Organic Cane Sugar - 229 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.

On route to who cares where in New York City, I picked up this bad boy. It's good. I wanted tea. It's like 80 degrees in October, dude. Jay and I are tired and thirsty, man. I got it and didn't think twice. It was kind of expensive but it's New York so who cares? $3. This place is an island. It costs more to get things here.

Cranberry Lime is a good standard. The tea is good. It's darker that I thought. It was pretty low in calories, too. 60 calories for the bottle. Calories. Who gives a rip? It's honestly pretty regular. Regular good. Jay says it tastes like Mamma Chia without the seeds. I'd get it again. That says a lot. They don't sell it by me.

I learned today that hibiscus is often used in rituals to protect against evil, invoke divination, and clairvoyance. You would think with the amount of hibiscus I consume and the fact that several people have told me that my house looks like it should be somewhere a fortune teller runs their business, that I would be in the know of that information. Well, I suppose I am now and that makes me love it even more.

This is the most “pink” tasting beverage that I've ever tried. You know there are flavors that you associate with blue, orange, and purple that aren't necessarily the flavor of the fruit they pretend to be and instead have just become the flavor of the color? Well this should be the taste associated with pink, and for an added bonus it isn't even overly sweet. It's sweetened, but not in a mouth rot kind of way. This is not a spiced hibiscus, so if you were hoping for that you will be disappointed, but then excited once you realize that it may not be what you had wanted, but it's pretty great in its own way. It is simultaneously both vaguely floral and vaguely fruity.

My only complaint is that it is the lightest carbonation I have ever had in a beverage. My ladyfriend says she loves it that way because more bubbles would detract from the flavor. To me it feels like it's about to go flat. That didn't stop me from getting a great deal of enjoyment from it though.

Let's begin by looking past the fact that this is an energy drink and all that entails and the flavors that brings to your mind. Instead, let us concentrate on the fact that this is an organic beverage, an organic grape beverage at that, yet nowhere on the shockingly short ingredients list (five items) is grape juice, or anything grape listed. The flavor falls under the category “natural flavor.” I'm guessing that natural flavor is in fact grape juice as it tastes more like sparkling juice than grape soda, but that leaves me concerned about what other things can fall under that header and make it to market. “Natural” can entail a wide variety of things. I'm not saying there is anything nefarious going on here, but it makes me uneasy what companies can feed us without us knowing.

Anyway, as I said it tastes more like sparkling grape juice than soda and tastes nothing like a typical energy drink. It's just sparking juice, with unnecessary sugar added and caffeine thrown into the mix. It's not going to make you crazy, but it will give you a little boost and a whole lot of sugar (44g).

All my life I thought I despised coconuts. As it turns out I just hate it in toasted form, and it has ruined many otherwise delicious desserts for me. Raw coconut and coconut water on the other hand are pretty tasty. Pina colada is a flavor that always eluded me. It sounded like, for those who liked coconut, it would be the ultimate tropical summer drink. Keep in mind these are the thoughts that came to me in my youth. Now that I am older and wiser I can say, ehhh it's not bad at all. I'll rather have a fruity tropical drink, but it does taste like sunny weather.

For all their energy drink promotion, and the association with Mountain Dew (I think they are trying to distance themselves from that) this really just tastes like a pina colada soda, and I am into it. It's very sweet, like your average soda, but there is no energy drink taste to it. The entire boost in here comes from organic caffeine, no other nonsense. I would drink this on a beach if I were ever kidnapped and forced to go to the beach during the day, which I believe is one of the circles of hell for someone as pale as I am. It's summer. This is tasty. What are you waiting for?

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.

Amp started off as Mountain Dew's energy drink that was put out by Pepsico. The Dew logo may not be on the can anymore, but it's the same formula and I'm sure extreme dudes and dudettes are the largest customer base of this product. My point is that since the original Amp was basically Mountain Dew infused with taurine and the like, it stands that this is some sort of organic Mountain Dew flavor and now the world no longer makes sense to me. Mountain Dew is pretty much the definition of junk food to me and the fact that there is an organic version (in some form) it has turned everything upside down for me.

