SupremeMongoose

_{2nd Infusion}

Compared to the first infusion, the green tea taste is a touch milder and less astringent, and I’m only getting a light sweetness, as opposed to the clear pineapple aftertaste. Still good, and I still don’t want to sweeten it, but I’m not sure if I’ll do a 3rd infusion of this today.

I picked up several loose leaf teas from this company while visiting relatives in Illinois, and I decided to try this one first.

In the tin, this smells mostly of green tea, with a sweet overtone from the pineapple chunks, which are large and plentiful. I used 2 teaspoons for a little over 8oz, plus a big pineapple chunk. :D The scent in the cup is pretty delicate, but it smells really tasty.

Before adding honey, this tastes mostly like good quality green tea, and the pineapple comes in at the end of the sip and in the aftertaste, which is really pleasant. In fact, now that I’ve had a few sips, I don’t think I’m going to sweeten it! The taste of this unsweetened is perfect! It’s very rare for me not to add a few drops of honey, so this is high praise.

I’m going to do a few more infusions of this I think!

This + early V-day chocolates = om nom nom :D

This is another discontinued tea I’ve been hoarding my last canister of – darn Teavana and their sneaky discontinuing ways. :p

In the tin and in the cup, this one has a nice fruity scent – kind of pineapple-y. While the tuo cha cakes are kind of a pain to break up, I prefer to have a bit of the pu-erh taste in there with the other flavors. The fruit flavor in this is pleasant, but it doesn’t overpower the green tea. I usually do a heaping teaspoon for 8oz, and add a little honey. Yummy!

This is one of my favorite “ginger peach” black teas – it has a mellow ginger flavor (no burn) that blends very well with the peach flavor. It smells absolutely divine both dry and while steeping, and the taste actually lives up to the scent remarkably well. This one is quite good plain, but adding some honey rounds out the taste nicely. For the best flavor I use about 1.5 tsp per 8/10oz, rather than the recommended 1.

Unfortunately, Teavana has discontinued this, so I’ve been hoarding my last tin of it – I’m going to be really bummed when I run out! :(

No notes yet.

Dry, this tea smells faintly of peaches, but when you start steeping it, it has a deeelicious light peach scent.

Before adding honey, while it’s still quite hot, it tastes faintly of peaches and white tea. The flavor in this tea definitely comes out more when you let it cool for a little bit. After it cooled down (but before I added my usual honey), I tasted it again – it has a very nice, delicate white tea and peach flavor. I added a little honey, which brought the peach flavor out a bit more.

Very nice for bagged white tea!

My tummy and I are still at odds, and I needed some caffeine, so I went with this tea.

I drank it hot and I steeped it for 5 minutes – it says 1-2 minutes on the box, but that’s always too weak for me. I added a few drops of honey (although it’s just fine without too). The refreshing spearmint/black tea taste is helping me perk back up a bit. :)

No notes yet.

A very tasty mint tea – I’m drinking it tonight for an upset tummy. :( It certainly helps, and it’s quite refreshing. I added a few drops of honey.

Mmhmm good start to the day :) I steeped this for 5 minutes, ignore the time below – my iPad doesn’t play nice with the sliders :(

The dry teabag has a deep, rich fruited honey scent – almost a powdered honey smell. It smells really good! The tea smells exactly the same while steeping – maybe with a touch more fruit. The scent reminds me of a fruity dessert mead…mmmmm.

Without sweetener, the tea is lightly fruity and tastes somewhat honey like – I can make out the green tea, but it’s pretty faint.I would never know this had chamomile in it if I hadn’t read the bag. The hibiscus works well with the pomegranate flavor, and it isn’t too tart. Of course I had to add a little honey to it – it brought out the fruit flavor, but the honey flavor also became more pronounced. They could have just as easily called this “fruit mead flavored tea”!

I’m surprised the reviews on this are as ho-hum as they are – I probably would have rated this about 5 points lower without sweetener, but it’s quite good with a few drops of honey. I’m also a hibiscus fiend though, so keep that in mind when I tealog herbal teas… :)

This is pretty much my favorite herbal tea! I just cracked open a new box, which means I’m going to have to make a trip to Albertson’s soon for a new backup box – it’s the only place in town that carries it, oddly.

This tea smells pretty much like any other Zinger before steeping, but after – it smells like a hot cup of hibiscus-y tangerine-y goodness. This is a tea that I usually hover over, inhaling the yummy scent while I wait. It’s naturally sweet-tart and flavorful (just like a ripe tangerine!) without adding any sweetener, but as usual I added a little honey to bring the tangerine flavor even closer to the front.

Ahhh this tea makes any evening a happy place for me :D

I really like this tea! It has a nice, fresh lemon scent dry, and it smells fantastic and even more lemony while steeping.

It’s good with or without sweetener, but I find that a few drops of honey really brighten up the flavor of this tea. Pre-honey, it has a pleasant lightly lemony green tea flavor, post-honey, it tastes like a mellow pink lemonade, and the flavor blends well with the green tea, rather than covering it up. In fact, I think pink lemonade + iced green tea would be a pretty awesome combo, especially after drinking this!

