Novi

This tea is the ultimate comfort food to me… Quite artificial, yes, but I love it anyway. This is not as spicy as a loose chai, especially for those of us who are used to drinking chai teas… A bit of spices in the background, but nothing that stands out. This is more like a dessert than a true tea… Like creme brulee pudding or something. I enjoy it very much!

The scent of the tea leaves is exactly what the name implies… Very sweet lime and pineapple, and quite impressive! I had high hopes. However, the brewed scent worried me a bit… It smelled almost like Lime Perrier… that very fizzy, almost salty, unsweetened carbonated water. So its really a toss-up of which way this tea will go!

Sadly, it went the Perrier route, and a tea that tastes carbonated with no bubbles is just strange. I might have to tea swap this.

Raised my rating from an 81 (hot) to an almost perfect score! This is one of the best iced teas I’ve ever tasted. I will absolutely buy this again. It tastes so much like Welch’s white grape juice, and that is such a comforting flavor to me that I can’t imagine ever letting myself run out of this blend.

This tea just wasn’t very good… From the bag, it smelled amazing… like a peaches and cream, almost. The smell made me very excited to taste this tea! It smelled just as good brewed, and I could definitely enjoy a candle that smelled like this tea. Sadly, the tea tasted almost like a candle! The peach flavor was nice, like a light cling peach. But there was a terrible, waxy aftertaste that made it difficult to even finish the cup – I think I’ll be passing this tea onto a friend (or enemy) because I can’t ever see myself drinking this again on purpose.

No notes yet.

First off, my tea doesn’t look much like the picture… there seem to be way fewer currants in my tea than are in the picture. However, I don’t think it affects the taste of the tea at all. It really does taste like white grape! Sadly, there’s no tartness to the flavor, like there would be in a white grape juice. But this tea is also something I never expected it to be… Its almost comforting, and I never expected that from a grape flavored tea. Not one of my favorites, but I’ll probably buy it again, when looking for a change.

Final tally came out at 184oz of tea for 2oz mix. That’s pretty close to a gallon and a half! Enjoyed every bit of it, too. This tea never lost its flavor, and never stopped having swirly chocolate in the bottom of the cup. One of the best teas ever!

No notes yet.

Skipped a log, so I’m now at 112oz… I really enjoy this tea. It tastes even better when more sweetener is added… Doesn’t taste so good when it gets cold… Probably would if brewed like chai and chilled in a chocolate milk sort of way, but as a plain, water brewed tea, it just isn’t good cold.

No notes yet.

80oz… The oily layer on top is really bugging me, now. Is it the melted chocolate chips? Is it a by-product of the steeped nuts, coconut, and cocoa pieces? Could it be the salt?

Either way, this really is a tea that you either need to drink down quickly, or drink with a spoon. The melted chocolate mixes well with the water at first, but after sitting, sinks to the bottom of the cup and needs to be stirred back in.

No notes yet.

Fourth steep, 64oz, considering how this experiment will go as I drink this tea with spaghetti dinner…

The caramel and chocolate flavors are starting to blend better, now… Before, they tasted more separate and distinctive, but now, it tastes like a really good bite of a less sweet Milky Way – very blended flavors, not at all overwhelming. I think the next steep may call for an extra scoop of mix, though, to keep it from getting any weaker.

Third steep, puts me at 48oz thus far.

This blend is still sweet, but now the chocolate note takes a bit of a backseat to the caramel flavoring… a surprise, since the caramel disintegrates with each brew and the cocoa and carob don’t. When a bit of salt is added, the chocolate notes change into something almost coffee-like. Each infusion is brewing darker than the last, and each has that odd oily layer on top, like the first cup.

Still enjoy the tea, but as I drink the second round, its worth noting that this tea has added sugar in the flavoring – plain sugar is listed three times in the ingredients list.

As with the last “herbal infusion” teavana tea I tried, I decided to just dump a spoonful of new mixture on top of the previously used mixture and re-steeped. That cut the amount of sweetener down pretty well and let me control it.

So, the flavor of this second steep didn’t differ much from the first. The chocolate flavor was more milky than the first, the caramel more creamy… Still tasted no salt, but enjoyed the flavor much more than the first steep! I’d love to start counting now how many good tasting oz I get out of this baggy, and right now we’re at 32. My goal is a gallon.

When I first opened the bag, the dry tea smelled very strongly of freshly cooked, just off the stove caramel, which was a shock – usually, in chocolate containing teas, the hot cocoa smell overpowers everything, and I was hopeful that this would be more of a caramel taste with an undertone of chocolate.

After brewing, the chocolate really came out – the tea and spent leaves both smelled of melted chocolate pieces, with little caramel or salt to be found! Luckily, the chocolate and caramel balance much better in the cup. This is a pretty good dessert tea – probably not worth the original asking price, but at less than $1/oz, with each oz probably giving me over a half gallon of tea, I can’t complain.

I also can’t speak to the salt in this blend. I don’t taste it, but I’m a salt hound and probably wouldn’t taste it unless it was so salty it made normal folks cough.

