Organic Cane Sugar - 229 Reviews

Harney & Sons have proven themselves to be masters of tea. They know how to brew it and they know how to flavor it. If you've ever tasted their products you know each of them is their own special treat. Now they have ventured out past the borders of Tea Town and have traveled to the world of juice drinks. That's an important distinction there, the inclusion of the word drink. The reasoning is that if this bottle had just said juice, I probably would have made a little complaint about added sugar. For some reason because they used the word drink, I think it is more acceptable to have cane sugar in the mix. I know it's all semantics, but I go crazy sometimes.

Yes this is sweet, but so is fruit and this really does taste like you're biting into a mango that has been pumped up with water. A weird visual I know. It doesn't taste watered down per say but it tastes naturally light. There is orange in the title, but I don't taste too much of it in the drink, but I'm okay with that. Orange is a filler juice to me. There is also apple, passionfruit and hibiscus juice in here. Those three all blend together to accompany the mango. This is just great, plain and simple.

Of course I don't think the added sugar is necessary ( I couldn't resist), but at least they were upfront about it, and you know what you're getting yourself into. I don't need the sugar in my diet, but hey sometimes you just have to indulge, and I could indulge in this way more than I probably should.

"It probably tastes like grapes." I say. "That's what it usually tastes like." I follow up. My friend Dan took this out of the fridge. I told him whatever he picks he has to take the first sip to which he agreed. He took a sip and oh, the disgust on his face. It worried me because we're usually on par when it comes to drinks. I took my own sip and man was he right. This sucks.

So let's draw a picture here as to why I came up with that blanket description. For one, it tastes medicinal. It tastes like something you would rub on a burn you got from making Jiffy Pop and trying your best, but failing, because you put your hand close to the heat. The chunks are in there but the flavor...ugh. It's a mix between plastic and rotten grapes. It's sour and bitter but it tastes as if they made it there by accident and it's not intentional.

This drink, much like that tattoo you have of a Creed lyric, is a mistake.

If there are two beverages that I truly enjoy in this world it would be green tea and aloe juice. I drink at least a half-gallon of unsweetened green tea daily and back before I was watching my sugar intake so much I used to down those giant 50oz bottles of aloe all the time. The thought of that now makes me feel disgusted with myself, but man are they tasty.

This product combines those two wonderful beverages with low calories and low sugar. While that sounds great on paper, I think the lack of sugar/use of stevia takes away from the allure of the aloe. The way it is I don't like it aloe very much. See what I did there? Terrible joke. The aloe flavor that I love is nowhere to be found. I'm guessing it's obscene amounts of sugar that give it the wonderful white grapeish flavor. In addition to that the tea flavor is not very strong.

I've told you what this drink is lacking and now I'll tell you what it delivers. What I get when I take a sip is a watered down green tea that has been mixed with not-very-sweet aloe that gives it a taste that makes me think of a cleaner. All of that is sweetened with a mixture of cane sugar and stevia with a hint of honey thrown in for good measure. Doesn't sound very good, does it? Luckily it does deliver a nice smattering of vitamins and it is also very refreshing. I can only imagine drinking this on a hot summer day would quench your thirst quite nicely. Make sure you're prepared for a flavor that isn't terrible, but also one that doesn't live up to it's potential.

I can only hope that everyone who reads this is familiar with the Purity Test. If you're not, what did you do with your time in school? It's generally a questionnaire used by high school and college students to determine your degree of innocence in matters such as sex, drugs, and other damning things. Depending on what type of crew you roll with a low purity score could be a thing of embarrassment or pride.

I hadn't taken one of these tests since college, so I decided now was as good a time as any. I would like to report that these juices were nowhere to be found on the test, shocking I know. I'm sure some weird questions could be rephrased to include it, but I can also assume that the company would be none too pleased about that. Oh well, I don't need to know what degrading things can be done with juice. All I need to know is that it's tasty and that I enjoy drinking it.

This is just mango puree and orange juice with some sugar and water added to it. The mango flavor is steering the ship, just as it should be. I have no problem with orange juice, but it's such a standard juice that I enjoy when other flavors take over. I personally don't see the need for the added sugar. I would have enjoyed it much more in its natural state, so I didn't feel as if I had to brush my teeth afterwards. I can't argue with flavor though, and this is full of it.