This is one of my favorite lemon flavored teas. :)

I’ve had this tea around for awhile…long enough that mine has the old Panda Berry label! Part of my reason for joining this site was to encourage myself to start rooting around in the depths of my tea cupboard a bit more, and this has definitely been a lurker. I can’t recall what it tasted like anymore, and on opening the canister I discovered that uh…I’ve probably had this all of 2 or 3 times. Looking at the tin vs the Republic’s website ( I added their ingredients to the Steepster listing), the ingredients have remained the same after the name change, with the exception of “natural cream flavoring” having been replaced with (or renamed as) “natural vanilla flavoring”.

The scent of the dry tea is a strong, sweet cherry/berry scent. I like my fruity tea strong, so I brewed it for an extra minute, as it was still looking pretty pale at 4 minutes. Once brewed, the berry scent is quite faint, and unsweetened, it tastes kind of like slightly berry flavored hot water. In an attempt to bring some of the flavors out, I added a little honey. It didn’t make much of a difference – now it tastes like sweet slightly berry flavored hot water! I don’t taste black tea in this at all. I don’t have any lemon around, but there’s a chance it might improve this tea a bit.

On the container, it said to let it cool to room temperature (although I suspect that’s just to avoid scorching your kids), but I decided to give that a try, just to give this a fair shake. It didn’t do much sadly – now it’s just cool, sweet, slightly berry flavored water…blargh.

This tea isn’t undrinkable (I finished my cup), but it’s pretty ho-hum. I’m going to go brew up a cup of something else!

Now that I’ve rated this poorly, if anyone out there still wants what I have left (probably around 45 bags) for their kids, or just to try, please PM me – I feel kind of guilty chucking it (although I think I’ll keep the canister to air out and put other tea in). I suppose for now, it’ll just go back to lurking until I need the space!

Considering I’m not a big licorice fan, it came as a bit of a surprise to me that I liked this tea. I have a full canister of it (bagged), and I probably drink it a few times a month.

The tea in the canister smells herbal and spicy, almost medicinal, but in a good way. You can definitely smell the ginger and anise. It smells similar while brewing, but a bit less strong. This is a tea that benefits IMMENSELY from honey – all you need is a few drops, and the flavor changes from a weak, somewhat gingery/anise tea to a nice strong and complex ginger mint with a hint of citrus. For some reason, I like that this tea tastes a bit medicinal (in the herbal sense, not in the cough syrup sense), but I do have to be in the mood for it. It does leave a bit of a tingle in my throat from the ginger, but I like that too.

I like this tea after meals, when I feel like I may have eaten a bit too much, or the food just isn’t sitting quite right. It’s very easy on the stomach.

I think this may be a new favorite bagged flavored green tea for me – it has a sweet juicy fruit taste with a touch of citrus that blends very nicely with the green tea. Usually with flavored green tea in bags, I don’t expect a whole lot from the green tea, but in this case I was pleasantly surprised by how smooth the green tea tasted. I added honey, but I don’t think I really needed to, in retrospect – this tea is quite sweet on its own.

Compared to my usual teas with ginger (Republic of Tea Ginger Peach Black and Teavana Ginger Peach Apricot), this one packs some real ginger burn, rather than the milder ginger taste I usually associate with ginger peach teas.

It was good, but I think my usual brew time of 5 minutes was a bit stiff for this tea -the ginger overshadowed the peach. Some honey helped the peach out, but I think I’ll shoot for 3 or 4 minutes next time.

I enjoyed this tea – it had a nice tropical taste, mostly mango with a light coconut flavor. I think I added a bit too much honey though, and it may have overpowered some of the flavor of the tea. I think I’ll try a touch of sugar next time.

This is my favorite plain peach flavored tea. No extra spices, nothing but a beautiful, real peach flavor and lovely black tea. This one is fantastic with a shot of honey, and I love it on lazy mornings when I’m in no hurry to get anywhere or do anything. Fantastic!

I like this tea. It does smell a bit fake in bagged form, but I didn’t taste that in the cup. The hazelnut flavor was mellow, and the chocolatey flavor was a bit weak, but a teaspoon of sugar helped this tea immensely. Usually I use honey, but I thought it might be a bit odd in this tea. I can’t drink caffeinated tea in the evening, so this was a nice change from my usual herbal tea routine.

This is my favorite straight peppermint tea – it’s refreshing, and great with a bit of honey, or unsweetened. I usually drink this when I’m flagging in the evening and need a bit of perking up, but not the caffeine.

I tried this one before bedtime last week – I needed something calming, and the ingredient list was too weird to pass up. I actually found the scent of this tea to be very…strange, almost off-putting. However, when it cooled enough to drink, I actually kind of liked it!

I think the combination of herbs and flavorings go together pretty well, but I’m going to have to try it a few more times to make up my mind about it, since every time I caught a whiff I thought “Ugh!”, then with each sip I thought “Mmm..?”. Maybe I need a clothespin for my nose on this one. :p

This tea was very nice and fruity – it had a pleasant lemon flavor that was juicy and natural tasting. I didn’t even realize this had chamomile until after I drank it, so if you’re unsure about chamomile, this might be a good one to try out.

(I have the bagged version of this.)