Teas' Tea - 11 Reviews

Teas' Tea, and their parent company Ito En, have been long time favorites of us here at Thirsty Dudes. They make quality products that taste like real tea and not some strange powder. After years of their standard flavors they seem to be expanding their line a lot over the past bit of time. As long as the staples stick around you will hear no complaints from this guy. I bought this bottle when Mike and I joked about walking from downtown Brooklyn to JFK and then ended up walking half of the way before we realized we were being ridiculous and we should just get on a train, whose stops we had passed the entire way. We ended up walking 35 miles over a few days and never complained once. That was a good hang. Anyway, we walked. I was thirsty. We hit up a bodega, where I was planning on grabbing a Guayaki, but instead happily ended up with this. I wasn't disappointed at all. This is one of the best teas I've had in a long time. It's only slightly sweet, which is always a plus and the flavors really shined. Yuzu is a citrus fruit that I hadn't thought I had tried before, but as soon as I tasted it I was immediately reminded of one of the original Sobe flavors that used to come in glass bottles. I drank far too many of those things in the back room of my first job at a supermarket to forget that flavor. Did I steal them when doing returns? I admit nothing. You do your research. I actually searched on my own the old Google and yuzu is definitely a fruit used by Sobe. So if you remember Sobe in the late 90s you probably can imagine what this tastes like. Man I miss those drinks, they just aren't the same now. Okay, back on topic, this is really delicious and I can't encourage you enough to get out there and try it.

I balked at cold brew for coffee when it became popular as being nonsense for people with too much time disposable income. Then it was finally forced upon me as a friend and I realized that I wanted to be one of those people because it was so much better than regular coffee; smooth and delicious. Now cold brewing tea is becoming a thing, and again I thought it was companies jumping on a trend, but I'll be damned if this is not the best sweetened raspberry tea that I have ever tasted. Just like with the coffee the tea is smooth, without being syrupy. I'm sure a bit part of the greatness is that actual dried raspberries are brewed with the tea and it's not an additive. The sugar level is kept to 15g, which makes it sweet, but tolerably so. Let me rephrase that, it a level of sweetness that you can actually enjoy. It doesn't overshadow the actual flavor of the drink, but it also helps them to shine a bit. It leaves a tad bit of bitterness to the tea, and that's how I like things. The price point on this will keep it from being a regular drink, but it is something I will definitely treat myself to from time to time.

I know I can be a stickler, but I really would prefer if companies named their products in the order of the prominent flavors. For example, this is labeled peach ginger, but in my mind it should be ginger peach. That's correct, for the first time ever a beverage has peach in it and it is not the flavor that is smacking you a good one, right in the kisser. In fact both flavors in here are fairly tame, but of the two, ginger is what I am getting the most of. They are not kidding when they say this is lightly sweet. Even though it's 20g of sugar, it tastes on the border of being unsweetened, which is where I like my iced tea to reside. So it's a black tea with a tad bit of sugar in it that tastes like it was steeped with a bunch of ginger in it (not enough to give it a burn, but enough for the flavor to be there) and then a single slice of peach was allowed to soak in it while it cooled down. I know I was complaining earlier, but this really is a nice tea, and I apparently just like to complain about something in every situation. I need help.

The Ito En / Teas' Tea company doesn't mess around. They keep things simple, natural and delicious. Their iced teas actually taste like tea instead of sugar, like most companies. They know the secret that tea is delicious on its own and it does not need to be disguised by sweeteners. Sure sometimes you want a little something extra in it, but for those times you certainly do not need to go overboard and dump the equivalent of a semi's load into a single bottle. With this “Lightly Sweet” tea they added 20g of sugar, as opposed to the 30-40g range that a lot of teas fall into. To be honest I didn't even need that much sugar. I think it detracts a bit from the green tea and hibiscus. When you use quality ingredients you don't need to mask the way they taste, and there is nothing but quality in this bottle. Do I think the floral taste would have been better without any sugar? Yes, I do. Do I really mind that they added some? No. It is still delicious. I believe hibiscus is at its peak when it is paired with some spices, such as cinnamon, but I do think it has a lot to offer in solo form and this drink proves that.

Is chai tea magic? I mean it doesn't involve eye of newt or toe of frog, but there is a very specific list of ingredients that when combined together make something truly wonderful. I get the feeling that if you mixed things up and added the wrong thing in comical movie way the results might not be as bad as the silver screen portrays it, but it could get gross, fast. You add cinnamon, cardamom, ginger root, black pepper, cloves and star anise to black tea and bam; you have a beverage that has been enjoyed by many forms of royalty throughout the centuries. I can only imagine that if those ingredients happened to be mixed up that some sort of beheading or torture would have resulted. I mean everyone was treated as savages back then, right?

I don't know at what point milk started being added to this spiced tea, but whoever came up with it deserves a tip of my nonexistent hat. While straight up chai tea is great, the addition of milk makes it so much smoother and more enjoyable to drink. Chill that and you've somehow made it even better.

Tea's Tea has smoothed out their chai tea to the max. This is ridiculously enjoyable as it has a spicy flavor that is not overpowering and at the same time it doesn't taste like milk with spices added to it. This is still primarily a tea, which is as things should be. The only thing I could think of that would improve this would be for it to be made with soy or almond milk instead of skim milk powder. That would be right in the pocket.

Now I just need someone to make me a chai green tea latte. I bet it would be amazing, but too bad it would probably also be considered black magic that would cause it's created to lose his/her head to a blade.

I know I've complained about this before with the peach version of this drink, but “half and halfs” are supposed to be tea and lemonade, not tea and juice. In my book that is just a flavored tea. This tea doesn't make me think of professional golfers at all and it should with a name such as this.

