OolongLily

My second from Tea Forte’s Skin-Smart sampler. It smells amazing in the bag. Sweet, nutty, tasty. In my cup, not so much. I think perhaps, that these particular tea bags just need to be steeped longer. I tasted both the cherries and the almonds. The cherries were sweet, juicy, with a little tartness. The almonds were sweet, smooth, and nutty. The green tea provided a nice backdrop for both. I think I could really dig this tea if the flavor was bigger but it just wasn’t that impressive a cup. Maybe I could sprinkle the tea around my house and make the house smell awesome…

The score was bumped to a 70 after some seriously long steeping.

My first of Tea Forte’s Skin-Smart sampler. It’s… weak. I steeped it for three minutes but it might have needed more. The flavors just wasn’t as big as I’d have liked. I got the cucumber and mint flavors. The blueberry was minor and more towards the end. It reminded me a bit of cucumber aloe creams. I drank this hot, but it seems like it would be better cool or iced. Cucumber and mint are naturally cool flavors so maybe an ice cube would have helped.

On another note… Tea bags? It’s a beauty-themed product and they use generic tea bags? Even a pyramid bag seems more in line with a beauty enhancing tea. Generic tea bags aren’t pretty.

Full review: http://www.tea-tank.com/?p=282

Bought this purely for the glass. I love POM glasses. This is my new POM glass. Now with lid!

…but I won’t talk about the packaging here. This tea was alright. Four ingredients. I taste three. Decent black tea base. Enough honey in there to add sweetness and a cakey texture to my tongue post-drinking. Sugar. I don’t taste the “splash of lemon” too much. Maybe it’s more a drop of lemon. It’s an above average RTD. Tastes more like tea than the average RTD, yet it seems awkwardly in the middle between standard sweet RTD tea-juice and loose iced tea. Not something I plan to keep stocked in my fridge. I kind of want it a little sweeter. I will return for the other flavors so I can have more glasses though.

Full Review: http://www.tea-tank.com/?p=259

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My last from the Steepster August box. I wasn’t looking forward to this one since I thought it might be overly floral. Opening the package didn’t make me feel better, as it smelled pretty damn flowery. Turned out to be a fantastic jasmine scented white though. Extremely balanced in flavor. Good white tea flavor and the jasmine adds a different, floral sweetness to the white tea. It’s a great evening tea. Almost a light dessert tea. Relaxing.

Reminds me of summer evenings when I lived in Cali. Sitting on the patio after a hot day while a cool breeze travels through the backyard, bringing with it the scent of the potted jasmine flowers in the neighborhood… Just chillin. Much better than right now, where I’m chillin because it’s freaking cold downstairs. I’ll have to put my teapot inside my sweatshirt pretty soon.

The second tea I tried from the August Steepster box. It’s a delicious darjeeling. Slightly green and floral. A little bit astringent. I try to under-steep this one to avoid bitter notes. Very nice overall. I could see drinking this on a regular basis. Not much flavor on the second steep.

My first tea sampled from the August Steepster Select. It’s a pretty solid ginger peach tea. The ginger is present but it doesn’t punch you in the face. The peach is there. Sweet, but not overwhelmingly so. Slightly flowery, in the generic potpourri sense. Warming, sweet, satisfying – a good flavored black tea. Everything plays well together. The only detracting factor for me is that sometimes I’ll get a spoonful with more flowers than the others, and at that point they can be a bit overwhelming.

This tea has grown on me quite a bit since I first tried it, which is good because I have a lot of it. It’s become my quick and dirty oolong. Most of my oolongs are the kind that I feel guilty about if I don’t brew it properly. The kind where I have to get out my gaiwan and resteep them a million times or else I’m going to Tea Hell, where they only have Lipton and Tazo Joy. This oolong from Utopia Tea is good. I enjoy it. There’s no guilt though if I make a tea party foul.

Dry, it smells woodsy. A little sweet. Kind of roasty smokey. It actually doesn’t smell that good in the bag imo. In fact, I had a bit of an awshit moment when I opened it up for the first time, thinking, what the hell am I going to do with all of this? I’m not even sure what it is that’s off-putting, really. Something kinda sharp. Anyway. Fortunately it tastes better than it smells. The liquor is pretty. Dark golden brown. It tastes woodsy and roasty, but without whatever aroma that wasn’t sitting well with me. I get a little bit of the citrus they talk about in the description. Not the vanilla though. It’s pretty smooth, though I can’t say that it’s really spicy. Pleasantly warming.

