Iced Tea - 901 Reviews

Dear Sir, are you a liar? No. Well, that's good enough for me. I believe you about your tea. I mean Honest is your name. This certainly tastes like brewed green tea and nothing else. Good job and keep up those truths.
-Thirsty Dudes

As Jay mentioned, Marburger was previously known as "Fike's" and drinking this brings me back to simpler times. When I had my first helping of this, it was probably around two in the morning and I was waiting in line to get pizza after my break from "metal night" only to finish said pizza and then go back to "metal night" until four in the morning and then have to drive forty minutes home.

This was always impressive to me. I know, I know, it's got corn syrup in it, but when you drink it then and there, right out of the cooler, it's not that bad and it doesn't have that cheap, corn syrup sting. There isn't a bad, gas station iced tea. It's actually not too bad at all, and for the price, you can't really beat it. Taste is not anything like an instant tea and I don't know why they even advertise it as such. Yeah, I know it's technically an ingredient, but it seems like something they would at least want to skim over. I could go to the store, buy iced tea mix, and make it myself. It just seems strange that there are still these other ingredients aside from "iced tea mix" but I guess even the mix is made of something.

Marburger, you're alright with me.

Science made this tea. No questions asked. There is no way that a group of people that just make drinks made this. They had to hire out a special force of mixologists and chemists and florists to get the blend of magic that is contained within this bottle. Every sip is the most bold, complex taste your tongue has ever had.

Licorice, hibiscus, cinnamon and more. There is a serious spicy, floral explosion with every gulp. At zero calories, this could come in a fifty-five gallon drum and it wouldn't be enough. I have nothing bad to say about it other than I tried to span it out as long as I could and could not let it stay in my fridge undrank any more. Even the Reb A left you with a cool, sweet taste when the main show was over with. It was a dessert to a perfect meal, if you will.

Get it. End of story.

If anyone ever has any problem sleeping, pause in your tossing and turning, get out of bed and grab a bottle/can or Marley's Mellow Mood. It seems like the most ridiculous thing, like it should be a gag gift, but this stuff works. I mean really works. There are a lot of relaxation drinks popping up out there. Some are more effective than others, but none are as effective as these. There is a reason these are popping up everywhere and other brands fall by the wayside.

This flavor is so smooth as well. It's a half and half that is sweetened with erythritol, but it just tastes like iced tea and lemonade. It doesn't taste diet at all. Okay it does have some regular sugar in it as well, but the weird diet taste usually overpowers everything. A lot of relaxation drinks are carbonated, which can be annoying when it's the middle of the night and you can't sleep. With this tea you don't have to wait for the bubbles to settle. You can pound the whole bottle in about five seconds.

I wasn't overly awake or sleepy last night when I drank this. We were almost through Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil and I decided to drink it just so I could write a review for it this morning. About 10-15 minutes after I drank it I was having trouble keeping my eyes open while laying in bed watching the movie. I did win the fight and completed a great movie starring two of my favorite actors.

What've you got there? Is that a gun? Oh, it's just a can. Sorry. I'm a bit paranoid. You see, I had this wildly vivid dream where a man who looked just like you stood me up at this very shoe store. I was here, buying my Gentlemen, welcome to orientation. As many of you know this weekend marks the opening of the golf course here at Leisurewood Acres Country Club. For the sake of the new caddies and as a reminder to those returning to us I would like to remind everyone that this is a place of business, not a movie from the 80's. Every year pranks get played and every year the golfers complain. I'm not above having a little fun, but really guys how many times can you throw a Baby Ruth in the pool and pretend it's a turd? It's been done and I don't see any of you following in the footsteps of the great Bill Murray and taking a bite out of the chlorine drenched candy.

Okay, I know you guys aren't going to listen to me and the pranks are going to happen no matter what I say, but can you please at least be creative. Recreating scenes from a movie is never funny to people on the outside. In fact it's just plain annoying. So think of new pranks or don't do any at all. I'm putting my foot down about that. Also, while you're out there on the links daydreaming about what jokes you're going to pull, offer the golfers some cans of this new Peace Tea. Sharon in the front office accidentally ordered 100 cases of the stuff and we have to move it somehow. Mark, stop your complaining. It's not like I'm having you guys peddle garbage tea, this is some decent quality stuff. For legal reasons we can't call it by it's proper nomenclature, but it's half tea and half lemonade the way great golfers like it. It's actually way better than the garbage they've been brewing in the kitchen. It tastes like a naturally brewed lemon tea with a little extra kick to it. There's even a little apple juice mixed in for good measure. It's refreshing and tastes more like tea than it does sugar water.