For those of you keeping score at home, I got 44% on the purity test. I'm sure there are people everywhere praying for my soul. Take the test yourself and see if you need to be saved.
http://www.puritytest.org

Oh the flavors. If you don't like this, then you can just go home. This so perfectly captures the "real" taste of pomegranate as well as the earthiness of a rooibos tea. It's got the bitter and sweet that contrast so well in a good, high quality tea. It's properly sweetened with cane sugar and the blend of pomegranate and rooibos is right down the middle so nothing is lost in the mix.

If you are ever on the fence about getting this, jump on over. On the other side of the fence you can ride dinosaurs while beautiful men and women serve you pizza. The dinosaurs are really nice and let you take your picture with them as long as you don't use a flash. It hurts their prehistoric eyes. And that's how to get a dinosaur to bite you.

When a beverage has pictures of honey combs all over it, as this one does, and it boasts to include organic honey, I expect a very, very strong honey flavoring to it. Actually I would be fine with a plain old very strong honey flavor to it. Unfortunately Purity Organic did not deliver. I went in expecting a thick, sticky tea and what I received was a pretty standard green tea with just a touch of honey added. I wanted them to go overboard with that particular ingredient, and it ended up being something that you could miss if you weren't looking for it. I still enjoyed the beverage, but I had high hopes that were not met. It tastes like a natural version of Arizona's green tea. We here at Thirsty Dudes will always have a soft spot for that particular beverage, so that is nothing but an improvement on a classic to us. Just up the honey, will ya?

Son, sit down, there is something that I need to say to you. Your mother and I wanted to apologize to you for an injustice that occurred many years ago. We didn't realize what we were doing, it just sort of happened. We didn't even know that what we were doing was wrong, until years later. Son, it was wrong of us to introduce you to the world of hibiscus through True Brew's hibiscus tea. You see they added a bunch of spices to their tea, much like a spiced apple cider, and it distorted your idea of what hibiscus should be. You see True Brew was the exception and not the rule, but the rule is also a very delicious place to be, you just can't expect the exception. Well, that just got confusing. See you need to learn to forget the spices and embrace the hibiscus for what it is, a fruity, lightly floral, slightly tart beverage that can almost always hit the spot when it is properly sweetened.

Take this bottle of Zone 8 and you'll see what I mean. It's not spiced at all, but it's still wonderful isn't it? It's just hibiscus, water, sugar and a bit of lime juice. Okay, the lime juice distracts from the taste of the hibiscus a bit, but it works great in tandem with it. Those spices you were used to are nice, but just look at these as two different flavored beverages that both have their merits. This version tastes like something you would be sipping on a tropical beach vacation. On top of that it is all natural, so what else could you ask for? If you say spices then you are grounded, and just wrong.

I have a stern warning for those of you who are looking for a weak, fake peach candy tasting beverage; this is not for you. Sure there is added sugar and a couple of other added juices to round it out, but this is very accurate on the flavor. It's like someone skinned a peach and let it soak for an hour or so in sugar water. That actually is a terrible comparison, because in theory that sounds horrible, but in reality it is ridiculously tasty. It just happens that's an accurate description. It tastes like overly sweet peaches, and I will not apologize for wanting to drink a whole mess of it.

There are very few things in this world that bring me more pleasure than jumping off of something that is a decent height into water. The thing is that I am not a fan of swimming, and being in the water doesn't do much for me. It's overcoming the fear and the drop that is what I enjoy. I should probably go skydiving at some point. This weekend my ladyfriend and I took a trip to Ithaca to do some hiking and we ended up at a spot where you could cliff jump. There were different levels, and the one that the locals said was a 40ft drop was the best. There was a 60ft one, but I was sketched out because you had to jump out a bit to clear a large branch/log that was in the water. I jumped over and over and the panic that struck me about midway down never lessened.

This all really has nothing to do with this yerba mate tea, but that is where I was physically, as well as mentally when I drank it. I was parched and exhausted, so this refreshed me and the natural caffeine in it gave me the little push I needed to continue on. It was a perfect choice for when you're hanging out at a manmade dam in nature just outside of a hippy town.

Yerba mate is so great because it tastes so earthy, without tasting like you're drinking the water that was just filtered through a potted plant. It tastes natural and right. As we all know peach in tea is a slippery slope because most of the time it ends up being too strong, and tasting like peach candy. Guayaki held back with their peach. It's there, but it doesn't overshadow the taste of the mate. The fact that natural peach was used for the flavoring also helps. As a result of all of this, what I drank was one of the best peach teas I have ever encountered. Yerba mate is a different world if you're not used to it, but it's worth the learning curb when you grow to love it.

