tea. Now they have and people should watch out.

This tea is wonderful. It tastes like a great, homemade sweet tea. It's just the right amount of sweet and still tastes like a real tea. It's all contained in that tiny little container, too.

I only bought one type of Keurig K-Cups prior to this and that's the dark hot chocolate. Spending $2 on a drink is alright. It's right at the cusp of where I can take it or leave it. You can't buy less than sixteen of these and it costs usually around $11, which, to us Thirsty Dudes, it astronomical because we only need one drink and sometimes that is too much. In hindsight, I'm alright with spending that much now. Not because it comes out to less than $1 per glass, but because it's good enough that I will easily drink it again and again.

I am currently out in the middle of the desert on a spirit quest. Instead of being in a sweat lodge I'm in a air conditioned car. Also, instead of taking peyote I am drinking Peace Tea's cranberry tea. It has caused me to have an Epiphany, which is the desert is absolutely terrible and it doesn't matter if it's a dry heat, when the temperature is over 100 degrees it is still absolutely terrible. I normally hate air conditioning in cars, but it's a lifesaver in this circumstance. This tea is also helping to keep me refreshed. There are three servings in this can, but I downed the entire thing in less than ten minutes. It's your general cane sugar sweetened black tea with some cranberry juice thrown in the mix. It has all of the sweetness and flavor of a cranberry juice, but it lacks the bitterness and the harshness of the fruit.

Peace tea has stepped up with tallboy tea world. Now it's the other brands turn to respond. Eff the desert.

Jay and I are like brothers. Here are some little known facts about us:

1. We moved in together on someone else's suggestion after about two days of really knowing each other.


2. We wrote a ton of songs about barbecues.


3. We lived together without having a single fight.


4. We've seen each other's girlfriend's naked. Not current ones, but one girlfriend back each.

That's a close list of stuff, right? What more do you need to know you are compatible? Nothing. Jay knows what I like and he saw this Made and knew that it was a drink for me.

The cranberry of this drink is the number one flavor. It's prevalent and very strong and bites you the whole way through this euphonious ride. The lemon comes and goes. It's there but it goes and you don't miss it. The green tea does the same, but the cranberry easily trumps the bitterness of it. There is an odd but very Made flavor and it might be the final ingredient, Sucralose. It's not a deal breaker, ladies. It's fine. If I saw this again, I would drink it. I would recommend it to a friend. That means a lot because I drink a lot.

Jay and I like Made. Jay and I like each other. Jay and I like cooking on a grill with friends. We're great to be around. Find us. We'll entertain you.

When you've got it, you've got it. Tazo has it. This tea is a treat, a peach even. People don't really use that any more. Strange how a phrase just doesn't get used anymore, like some committee sat around and said, "Alright ladies and gentlemen. Today we will strike the words 'phat', 'boss', and 'cowabunga' from the American vernacular. Agree? Objections? No. Then it's settled. Let's go get a pizza." This tea is everything. It's perfect for what it is. It's sweet but not too sweet. It's bitter but not too bitter. It's a sweetened green tea that tastes like it should. Not to mention, it's not horrible in the calorie department. If this came in a 40 ounce bottle like malt liquor I would buy it and probably, with no restrictions, drink the whole thing. I don't live in the worst part of town, but if I find myself at the market across the street at, say, 9:30 in the morning, I see people buying 40s. I could now buy a 40 and drink with them. We could hang out. I could make friends with a 40 of this iced tea. Also, if the people who are buying these 40s are just thirsty for that much drink, they could save their livers and get this.

Tazo. Look at the picture I'm painting for you. Do you see all the work I'm doing for you? There is a demographic that you are missing: the early morning thirsty people. These people aren't alcoholics. They're just thirsty. You could sell so much of your drink to a new audience that you could open new factories and employ people. You could take the poor and give them jobs. Tazo! Are you listening to me? I'm having an epiphany. Do this. Make 40 ounces of pure, green tea bliss for everyone. Raining down from the skies like a needed rainstorm during an otherwise dry season, this could satisfy the masses. This tea could unite everyone.

Over the past couple of months I have been brewing gallon vats of tea, chilling it in my fridge and enjoying my own unsweetened iced teas. 99% of said tea has been green tea, and it feels like it's been forever since I just sat back and enjoyed a nice black tea. This Teas' Tea perfectly satiated my taste buds.

It tastes like a traditional southern sweet tea with some peaches thrown in the mix. It really is a nice refreshing change of pace when you can actually taste that a company uses cane sugar. It almost gives the drink it's own texture. There are subtle hints that it should be gritty, but without any actual grit at all. I could go for a slightly stronger peach taste in this, but the level that it is currently at is not a deal breaker by any means. The label says it's a “classic” and who am I to argue. With the heat and humidity that Buffalo has been having lately I feel like if I was out on my porch sipping this I could close my eyes and be transported to the backwoods of Georgia. Where I can only assure horrid things would happen from the stories my friends who used to live down there have told me.

I have always heard that pu-erh tea was supposed to be super fancy. I'm not a big fan of hot tea so I never looked into it. When I saw this bottle at the store today I thought, "Hey I can finally try this and see what the fuss is all about". Verdict: I don't like it. After doing some "after the fact" research, I find out that pu-erh tea is fermented. In my top 10 most hated drinks, 8 of them are fermented. I don't know why, I wish I could like fermented drinks. Everyone swears by Fentiman's and Bionade, but I can't enjoy them at all.

All that being said, this is a good clean tasting tea. There's only a slight peach flavor, and an even slighter ginger flavor. The latter really disappointed me because I really like tea with ginger in it. Even though I'm not big on lightly sweetened teas, even if this had more sugar in it I think I would still not like it very much. Sorry tea connoisseurs, it's just not my thing.