Now get out there with your tiny scissors and tend to the greens. The groundskeeper left in a huff and said something about getting a job at an elementary school. At least that's what I think he said. It's hard to understand him because of his accent sometimes.

What a day. It has been dry as a bone for a month here in the North East. My yard is yellow and looks terrible. I am sure that I am going to have a thousand dollar water bill, as will the rest of the gardeners up on the East Coast.

Today the sky broke and rain poured down from the sky. It fell down so hard that I knew I was in for some trouble. My house was built in 1827. No joke. 1827. The basement takes on water like a sieve and today was one of those days.

I checked when it started to rain and there was nothing. Awesome. I checked again, because I felt it in my bones that trouble was afoot. I couldn't have been more right. 6-8" of water covered my floor. It blew the cover off one pipe and filled my sump pump. I had to bail water myself with a bucket up and down the stairs as my basement took on more water.



Eventually, the rain subsided and the water started flowing out instead of in.

When all was said and done, I stood outside in the drizzling rain, catching my breath, and cooling down. I needed something to drink and this was the clear choice. No pun intended. It did a great job and I liked it more than the other flavors that I had. This actually gave the essence of flavored water. Water first, flavor second. I didn't get a lot of white tea taste but I did get a fair amount of mandarin and that's all I could have asked for.

Rule for first time homebuyers; check the basement before you buy a house. Check out the house on a saturating day to ensure that it can take it.

For the longest time, I couldn't enjoy unsweetened tea. I always need my iced to taste like fruit and sugar. Sometimes one would question if what I was drinking were actually tea. Probably not, I think most sugary iced teas are more water and sugar with a hint of instant tea powder.

Skip forward many years and I'm living in a house in Portland called the Lemon Bomb. It was named the Lemon Balm, but people kept saying it as 'bomb' so they changed it. A friend once drew a great picture of a grenade/lemon hybrid. Anyways, previous tenants of the house had amassed a good collection of loose tea and everyone in the house enjoyed them. Everyone that is, except me. One day, I decided to be adventurous and went through all the little mason jars and picked out a few scoops of 3 or 4 of the best smelling ones. I put them in a pot of boiling water and 10 minutes later I had the best unsweetened tea I've ever had. It was that moment that made me realize that all unsweetened tea isn't bad.

This tea isn't quite as incredible as my own concoction, but it's still really good. It has a nice light and crisp taste to it. My palette isn't accustomed to unsweetened teas yet, but this has guava leaves and ginseng in it along with the Oolong tea. Thank you Sokenbicha for helping me on my journey into the unsweetened tea world.

The best word I can think of to describe this tea would be "clean." It's very crisp and flavorful, but there's really no aftertaste. You take a sip. The flavor hits you all at once. You swallow. Clean palate. It's a nice change of pace as many sweetened teas leave a taste in your mouth for a while afterwards.

The peach flavor doesn't taste overly ripe, but it fits the taste of the white tea better because of it. If it were riper it would become too overpowering. I am a big fan.

Sometimes it's 90+ degrees out and you suddenly have the undying need to go out walk a creek and search for the worthy opponent General Sherman. For the record General Sherman is a catfish that lives in 18 Mile Creek out in the Derby/Hamburg area of New York. Rumor has it that his belly is filled with gold and the ultimate iced tea. Few people know of his existence and even fewer have lived to tell the tale of their battles with him. That is mainly because I think only three of us ever tried to catch him. I have had two encounters with he and all his glory through the years (last year). Editor Dan and I nearly had him once. He exited the water and we grabbed him, but his hide was just too slippery for us to keep a grasp.

