Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Black
Where to Buy: 52Teas
Learn more about Southern Boy Teas here.
Taster’s Review:
I don’t drink a lot of soda, but on the rare occasions that we go out to eat and the iced tea available at the restaurant is questionable, I usually ask for a cherry cola.
So I was excited to try this iced tea flavor from Southern Boy Teas, because it’s a flavor that I enjoy and would be able to identify and also because in the past, I’ve been impressed with the cola flavored teas that 52Teas has offered. They really do have a bubbly, effervescent taste of soda pop, which is a little weird when I would drink the hot tea. Weird, but in a wonderfully weird sort of way.
To brew: The Southern Boy Teas are a “bagged” tea, sealed in a large tea pouch that makes it easy to cold-brew (put it in a pitcher with a half gallon of freshly filtered, cold water and then stash that into the refrigerator overnight. In the morning, take out the sachet – and save it to resteep later! – and enjoy) or to hot brew.
I do have another pouch of this tea and I plan to cold steep it to see how that turns out. I’ll have to come back and comment on this review to let you know how that turns out when I do that.
I usually hot brew all these iced teas for the first tasting, because I feel like I’m getting the true, intended flavor that way and since I want to write about the experience, I think that this is the best way to do that.
To hot brew this, I start with a quart of freshly filtered water and put it in my kettle and heat it to boiling. Then I just toss the sachet into my kettle and let the tea steep for 2 minutes, strain the tea into my favorite iced tea pitcher, and then I repeat the process, pouring another quart of water into the kettle, heating it to boiling and then resteeping the pouch, this time for 3 minutes. I let this come to a room temperature cool before I put the hot glass pitcher into the cold refrigerator. Then I let it chill for several hours (or overnight).
This is a tasty glass of cold refreshment. I can taste the notes of cherry and cola. And I can taste the black tea flavor too. It’s a bit like someone poured some flat cherry cola into my iced tea.
Yes, I’m still getting some of that aforementioned bubbly taste from this, but, it’s not as bubbly or effervescent as you’d get if you were drinking a straight soda pop. Nor should it be. This is tea, not a carbonated beverage. However, you can make it a tea soda.
I can taste that bubbly sort of flavor that I’ve experienced in the past with 52Teas soda flavors, although for some reason (I’m not sure of the reason) and this is something that I’ve noticed with the other cola flavored iced teas from SBT, the “soda” or “cola” flavor doesn’t shine through quite as copiously as it seems to when I sip on a cup of hot soda flavored tea from 52Teas. As I said, I’m not quite sure why this is.
That said, this is still really tasty. It quenches the thirst and it tastes great while it’s quenching the thirst, and that’s what I look for in an iced tea.
