Organic Fair Trade Certified Cane Sugar - 13 Reviews

Yep. Here's another great one. When I drink coffee, it's cold and has chocolate in it. This checks all those boxes. It's pretty smooth because it's got half and half in there, too. I typically wouldn't put cream in my coffee but let me tell you this, if someone served this to me as-is while I was lying scantily clad on the lido deck of a cruise ship, I would say, thank you, and tip him an appropriate amount of money. I'm no monster. A tip is not a tip unless it meets the criteria of "enough." Having never worked in a tip-reliant industry unless you count playing in a band that is willing to but doesn't receive tips, I don't know what it's like to get a bad, good or great tip.

Here's a tip (segue) buy yourself some of this. It's smooth and still has a great coffee flavor even with the cream and chocolate. Be a little childish. You like coffee like you like your men? I don't know how to get out of this. I'm in a corner now. I'll stay here for a while. At least I have this coff...and it's gone.

I've spent 38 years of my life thinking that I didn't really like coffee. I didn't hate it and I would drink it from time to time when I needed some caffeine. Hell, my high school years were spent sitting in diners for hours just downing overly sweetened and creamed endless cups of it, just because that was what my friends did back then. I had to add so much to it to make it so I could continue to drink it. It's a miracle that I'm not insanely over weight. In the past couple of years I've realized that coffee isn't all that bad if you're drinking the right stuff. There are some great blends/roasts out there that can be downright tasty, but mostly I'm talking about cold brew. There is something special about cold brew that cuts the acidity and just makes it such a smooth drink. Also, coffee is so much better cold that hot to my taste buds.

While the carton here describes the true meaning of the name Cultivo, I will pretend that it is referring to the cult of coffee drinkers. You know the people out there who absolutely need their coffee to function, and for some I'm not even sure it's due to the caffeine. People love coffee, and I think this product is here to indoctrinate new people into the cult by giving them smooth, delicious coffee to ease them in. This is exactly what the beverage is. It's high quality coffee that is nice and creamy from the half & half (I can even forgive the use of real milk here, which normally disgusts me). It's mildly sweet from the 9g of sugar in it, but they took care not to overdo it so that it is still mostly coffee and not a sugar drink.
It's no shock here that this is a brand of Uncommon Coffee Roasters aka the best coffee I have ever drunk. They are a high quality company with ethics I can get behind. If only all companies had similar beliefs and practices while making such high quality products the world would be a much better (caffeinated) place.

I'm sorry but lemon black tea just does not excite me. First off, when it comes in an iced form it almost always tastes like it was made from a powdered mix and not brewed. It's probably a dumb memory from my junior high years when I used to make way too much iced tea with Lipton powder and of course use an excess of the mix. That was some pretty strong tea that I would completely dislike now, but when I was 13 going to hangout with my friends and skateboard it worked just fine. You would think that something that tasted of good memories would be something I would enjoy, but now I just find it boring. It doesn't help that lemon is the lowest level fruit flavoring a beverage can have (which would be the “secondly” part). There is nothing bad about this tea, but it does not hold my interest. It is the kind of drink that could be the only thing in my fridge besides water for a month and I still might not get to it. Oh, did I mention that I really enjoy drinking water though?

Something is off with this. At first I thought it tasted like plastic. Then I thought that maybe it had been sitting around too long and had expired. It doesn't and it hadn't. Then I realized that it tastes like the pomegranate that they juiced for the flavoring of this tastes like it wasn't even close to ripe. When it's perfect the fruit is a bit sour, but this is just bitter. I will say that it has one of the most authentic pomegranate tastes I've ever come across in a beverage, unfortunately it's like they took the bad aspects of fruit and left all the wonderful things behind. It's not horrible; it's actually very close to being amazing. That is also its downfall. It leaves me wanting to such an extent that I can't appreciate what is there.

Hey, sir! I see you over there drinking your can of Squirt! You listen to me mister! You throw that can right in the trash. It no longer deserves your time. I'm sorry if I came across angry, but I guess it does anger me to watch people drink inferior soda when the quality stuff is available. Here, have a can of this Alta Palla. Now tell me person who I just met, who I will now call friend, is that or is it not the best can of grapefruit soda that has ever passed your lips? It's sweet, but still has the appropriate amount of bitterness. It tastes like dumping spoonfuls of sugar directly onto a grapefruit that has been cut in two. Part of me wishes there was a little less sugar in here, but then I think about how good as it tastes as it, and I'll deal with the extra calories. Now, get back to work! You don't get paid to talk to obviously crazy strangers on the sidewalk!

Can we take a moment out of our regularly scheduled beverage nonsense to discuss how Whole Foods has gone completely downhill? We don't have them here in Buffalo, but I've visited their stores a decent amount while I'm traveling. While I was never completely onboard with it, mostly due to the price, they were always a mecca of vegetarian prepared foods. I could walk up to the hot bar and have a selection of various delicious meals. While out on the west coast last month I stopped by two separate stores and it was dismal. The prepared foods sections were scaled back a lot more than I remember and other than salad stuff, there really weren't any veggie options other than lasagna. Both times I ended up getting soft pretzels and calling it a day. Of course they are finally opening one in my hometown and it will be essentially useless to me. Without the options what reason do I have to go there over the superior Wegmans, which is way cheaper? Oh yes, it is because of the beverage selection. There is always something new to me in the drink cooler at Whole Foods. This time around it was Alta Palla.