So I returned, I saw the corpses of many catfish (three) but none of them were the General. He was nowhere to be found. Maybe he was laying in wait to build up his armies, or maybe he swam out into the lake. I doubt we'll ever know for sure. One thing that I do know is that I worked up one hell of a thirst on this adventure. I had hoped to quench it with the previously mentioned "ultimate tea" I was going to gather from the gullet of General Sherman, but since I failed I had to resort to POM tea.

To be fair it wasn't really a resorting to it, as POM makes some incredible tea. This flavor has the perfect blend of pomegranate and blackberries. I am a sucker for anything with blackberries in it, they are your money berry. Something strange happens in this tea. There is the great fruit and tea flavors, but there's something else. It almost tastes like mint. It has the same cool crispness, but without the actual mint flavor. I had never experienced this before this week, but this is the second drink I've had with this effect. I have to say I really enjoy it and it makes the drink that much more refreshing.

Fikes used to be THE ghetto iced tea of choice among my friends for a long time. They were 69 cents for a little jug of it and was only available at a gas station on the corner of Main and Winspear in Buffalo. They changed their label at one point and for the longest time I hung onto an empty jug of it. I wish I still had it.

Anyways, as Jason mentioned in the Mountainberry review, Fikes is now Marburger Farm Dairy. Sure it doesn't have the same classic label, but it's still delicious. I bought this at the same gas station as Jason and I could have sworn I saw Franklin Mercer coming out of the store as I was entering. It sent chills down my spine. Anyways, this flavor is great. It tastes like iced tea mixed with a melted freezie pop. Even for a tea made with high fructose corn syrup, this is great! I just wish I had stocked up on more while I was in Zelienople.

Ahhh, big city boy like you coming down to the South, eh? Well we've got a thing or two to teach you about how we do things 'round here. For starters, we only wear overalls. For the women-folk, they wear sundresses. That's the way 'tis and that's the way it's gonna be, now and forever. Number two is that we make our pies with lard, the way that mama made 'em. None of that fancy, low calorie margarine like you city slickers have up there. Lard. If y'ain't got lard, butter. Ol' fashioned butter'll make everything go down smoother. Third, it's hot. Get used to it. Fourth is that we make our sweet tea with two things; tea and sugar. That's it and that's all, now and f'ever.

What's that you got there, boy? Sweet tea?! In a bottle?! That better be a bottle that used to have paint or some sort of gas-o-line in it or I ain't tasting' it. Alright, give her here, I'll take a swig. Ppppttttt!!! What's this, here? Swill is what it is. It's too thick. It's downright syrupy, if you ask me. Not that bad?!? City boy, number five is respect your elders so don't you forget it. Real Southern sweet tea is smooth and sweet. This is smooth and sweet and syrupy. Do you remember me saying that real Southern sweet tea is s'posed to be syrupy? 'Cause I didn't.

Boy, you've got some learnin' to do before you make it down here. It's not all swamps and gators and biscuits and gravy. What'd you say, darlin'? I've got to go, boy. M'wife made gator stew with biscuits and gravy.

Does anyone besides the elderly drink, let actually like instant coffee? My grandfather drank it, but I think he may be the only person I've known that has. I don't like coffee to begin with, so an instant version sounds like pure hell. Why do they even make it if no one buys it, well besides the elderly? When you get to a certain age do you just suddenly develop a taste for it, or did it just have it's time and place and once that generation dies out the "art" of instant coffee will be gone?

For as few people who purchase instant coffee I can only assume that even less buy instant tea. I think every mother buys a huge tub of it once. They make one pitcher of it. It takes one glass to realize it's way gross and then the tub sits in the pantry for years never to be opened again. It turns out that all of that unused instant tea on the shelves of grocery stores ends up in the factories of "ghetto" tea companies. You know the ones that are brands you never really heard of that come in huge jugs for less than a dollar. They all seem to have the names of farms, but I don't know why a farm would make iced tea. I could understand juice or some nice chocolate milk, but tea makes no sense.

Galliker's is one such company. They are based out of Pennsylvania and I believe they are also known as the "in-store" brand for Sheetz gas stations. I love Sheetz. I wish more gas stations were like it. They are clean and have a great selection of drinks as well as the "Made to Order" deli section.

