Iced Tea - 901 Reviews

I don't think there is a Southerner out there who could make a complaint about this tea. I understand sweet tea is a huge part of the culture down there and it ranks right up there with any sort of religious artifact. This is simple and pure, the way sweet tea is supposed to be. It's just black tea (that was grown in South Carolina), cane sugar, and phosphoric acid (to help fight mold and bacteria).
There is actually less sugar in here than I would have expected from the taste. It only has 28g in the whole bottle. I still think it's pretty sweet and you can tell that they used cane sugar from the taste. Maybe I was wrong before. Maybe Southerners will be all up in arms because it's not sweet enough. It will be like someone desecrated their most holy artifact and that will be out for blood, sugary sweet blood. I don't understand how people below the Mason Dixon have teeth at all with the amount of sugar I am led to believe they consume.

Lipton released its Pure Leaf line as a higher quality, real tea iced tea a few years ago. It started off as Lipton's Pure Leaf and now it's just Pure Leaf with the name Lipton only appearing in the small print on the back. Now they have taken things in an even fancier direction by having Pure Leaf hasa sub-line called the Tea House Collection.

This is organic green tea that has had apple and ginger brewed right into it. This is the way tea should be. It's not garbage tea that has had some sort of flavoring added to it, such as syrup, like a lot of companies do. When you brew all of the organic material together it tastes real and that is what this is. I wish more companies thought this way. I would happily pay a little more for a quality product like this instead of a can of something that makes my teeth feel like they are rotting.


As with most drinks I would have preferred a stronger showing from the ginger, but it's still there in taste if not burn. The Fuji apple is fairly strong. It kind of taste like I'm eating an apple that someone has shot with a syringe full of green tea. Just imagine biting into that juicy beast. That would be great, messy but great. Save on the cleanup time and get yourself a bottle of this. I defy you to find a more naturally tasting mass produced tea.

I know that to everyone out there it sounds like being a part of Thirsty Dudes is a nonstop party. I mean sure, Mike and I have abandoned our families and live in a giant penthouse in the fanciest of buildings downtown. Sure, we race motorcycles everywhere we go, including both the public and private elevators to our penthouse. You know how some nicer fridges have a filtered water tap built into the door? Ours dispenses ice cold sarsaparilla. We have an entire freezer that is filled with nothing but green tea ice cream mochi. That doesn't make us any different than you our mild mannered readers. We still ride our prototype hoverboards one push at a time just like you. We are still humbled when companies send us advance flavors before they hit the market. Actually, that makes us feel pretty special. It's not the millions of dollars we have made from reviewing these drinks that fill us with a sense of pride, it's the little things like this.

When a package arrived the other day of the three flavors of the new Steaz cactus water line, I was pumped. You know pumped like when I ride the zip line down from our penthouse to the hot dog cart a few blocks away. I couldn't wait to review it and help get the word out on a product I was sure was going to be fantastic. The problem was that I was completely incapacitated from the flu. I didn't leave the couch, except to crawl to the rest room for about 72 hours. I thought it was the end of my life of luxury and leisure. As it does, time passed and my health returned and here I am enjoying a can of starfruit and green tea cactus water, even if it is a few days later that I would have liked it to be.

It was worth the wait folks. This is delicious. Cactus water is basically nature's version of Gatorade and it is far superior to what has been dumped on coach's heads for decades. It is high in antioxidants, reduces inflammation and is just chock full of electrolytes. This is sweet, smooth, and fruity. The green tea tastes is only vaguely there in the aftertaste, but the starfruit is right up front with the sweetness of the cactus water. There is some stevia in the mix as well, but I wouldn't really have guessed that from the taste, which is a sign of proper use of any zero calorie sweetener. Steaz has not disappointed.

I wonder how many cans of this it would take to fill one of those Gatorade coolers. I'll need to use the power of science to figure that out so I can be prepared for our next air hockey tournament up in the loft. I'm going to destroy Mike and then have the butler dump this on me when I win. Just like the champ I am.