I grabbed this thinking it was a blood orange seltzer water (because it said sparkling). I cracked it open while I ate my pretzel and was nicely surprised to discover it was actually sweetened, but not ridiculously so. During my trip I was doing a lot of hiking, which led to me drinking a lot of water, and eating a whole lot of protein bars and eating trail mix a whole bunch. I didn't realize how much my body wanted this sugar until I drank this. It has an incredible blood orange flavor and it is in the same realm as San Pellegrino, only better. All I can say is that when that Whole Foods opens its doors in Buffalo they better have this in stock, because I want it and I want a lot of it.

I'm going to change an old adage and instead of “A chain is only as strong as its weakest link” I'm going to start saying “An Arnold Palmer is only as strong as its weak lemonade.” This could have been the world's best iced tea (it's not it pretty average), but since the lemonade aspect of it is fairly unremarkable the whole thing just kind of falls apart. I don't understand what the problem is. Everything in here is organic and they use real lemon juice, but that part of this concoction tastes weak and fake. Actually, it tastes more like someone brewed a bag of black tea, mixed in a squirt of lemon and then put it in the fridge. It tastes like the tea my grandma used to drink, but cold. It's more of a lemon tea than a 50/50.
It's not horrible, but I just had higher hopes for this and it ended up being average. Sure, it's better than Lipton garbage, but I feel it could have been out of this world good.

Cold brew coffee is everywhere these days, so why not cold brew some tea? Oh, you don't have an extra 12 hours to steep your tea, so you take the quicker hot brew method? Don't be such a chump, Titan will do all the work for you and all you have to do is walk into a store grab one from the cooler, and hand over your money to the cashier and you are out the door in 5 minutes or less. That is a comparable amount of time as it would take you to hot steep some tea. I don't even really know the difference. I guess cold brewed coffee is supposed to be smoother or something, maybe the same goes for tea.

Something about this doesn't taste like I expected. It tastes like a good raspberry black tea, but there's something else floating around mucking up the flavor. It might be the lemon, or it may be the electrolytes. Whatever it is, it distracts from both the taste of the tea as well as the raspberry. It's still an enjoyable beverage, but with a little tweaking I would enjoy it a whole bunch more. Maybe spend less time steeping and more time tinkering with the taste.

To be a woman is rough. If this is any indication of what motherhood is like, it sucks. I've got a kid and child rearing also is very difficult and, at times, sucks. If I knew that the action of carrying a baby tastes like a lemon V8, then I might propose adoption to my increasingly unfortunate "baby mama."

This is a lemon red tea. There is raspberry in it but the lemon is real lemony and overwhelming. If you made yourself a nice, cool glass of red tea and then took one of those little bottles of lemon juice and just went haywire and squirted an excessive amount in it, you would have this. I, with every sip, do not know what's happening in here. It's just so overwhelmingly lemon flavored that it distracts from any other flavor.

Maybe, as a man, I am missing the point that...I don't know, lemons are really good for pregnant women? As a man, who is not pregnant at this current point in time, this is not for me.

Yesterday my sister had a baby. Not like she had a baby over to visit, I mean she gave birth to a little girl. To celebrate this I decided to drink this bottle of Hey Mama! iced tea. Then through the use of some sort of dark arts I shall transfer all benefits this would normally give a new mom to her, you know using bloodlines and such. That's how these things work right?

This tea in particular is supposed to aid with lactation. It also has a large heap of chamomile in it to help the new mother calm down and just relax a bit. There are vaguely strange things for an iced tea to promise but if it's what the mothers need, it's what they'll get.

Let me state that I bought this tea on accident. I mean I intentionally purchased it, but I was in a haze of buying dozens of drinks in bodegas in NYC. Manhattan and Brooklyn are hotspots for new drinks. In a world where it's rare that I come across something we haven't already reviewed I felt like I was drowning in a sea of wonderful beverages and my bank account was draining. I would go into the coolers and just grab anything we hadn't reviewed yet. I registered that this was a tea that we had not reviewed so I bought it. I didn't notice that it was specifically for mothers, not that it would have stopped me. What would have potentially stopped me was the price. It looked like it said $1.99, but it actually said $4.99. A hefty price for a tea, but once I realized it was brewed for a specific reason I understood, even if I think it was still a tad pricey.

Enough rambling, on with the taste. This tastes like someone started to brew some root beer from scratch, but only put in half the ingredients, leaving out the wintergreen, vanilla and sarsaparilla. Instead they replaced them with pomegranate and blueberry and doubled the amount of licorice. It tastes like a fruity, woodsy concoction, meaning that it tastes like someone soaked wood (specifically licorice switches) in a pot of juice. It's unusual, but not unpleasant. If you don't like fennel/licorice I wouldn't immediately write this off. It doesn't taste like black licorice or black jelly beans. It has a much milder flavor that tastes completely natural. It's not something I would drink on the regular, but I could see myself enjoying it from time to time. The chamomile really does calm you down a bit as well.

