__Morgana__
drank
Om by Tazo
Another of those confusing black and green blends. What temperature? How long? Wish: that sexy Breville tea maker will have the right setting for something like this and take all the guesswork out of it. Getting to experiment = fun. Having to guess = not so fun.
I chose to go with three minutes and fairly hot water. I’ve mostly been making this tea at work anyway, where I have little control over water temp and less control over steeping time. I get distracted easily by work while at work and tend to oversteep. Which is as it should be (the distraction part, not the oversteeping part). :-)
Before I did, though, I sniffed the bags. I could smell the cucumber and something spicy. It took a minute for it to click, then I realized what spicy cucumbers are… pickles! Yeah. Pickle smell. I like pickles, but I’m not sure how I feel about them in tea. Seems like next year’s 52 Teas April fools joke waiting to happen.
The pickle smell becomes less prominent with steeping, perhaps because the peach fragrance emerges. It isn’t strong, but it seems to snatch whatever was making the bags smell pickley away from the cucumber aroma and renders it fresher smelling as well.
Flavor-wise, this is fairly unremarkable. There is a fresh note to it from the cucumber, and a slight sweetness, but not a lot else going on (not even pickle). It has a moderate amount of astringency.
I am considering two adjustments. 1. Lower water temperature, and 2. Sweetening it up a tad. I wonder what adding honeybush would do?
