Dustin

I love floral flavoring in food and dessert. Rose, violet and jasmine! Jasmine does well in tea, but I have found rose tea to be lacking. It seems like they rely on the natural concentration of rose and it just ends up seeming weak, empty and unbalanced to me. Because of that experience I probably never would have tried this tea, but I read a review that it was a revamp of the discontinued Almond Biscotti that I dearly loved so I had to give it a try especially when prompted by a super sale.

When checking it out in the store I noticed candied violets! There aren’t enough candied violets to make sure you get one in each cup or even each bag so I’m curious as to how that would affect the taste of the tea on a cup to cup comparison. The sales guy let me try one (it was delicious) and I let him pour me more tea than I asked for. The smell of the dry tea is overwhelmingly rose, but there is depth behind with the almond and black tea base.

The flavor holds quite well for at least two steeps with the rose weakening significantly on the third. The brewed tea gives off a lighter scent of what the dry tea does. I can taste the Almond Biscotti/marzipan that I love so well and it is nearly overpowered by the addition of the rose, but not quite. It’s like they took the rose level up to the line but didn’t quite cross it. It’s almost rose syrup like in it’s intensity. It is really quite amazing and the flavors pair well. I might have to eat my words and take back my damning of Teavana for discontinuing a favorite of mine because I think this just might be better than the original. I have had four cups over two days and found myself thinking about the next morning cup as I was trying to settle down to sleep. I would drink it in a box, I would drink it with sugar rocks!

Could it be I’m falling in love? I am totally going to hoard this one if I ever hear it’s being discontinued. Hell, I might hoard it anyways.

The smell of this tea dry is very true to it’s name. LOTS of rich berries with chocolate undertones. The smell of the tea brewed is pretty good too, but when I tasted it the power and flavor that I was expecting just wasn’t there. It seemed watered down and bland. A very small chocolate taste with a couple tart berries. I hate it when teas don’t live up to their smell! After trying it again at a higher concentration I gave up. This one was returned.

Forgettable. Utterly forgettable. It tastes like the dishwater in a rinsed out ramekin. Just a lingering touch of flavor that once was. Such a tease!

This was a tea I was sad I missed out on buying, so I was pretty excited to see it in the 12 Days of Christmas pack. The marshmallow root seemed especially intriguing as did the name. The dry tea had a touch of smooth mint aroma, almost like it had vanilla to mellow it out. When brewed, the minty taste is quite subtle for a mint and the more I taste it, the more I feel like the marshmallow really does act like vanilla in it’s ability to balance and tone down the mint. As mellow as it is, I don’t really taste the green tea base, so the minty-mallow must be strong enough to overpower the tea without being overpowering on it’s own. What a strange but beautiful balance! I enjoyed this tea hot, but it was also good cold and seemed more cold bodied rigamortis graveyard misty that way. Although I liked it, I feel I escaped it totally sinking it’s claws into my heart. Okay, maybe it got one or two claws in.

I got this in the 12 days of Christmas pack. They aren’t labeled on the outside so I was having fun opening and smelling them before I looked at the tag saying what it was inside the pouch. When I opened this one I was a little horrified at what I smelled. Pepto Bismol?! Whaaaaaa?! Once I read the name I could imagine more of a butterscotch/rootbeer sort of smell, but I couldn’t totally shake the PB impression. Once it was steeped it smelled a lot more like butterscotch and root beer, but I found the flavor to be weak and tasted like cardboard soaked in root beer. I’m feeling a little guilty for being so harsh, but that is what I got out of it. This tea is not for me, but I’m still going to try it a couple more times just to make sure. Second try… still the same. I give up. :/
This one gets a big Mr. Yuck face from me.

Whoa there lime smell jumping out of the bag! Easy there! Down boy. Once steeped, the lime smell simmers down a bit and I can smell a gelatin scent coming through. I can taste the lime and the jello flavor, but I think this is going to need some sugar to not taste like super watered down jello. The aftertaste is the same that I’d expect with jello and it does taste better sweetened. It is a little unnerving that the gelatin taste is in there so perfectly, defying the laws of reality. I’m not a lime jello fan (pistachio pudding would have been more up my alley) and this isn’t one I’d feel compelled to buy again, but I’m quite impressed at how dead on the flavor of this tea is. It’s good, but it’s also just weird.
A few days after I had this tea I was at a party and tried lime jello salad for the first time and found it a pretty close match to the tea!

