Reviews

The premise behind GoldenBrew Tea, which hails from Portland, Ore, is to create micro-brewed organic teas. The company's attention to ingredient detail starts with using whole tea leaves rather than “fannings” (leftovers from higher grade tea) used by other tea brands. The teas are sweetened products with either honey or agave.

This variety, which blends watermelon, red pepper, cucumber, tomato, lemon, sea salt, cilantro, olive oil, white wine vinegar, black pepper, and cayenne, has that bright flavor that we love about the original Tio Gazpacho, along with the refreshing flavor of watermelon.

Bizzy Coffee is a St. Paul, Minn.-based startup focused on the cold brew coffee category. The company's initial offering comes in the form of a shelf-stable concentrate, which is USDA Organic certified and contains no calories or sugar.

Based on a 1,000-year-old West African recipe, Ginjan is a beverage that features ginger, pineapple, lemon, vanilla and anise as its key ingredients. The product is also sweetened with sugar, which results in a total of 30g of sugar and 120 calories per bottle.

Just Chill, which is a “calming drink designed to help reduce stress and enhance focus,” recently launched a zero-calorie extension. Unlike Just Chill’s other flavors, which have 70 calories per can, this product contains no sugar and uses a blend of erythritol and stevia.

Happy Tree Maple Water’s Cold Brew Coffee offering is a high pressure processed (HPP) blend of maple water and coffee. What’s really unique about this offering is that Happy Tree actually cold-brewed the coffee with maple water rather than water. This results in a unique and smooth flavor profile that’s really outstanding.

Starting with the packaging, the design of Gundalow Juice is something that is a bit different than your standard HPP juice. This starts with the use of a black shrink sleeve label that covers almost all of the bottle aside from a small portion of the bottom where the liquid can be seen. It’s eye-catching, but less vibrant than competing brands, which often focus on bright, positive colors rather than black.

Vim + Vigor, or “V+V Apothicaire” as the company now refers to itself, has expanded its offerings from cold-pressed juice to include chilled drinkable soups. The soups, which come in three flavors, including Heirloom Gazpacho, Kale Avo’ Basil, and Harvest Melange, are said to “marry European culinary influences and functional nourishment.”

With its sharp branding and intense flavor, Matcha LOVE is one of our favorite brands that Ito En has created for the U.S. market. In fact, it was the winner of the award for “Best Tea” as part of BevNET’s Best of 2015. Matcha Colada, which blends coconut water (70 percent), matcha, green tea and natural flavors, is the latest line extension for the brand.

NÜMOO is a line of organic high pressure processed nut milks that are made without the use of stabilizers, gums, or any other additives commonly found in dairy alternatives. The product line, which was announced in February, comes in strawberry, vanilla, chocolate, and coffee flavors and four different nut milks: cashew milk, almond milk, pecan milk, and pistachio milk.

The advent of brands like Honest Tea has changed the conversation around the RTD tea category to address the origins of the tea used inside the product. Still, the rich heritage of English tea has, at least in the past decade, been somewhat overlooked. Enter Thea’s English Standard Tea, which, as the name suggests, is focused on bringing that story back to life.

Modern Alkeme is a self-described “Clearing Tonic” and is available in a single 8 oz. formulation that is high pressure processed. On the surface, this appears to be a new take on a cleanse product, with a suggested regimen of two bottles per day for three days along with plenty of water and a healthy diet, followed by a bottle per day for daily maintenance.

Pressery Coconut Drinking Vinegar is a line of organic cold-pressed beverages that are made with juice and coconut vinegar. Pressery, which is a Colorado-based company that also produces a line of traditional cold-pressed juices under the same brand, has done a great job of creating something that is authentic but approachable.

The Ginger People, which is a company that has long focused exclusively on ginger based food and beverage products, has partnered with Gordon Biersch Brewing Company to produce Bottoms Up, which was apparently designed with ginger beer purists in mind.