I would probably never have picked this up, except the sugar cubes on the label caught my attention. Sure enough this is corn syrup free. That made up my mind, along with the fact that it says "no lemon." It's cheap sugar tea. That is for certain. The thing is sometimes drinks like that have a certain charm. It's on the higher end of the scale of cheap teas. I would never go out of my way to pick it up, but if I saw it in a gas station and it was between this and a Nestea or a Brisk this product would certainly win out.

I like a lot of Honest Tea's tea. Is that redundant? I don't care. I like a lot of it, which is good because there is a lot of it to like. They definitely crank out flavor after flavor and never look back. I look at the shelves more than one should and I'm not even surprised when I can't keep up to what they come out with; this, CocoNova, Ade, and so on and so forth.

I think that this is a tricky one. If you make a cup of tea, and add one sugar packet, you're pretty set. It's a good ratio. This tastes like a gallon of black tea with one sugar packet. It's in there, but it's so lightly in there that you almost wish it was not there at all. It's not a bad tea, but for my money, this is too "Just a tad sweet" for me. I do, on the other hand, appreciate the maple syrup as an additional sweetener and flavoring. It's light in the mix, but it's there and you like it. It's bitter, almost like a green tea, but it's black tea.

I like this tea, but there are other teas out there that do what this tea does better. I am sure that this will sell like hotcakes, just not to me.

About a decade ago Mike, a couple of other friends and myself would go to this crappy bar for "Metal Night." We weren't/aren't super into metal but our friends DJed it and it was something to do. Every week we went and every week about an hour or so in we would get bored and go get pizza and iced tea. Not any iced tea mind you but Fikes tea. It was a really cheap jug of tea that was actually really tasty. We would just kind of disappear from the bar every week and not tell anyone. When people would ask we would jokingly reply that we had a meeting of "Team Cool." That's really a pretty boring story, but it was fun times. The reason I tell you is that I believe Marburger Farms and Fikes to be the same company. The only places I ever found Fikes was in one gas station in Buffalo and one in Zelienople, PA (A terrifying town that is home to the Mercer Family). I'm sure you'll hear all about them at some point. The reason I think they are the same is that I would always stop at that gas station on my way to Pittsburgh to pick some up. When I went a couple of days ago Fikes was nowhere to be found but Marburger Farms was there in the same style bottles, with the same flavors. I don't know if there was a hostile takeover and to be honest I don't care. What I do care about is that this iced tea still exists.

There are a lot of "ghetto" iced teas out there. Most of them aren't fit to feed to swine. This tea is cheap and should be terrible, but it somehow turned out great. It's definitely more sugar water than tea, but it still has a somewhat tea flavor. They use instant tea powder instead of brewing it, which is normally a big no-no in my book, but again they somehow make it work. I think it helps that they actually use fruit juice in their flavoring instead of some weird chemicals. In case you were wondering "mountainberry" is Pennsylvanian for blackberry.

In recent news, the unsweetened tea world has been turned on its ear recently by newcomer Sokenbicha. When Sokenbicha first arrived on the tea scene no one took much notice. It sat on the shelves in its quasi-fancy bottle gathering dust as it was overlooked for Teas Tea. Then one daring individual took a chance during a sale and the tea world has never been the same. Never has such a richly flavored unsweetened iced tea made so many moves in such a short time.

The company knows that flavor is just as important as no sugar, and they make their ingredients count. Most companies treat their unsweetened teas as bare bones. Water and tealeaves with nothing else added. Sokenbicha sees the folly in that and in this particular flavor they add barley, rice, cinnamon and ginger. The result is truly phenomenal. The taste is primarily a nice smooth tea mixed with what tastes like puffed rice. Added to that are the slightest aftertastes of ginger and cinnamon. It is truly a drink to write back to the small town you grew up in and brag about to those who are destined to die never leave.

When I told Mike and Jay I found this can for 60 cents at Big Lots, they wished me lucked. Unbeknownst to me, Jay had previously reviewed a mango drink from the same company and it wasn't anything to write home about. I was hoping since this was an iced tea it might be better, but nope, not at all. This is pretty generic tasting lemon iced tea. There is nothing special about this except for the can. For cheap iced tea, I'll be sticking with Arizona tall boys.