Not a super glowing review. However… I drink a lot of this. It’s become my workhorse tea. I work with digital media and usually my most productive hours are in the evening to late night (I prefer being stuck in a computer when it’s dark outside). When I know I’ve got a long haul and I start getting out the double-ended candles, I grab this tea. It’s got a good warming flavor and nice level of caffeine that just make it pleasant to drink while working late night. It’s not super fabulous though so there’s no guilt if I steep it once and forget about it. The tea is also pretty forgiving with temperature or time, so if I go all digital ADD and forget to pay attention to it while brewing, it’s usually okay. If I go incredibly ADD and leave it for an hour or burn it, I don’t feel too bad about tossing the cup.

It’s really the perfect balance between tea I want to drink because it’s delicious and tea I want to drink because I know at some point I’ll be an airhead and forget about it.

Last in my Tea Forte sampler.

Oh. My.

I will preface this by saying I love ginger. I eat ginger laced foods. I buy the super potent ginger beer where you see a layer of ginger debris on the bottom of the bottle. I love ginger so much that I’ll just suck on a piece of it while cooking. This tea is delicious.

I’ll keep it short, because I basically drooled all over my blog post… I went into this tea pretty grumpy. It was late but I really wanted to do the sampler teas five nights in a row (in my blog anyway, I keep forgetting to rate here). I saw that it had received pretty low scores and thought, well, it’ll probably be a one and done. I steeped this all night. Then I put it in the fridge and steeped it the next day.

The ginger is strong with this one. It’s sharp, warming, and vibrant. The lemon/lime combo supports it nicely and doesn’t get in the way. Makes it somewhat more refreshing. The honeybush is there and balances it out with a slight sweetness. I’m not sure where the kiwi was. It didn’t show up until the next day. In fact, the next day everything was much more balanced in flavor and all flavors were present and accounted for. I would wager that many of the folks who didn’t like this tea on the first or second steep would probably have liked it on my last steeps.

This tea had a wild, firey ginger orgy in my mouth. We partied all night long. Our good times ended the following afternoon, where we ended our craziness on a more peaceful, soothing tropical note. Good times.

Full OMGSPAZZ Review: http://www.tea-tank.com/?p=159

Fourth in the tea sampler. I can see why some wouldn’t like it. It’s not very tea-ish. However… I think it’s pretty cherry cosmo-ish. I don’t get the alcohol part of the cosmo, but the cherry flavoring is pretty on. The cherry is definitely present throughout the brewing and tasting and the hibiscus adds a bit of tartness. It’s like a sour cherry candy. Like life savers. Or sprees. Or skittles. A little too tart for starbursts. It’s like, if one were to mate a cherry starburst and a lemon head, and then juice their children and serve it hot, you would get this tea.

I like it.

Full Review: http://www.tea-tank.com/?p=147

My third in the TF sampler. A few months ago, I had mojitos in Boracay. That’s the best. There can only be one. Happy Hour from 2-8pm. 2 for 1 special. Lounge chair on the beach, 20ft from the water. Calamansi limes. Boracay sunset. Mmm…

…so I wasn’t expecting much from a marmalade mojito tea. Out of the packet it smelled like orange toothpaste. Kinda sweet in an artificial way. Kinda weak minty, like flavored toothpastes. It tastes the same as it smells. Spearmint dominates but the sweet orange comes through and mellows it out, with rooibos and honeybush adding more sweetness. It still reminds me of toothpaste. Or maybe the jelly filling in those orange-mint chocolates that I see around Christmas time. It’s good, but not mojito good – by any mojito standard, not just Boracay mojitos.

Most mojitos I’ve had use lemon, lime, and mint (which type of mint depends on the place). The flavors create kind of a sharp punch. Tart, minty, refreshing. The sweet orange in this tea mellows out the flavor combo and the spearmint is a weak, sweeter mint to begin with. Overall, it’s a sweet, pleasant dessert tea. A mojito, it is not.