You know what yerba mate is from South American rainforests. I'm sure people cliff jump there, so my initial paragraph wasn't pointless rambling.

I want so badly for the eldest male in the Harney clan to be named James, and for everyone to call him Jim. I also hope his sons are really only in their mid-twenties. My whole reasoning for this is that I am a child and I so badly want Mr. Harney to have been about 15/16 in 1987, when the classic film Earnest Goes to Camp came out. The only dumb reason I have for this is that every time I read Harney and Sons, all I can think of is Varney and Sons, and in case you don't know the actor who played the role of Ernest was named Jim Varney. You see I am a cruel man and I want to patriarchal head of the Harney clan to have been teased as a child because of his name. It's a rite of passage for teenage boys and I would hate for him to have missed it. If no one yelled “Hey Vern” at him, there is no hope for this world.

Okay, never mind that tangent I just went off on. It had absolutely nothing to do with the contents of this bottle. So let's move on to the important information. Harney & Sons make delicious beverages that I have enjoyed up to this point. When you take a solid company and introduce blackberry in to the mix, magic is bound to happen. This is a wonderful mixture of black tea, blackberry juice, hibiscus, and boysenberry juice. It all blends together into a beverage that anyone would long for on the long nights at camp. It's very sweet and fruity, actually it's a tad bit too sweet with 42g of sugar per bottle. It probably wouldn't taste overly sweet to most people, but I've been drinking unsweetened tea constantly this summer, so I've been noticing sweetness more.

My only real complaint here, and it's hardly a complaint, is that I wish the tea flavor was a bit stronger. The berry taste is a natural one, but it's still very in your face. If it were mellowed out a bit, that might take care of the sugar as well and this would be absolutely perfect.

This soda has put me to taste philosophically. Is it a great cola whose quality has been lessened by the use of stevia as a sweetener, or is it a mediocre soda and the only reason I think it's good is because it is better than most diet sodas. What came first the stevia or the egg?

After far too much pondering I am going to go with a little of both. I think that without the added stevia this could have been an exceptional cola. It has some complexities in the flavor that make it stand out from your Coke and Pepsis of the world. At the same time, the stevia brings it down a couple of pegs, but it still is my favorite diet cola I've ever had. To be fair it does combine cane sugar with stevia, and has 15g of sugar, but that's less than half of a normal can of pop.

Whatever science proclaims to be the true answer, I enjoyed whatever it was in this can and I had no guilt while doing so. That's gotta mean something in life.

Ladies, Gentlemen, Beloved Stockholders,
I've gathered you all here today to tell you what our numbers have been saying for years. The zero-calorie beverage game is a losing one. As much as Americans would like to ditch those empty calories and lose some weight, they are also a lazy lot, who also do not want to give up flavor. While we've come leaps and bounds in that department with stevia and its cohorts, it's still not enough. Those natural sweeteners still have a very specific taste to them. This meeting is to let you know that we are giving up. No we are not folding the company; we are simply going another route. Instead of aiming for zero-calories we have decided to shoot for low-calorie. We have discovered that if we mix up cane sugar with stevia, we can keep the sugar/calorie levels on the lower side and maintain some of the flavor from the premium ingredients we use.

You are all familiar with our ginger ale soda. We used real ginger and lemon juice in it. It should have been a masterpiece, but then we added a whole bunch of stevia and people complained that it was the only ingredient they could really taste. I am happy to now present you each with a can of that same ginger ale with the stevia lowered and a bit of cane sugar thrown in the mix. Tell me that isn't the best diet ginger ale you've ever tasted and I will call you a liar. No longer is the stevia distracting from the last of the ginger. This is the way ginger ale was meant to taste. You can actually feel the slight lemon kick that has been hidden for all these years. Sure there is a bit of the coolness of stevia, but it's so low that in blind taste tests most people didn't even notice it. All of that flavor and it's only 15g of sugar as opposed to the 30+ from other “mainstream” ginger ales. On this side of the table we really believe we are on to something and we hope that all of you feel the same. We've seen the future folks and it is called compromise.

As an adult do you ever find yourself craving chocolate milk, but you feel that it is a beverage made for children and someone in your life told you it was time to leave childish things behind? First off, if that is true someone told you a horrible lie and wants you to lead a miserable existence. Nearly all things that are fun are childish, and life without fun is just pain and now we're getting into philosophy and I'm not prepared for that. Regardless, this beverage is for you. There is nothing seemingly childish about coconut water, but the fun is hidden in there.