The flavors in here are orange, mango, and passionfruit. They are all present, but in a strange Mountain Dew sort of way. I don't know how else to describe it. It's like they made three separate Dews, one for each of the flavors and then mixed them together. There is also something about this that tastes vaguely diet, even though it's chock full of sugar. At first I kind of dug the strangeness of it all, but the more I drank the worse it got. That could partially be due to the fact that I didn't do the customary chugging of the can and it warmed up over time, but the quality of the flavor definitely decreased for me.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the Shel Silverstein book that shares a name with this beverage is about how humans are horrible needy beings that will ruin anything if it helps them to “progress.” In the book the boy takes and takes until there is nothing left, and even then he uses ole stumpy as a place to rest his weary body, when he hasn't been back in years to visit. At the same time the book seems to teach that feminine things should be happy to serve. I know it's a childhood favorite to a lot of people but looking at it as an adult that book is a crock.

While they may share names this beverage is of a different sort. They give in the form of vitamin c, calcium, potassium, iron, protein as well refreshment, but they also take your cash and make a profit, which they should. As an added bonus, Giving Tree Tea also donates a portion of each sale to provide healthy meals to people who are struggling with hunger. They should be the basis for a children's book. They give and they take, and they aren't a chump in doing so. Everyone is happy and they are making the world a better place. Sharing and giving are important, but so is your general wellbeing, and don't let a picture book from the 60's tell you any different.

Moringa is a light earthy tea that has some produce like notes in it. Sometimes I think they are fruitlike and other times it's almost like leafy greens. I'm going to go with the latter and say it's the sugar that makes me think of fruit. It's almost as if it's tea flavored water, except it is way healthier. I feel like I could down a gallon of this without blinking.

Sometimes you come across things in life that are simply not for you, but that you can appreciate that they are well made and completely understand why other people would love them. This tea is one such thing. I've never been a huge lemon fan. I always kind of thought that it was because the flavor normally tasted very fake or that it wasn't strong enough in a pure form (the exception being proper lemonade which I can destroy during appropriate times). The Tea house Collection doesn't mess around. They don't add “flavoring” to their teas. They actually brew the things in with the tea itself, like tea should be made. Lemon peel and honeysuckle are mixed in with the black tea leaves when the hot water is added to steep it. That makes all the difference and everything tastes natural. The result is a lemon tea that has a strong flavor, without being bitter. It tastes like a iced version of someone's grandmother's tea if she used higher quality ingredients. I enjoyed this, but I didn't love it. If you are a fan of lemon tea, you will love this though. If you don't I don't know what to tell you. The world makes no sense.

I'm always spouting yerba mate this, and yerba mate that. It's the tea of my dreams. It tastes of the earth and I usually can't get enough. This, my friends and readers, is no yerba mate. If I were a conspiracy theorist I would make claims that not a single leaf of yerba mate was used in making this. The wonderful earthy taste is not present at all, let alone any sort of tea taste whatsoever. At best what you have tastes like a malt beverage. At worst it tastes like crappy beer a teenager would squirrel away until the night of the big party in the woods with all their hair farmer friends. This is gross. I tried to power through it, hoping that maybe I would get acclimated and it would get better, but there was no chance of that. I couldn't even make it halfway through the can. I would avoid this at all costs. I have no idea how this got big enough to make it into 711. It's something I would expect to find in the dirtiest of bodegas, covered in a thick film of dust as no one has touched it in decades.

Ladies, Gentlemen and everyone in-between, I am here to spread the gospel of yerba mate. It is the superior brewed beverage and that includes all teas and coffee. It is the best as you should worship it for the golden god that it is. I am obviously glad that more companies are popping up who put out this wonderful beverage. Not only is it delicious, but it is also my favorite form of caffeine intake.