Hawaii is a tropical wonderland. Everyone knows that. It's lush, gorgeous and relaxing. You can hike through a jungle, spend the day surfing, check out a volcano or just relax on the beach. What more could anyone want. On top of that the fruits that grow on the islands are out of control: guavas, pineapples, mangoes and many others that you have probably never heard of, but that are more than likely delicious.

With all the great produce that grows I has hoping for this to be some sort of exotic iced tea. Can you just imagine an iced tea with guava juice in it? I think my taste buds would retire after tasting such a thing. Unfortunately Noh Foods' Hawiian Iced tea is simply the normal lemon variety. There is nothing wrong with that, and it's actually one of the finest lemon teas I've ever tasted, but I was just hoping for something more unique to the geographic namesake.

Noh Foods were smart when they made this. They knew that the tea is the main part of the drink, and that the amount of lemon juice they added to it mustn't distract one from the taste of the tea. I was actually surprised to find out that it was instant tea, and not traditionally brewed. Normally drinks made from instant tea are on the lower rungs of quality, but they have over come that and created a very nice product. I just hope they read this and decide to expand their line into some innovative fruit flavors.

“To achieve a hippy utopia through the use of brewed beverages.” I'm pretty sure that is the mission statement of the Peace Tea company. For the most part I think they might be on the right track. Their beverages are inexpensive so the common man can afford them. They also use decent sweeteners for health reasons. On top of all of that 90% of their line of teas taste pretty fantastic. It's a tea nearly everyone can afford and enjoy and isn't that the basis for a utopian civilization?

As far as I know this is the only diet tea they have yet to put out. I had my reservations about it, hence it took me so long to actually get around to drinking and reviewing it. Happily it wasn't all that bad. In fact I straight up enjoyed it. The strength of the green tea overpowered the sucralose and it didn't have that gross diet taste to it, well not too much. I honestly expected to drink a couple of sips of this and then pass it off to someone else, but I ended up downing it all myself. When it was nice and cold is when it was at its peak. The warmer it got the more the sucralose was noticeable.

My only question for the company is if you're striving for peace, what's up with all of the weird propaganda slogans on your cans? Are you trying to lull everyone into a sense of peace and well being and then arise as our new overlords? Are you actually the bringers of the apocalypse? Either way, good job on the tea. I'll be drinking many more.

Um, hello. I don't know how to say this, but when I was eating Mike, he told me that his final wish was to review this can of pink lemonade tea for him. I'm a chupacabra and what I do is eat people. I eat goats, too. Rabbits are pretty great but are often hard to catch. It seems that Mike and the Thirsty Dudes have a pretty big following so I feel that I owe it to his fans to explain what happened.

Mike was in Las Vegas looking for a root beer float and someone misguided him into going to the outskirts of town to a small ice cream shop. He made a wrong turn and ended up in the desert. He came across my path. I didn't want to eat him but he said something like "do you know who I am?" and that just ticked me off and I lost it. I had just lost $15 in Keno at Horrible's and was irritable. Next thing I remember is that Mike's legs were in my mouth. He told me while I was chewing his thighs that he had a backpack with this drink in it and he had to review it for the site. He gave me access to the site and just kind of let me eat the rest of him.

Now that you know what happened, I can review the drink for him and for you. I may be a desert dwelling creature, but I've been around the block a few times. I've had tea and I've had lemonade and I've had pink lemonade. This is a better pink lemonade than it is a sweet tea. The sweet tea has that partially diet taste, which distracts from the lemonade. The mixture isn't too bad on these hot summer days in the desert where I spend much of my time.

I'm not sorry I ate him, and to thank him for letting me do this for him, I've got a pair of ill-suited Cole Haan shoes and a gold Seiko watch someone can have. I'll be at the Golden Nugget all night. Just don't make me mad or I might have to eat you, feet first, of course. I can't have my dinner running away from me now, can I?

Somewhere in Asia there is a community garden where they mostly grow tea. I know it sounds ridiculous to designate so much public land to a garden of this variety, but think about it, who doesn't love a glass/mug of some nice green tea? Also, who are we to judge what brings a community together. Whether it's growing a few carrots and peppers or a small field of tea plants if it brings people together, then it's good for the community.

The real problems begin after the tea is harvested and it is drying. That is when arguments arise about how they will flavor the tea. There are many who are purists who just want it to be straight green tea. They believe adding anything to it disturbs the integrity of the drink. Others wish to flavor it with flowers. There are still some that want to add fruit flavor. Every year it's the same argument and every year they settle it the same way; with an old-fashioned street brawl. Everyone who has an opinion gathers in the middle of the now desolate field, where the tea had recently been harvested from and they have it out. The last one standing has their way (eww, not like that) with the tea.

This past season the top brawler had wanted some orange tea. He had kept his mouth shut about it for years, because he knew his training wasn't finished. For years he hit the gym daily to bulk up in order to ensure he would win the battle. His efforts paid off. The rest of the town was no match for him, and the brawl set a record for being the shortest in history.

Now that the tea has been brewed and chilled, our warrior sits on his back porch with a dusty old dog and sips away. It's a very strong, bitter green tea with slight accents of orange peels. He added just a touch of sugar to it to take the edge off, but no one in their right mind would ever refer to it as a sweetened tea. As he sat there he decided that it was a nice tea. It tasted like green tea should taste, but that if he had wanted it to be perfect he would have been better off either using orange juice instead of rinds, or a different fruit altogether.