Here's an idea, let's take a less than stellar beverage and make it somehow worse by taking out the sugar/stevia mix and replacing it with sucralose. Seriously why would they not just use all stevia? It may not be the best, but it is way better than the poison taste of sucralose. Nothing tastes real in this beverage. The peach tastes artificial and even the tea flavor seems fake somehow.. It's not undrinkable, but it's by no means enjoyable by my standards. It's like there was a science fair and a kid decided to make a soda in his home laboratory. Oh yeah, that kid is a super scientist in the making, just don't let her near anything you want to ingest. I really wanted to like this line and it just wasn't meant to be.

Ten years ago I was sitting in a kitchen in Portland, OR and a mug of tea was placed in front of me. I took one sip and my world changed. Up until that point I had never had yerba mate before and I had no idea how vastly different it was from every other tea I had ever drank up until that point. It was earthy, woodsy, bitter wonderfulness with a nice boost of caffeine. Since that time it has become more prevalent and I couldn't be happier.

From my own gathering of intel Guayaki seems to be the longest running and most readily available producers of ready to drink yerba mate on the market. I have yet to try one of their flavors that I wasn't in love with and I drink them all the time. As someone who doesn't normally drink coffee, these beverages give me a nice little push of energy from their caffeine content.

With the Bluephoria tea they have mixed in elderberry and blueberry juice in with their already wonderful tea. The result is just as good as you would imagine. The juice kind of sits on top of the tea, flavorwise, so there's not so much a new taste, just the separate flavors hanging out together, and that is how I like my tea. It has aa decent sweetness to it without tasting like liquid candy. The fact that it tastes like blueberries and elderberries and not just some generic sugar-berry amalgamation is what makes this drink so great. Guayaki has done it again and I can't wait for their line to expand yet again.

Steaz pumps out more flavors that almost any beverage company that I can think of. I feel like we get packages from them more than anyone else, and I am certainly not complaining. They manage to work out new teas, but they also keep their quality high. My only complaints seem to come from their zero calorie sweetener lines, and that's not on them. There is only so much a company can do when they want to sweeten a beverage, but keep it zero calories. Also, I've had issues with their carbonated teas, but I'm simply not a fan of carbonated tea for the most part.

This is one of that flavors that stands out in a sea of greatness though. I love jasmine tea and I love all things hibiscus. I once drank multiple pots of jasmine green tea at an Asian restaurant because they kept bringing it. It was so good that I couldn't help myself, but of course I haven't slept since due to my caffeine intake. Mike and I have also been known to purchase obscene amounts of hibiscus tea for our pleasure drinking, which we don't get to do much of.

Steaz has combined both nicely. One might think that combining the two would make everything too floral, but that is not the case at all. Sure, you can taste florals, but it's not like you got into a fight at a funeral and someone shoved an arrangement down your throat. It's nice and subtle. The hibiscus is just that, hibiscus. There is no trace of the spices that sometimes accompany this flower, but even though I love them, I don't think they would have a place in this beverage. So it is classic hibiscus mixed with classic jasmine all of which is lightly sweetened cane sugar and just a drop of lemon juice. It's wonderful and if someone kept pouring it into my glass I could see myself drinking a case of it before I even knew what happened.

Look at you Sotea, you're moving up in the world. You've taken off the training wheels and have put out a flavor that is actually pretty decent. You may not be ready to go on a 40 mile bike trip yet, but you are moving out of the driveway and onto the sidewalks. This may be the dumbest analogy I have ever used and it doesn't even really make sense. My point is that while the other two Sotea flavors we have reviewed left a lot to be desired this one is actually pretty good. It tastes like carbonated green tea (always a bit weird, but sometimes enjoyable) with a fairly good (black)berry flavor to it. Sure, there is stevia in the mix with the cane sugar that is messing with the taste a bit, but it's nothing horrible and I can easily see past it. I feel like this is what they were reaching for (and missing) for the other flavors. I can only hope that with the other flavors we have on deck that they get even better.