The mate flavor in this here can of Yachic isn't as strong as my favorite, Guayaki. The water to tea ratio is off and it is causing it to lack the earthiness that you normally get from a yerba mate. Anything that is lost from that imbalance is made up for by the taste of the blueberry though. It's flavored with organic blueberry juice, which causes it to actually tastes like the berries instead of the usual fake flavoring. This may taste more like a “regular” tea, but it at least tastes like a great version of that. This is what I would expect Arizona's take on yerba mate to be, but you know with better added flavors.

Honest has had a lot of tea on the market over the years. Throughout their dozens and dozens of flavors there have been quite a few green teas under different names. I will go out on a limb and say all of them are wonderful. Honest is a company that doesn't mess around and they make nothing but quality products. Looking online, it seems that this is still just the Green Dragon Tea with Passion Fruit. For some reason it doesn't taste the same as I remember. The passion fruit flavor isn't as strong and it's more of just a “just a tad sweet” green tea with a little lemon in it (and some other light flavors). Whatever you want to call it, it's tasty and I'm not complaining. Green tea is always fantastic when it's not buried underneath ridiculous amounts of sweeteners. I'll just take their word for it and sip in pleasure.

It's never too late to catch up and get with the times. Actually the times seem pretty terrible to me nowadays, so maybe getting with them is not the best of ideas. Let's rephrase that and say it's never too late to change and try to better yourself and expand your world view. Honest gets that. They have an organic line, which is always a plus, but more importantly they have started releasing some mate teas. Sure it's a mix of mate and black tea, but it's still moving in the right direction and I love it. I'm a sucker for mate so any amount of it is a positive to me. I also see this as a great introduction, or a stepping stone if you will, to get people into yerba mate. I can see stepping into it blind being a bit strange as the earthy flavor could be off-putting if you are expecting it to be like black or green tea. This has a mild earth flavor. It's smoother because of the black tea ( and the sugar). It's a great balance between the two. The mango flavor comes from mango puree as well, so that means it's wonderful. I hope they expand their products into a full yerba mate line. Ahh to dream.

I have been on a huge tea kick lately. Drinking it hot, brewing mass quantities to put in the fridge to complete the transformation to iced, and just buying bottles and cans of ready to drink stuff. For the most part I have kept it unsweetened to give myself the illusion that I am not treating my body like the town dump, but I've developed a soft spot for the Inko's energy teas. I mean it's not like I'm polluting myself with all the junk in the energy drinks that would initially cross your mind. These are simply flavored white teas (with all the caffeine that involves) with some ginseng and guarana added to it. If these didn't have sugar added the amount that I drink would increase drastically. I probably wouldn't need all of that energy, and by probably I mean definitely. So let's look as this sugar as a benefit since due to it I can actually sleep.

These are some of the few beverages that mix sugar with stevia for lower calorie count that actually don't taste diet (at least if you drink it cold). It's just a not-overly sweetened tea that has a nice mango flavor. This is something I feel other companies should strive for. Inkos knows how to make a good product and I look forward to seeing what they put out next.

Welcome to a very special episode of Tales from the Teahouse. This week there is a new exotic stranger in the town of True Brew. At first the townsfolks write him off because he is formerly a citizen of another country where things are kept quite hot and they feel he has no place in such a cool place as True Brew. Things come to a head when the stranger walks up to the front of the town hall meeting and implores the townsfolk to give him a chance saying that he's not like the other people of his kind. His spice is brewed right into his tea. He knows how purity is so important to the town and that is why he wanted to live there so badly. He is tea, ginger, cinnamon, cloves, and cardamom all brewed into one magnificent form. If they would just partake of him they would all find that True Brew was truly where he belongs. Some of them partake of his body and find that he is right. He should have been a mess but he was close to perfection. Spiced Chai then became not only their neighbor, but also their god. If Vulture were to review this episode it would go something like ”True Brew is seriously a messed up town and this week a whole racist/Jesus thing went down and when you think about it the racism wasn't really cleared up and it actually ended up more engrained that you originally thought. A must see!”