Okay I might as well say it, no I did not experience any lactation being a male, who is obviously never had a child. For thinking that you are in fact the child though, but so are we on this end because we joked about it and giggled a lot. Now on to the vitamin transference.

In the Batman mythology Dr. Penelope young worked out a way to combine Poison Ivy's plants and Venom, the chemical that gives Bane his strength, into a new formula she called Titan. It's a fast acting, small dosage version of Venom, which has some unfortunate side effects. If the Gotham world were real I would only assume that this beverage company had found a way to clean up Titan and infuse extremely small doses of it into their teas to create a powerful beverage.

I'm sure there would be a stronger version for superheroes to get a little pick me up and hydrate. Hydration is important, even to those who protect our fair city from tyranny. This though, this version is for the everyday Joe and Mary out there. It says it has caffeine and ribose in it for sustained energy, but we all know that is just hiding the fact that Titan is involved. They can call it whatever they want, as long as it gives us a little pick me up and tastes like it does. This drink is on the bitter side of the tea world, and I personally appreciate it. Far too many iced teas these days are overly sweetened and the flavor o the brew is lost in a sea of sweetness. In here you can definitely taste the tea, and it makes the beverage stand out. Also it actually tastes like peaches and not fake sweetness in that regard as well. To be more specific it tastes like the part of the peach that touches the pit. It's a weird part of the peach to strive for, as it's not as sweet as the outer part, but that's exactly what this tastes like.

My ladyfriend did not enjoy this as she said it was too bitter. That is the exact reason I love it. It tastes natural and proper. Nothing tastes artificial. I would guess that is Poison Ivy's doing. She always has had such a way with nature.

Enough. Enough, I say. Things have gotten out of control in my kingdom. I leave for two weeks with the queen to the seaside and when I return things are in shambles. I left all of you in charge and you have forsaken me. There are chickens running rampant for one. I stepped in chicken eggs and poop on my way up the stairs and there have never been chickens in the castle unless it was in the kitchen on their way to become dinner. The men are growing their hair out both on their heads and on their faces and they look like the cavemen that roamed our fine earth before us. More importantly, though, I would like to bring up someone's bright idea to marry our fine tea with flowers and sugar because they deserve to have their name and "guillotine" in the same sentence.

"What's wrong with it?" Well where do I start? It was a fine, red tea that we brought in from our trip to China to trade. The flowers, what did you say were in there? Chamomile and lavender? Look, the chamomile was fine. It was a nice relaxing tea but the lavender turned it into one of those baths that we take once a month. That or something we give the children to ease their throats when they are ill. That or a candle. Now all of these I could possibly take if it weren't for the sweetener that you have used. I have surveyed the sugar farmers and they said that they did use their sweetener but they also said that used something called Stevia. Now, I appreciate you using your skills as budding scientists to make new things but I might have to ratchet that down to things like alloys for armor and, I don't know, something crazy like air in the tires so that you don't feel every bump on those hard, wooden rims. It's too sweet and you know how I, the king, loves his sweets.

My faithful town, you have done me wrong and that is why the queen and I do not take trips. Now, to make things right, you must catch all the chickens, put most of them back in their cages and we shall have a triumphant feast in celebration of the dear queen and my return. That and that the food in Florida was quite bad.

It is a little known fact that in the offices of Blue Buddha they have a giant statue of the Buddha. I know that probably doesn't sound all that interesting, but I think you will change your tune, when I tell you that the insides of the statue are hollowed out, in order to make room for…€¦get this…€¦an iced tea dispenser. How cool is that? Oh you're offended? Well let me tell you this friend, iced tea is the key to my enlightenment, and I'm sure the Buddha is cool with me achieving it any way that I can. The gross part about all of this is that the only place they could think to have the tea come out of was the nose, everywhere else just made a mess. They are professional people, who entertain clients in their office, and a messy Buddha just wouldn't cut it.

So you're interested in trying their hibiscus raspberry tea, well then you'll step right up to the ole' enlightenment dispenser, place your cup under the nose, and pull the left earlobe. I said left! Great now you've got some raspberry lemon. No problem, I'll drink that one, you can get a new glass. What do you think? It's got a great flavor doesn't it? The hibiscus and raspberry blend in well together to create a slightly floral berry flavor that really isn't all that floral at all. In fact it's nearly perfect. It's really just a green tea, but since hibiscus is in the mix it can be called an herbal tea to make it seem fancier. Whatever you call it, it tastes wonderful.

The one thing that the folks at Blue Buddha wanted to get away from is the idea that you have to be fat like the Buddha in order to achieve enlightenment, so they mix in some stevia with the cane sugar. The result is only 8g of sugar in this whole bottle, and it doesn't taste very diet. If you didn't know, and we're familiar with stevia, you probably wouldn't even guess that there was a zero calorie sweetener involved at all. Low calorie drinks have come a long way since the days of aspartame.

Please don't stick your hand in the Buddha's mouth. It' the ice dispenser and it's very sensitive, we don't need your grimy hands monkeying up the works.