"Where da ginger at!" I exclaim as I drink sip after sip. "Where da ginger at!" I yell when I can't find my live-in girlfriend. More importantly, though, this drink didn't have ginger in it as far as I know. You can tell me up and down that it did but taste it, bro. Ginger it does not. There isn't that earthy flavor that ginger brings and there isn't that sweet heat that ginger so generously gives.

Gingerless aside it was good. Like a lightly sweetened half and half. Oh a half and half cut into thirds called a "third and third and third" with lemonade, tea and ginger? Now we're talking. You hear me, Steaz, if that is your real name. Now we're talking.

What is the secret to making a good iced green tea latte? I've tried numerous times at home with mediocre success. When I get them in a coffee shop, or buy a higher-end prepackaged one, such as this, I really enjoy them. Maybe I'm just not using a high enough quality green tea. I'm not brewing bottom of the barrel stuff over here, but it's not super nice either. Oh well, I guess it's not all that important. It's not a beverage I often crave, so when I do I have options to purchase it.

Rebbl has put their hat in the ring with this latte that is made with coconut milk. Unlike the Maca Mocha the coconut in here does not taste toasted, and that is an improvement from my perspective. It's pretty creamy and I almost want to say it is too heavy on the milk, but that green tea flavor still cute through nicely, so I guess I really have no complaints. It's smooth and it tastes like the quality green tea that I am apparently not using.

In addition to the tea and the milk there is also honey ,vanilla extract, spirulina, quillaja, pink salt and stevia in the mix. First off I would like to note that I can't taste the stevia at all, so good for them. Other than that you might find yourself asking what need is there to add so many extra ingredients into this recipe. Well normally I would be right there with you, but Rebbl drinks are “Super Herb Elixers,” so they always add extra stuff to give you some health benefits in ways that doesn't mess with the flavor at all. I'm all for it. None of those ingredients are detrimental to your health at all, so I'll take the benefits and I'll drink the latte and I will like it.

"Don't bother" would be my response to the statement, "I'm going to carbonate tea." Sure, it's a real "millennial" response but seriously, don't bother. Iced tea is like the perfect drink and you're going to ruin it with a million sugars. Yeah, I said it. This drink is ruined. It's got citrus but it tastes more like someone dumped half a can of Sprite into...something. I am not sure if there is tea in this to be honest. Aren't I always honest with you, friends? This kind of stinks. How's that for honest? It's too sweet and I don't like it. You like that? Brutal. It might be sweeter than actual Sprite. They really let this drink have it. Woo! So sweet. So bad. Peace.

Getting older is a strange thing. Your priorities change, well sometimes, and even your tastes evolve. Less than 10 years ago I was an adult by any cultures standards. I was 26, I lived in an apartment, I supported myself and I did what I wanted. It just happens that what I apparently wanted to do was drink obscene amounts of iced tea. The thing is that what I was drinking was more sugar water than tea, and the fact that I am not obese with some disease and shocking. On an average day I would say I drank more Arizona tall boys than I am comfortable admitting. Those days are long gone though. I would have to struggle to get through one full can of Arizona at this point, and my drink of choice is unsweetened iced tea that I brew at home.

Bigelow understands this and believes that it's ”about time tea drinkers had that home brewed tea experience in a bottle.” Now I always assumed that Arizona and Bigelow were connected in some way because of their similar bottles, but the 5 seconds of research I just did provided me with no info to back that up. Whether they are or not, doesn't matter, but this bottle of tea is definitely far closer to what I brew at home than a tallboy of Arizona. This actually tastes like tea and not the sugary goodness that youth craves. There is about half the amount of sugar in this that what I used to drink. It kind of tastes like what sweet tea would be if you made it with green tea (and a little less sugar). It's nice to still have a touch of the bitterness from the tea. The mango and lychee flavors are both there and identifiable, with the lychee being the stronger of the two, but neither of them take away from the green tea taste and pair nicely with it.

I wish I would have jut accepted beverages like this as superior when I was younger. It would have saved me from a lot of dumb calorie consumption.