Editor Dan sends me messages all the time like, "Have you ever tried _______?" and I will refer to the list and let him know if we have or not. He goes on more little trips than anyone I know. Dude will just up and leave and I'll call him and he'll say "Oh, I'd love to get tacos but I'm in Nebraska" or "I'd love to get pizza but I'm in Albuquerque". One thing that Dan excels at is thinking of Thirsty Dudes and always bringing us stuff back.

Well on this occasion, he brought us stuff back from a store that is two miles away that carries this drink that I've never seen, Jay's never seen, and Derek's never seen. That's strange as we typically scour stores we've been to hundreds of times. You know, just in case.

So he brought us back every flavor they had and I paid him in a burrito. Fair trade? I think so. He wanted me to wait for him to try this, but since he's not here, I'm thirsty, and this guy was cold, I had to go in without him. He would and should be upset.

This tea rules. It's got all the inherent bitterness you would expect from a white tea but a killer, natural strawberry flavor through and through. It contains "strawberry flavoring" which is a bit ominous but it also contains Poteet strawberry puree although there isn't any seeds or strawberry remnants. Poteet is a city in Texas known for its strawberry festival, and dude, if this is what they come up with, I might have to schedule a trip. This tea is wonderful. It's strong, sweet, and it tastes as natural as it says it is. I believe them. Texas is known for being big, not liars.

Rough days count for strong, unsweetened tea. Nothing calms me down like an unsweetened tea that's bursting with infused with flavors. I've been having a rough time at work. Things are going down, you know. It's one of those things where I just wish someone could punch me in the face and it would all be over? You've never had that? Come on. You've never wanted to get punched in the face and wake up and "it's all over"? You live an easy life, my friend.

Before someone punches me in the face, I would like to finish this bottle of tea. It's good. It's that nice bitterness that is accompanied with an uber-intense chamomile flavor that, I'm hoping, doesn't knock me out. I hope it just chills me out to the point where I don't care if someone runs up the back of my legs with a bike because no one in this city knows you're supposed to ride your bike on the street. Sidewalks are for walking. Streets are for bikes. So there aren't any bike lanes. Who cares? Deal with it.

I could easily make this tea a nice standby and if you are a non-sweetened tea lover, and you've never tried it, you can't go wrong. Drop a small amount of dough and relax. That punch is coming.

Up until this point nearly all of the Rob's Really Good Flavors have been discontinued. It's funny because I had stated before that I always expected more from this company with the exception of the blueberry tea, which is the only flavor that made the cut in the switch to their new line. I'm glad that the company held the same opinion as us.

This is my first go with the new line, and I have to say after my first sip I already knew it was far superior to their old flavors. If a sweetened tea company wants to win me over with their products the best course of action is to use a decent sweetener and actual fruit juice for flavors. Rob's Really Good has done both of those things. I also want to applaud them for their use of oolong tea instead of the classic black variety. It adds just a little bit of kick that makes it stand out. In essence this is a southern sweet tea made with oolong with some real peach juice mixed in. I can't wait to try the other new flavors.

Call it a hunch, but I'm pretty sure this is a completely different company than the Texas Tea we reviewed in the past. That stuff was cheap gas station swill that was passable only because it was so cheap. This on the other hand is a high quality organic tea. This one is also actually made in Texas instead of New Jersey. Can we just strike the other country from our collective memories and pretend that this was the only Texas Tea that we've known?

This tea is wonderful. You can tell from the taste that actual blueberries were used in the creation of it. The sweetness of it is also very obviously pure cane sugar. It's almost gritty and I mean that in the best possible way. It's sweet and refreshing. I can imagine myself slowly sipping on a bottle while I sit on a back porch of a century house somewhere in the backwoods of the south. It's a relaxing and slightly terrifying thought.

The bottle was also informative as I learned that Nacogdoches is the oldest town in Texas and it also has the highest production of blueberries out of anywhere in the U.S. Who would have thought that? I never expect much to be in Texas. With the exception of Austin my experiences in that state have been less than stellar. Since starting this site I've learned that there is an unusually high concentration of quality tea companies that reside in that state and I'm glad that I've found another in Texas Tea. The next time I'm down there the amount of iced tea I will consume may be setting a record for the books.