I had incredibly high hopes for this tea the second I opened the bag. The “tea” mix has a very strong, sweet fruity smell, like a sugared wine. It left me truly excited at the prospect of tasting this tea! The strong scent left me surprised at how light the brew was, and hoping that it tasted more like it smelled, less like it looked.

Hot, this tea just didn’t meet my expectations – it tastes weak, even after a long steep at the recommended temperature, time, and “tea” amount. It has the flavor of an extremely watered down, warm juice (which, I suppose, is what it is).

I was disappointed, thinking I’d just down this because I paid for it and thinking of people to pawn it off on, but by then the tea had started to cool, and it was like a whole new drink. The tart/sweet flavor really shone through, getting stronger the longer I let it chill.

Sadly, while I enjoyed the flavor after a while, I don’t drink much iced tea, so this one probably won’t be re-ordered.

This tea truly is pretty incredible. The second I opened the bag, I could tell exactly what the flavor was meant to be… blueberry candy. I’m not used to drinking green tea, so the tan-peach brewed color made me nervous, but there was no need to be… this tea was delicious! The level of sweet flavor was a bit low for a cotton candy dupe, but a pinch of stevia picked it right up and brought out the candy floss notes in the flavor. The blueberry doesn’t exactly taste like a real blueberry – it tastes more like eating a really good (but artificial) blueberry gummy bear – the perfect blueberry taste for cotton candy!

You can still taste the green tea base beneath the flavors, but it doesn’t overpower or clash with the cotton candy flavors at all. And I love the way 52teas blends seem thicker than regular water or tea – just slightly, but enough to add some character to the mouthfeel.

I’m not entirely sure how to feel about this tea. At first smell, I thought I’d opened up the wrong bag, because the dry tea smelled quite heavily of chocolate. After re-checking that it was, in fact, maple bacon, I set out to brew. This brewed up relatively dark, for tea, and smelled heavily of coffee at first – not bacon or maple at all, at least for me.

At first pure sip, this just tasted like a run-of-the-mill strong black tea, but the suggestions made to add sweetener and salt really helped. Not sure if I’m getting maple or just plain sweetness, but the salt helped the bacon out a lot – maybe a salt-rimmed glass would be even better? Though I do have a salty palate, so maybe that’s going overboard.

The texture of the brew is wonderful, though… Its got that slight thickness usually reserved for coconut teas, and is an easy drink.

Sad that this is already gone! I did get about 80 oz of tea out of a sample that they said would only make 16 oz. The trick, to me, of making this tea taste good was re-steeping. I used two Perfect Tea spoons worth of mix for the first steep (using an IngenuiTea). Then, I simply added 1-2 Perfect Tea spoons worth of new mix to the old, then re-steeped for the same time and temperature. The tea tasted better with every brew – possibly the fact that the tea was coming closer to the correct balance of spices to sugar – the last steep had my IngenuiTea over 1/4 full of spices and tea leaves, and only a few pieces of sugar were in that steep. Speaking of which, rock sugar is the first ingredient in the tea, and there is also candied fruit – those watching their sugar intake should be aware.

I think I’d order this tea again if I could get a rock sugar optional blend of it – the sugar seems unnecessary, and its hard to justify Teavana’s high price tag per 2oz just to be given a tiny bit of tea and a big container of rock candy – especially for those of us with blood sugar issues.

This tea blend was a sample sent from Teavana with my order, and the first Teavana tea I’ve tried. I was shocked to see that they expected you to use the entire 1oz sample for 16oz tea – I’m used to 1oz sizes being good for at least 5 cups, if not more! I suppose the rock sugar is why, but I decided to split this tea the same I do with my others – 1.5-2 Perfect Tea Spoons for 16oz tea. The tea brewed somewhat dark that way, but not too strong – like a nice, sweet chai. The spices are present, but not overwhelming, and brewed this way, the sugar isn’t either! The tea tastes somewhat like a mixture of Big Red gum and plain pink Bubblegum… Surprisingly good!

Very tropical… Not fond of the flavor hot, but one of the best iced teas I’ve ever tasted! The strawberry and coconut are strong, but the kiwi flavor is pretty understated – if you’re not specifically looking for it, you may only notice a vague fruity flavor, not necessarily kiwi. The brew smells strongly of coconut, but doesn’t have the thick mouthfeel that coconut usually brings a tea – probably since there’s no real coconut in the tea. For someone like me, who hates that oily texture, this tea is a winner!

I’m not quite sure I enjoy this one, honestly… The black tea base has an interesting flavor, slightly bitter. And the mint isn’t what I expected – I was hoping for a sweet candy mint, or a very icy-cold mint (like their Brandy and Wintermint). It tastes vaguely minty, and very green, which just isn’t something I look for when wanting to drink a mint tea.

This tea is good, but in ways could be better. I feel like the chocolate doesn’t blend as well with the spices as it could… Its still good, but if the spice blend were a little smoother, the tea would work better. Overall, still a good tea, but not one I’d re-purchase at full price.