Review: Organic Hemp Iced Tea

Hi-T is an organic hemp enhanced iced tea, which means that it contains hemp seed syrup and hemp extract. If you’ve ever had a hemp based food product (e.g. hemp powder or hemp milk), the flavor of Hi-T will be very familiar. Otherwise, the flavor of this product is probably best compared to a blend of mate and green tea in that it’s earthy and grassy. The product is sweet, but not too sweet (it’s about on par with a standard RTD iced tea), while a touch of lemon rounds out the flavor. Compared with the only other RTD hemp tea that we’ve sampled (C+Swiss), this one is a bit heavier on the hemp flavor, which is simply going to come down to personal preference in figuring out which one is better. On the outside, the 12 oz. can is very much an in-your-face approach, with both the name and design being less than subtle references to marijuana (for the record, they claim that the name is a reference to “high tea” in England -- although the leaf on top of the “i” says otherwise to us). That said, we’re just not sure what type of consumer wants an organic beverage with a hemp/marijuana leaf on it. While it might make for some novelty sales, it’s hard to see this being a brand that a large number of people will associate with and repeatedly buy as a serious product. For us, that’s a shame -- the rest of the design and the flavor inside the can definitely have potential.

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