Attack of the sugary berry as soon as I open the bag! Once steeped the smell mellows out a bit. It’s a little bland before I add sugar, but the aftertaste is distinctly berry/candy like. I’m finding a lot of 52teas need sugar (sometimes more sugar than I normally use) to make make the flavor taste right. What is cotton candy without the sweet, right? The green tea is present in the aftertaste and mellow, but isn’t very detectable in each sip. I’d have to sum it up as an amusing light sweet treat.

The first time I brewed this, it seemed weak and kind of boring. The scent of the dry leaves wasn’t super strong like the other teas in the Christmas pack. The second time I brewed this I made it quite strong. Almost too strong, but I planned on adding a little cream which would dilute it and some sugar. This time it is pretty good. I taste chocolate mostly after each sip. Chocolate flavoring in tea always intrigues me, yet when I taste it, it confuses me because it is never as full of a flavor as I am used to with chocolate. This tea has a nice hearty well rounded base to it that so many teas lack and I appreciate that! It feels filling and satisfying. I’m not quite getting a decadent level of chocolate, but I taste more chocolate on the sip as it cools. I can see this tea partying it up with other flavors really well, but if you want chocolate all on it’s own, this tea is what you are looking for.

The little candy cane slices that are in the dry tea are amusing. Kinda cute, even to someone who doesn’t like Xmas. I can smell a little mint when the tea is brewed and I’m also getting something buttery like. When I sip it, I taste a little mint. It seems unbalanced and sharp at first, but mellows out a few sips in. I’m getting a butter like aftertaste similar to what DT’s Buttered Rum tastes like. I wonder if they have the same base. This tea doesn’t stand out to me in any way. I find myself trying to find something additional in every sip, like it will become more interesting if I keep drinking it and I come up with nothing. I dub it… boring.

I found this in bulk at the supermarket and decided to get a test run sample. I love cinnamon and cardamon and I’m looking for more decaffeinated options for the evenings, so it seemed promising. It appears to be largely cinnamon bark bits with cardamon in pod and seed form and a few peppercorns, anise seed pods and ginger root. I let it steep for six minutes, but I’m not getting much flavor. I can feel the cardamon on the sides of my tongue just after each sip in that cardamon tingle sort of way. I might be getting some ginger heat if I really think about it. Not much in the way of flavor tho. It’s not very well rounded and lacks a depth or heavier base flavor to it. Kind of just tastes like my spice rack threw up a little in my cup without much thought to it. It’s not bad, but there is no wow there at all.

First thing I noticed was a chocolate raspberry smell which was promising. While waiting for it to cool, the scent seemed more raspberry truffle like. Chocolate raspberry and raspberry truffle might sound the same to some, but it is not. Raspberry truffle is more like if two Vulcans, one drinking raspberry tea and one drinking chocolate tea did a Vulcan-tea-mind-meld where the flavors were shared with each other instead of being tasted on their own. They merged so to speak. But I digress… When it’s cool enough to sip, I taste that same flavor, not a mouthful, but the flavor is there and it’s good. Adding sugar hides the chocolate and makes the berry more pronounced on the sip, but the chocolate comes back as an aftertaste. I like it, but I’m not amazed although I would like to revisit it again sometime.

My first sniff of this tea brewed revealed buttery tones, but I swear the dry leaves smelled like chocolate. Strange. Each sip is quite bland, forgettable even, but once I forget I start noticing a buttery aftertaste. Adding more sugar than I normally use speeds up the arrival of the butter, but it’s still pretty mellow and I’d like to have a mouth full of flavor instead. I feel like the flavor is a little more pronounced as it cools, but still not as strong as I like. I see that there is coconut in it, but it seems the coconut has somehow been coaxed into tasting more like butter than it’s normal self. Power of name suggestion or some sort of coconut wizardry? You decide!

The tea wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t amazing either. Guess that leaves it in the gray area of moderately good.

This stuff smells fruity and delicious as soon as I opened the package. When I tried it I didn’t taste smoothie, I tasted… bubblegum?! What the…?! At the end of each sip I can pick out some fruitiness, maybe banana and pineapple, but mostly bubblegum. Not quite what I was expecting, but very nice. It seemed a little sweet on it’s own, but also good with a touch of sugar. The first two steeps were great. The third steep which I didn’t add sugar to was a bit on the weak side, had a slight licorice aftertaste and was still yummy. It is my first honeybush experience and it was pretty good. I’ll definitely be looking into more honeybush teas in the future.

