Better Libations | Healthy Drink Reviews

I’ve tried a few of Adina‘s Holistics line recently, and was ashamed to realize that we have only reviewed one of them.  I also realized that my reviews have been fairly scant recently, although I blame moving a business and a home around the same time.  I should be back on the review train shortly, so today I bring you Jade Green Tea!

I really dig their new bottles, with the tribal monkey thing on it and the original shape and design.  I twist off the cap and away I go into olfactory delight.  There’s a definite herb-y scent to it, with an almost lemon-honey smell.  The taste is very herb-y and flowery, with a mysterious leafy spice in it, and a pleasant citrus, sweet aftertaste; there’s nothing bitter about this tea.

There’s plenty of good stuff in this bottle, including tulsi (Thai Holy Basil!) and some stuff I’ve never heard of like ashwagandha and eleutherococcus senticosus root.  The ingredients are organic, and the tea and sugar are fair-trade certified, which is pretty awesome in my opinion.  Aside from the beneficial bits, the sugar comes in at 26 G in the 14 oz bottle, which isn’t terrible.

Overall, I’m quite impressed with this beverage, the ingredients are unique and organic, and the flavor is surprisingly complex and pleasing.  Basically, this is delicious, and I can see myself drinking this on a more regular basis, I really can.

Score: 5 out of 5. A surprising find in an increasingly saturated market of  ‘organic herbal drinks.’

– Wiseguise

User Reviews: (2 votes, average: 3.00 out of 5)
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5-Star Reviews, Adina green tea, organic

New plastic bottle!

Until now, I never really drank the SoBe Lean line of diet beverages, with their notorious use of Ace-K and Sucralose as sweeteners.  I found this in a local Maverik store and picked it up, excited to see that it has been switched to the erythritol/Reb A sweetener blend now used in all the LifeWater beverages.  After getting this home, I sat down at the computer and began to search fro information on this new packaging and sweetener change, and was dismayed to find a complete lack of any such information.  In fact, the only thing I found was a page on CostCo’s website where you can purchase it in bulk and a Pepsi website listed caffeine content in their drinks.  I called their customer service line, got the computer, and was eventually redirected to their website, which has no information on this product.  Thanks, guys.

Having given up on finding anything helpful about this product, I decided to just let my nose and tongue tell me everything I needed to know about it instead.  Cracking the seal, I am reminded of an iced tea, and don’t really detect any honey.  A look at the bottle and I can see why; it’s the last ingredient, and the amount in the bottle apparently so minuscule that it added no calories to the tea.  The flavor is not at all honey-like, although I can sense the presence of the stevia.  The tea flavor doesn’t really last long either, it is the third to last ingredient.  The flavor overall is sweet and temporary.  It is far better than the Swiss Premium Tea I regretfully experienced, but nowhere near the excellence that is HonestTea’s honey green tea.

I found this flavor surprisingly uninteresting and lacking for SoBe, who have become one of our favorite (despite their subsidiary status) drink companies out there.  The ‘honey’ and ‘green tea’ were difficult to enjoy amidst all the sweetness, and were some of the last ingredients in the bottle, not quite what I would like to see in a tea.  I was unimpressed with this beverage, but I might still be caught drinking it on a hot day in a pinch.

Score: 3 out of 5. No detectable honey and not much tea in this honey green tea and lots of  sweetness for a zero calorie drink.

– WiseGuise

User Reviews: (1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
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3-Star Reviews, SoBe Lean all natural, green tea, Stevia

I haven’t reviewed an iced tea in a while, and this one was politely donated by my girlfriend and purchased from the local Good Earth health grocer, and couldn’t say no.  This is not my first Steaz, I have sampled their tea before, but never managed to sit down and review one.  In a world of sub-par teas, it’s nice to find a company that focuses on theirs and strives to make them flavorful and conscientious.

After my last experience with a mint flavored tea, I was hesitant to try this, but my worry was needless.  Scent-wise, the mint isn’t overpowering, and the tea is tangible.  Flavor-wise, it’s tangy and pleasantly minty, finishing with a soft tea flavor and a perfect dryness.  This is what Lipton iced tea should taste like, (minus the mint) with less than half the ingredients and 6 g less sugar.  Iced teas have been pushed out into the market as something that should be syrupy-sweet and lemon-sour, with hardly any recognizable tea flavor and a generic taste.  This doesn’t have to be, and this tea shows it.

This entire line of iced teas are all natural, organic  and fair trade, and at least with this particular tea, only 20 g of sugar in the 16 oz can.  Light on sugars and organic like Honestea, environmentally conscious and next-door sexy like Hayden Panettiere.  Okay, that last one is only opinion, and I’m probably going to get in trouble for it.  If you like iced teas, these are definitely worth a try.