Out of the Organic Energy line that Inkos puts out this is the only flavor that I didn't absolutely love. Perhaps that's because it's the one that tastes the most like something was added to the tea. The tea flavor is there, but there is definitely something else floating around in the brew as well. Maybe it's the stevia, but I have a feeling it's more of the ginseng or guarana, as it's less familiar. The flavor is not enough to ruin the drink for me, as I still enjoy it enough that I bought a case when I found it for ridiculously on sale. I just wouldn't pay full price for it very often, with the other flavors available.

One of the things I appreciate about these Inkos drinks is that they are non-carbonated, organic energy drinks. So not only do they avoid all of the chemical garbage that other companies use that make me feel all crazy, but they also keep things different by not introducing bubbles to it. This is energy you can feel okay about. It's made with white tea with just a splash of citrus in it. The more I drink, the more I enjoy it and think that hey, maybe I would buy this at full price on a normal basis afterall.

The version of me from a previous time would be mighty pissed off at current me now, but I just need to come out and say As a culture why do we even bother giving “cheap” iced tea the time of day? That's right I am reformed and this might be the most adult thought that has ever crossed my perpetually 15 year old mind. Long gone are my days of guzzling Brisk or downing can after can of Arizona tall boys. In my current world it's quality over quantity, and to be honest the price point isn't that drastically different. Even if it were I would happily pay a little extra for a product such as this that actually tastes like tea and my just syrupy sludge that we have convinced ourselves tastes like tea. It really doesn't and we just need to accept that and move on.

This is exactly what I want from an iced tea. It's brewed, and not made from a powder. That is step one in the right direction. Step two is that it is sweetened with real sugar, and it's not overdone. I would say this is mediumly-sweetened and that is the limit of where I want my sugar level. It allows you to still be able to taste the other ingredients and not just an overt sweetness. Perhaps most importantly taste-wise is that the added flavoring isn't a syrup or a powder. The strawberry and spearmint are brewed with the tea; you know how it is when you buy some nice fancy tea that doesn't come in teabags. I admit I end up eating some of that tea dry because of the dried fruit, but I'm a maniac what do you expect. This is nicely lightly flavored and the mint doesn't leave you feeling like you brushed your teeth just before consuming the beverage. Everything here is done right. Lipton has evolved and now so do we.

What a way to kick off a ten degree day; a nice little black tea with some citric citrus going on up in there. It's all very lightly sweetened and lightly flavored and comes together into a nice lil' package. The black tea is a light to medium brew and the Valencia just an "orangish" flavor. I'm no orange connoisseur so it's "just" orange to me. It unfortunately doesn't come in a gallon jug because I could sit here and drink it all day. Sure I got it across the street from where I work but it took me an hour to drink this. If I'm at work for eight hours and this cost me around $2.50, that's going to cost me a Jackson per day. There are better ways to spend your money.

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.

You will not believe the amounts of sports I have just done. I hit all the field goals, shot all the home runs, kicked all the goals, and slammed all the points. I did it all, and boy am I dehydrated now. It's lucky for me I have this bottle of Kra to get me back to normal. It's a slightly salty (in the best way) sports drink with actual juice in it. This is the third flavor of Kra I've tried and I have been on board with all of them. They are tasty and hydrate me when I need them to. You know, like right now after all those sports I just did. I'm exhausted and dripping with sweat. I could literally wring my shirt out and get a substantial amount of fluid from it. This drink that tastes like a salty blueberry apple juice that is slightly watered down with fill me with hydration the way normal sports drinks never could. When that happens I will be ready for more sports! Huh? What do you mean I haven't been playing sports? I mean I'm soaked and tired. Oh, I've just been printing shirts in my basement all day in the extreme heat and humidity, standing next to a 1,100 degree dryer and I'm now delirious? Well, Kra helps with that too then!