Madison Bartholemew

I didn’t put anything extra in this tea.
When brewed the color is extremely light but, I brew a pot at a time instead of a cup and if you do this you will notice that the tea gains color as it cools like most whites and minimally processed greens. So its lack of color just seems normal to me.
The flavor starts sweet, hits a little wall of toast and jumps it so fast you’ll wonder if you imagined it. The finish goes right back to sweet. Sweetness that doesn’t go away for an extremely long time.
This is a great tea for non-obtrusive tea drinkers.
I had an idea that it would work well as a palate cleansing tea because of the extremely long finish and stubbornly sweet qualities. It does work well to remove strong sweet flavors like fruity cookie samplers but for thai spicy kind of food it was more of a pleasant compliment than a palate cleanser. I was not expecting that at all but it’s lean to compliment spicy makes me thing that this might be a more oily tea.
Anyways… I find food and tea combos interesting.
Great tea.

Mixed with Vanilla Honeybush is now my favorite morning kick in the pants.

Steeped 3 min 195 degree water no additives.
This is a steak dinner of a tea. Very dark almost black tea on the fermentation scale but it retains the toasty mellow taste of oolong.
Personally I preferred the second infusion as the flavor was as round as the first but some of the density of it was diluted.
Then again I also prefer the oolong towards the pouchong end of the scale.
It is definitely an awesome tea.

Brewed 5 min. 1Tsp raw sugar. Hot.
I taste the Ginger but not only is the ginger being dulled by the other flavors it is turning into a muddy mess.
This is not a clean tasting tea. To me that means it is not blended very well because good blending means that the flavors compliment eachother and stand on there own within the confines of a cup. An example of good blending is Tea Forte’s African Solstice where the fruit and vanilla can both be clearly tasted but also combine well together.
This is not a good ginger tea because of the muddy flavor profile and lack of balance.

Brewed 5 min. 1 Tsp raw Sugar. Hot.
The pepper in the mix I feel is misplaced. The rest of the blend is very complimentary but there is a bitter under current that takes me out of the pleasurable experience.
Chai shouldn’t have black pepper in it.

Brewed 3 min. No additives. Hot.
I’m trying out using about 8 ounces of water in the pot instead of the full 12 I usually use for tasting.
So hopefully weak tea wont be an issue.
…weak. but it’s a green.
Green tea taste to start.
mild mango sweet after taste.

Steeped 6min. 1 Tsp raw sugar. Hot.
Berry front. Vanilla finish. Very mellow, pleasant and smooth.
Non medicinal which is awesome considering that berry flavor teas usually taste medicinal to me.
I have a cup set from tea forte that holds 4 ounces instead of 6 and the explanation on the package said that there dessert teas specifically would brew in the smaller cups better to enhance the flavor. I’m strating to think that all of the teas from tea forte would brew strong pleasant cups in less water.
I’ll give that a shot with the next cup.

Brewed 3 min. No additives. Hot.
This is very well blended but I do not agree that it is so seemless you can not pick out the individual flavors. Which I wouldn’t consider a great compliment anyway. There is a citrus vein through the flavor of the tea that is effectively mellowed by the coconut and vanilla. The resultant effect is a smooth naturally sweet tea with a shimmer of citrus.
My only complaint is that the flavor is masking the tea. I can’t find a substantial under current of tea leaf flavor at all through the 3 flavoring agents.
But still. Mild. Not at all unpleasant but If they didn’t say this was a white tea I might have assumed a weak steeped herbal infusion.

Brewed 3 min. 1 Tspn Sugar. Hot.
Absolutely delicious. The hibiscus accents the raspberry but does not over power it. This was an awesome first experience with Tea Forte!

Brewed 3min. No additives. Hot.
Strong mint flavor with any hint of green pushed to the back. Perfect for mint lover who want a little bit of a health kick

Brewed 4min. 1Tsp. raw Sugar. Hot.
This teas flavors are true to the advertisement and even has the subtle starchy after taste of pear. It is very nice even though the honey plays a subtle back ground role to the tea and pear.
My only complaint is that this tea is extremely easy to over sweeten.