This tea smells fantastic in the bag! I wanted to grab a spoon and chow down. I got a lot of almond and a little coconut when I sniffed it. I may have brewed it too long, or maybe it was a combination of what I had just eaten, but the first couple sips tasted bitter. A few more sips into it as I was deciding if I should dump it and try brewing again, it started to taste less bitter. I added a little sugar and a few sips later it is tasting pretty smooth. The almond and coconut go together so perfectly that it’s a little hard to pick them out individually in each sip. I find the aftertaste has a slight bitterness to it that is pleasant with coconut on the end. True to it’s name, it is much like an almond cookie and is delicious to the last sip. I may have found a new almond tea love!

When I opened day 17 of the advent calendar, it said this was a white tea. Although I do see some lighter leaves, it looks like it is largely black leaves. A little confusing, but on to the tea! It smelled coconutty when I opened it and tastes like toasted coconut aaaaand that is it. I really didn’t get much more than that out of it. Coconut and tea. Decent, but kinda boring. Reminds me of Zhi Tea’s Ambrosia, which I like better.

My microwave broke and I have been enjoying the throwback to the 70’s lifestyle before microwaves were standard in every house, so I haven’t replaced or fixed it. The feature I miss most on it is the timer, so when I saw this tea timer while grocery shopping it was obvious it must come home with me.

This timer has a couple features that are pretty neat. It can double as a lid for a standard small round tea tin, which is pretty clever designing! It’s a tight squeeze, but it works. That feature would probably suit someone who has only a few teas in their collection. I have over 30 teas in my cupboard, so searching for the one tin with the timer isn’t going to work in my house. Fortunately it also has a magnet inside the plastic casing, so I am able to stick it on my fridge instead. Perfect! It has five preset buttons, color coordinated for the type of tea; 1 minute for white, 2 for green, 4 for black, 5 for oolong and 6 for herbal. It also has a button for you to add minutes to the time, one to add seconds to the time, both of which beep for every second/minute you add (annoying) and the start/stop button. The preset buttons are great, but it’s the recommended time for their teas to steep. Other companies have different suggestions for steeping time for their teas, so I find myself having to add time to adjust. Not the end of the world, but not super convenient either. The timer only goes up to nine minutes and fifty nine so you can’t use it for any other application that may need more time. If you add too much time you have to reset it which consists of pressing the start/stop button enough to clear it. I like that it runs on standard AAA batteries, not some hard to find watch sized, but it looks like you need a screwdriver to get past the 4 screws and into the battery compartment. I have only had it for a few days, but I’m finding the buttons get stuck and don’t pop back up the way they should. I have to press on them and tilt them in the opposite direction of where they are stuck to release them. Lastly, the beep reminds me of some super annoying digital alarm clock that left early morning scars on my subconscious. I would have preferred a little tune of some sort that doesn’t set off a clawing urgency inside me to shut the timer up when I’m preparing to relax with a cup of tea, but oh well!

Despite the down sides and room for improvement, I dub this sleek looking little timer a keeper.

I was at a supermarket today in awe, standing in front of the bulk tea section and couldn’t resist picking up a couple samples. This one smelled like this amazing rich mixture of blueberries and cherries. Delicious… or so I thought. Went home, brewed it, tasted it, yuck. It has that tartness that I find unappealing in so many fruity teas. When buying it in bulk you don’t get a list of ingredients, but I’ll bet it has a small army of tiny hibiscus pieces waiting to launch an attack in every cup. It tasted better once it was cold and I could even enjoy the fruity flavor a little at that point, but not enough to brew another cup ever again. I’m starting to think I don’t like tart and hot at the same time. Well Scarlet, done and DONE.

I had never heard of this brand of tea before, but picked up an 86 cent sized bag of it at the supermarket in the bulk section on a whim. It smelled like the discontinued Bangkok Lemongrass Teavana tea. I liked that one, this could be promising. I brewed it up and took a sip… yeeeeeeesssss, the lemongrass is strong in this one. It has a heavier, fuller taste than the Bangkok tea. I think I may like it better. Each sip fills my mouth with lemongrassy goodness and I ADORE lemongrass. The rooibos is present, but hangs out backstage. Not quite as delicious once it has cooled. Could it be I’m falling in love? I’m going to have to check out more teas by Sterling because this one was awesome.