All complaints aside this is a pretty decent tea. Tea's Tea (when did they drop the Ito En?) always uses high quality teas in its beverages. In fact if I were ever trying to explain the way a certain tea tastes I would give the person that version of Tea's Tea. They are the company that taught me that what Arizona calls green tea, is nothing more that a delicious bastardization of a perfect beverage.

In this bottle we have their perfect unsweetened green tea, with some acerola cherry juice mixed into it. It's more tea than cherry and I am okay with that. I do wish they had used a different type of cherry though. Acerolas are not what I'm used to and they have a slightly different flavor. The real disappointment in this drink (to me at least) is that they chose to sweeten it. Even though they didn't add too much sugar, I feel like it detracts from the taste of the green tea, and muddies all of the flavors a little. I am just nitpicking though. This is a beverage that I would happily drink again and again. I dream of the day that I see this companies products in every gas station across the country. As I get older the tall boy tea loses its allure. Sometimes you just want real tea that isn't made by Lipton.

Up until I went to the UK a few years back, I had never put milk in my tea. I was strictly a honey man. Then when there, someone (ie everyone) made us tea and made it with milk and a little sugar. It wasn't how I would normally drink tea, actually I don't think I've ever made hot plain black tea at home ever, but it was enjoyable and it seemed fitting. I've still never added milk to my tea when on native soil but the couple times I've been back over seas I always drink it that way.

Cut to a couple of months ago when I was introduced to green tea lattes via the new Bolthouse Farms drink. It was great and tasted like melted green tea soy ice cream. I then got one at Starbucks and it was kind of gross. Okay it wasn't gross, but it just tasted like soymilk with a little green tea. It was perfectly drinkable, but just not what I was hoping for. Now Tea's Tea has released a latte line, and lo and behold there is a matcha one. Luckily it's much better than Starbucks, and closer to the Bolthouse side of things. I would prefer that it was made with soymilk, but for something that is mass-produced and doesn't need to be refrigerated this is more than okay. It's vaguely grainy (in a good way) with a strong matcha taste. It has all of the flavor of green tea without the bitterness.

I don't think I'll go and make this for myself, but it's a nice treat. I wonder if the folks of Britain drink their green tea this way, or if they are a strictly black lot.

I am ashamed to admit how long it has been since I've had iced tea. I could blame it on the weather, since, as we all know that iced tea tastes better in the spring/summer. Or I could blame it on Mike and Jay, as they are iced tea fiends and review most iced tea as soon as we get them. In reality, I don't have a valid excuse.

This is a pretty basic green tea. I wish they wouldn't have used grape juice concentrate, but it's not the end of the world. The grape compliments the green tea nicely and doesn't overpower it, which is nice. This is one of those classically "middle of the road" iced teas.

What's the perfect drink while you're holed up in your house during a snowstorm? If you said hot chocolate you are wrong. Today my vote goes for this iced tea. It's already warm inside my house so I needed something cool and refreshing that reminds me that spring is only a couple months away.

I'm pretty sure this is my first green tea/coconut half and half and I really hope it's not my last. It's really good and crisp and refreshing and probably a bunch of other positive adjectives.

"Go green!" everyone says. "It's good for the environment!" they add, rather snobbish. Teas' Tea just couldn't hear it anymore. All day, green, green, green. "Enough!" the CEO said. "We're going to go so green you're going to puke!" When that dude gets mad, he will do whatever it takes to stop. He went into the Teas' Tea workshop alone for an entire weekend. He shut off his phone and told no one to come down until he said it was alright.

Saturday came and went. Sunday came and went. Monday came and went and people were getting worried. No one dared knock on the door for fear of near execution. Tuesday he emerged from the workshop with bottles in his arm exclaiming, "I've done it!" to an empty office. Everyone had gone out for tacos. He took his bottles and put them on everyone's desk so when they returned they had something to drink. They all came back and the intern who was rather thoughtful brought a taco back just in case he was done working. The intern gave him the burrito and the CEO gave him the lowdown on what he was working on.

What he manufactured for almost four days was a green apple and green tea drink that embodied all that was green and delicious. Initially it tastes like a green apple then it kicks in to green tea gear, whatever that gear is. It's not overly sweet and tastes like it gets all its sweetness from the apple even though both cane sugar and Stevia sweeten it. The intern loved it and everyone who tried it came in one by one to agree that it was all the same.

The CEO pushed that product to the people ASAP and people agree; Teas' Tea went green and did it swimmingly.

Well this isn't what I thought it was going to be at all. I'm guessing that I'm not the only one out there that thinks of a combination of iced tea and lemonade when they hear “half & half.” There wasn't an ounce of my being that didn't think this was going to be peach flavored green tea and lemonade in equal increments. Looks like every ounce of my being was wrong. How does it feel to be wrong, self? Oh nevermind, you're used to the feeling.

The truth is there is no lemonade in this drink at all. When Teas' Tea says that it is a half & half, what they mean is that the beverage is half green tea and half peach juice. To be honest I'm glad that I was wrong. This year everyone is going crazy with the lemonade tea combos and I'm getting a bit tired of it. One thing that I will never get tired of is lightly sweetened quality tea, and that is what we have right here. It has the classic Teas' Tea green tea taste juiced up with a heaving amount of peach. They could have just called this peach green tea, because it doesn't taste crazy different than their normal teas. Okay, it is a tad sweeter than their other flavors, but not by much. I guess marketing had to get their grubby hands in there, and they figured calling it something new might catch people's eyes.

Oh, and this trend of companies using cane sugar and stevia because they say it helps bring out the flavor? Cut it out. Luckily with this drink you cant' taste the stevia, but in most of the other ones I've tried the stevia is distracting and takes away from a great beverage.