Strange things are afoot at the Circle K, and by Circle K I mean this bottle of carbonated tea. I've had a handful of tea sodas in my days on this planet and to be honest I don't know if any of the flavored ones have really impressed me. Give me a straight up sparkling black, green, white, or yerba mate tea and I'll be all over it, but something gets lost in the translation when you mix carbon dioxide, tea and fruit flavors. Something especially seems wrong when a zero calorie sweetener is brought into the mix. Look, I've made my peace with stevia. I don't love it, but I know it has its place and I've even been known to enjoy it in some drinks. In this bottle of Sotea it's blended with real sugar, so it should be actually decent, but it mixes with the peach flavor in a way that just makes the whole thing taste artificial. The ingredients say nothing about the peach juice, but “natural flavors” is listed, so I'm assuming it has something to do with an actual peach, but it just doesn't taste authentic. I was excited to try this line when I came across it, but it really is just not for me and my taste buds.

Here we have a company who understands how to do low calorie beverages. Perhaps it's just me but when I'm looking to lower my sugar/calorie intake, just reducing the amount of sweetener is a perfect solution. I don't need a beverage that is “fake sweet.” Sure zero calorie sweeteners can lower the amount of calories until they are non-existent, but they also have a very specific overpowering flavor to them that can ruin nearly any drink that they inhabit. In most cases you can taste the sweetener more than you can taste the actual flavor. Dark Dog still uses cane sugar, in conjunction with coconut sugar, but lowers the quantity to give you an energy drink that has 50 calories from 11g of sugar, yet you can also taste the flavor of the beverage with no distractions.

The caffeine in this drink comes from the trifecta of green tea, yerba mate, and guarana. Unlike the sweeteners used those flavors are very prevalent in the taste. This is essentially a sparkling tea drink with vitamins and a splash of juice added. The combination of elderberry, acerola, cranberry and lemon juice is very minimal and you can only detect hints of it when you take a sip. There is a vague fruitiness floating around the tea flavor.

If this can didn't state that it was only 50 calories I would never guess that it was a low calorie beverage. It still has just enough sweetness without loading you up with buttloads of sugar. Yes, that would be cubic buttloads the only official unit of measurement at Thirsty Dudes.

I'm happy to announce that Bhakti Chai has made its way to Buffalo, NY and I can now purchase it whenever I want to have an intense experience. If you think you know what chai is all about because you've ordered it from Starbucks before you are in for a wild ride with this company. The spices and ginger used in these teas are much more pronounced in order to try and recreate the traditional chai of India and not the watered down American version. I understand that this is not a drink for everyone, but I certainly love it. It borderline hurts to drink this, and I love Bhakti for it.

This is the Semi Sweet version of the beverage, and as you would expect it tastes exactly like the original, only not as sweet. I prefer this version, because who needs that much sugar?

Also, in a moment of brilliance I decided to add some of this to the pancake batter I was making and bam chaicakes, your new favorite breakfast food. I know I will be making them again soon.

Starbucks. Woah. You really nailed it with this thing. It's sparkling makes a huge difference. The pineapple kicks it up another notch because it gives it a little sting. Then, as if that wasn't enough, I love the Passion tea. It's got that licorice that makes me feel kind of funny. Like when we used to climb the ropes in gym class.

This drink rules and if I get back into "the States" and they don't have it, I'm going to be very disappointed. Please be waiting for me when I get home. Wear something sassy or sultry. Not both. One or the other.

Tommy, you have been drinking far too many energy drinks. I can assure you that they are not improving your gaming skills. Sure, they might help you stay up until the early hours of the morning, but you're a teenage you should have no problem staying up that late anyway. I mean you don't wake up until noon. Fine, I can't handle your whining, you can have some sort of energy drink, but it has to be one of these natural ones and not that chemical swill you and your friends like to down. Also, you have to agree to go outside and have fun with your friends. Go and cause a little trouble, you're young that's what you're supposed to do, not sit in front of the TV all summer. Good, then it's a deal. Here have this can of V8. Don't look at me like that it isn't that gross tomato juice stuff, V8 has expanded their line. This is sweet potato and carrot juice with fruit juice and green tea extract mixed in. Trust me, it tastes fantastic. You don't even notice the juices except for the orange and pineapple. It has some underlying flavor that I can't really place, but it just makes it taste more interesting.

