Steaz organic energy drinks and sodas

I was treated recently to a sample pack of Steaz energy drinks and green tea-based sodas. Steaz has created the world’s first and only USDA Organic and Fair Trade Certified energy drink. Well, I assembled my Grill Team*, and we put the products to the test! I was particularly interested in the energy drinks as opposed to the sodas, since they are such a fixture in the lives of busy families…particularly those with kids in sports. These contain no chemical compounds with unpronounceable names, only organic Fair Trade certified natural ingredients.

When they first arrived at my house, I quickly covered each bottle and can with aluminum foil without first examining the labels. That was really hard for me to do since I’m naturally nosy and a label-reader! Ahem…anyway, I numbered each bottle and then a few days later, the Grill Team came over and we did a blind taste test. A wine tasting with sodas! We had a blast.

The results were unanimous in many respects. We all liked the green tea base of the products, the light sweetness of most of the flavors, and the lightness of the carbonation. The unanimous favorite flavor of the ones we tasted was the green tea soda with key lime! We felt it was a potentially very thirst-quenching flavor, which would be an important factor to most of us.

We differed on our preference for the rest of the flavors, just as you might expect. Some of us like things sweeter than others, some prefer berry flavors and others prefer a grape or citrus. One thing to note is that the diet varieties do not use any artificial sweeteners. One member of the Grill Team is particularly sensitive to these, and predicted that he’d be able to pick out the diet drink immediately. He didn’t! The diet varieties simply use less natural cane juice sweetener than the regular ones. Regular seemed to be around 90 calories for a 12 oz bottle or can, and diet was around 40 calories for the same size.

The Steaz website has a link where you can order these drinks online if you are unable to find them in a store near you!

* Normally consisting of Dan, Beth, Bill, my husband Mike, and me. Bill was unable to be with us this time