Score: 4.5 out of 5. Pleasant and minty and definitely not generically flavored.

– WiseGuise

User Ratings: (1 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5)
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4-Star Reviews, Steaz all natural, green tea, organic

I contracted a cold sometime during the past 24 hours, and I am currently bombarding my immune system with everything I have, hoping something drives away whatever nasty bacteria or virus has turned my throat into a petri dish.  Having had plenty of tea already, I decided to break out this Green Tea Soda to see if the 35 mg of EGCG would have any effect.

I can already tell we’re going to have a carbonation problem here; it’s so strong it downplays the tea and tangerine scents right out of the can.  Taking a swig, I get a mouthful of bubbles that subside into an awkwardly fizzy green tea flavor, then comes the tangerine, sweet and timid.  Even after I shook most of the carbonation out of the can, the flavors really don’t pop out, vanishing quickly and leaving me with a vague, orangy-sweet taste in my mouth.

The sugar seems a little high, 44 g per can, but the sweetness is just about right for this mixture.  The only other thing this brings with it is the antioxidants, no vitamins or even a drop of juice, just fruit and tea extracts and cane sugar.  Overall I was not impressed with this soda, and I don’t believe tea should be carbonated, especially to this degree.

Score: 2.5 out of 5. Weak flavors and waaay too much carbonation ruin this tea soda.

– WiseGuise

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2-Star Reviews, Hansen's drink reviews, green tea

Why so much pink?

Now I’ve gone on before about my love for the sweet-tartness of pomegranate, and my adoration for tea, so finding a mixture of the two is usually a guaranteed purchase for me.  Xingtea has one, and it’s good, but not great.  Spying this effort by Hansen,I tossed it into the back of the fridge for a couple weeks and forgot about it.  Running low on stockpiled potential reviews, I found it again and decided I should give it a shot, despite my less-than glowing review of their last drink.

Upon cracking the plastic seal and giving it a whiff, I catch the pomegranate escaping the confines of its plastic prison, along with its smaller, weaker inmate, tea.  It smells sweet.  My first mouthful is an oh-my-god-that’s-a-lot-of-sugar experience, and I glance at the bottle.  On the front it claims to be ‘lightly sweetened with cane sugar,’ and on the back it admits to 23 g of the sweet stuff per serving.  That’s nowhere near Coke’s 39 g a serving, but it still is not light.  After the sweetness rapidly fades away like an exceptionally brief love-affair, the real flavors are allowed to show their tastes.  The aftertaste is far more pleasant than the initial sugar rush, but it comes back with every mouthful.

Honest Tea is able to get its pleasant sweetness with only 12-20 g of sugar per serving, so I am curious why others aren’t able to do the same.  This one is obviously too sugary, they could easily lose 5 g a serving and still be plenty sweet.  And I’m also not quite sure what ‘Naturally Selected Ingredients’ are.  Picked by humans and not robots?  Whatever.  This wasn’t bad as flavored teas go, but not going to come out on top in a head-to-head with Honest Tea.

Score: 3 out of 5. Good flavors, but too much sugar almost overpowers them.

– WiseGuise

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3-Star Reviews, Hansen's green tea

What does iced tea-energy drink equal? That's right, PARTY!!

Having completely given up hope that I can avoid buying energy drinks with the enticing ‘natural’ or ‘organic’ markings on them, I snatch up anything I can find that fits within our guidelines and chug it down unheeded, after I take an appropriate picture, of course.

GURU produces a line of energy drinks they claim are 100% natural AND organic.  Good for them.  I have chosen to review their Green Tea Honey-Lemon 100% Natural Energy Drink.  That’s a mouthful.  No carbonation or HFCS in this particular beverage, and the bright green can is very appealing and easy to spot.

It smells pretty much like nothing.  A little honey-tea whiff, and that’s it.  But how does this actually taste?  Well, like some kind of lemon-herb cough-drop, actually.  It tastes suspiciously of instant tea, and the citrus taste combines with the energy additives to cover any hint of honey.  The energy boost is definitely there, coming in smooth and it doesn’t give you the shakes.

Yet the taste still throws it off balance, leaving a sour aftertaste that doesn’t go away, like that rash you have.  You know what I’m talking about.  Use the salve your doctor prescribed.  Any how, I could drink this once in a while, and I might get used to it, but I don’t know if it’s worth it for me.  Besides, I hear their other flavors are better.

*Note: I am in no way linking GURU to the Communist Party, merely myself for wearing the shirt.*

Score: 3 out of 5. Too much medicine-y energy-drink taste, but good on the energy.

– WiseGuise

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3-Star Reviews, GURU drink reviews, energy drink, energy tea, green tea