My second from the Herbal Retreat sampler. Out of the packet it smells great, like blueberry muffins. It tastes like blueberry syrup though. Hot blueberry syrup with tartness from the hibiscus. Sage is somewhere in the background. Seems like it would be great iced. I’m not really a huge fan of this kind of tartness in a warm drink. It’s almost like a blueberry lemonade. Lemonade always seems better cold to me. Could definitely see it being delicious and refreshing on a hot day.

The first I tried from the sampler. It actually does smell and taste a bit like amaretto. Not exactly amaretto but reminiscent. Props for that. The apricot/peach flavors are like candied or dried apricot/peaches. Sweet, tasty, pleasant. I enjoyed it. It tasted best at a certain point between hot and warm, before it started approaching cool. I couldn’t really taste all of the flavors until it got to that perfect warm point. I also had to hunt for the flavors a little bit. It wasn’t bad, just wasn’t impressive. If I could put the tea on some kind of flavor steroids that would just enhance and boost the existing flavors, I’d like it more. It’s like, if you had a hot peach amaretto cocktail and watered down all the flavors you would get this tea. Pleasant enough to drink if it’s around, but not something I’d see myself going out to buy.

First time I tried this tea was pretty fun. The overall experience, that is. I spent pretty much the last half of Legion (terrible, but almost funny in a terrible way, zombie apocalypse movie) smelling the dry tea. Every time I opened up the bag it smelled like something different – vanilla one time, old lady potpourri another time, cookies another time, the tea incarnation of diabetus the next time. It was fun. Real pretty tea too. Taste… not so fun. I was expecting it to be sweet vanilla-y goodness, or sweet something, since it smelled so sweet out of the bag (most of the time). It was sweet, but the licorice went zombie apocalypse on the flavor on the back of the tongue and on the way down. On the tip of the sip it’s chamomile, vanilla, lemongrass and honeybush – a decent enough combo. Right before the swallow though, the licorice swoops in and claims my taste buds in the name of The Land of Eww. I’m not the biggest fan of licorice but I enjoy it when it complements other flavors in a blend. Here it just destroys the other flavors in a death match. I think I’d like it better without the licorice.

After some experimentation I’ve found it’s decent with some almond milk.

Finally, I bought this tea because I’m always looking for a great sleep aid tea. To me, chamomile teas are usually sleep aid teas. I didn’t feel any relaxing or calming effects from the tea though, so it’s a little disappointing in that respect. However, it seems like an alright digestive aid tea between the chamomile, lemongrass, and of course, the licorice.

Full Review: http://www.tea-tank.com/?p=83

This is an old standby from before I got into loose leaf. Despite its lack of flavor, I find it’s actually somewhat relaxing. The lotus, passion flower, and spearmint are stronger than the chamomile, though the chamomile is in there somewhere. It doesn’t taste terrible, but that’s because the flavor is so weak overall. Ultimately, it’s still in my cupboard because it’s got a decent chillout effect and since it works, it doesn’t have to taste amazing. Until I find something at least as effective and tasty, this will have to do.

This tea was discontinued, which is too bad because it’s pretty good. A tasty everyday tea. Multiple steeps with good strong flavor. Many steeps if you don’t mind the flavor tapering off a little bit. It’s a clean black tea with some delicate floral notes. Slightly roasty.

I love ginger teas and this one is pretty damn good. The ginger is warming but not overly spicy and the orange is sweet and mildly tangy. The berries kick in a little sweetness too. Good dessert tea. Good tea for an upset stomach. Good tea to cuddle up with. It’s becoming a regular in my caffeine-free lineup.

Full Review: http://www.tea-tank.com/?p=59

This is one of the first teas that got me into loose leaf. I picked up the bagged version on Woot in a really good deal. Huge eye opener to what tea could and should taste like compared to the tazos and stash I was drinking.

It’s a good, straightforward, no nonsense black tea. Has a good roasted flavor to it. Almost a honeyed kind of sweetness. No bitterness as long as it’s not oversteeped. Good, clean taste – especially for a bagged tea. One of my staples.

Full Review: http://www.tea-tank.com/?p=46

A very tasty tea. Buttery, honeyed, and a bit floral, the dreamy creamy tea pleases all the way down. It’s one of my favorites right now. The aroma is great right when you tilt the gaiwan lid. It just punches you in the face with awesome. Good for many many steeps depending on how you brew. I’ll be keeping this stocked in my cupboard.

Full Review: http://www.tea-tank.com/?p=10