This is like someone dumped Nesquik into coconut water, but instead of the cheap chocolate powder we're all used to it was finely ground semi-fancy milk chocolate. It's ridiculous how much it tastes like real chocolate and not some powder garbage. This is indeed “chocolate milk” for adults. Also, on top of tasting delicious it also is extremely refreshing, unlike its childish counterpart. So yeah, put that specific childish thing behind you all accept this as your new chocolate beverage of choice.

It's mid May and I think it's finally safe to say that winter is officially over. I know it should have been over for a long time, but it snowed here in late April. Something it wrong with Mother Nature. She needs to go see a doctor STAT because up is down, left is right, cats and dogs…€¦. You get the drift. It's finally sunny and warm (if not downright hot at times) and that means bust out your lemonades and teas because we need refreshment.

For the most part Made has treated us well in the past. They have provided us with some spectacular beverages as well as some average ones. Only once have they steered us wrong, and that just happened to be with another drink that was composed of lemons and green tea (also strawberry). The problem with that was that the lemon was too strong, and it had a weird plastic taste to it. From the taste I will safely say that this is that self same drink, before they added the strawberries to the mix. It just doesn't taste right.

Maybe this combination was doomed from the start. It is more than likely that green tea and lemonade just weren't meant to co-mingle. I wanted to like this, but I just can't. It doesn't sit right. Also, going back and reading my old review put dumb Robert Palmer songs in my head and I am holding Made accountable for that terror.

Oh the mid-day slumps. On a gorgeous Friday evening after a seemingly endless winter, it's in the sixties outside and my body is craving the vitamin D that only doctor sun can prescribe my pale, pale skin. These Vemma drinks have been pretty good to us but this one is ravaging my poor body. It's fine. It's my fault. I only sparingly drink coffee or energy drinks but this one hit me really fast and really hard. Once again, I'm not counting this against them and you, as an energy drink drinker (working title) might like that instant jolt. Since I've covered half of this drink, the other half, proud residents of Coffeetown, need their fill. As a coffee drink it's oddly smooth and even though cane sugar is the primary sweetener, or at least the one towards the top of the list, that Reb A is shining through. It's not bad, but it's in there and you know it. I had to search for it in the rather long list of ingredients. I think Vemma is trying to make this healthier than "the other guys" but putting mangosteen, aloe vera, and green tea in there but what you get is an oddly smooth, pretty sweet, coffee flavored drink. Is it a lose? No. Is it a bad? No. It's just kind of "fine" because it's so much going on. Satin sheets seem like a good idea until you have to sleep in them and they keep getting kicked off you by your dumb lover, am I right? That's what this is. This drink is your idea of a sexy sheet but the realization that it's too much to handle.

As he sat comfortably in his seat, Alan watches as the Hudson valley passed home. He had just spent a couple days in the city and while he was feeling more refreshed than before, he was excited to sleep in his own bed. He loved visiting the city any time he could get away from his responsibilities at home and just unwind with friends. This time was different, though.

Alan was at a club and was dancing by himself, the way he liked it. Some of the songs were not his favorite but as long as he kept his feet moving he knew he would make it through the night. A girl approached him and asked him his name and how he knew his circle of friends. He replied very courteously but short. He was in a relationship and took one look at this girl and knew she was trouble. She constantly grabbed him by the waist and grabbed his hands and put them on her hips as she swayed back and forth to the music. He was no longer having fun because he was constantly awaiting the inevitable time that would come where she would lean in for a drunken kiss and he would have to dodge it. Without fail and during one of his favorite songs, she leaned in, eyes closed, tongue protruding from her mouth, beer in hand as always, and he just appeared to vanish. He walked outside the club not looking back and popped into a bodega nearby to regroup. He scanned the shelves and decided to pick out a drink. He bought an iced tea that he had never seen before and sat outside the club and started drinking it. It was good. It was sweet but it was good. It tasted like a less sweet Arizona green tea but it almost tasted like an apple juice instead of just green tea. As he was sitting outside the girl approached him outside with a very angry face. She started yelling at him in front of all the people outside smoking and waiting for cabs. He got up and just walked around the building so as to non-verbally tell her to leave him alone. She followed him around the building, yelling the entire way. Alan turned around, faced the upset girl, put his drink down, walked towards her, put his hands on her waist and kissed her. She stopped talking and kissed back and Alan promptly stopped, picked up his drink, looked at the girl and said, "Alright. That's enough. Go back inside." and the girl, very confused went inside.