I got this as a sample with my 1st David’s Tea order. I opened it and smelled both the strawberries and rhubarb right away. It kind of looks like a dried fruit trail mix with large chunks of fruit in it. Tempted to eat it while waiting for the water to boil. Patience! After draining the tea bits I noticed some white chunks that didn’t dissolve. I’m guessing they are yogurt bits as they were sweet and creamy. Too bad, I bet they would have been good in the tea. First sip; blech… hibiscus! Not a fan of hibiscus. I’m also hit by a citrusy tang that I find unpleasant, but the lingering creamy strawberry taste is nice. Trying some sugar… It’s a bit better now. The sugar cuts down the tangy taste that I’m not fond of. I could see liking it if instead of the hibiscus it was a black tea base, but this just tastes like juice to me. Not for me and I’m glad it was only a small sample and that there are so many other teas out there for me to try!

Oh, and those yogurt bits took a little extra work to get out of my infuser.

I love chili in my chocolate. I love the way the heat adds to the flavor of the chocolate. I love putting chipotle powder in my brownies and was intrigued by the idea of chocolate chili tea. Chocolate should be sweet in my opinion, so I added a little sugar to my cup which worked well. The chocolate taste is definitely present, especially at the beginning of each sip. The chili is quite mild and leaves a little heat at the end of each sip. There could have been more chili and burn for my taste, but that may limit its audience. The chai part I’m not getting. When I hear chai I think of super strong cardamon, cinnamon and clove, which I am not getting here. Maybe they call it chai to suggest you drink it with milk? I tried adding a little milk towards the end of my cup. It kind of just watered down the overall taste for me and voided the chili which is a shame. I like this tea, but it’s not wowing me. I want to be wowed. There is something missing to make it more full bodied and well rounded of a taste and I can’t think of what that could be. Either way, I think this flavor combo has much more potential than it was given in this tea.

I had never tried a pu-erh tea before and was wondering what the hype was about. So when I was at Teavanna I asked to smell this tea and was socked in the face with a rich ripe mouth watering strawberry aroma. I decided to give it a go despite the fact that things advertised as weight loss aids tend to freak me out a little. I wasn’t thrilled with my first cup, but I found myself thinking about it and craving it over the next day or two and liking it better on my subsequent cups. The smell of strawberry is fairly strong when brewed and the taste is very distinct. It’s almost like strawberry candy; a little over the top, but I kinda like it. I can’t quite describe the taste of the tea behind the strawberry, but it is very mellow and smooth. Maybe that is the pu-erh flavor I’m tasting? I tried it with a little sugar which was very nice, but adding a little milk after that took away from it for me. It steeped well for two cups and was bland on the third. I’d sum it up as a slightly above average tea and a decent introduction to pu-erh although I don’t know that I’m hooked enough to buy it again.

I should start by saying I’m not a huge fan of fruity teas. I bought this because I thought it may have been Trader Joe’s attempt at producing Paradise’s Tropical tea that they used to carry which I love as an iced tea. I don’t mind fruit as an accent to other flavors, but alone they rarely wow me. I find fruity teas have a tang to them that I dislike, but a little bit of sugar mellows it out and that worked with this tea. The smell and flavor of mango is strong and prominent in this tea. The taste is very simple and leaves a lot of room for experimentation with mixing other teas in. Overall I’d say it was decent for a fruity tea, but not something I feel compelled to keep in stock.

BLAM!!! IN YOUR FACE!!!! Which is exactly what this tea and it’s bullying jasmine flavor do! I love jasmine and I love tea that has strong flavor, so being smacked upside the taste buds by this tea is alright by me. I find it refreshing as an iced tea, but a little drying in my mouth as well. I do enjoy it plain with it’s puckering taste, but like it better with a little sugar to take the edge off the bitterness that seems to accompany it no matter how I brew it. There is often a pitcher of it in my fridge during the summer (in true southern form) and find myself getting all hopped up after a couple tall glasses and getting a lot of housework done. So overall, it’s a win in my book.

The first thing I noticed about this tea is that it is somewhat dense, probably due to the caramel and cacao nibs, so you fewer cups for your ounces here. When brewed, it resembles chicken broth in color and has an oily layer on the top like broth. When I smelled it, I caught whiffs of caramel which was exciting. I tasted it and detected only the slightest hint of caramel, maybe a touch of salt if I’m thinking about it really hard and a lingering licorice root taste in an overall muddled blandness. A little bit of sugar brings out the caramel a bit more, but it’s really nothing to get excited about. Since so much of it is nibs that dissolve with the first cup, there really isn’t much left for second steeping. Overall it was a disappointing venture to find a new favorite tea and it will probably sit in my cupboard until I either guilt myself into finishing it out of not wanting to waste or find someone else to pawn it off on.