Tommy, the thing about this energy drink is that it won't give you the jitters and will make you actually play your games better with steady hands. See I'm looking out for you. It's just caffiene and B vitamins. It's also on the healthier side because it's 34% juice and it's low in calories. I know you don't care about these things, but I'm your parent and it's my duty to look out for you when it comes to these things. Okay now live up to your end of the deal and go outside. I'm calling Johnny house and if you're there you're grounded mister!

This is an entry-level tea for everyone. There is a light green tea, light melon, light lemon and light peppermint. It's subtle everything which makes for a pretty good tea. If some of these flavors were too intense, it would make it too definitive or too much of one particular type but since everything is one the same, low level, you're left with an even, well put together drink.

Sometimes I ice my tea. In this case, this is what I did. It makes for a great iced tea. I think that iced green tea allows the bitterness of green tea to shine through a little bit and that's what green tea should taste like. I think that if I drank it hot, the lemon might have shined through but I would have missed the melon a bit. I think I made the right decision and I think I found a tea that, if I had more of, would be a "go to" in these warm, end-of summer, days.

There was a brief period a couple of years ago where vitamin drinks with a powder/concentrate stored in the cap were all the rage. The idea behind it was that it kept the vitamins fresh and more potent. Mostly they ended up tasting like Flintstone chewable vitamins, and while I can't vouch for their potency, they were fairly tasty and there's an element of fun in watching it mix.

This is the first time I have experienced an iced tea in this format and as expected there was no vitamin flavor at all. After I twisted the cap (and was surprised by the force of the propulsion of the flavor concentrate shooting down into the base) I was greeted by a nice peach ginger taste. There was zero burn from the ginger, but the peach did not taste candied like a lot of teas of that flavor do. This is sweetened with a mixture of cane sugar and stevia, but it's not obvious from the taste. I more than likely wouldn't have guessed that a zero calorie sweetener was involved at all if I hadn't read it on the label.

This may not be a perfect tea, but it's as close as your going to get with a a mixture and not something that has been freshly brewed.

I've been all about iced chai lattes this summer. I got one on a whim when I met a friend at a coffee shop about a month ago and I knew it would be the summer drink for me. I tend to make them at home with some fancy loose leaf chai that I have, but to tell you the truth no matter how good it is it's never as good as I want it to be. Enter Bhakti Chai and it's a whole new world. This is the strongest chai tea I have ever had and that is the way this drink should be. A lot of chai tea ends up pretty smooth, but this really packs a punch. It's black tea with spices, a healthy serving of ginger and a bit of soy milk. Each sip is a strong shot of spices that fade out into a mellow burn. I'm weird and I like a little discomfort in my drinks. This delivers what I need. Also, the fact that they use pressed ginger instead of a powder really makes a difference.

I've never had a chai tea outside of my house or a local coffee shop. This could be how it's traditionally done and I could be completely ignorant of that. If that's the case I need to drink more of the “real stuff.”

You'll never guess what happens next! After you drink this, you'll be totally refreshed. Why? Well because you're sure to drink the whole thing because it's good. You are sure to drink the thing because it's zero calories and doesn't taste like you're eating the plastic beads out of a 90's hackey sack. You'll drink the whole thing because you feel thirsty and it's better than the alternative which is almost certainly Brisk.

So after you're done drinking it what are you left with? Well, a nice berry tea taste and only the slightest bit of erythritol. It's less sharp than Stevia and I like Stevia. I like my old housemate Steve. I like one of my oldest friends Steve. I like the guy who used to sell thing on eBay for a skateshop in Lockport Stevebay. I'm filled to the brim with Steves I like. Sure I'm talking about erythritol but who cares. I'm in a caring mood and I care for this drink. A little bit of tea and a little bit of fruit and a little bit of sweet. I'm not going to go as far as saying that it's a trifecta by any means but I will say that it's a fantastic supplement for most of that other diet garbage you've been drinking.