When you picked it up and you look at the ingredients the bottle says on the front… coconut and ginger. Sounds wonderful. After taking my first sip I thought that the tea might have been a bad bottle cause the ginger tasted off… but I looked at the back and the first ingredient after tea is LEMON GRASS… then coconut. No Ginger flavor is even listed as being in the bottle. That’s probably what they had to call ‘natural flavoring’ on the back.
The tea itself is ok. Nothing to get excited over.
But the reason I’m writing this is because the bottle is misrepresenting what is inside…. and THAT really gets my goat.

Brewed 3 min. 1Tsp raw sugar. Hot.
This is my favorite vanilla tea. Golden Moon has stuck a very nice balance between the tea and the vanilla.
They did this by using a tea that can be called a weaker tasting black tea to allow the vanilla to come out in more prominence than in most other vanilla teas.
Which is awesome for me since I don’t really like black teas that hit you over the head with flavor anyway. There is no tannic bitterness or astringency.
Just a delightful, light vanilla tea.

Brewed 2 min. 1Tsp raw sugar. Hot.
I don’t know if I like Pu-erhs or not.
This one has a very smooth and round flavor with none of the unpleasantness of “regular” black teas.
But the complexities that puerhs have are ‘strange’ tasting. I’ve heard them described as “earthy” but I don’t agree. In the way that a compost heap does not smell like plain soil; puerhs do not taste earthy.
Puerh is the genre of tea you really just have to try to see for your self because it has such a distinctive flavor.
But, this Pu-erh is excellent in its roundness.

brewed 5min. no additives. Hot.
A full breakfast blend that does have a bitter bite.
Sugar fixes all of the bitterness and makes this blend extremely enjoyable.

Brewed 5min. No additives. Hot.
It ends with a bit of astringency and bitter after taste. Is better with sugar but I was hoping I found a black tea that didn’t need it.

Brewed 3 min. 1Tsp. raw sugar. Hot.
I really think plain earl grey tastes like dish water. I’m not going to say that this tastes great but the lavender really does round out the flavor so it is not so punchy.
It is a better earl grey…

Brewed 3 min. 1Tsp raw sugar. Hot
The jasmine is subtle enough to be un-offensive which is nice. And the vanilla really rounds out th flavor. If you like Jasmine that is mellow this is worth giving a shot.

Mixed with Teavana’s vanilla honey bush (1/3). No additives. Hot.
This has replaced all coffee in my life… They don’t advertise this combo or mixing it with azteca fire for a good hot chocolate.
This is just a great versatile tea.

Brewed 5 min. No additives. Hot.
This is a very dark fermented oolong. The flavor comes very close to being a light black tea but it still holds on to the roundness of an oolong without the tannin taste.
I have gotten 4 good infusions per tsp.
It has a good, woody sweetness.

Brewed 3 min. No additives. Hot
If you like “normal” black tea you’ll like this. It has all of the characteristics of tea that I avoid… including that weird tannin feeling in the back of my mouth, and that strange after taste that I have been told is the sign of a “good” black tea.
So it’s probably very good…. even though I don’t like it. K-Thnks

Please don’t be turned away by the appearance of this chai while steeping. I had to look up whether or not coconut is considered a starch. It is and the frothing like when you made rice is completely normal.

And this tea is delicious so I am very happy I looked it up. The coconut can take the place of too much milk for balancing out the assam base so for me it only takes a small amount of sugar for it to turn out perfectly.

This one delivers the strong chai taste!

Simmered 4 min in water and then strained.
Exactly as advertised. This is a extremely pleasant, aromatic and well balanced blend that needs no sugar or anything at all to accompany it. The toasty notes of the genmaicha hold there own against the spices and provide a wonderful base for the spices to build on. For the weight conscious looking for the benefits of chai with out added sugar and milk calories. Not for someone who enjoys the flavor smack in the face of extremely strong chai as it is very mild comparatively…
My Favorite Chai!

Simmered 4 min and then strained. 1Tsp raw sugar. No Milk.
I’m a big fan of their Chais but I feel as if the coconut in this blend takes away some of the flavor instead of adding to it.
So if you want something a little bit more mellow than their plain Genmaicha Chai I would give this a shot.