As the trees and hills and water passed Alan on the train he wondered what went through that girls head as he turned the tables on that girl and left her very confused in the parking lot. Part of him was curious and the other half couldn't care less. He took a sip of his coffee and just continued to look outside at the passing time.

Made, well Made makes things simple. Unlike a lot of companies they know that people don't need/want a lot of extraneous garbage in their beverages. When someone orders flavored lemonade they want water, lemon juice, sugar and whatever fruit juice is flavoring it. Anything else is just unnecessary. Little kids on the side of the road don't even give you that much. To be fair this is way better than any roadside lemonade I've ever tasted, so that little bit extra is well played.

The way the levels are in these ingredients leaves it more mango than lemonade. I'm okay with that. It is a bit sweeter than I would like it to be, as you lost all but the faintest tinge of the sourness of the lemon. For prepackaged lemonade it's AOK though.

Did Made start off as a little roadside stand run by a couple of youngsters? As they grew older did they start buying out other kids stands? Do they represent the interests of Big Lemonade? I have no idea, and I honestly don't care. It's a drink that I enjoy that doesn't have weird artificial ingredients in it. It also has a nice “retro” look to its label. Get into it.

While aloe drinks would most likely be something new and exciting to the general population, they have become old hat to me. I love them and think they are delicious, but I've run out of things to say about them because for the most part they are all fairly similar. They are a sweet, slightly syrupy drink that tastes a bit like white grape juice with chunks in it. I'm pretty sure you could serve it in glass to someone and tell them it was white grape juice with pulp and they wouldn't ever question it. The funny thing is that this is the first bottle of aloe juice that I can recall that actually has grape flavoring added to it. Why not play up on your strengths?

This is fairly standard for Korean aloe drinks. It has decent sized chunks in it that are great, and the flavor is as described above. If you've had one before you know exactly how this tastes without even cracking it open. Why wouldn't you crack it open though? If you know how it tastes then you know you want to drink it, and you want to drink it now, because as standard as it is, it's still something to be admired.

When buying a home, how many times in one day can you go to the hardware store? I have gone to Home Depot at least once a day, today twice, for the last week and a half. Caulk, wood, paint, primer, faucets, ceiling fans, wall sconces, and so on and so forth. It's a lot of work and a lot of money and a lot of time. Today I decided to treat myself a little bit.

Sure, I needed paintable caulk. Sure I did. Why wouldn't I? On my way to the first trip to the store, I decided to get something nice to drink for myself to pre-reward myself for an impending job well done. I saw this at the store and it stood out because I knew we hadn't done it. Sometimes I think we have done it all but then I leave my guard down, new stuff fills the shelves and it seems our job will never end. I bought it without thought and headed home for my double entendre "Caulkfest" of an afternoon with a father/son electrical duo.

This tea put me in a good place. Sure my hands were filled with caulk and plaster dust and general grime, but when I took sips of this drink it put all that in the back of my mind. This tea was a great middle ground between a sweetened and unsweetened tea. Sure, I know, once you add sugar, it's no longer an unsweetened tea, but it's lightly sweetened and nothing is masked by the sweetness of a sweetener. You can taste the bitterness of the oolong tea and although there is no actual honey in the drink, there is essence of honey that you can really taste. There is also essence of caramel, which, if you think about it, you can taste.

This is a wonderful addition to the great teas that Tazo makes for us. If you've got a long day of monotonous tasks ahead of you, maybe you should buy yourself a vacation drink like this.

Ahh, Christmas Eve. 'Tis the time for me to wrap all the presents I bought in one day while the little buddy is away. Did I succeed? Ha! No. I am actually writing a review instead of wrapping presents. Will I catch gruff for it? Probably. Will this review write itself? Nope. You see the priority of things in my life. Review, then joy.

It's snowing here and this is a summer drink. Pomegranate lemon green tea: Summer drink. It might just be the lemon but if we're talking about season fruit, isn't pomegranate a fall fruit? I've got one in the kitchen but I bet it's going to be alright. Why? Because I'm no fruit connoisseur, that's why.

This is a good drink, even if I have to go out after the review and shovel. It, as most Made drinks do, have a good green tea bitterness. The pomegranate is there and just a titch of lemon that you can actually taste. I really have enjoyed Made and this is no different. Their green tea line is good because they've got a good base and everything else is just icing.