52teas

Been drinking this for 2 days as I recover from wisdom teeth extraction yesterday. No hot tea allowed, but I’ve been sucking down the gallon I made of this, and boy, is it good! I don’t like juice, and I just can’t manage to drink a lot of water, but this stuff has really been great to stay hydrated with!

Backlog:

I enjoyed the Very Big Hill Dew Honeybush so I was interested to see how this would compare. This makes a very tasty iced tea. I think that this does work better with a honeybush base than it does with a black tea base. The lemon-lime notes shine through in the iced tea version, but, I am getting less of the bubbly, effervescent taste that Frank captures so well in his “soda” inspired teas, and I felt like that flavor came through better with the honeybush version.

But this is still a very refreshing, tasty iced tea.

Been getting headaches in afternoon. Decided it could be caffeine withdrawal since I’ve been drinking almost solely herbal teas for weeks. Decided a cup of this with vanilla honey and a splash of rice milk was in order.

TTB&C #18

I pulled out a tsp of this last night before packaging up the box. I steeped this for 2 mins, per some suggestions for 52 Teas I have seen recently. I also added a tad bit of sugar since I was hunting around the house for chocolate:) I get a subtle hint of bananna and a bakery like teaste. This isn’t too bad. I am thinking the 2 min steep time might be a sweet spot for the 52 teas. Will have to try it with a few of the others I own. Thank you for including this NayLynn!

Mmm!

This cup is very refreshing, and super tasty. It’s like this perfect combo between refreshing, almost melon-y, cucumber and sweet mango! It’s definitely a “spring” tea – although today didn’t really feel like Spring; it was snowing really heavily all afternoon.

I think cucumber teas are something I’d want to keep exploring…

So this has cooled quite a bit while I was working on my final project. I am sort of sad about that because for the first time in a while it has a great strawberry flavor.

You know what I am not sad about though? Finding this awesome acapella group on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lExW80sXsHs

I am drinking this in excitement for this week’s 52teas creation! I can’t believe I suggested a tea a week ago and presto, there it is!

Thank you, VariaTEA, for a sample of this tea!

It’s so yummy! I can definitely taste strawberry and marshmallow fluffiness as well as genmaicha ricey base. It all melts together real well. I can envision this tea being suitable for both summer (the strawberry refreshing notes) and winter (the desserty, sweet relaxing goodness). It is also, possibly, the first 52teas creation that really impressed me. I cannot order anything from anyone for a while now, and probably by the time I can, this will be gone, but most of the recent 52teas blends sound really good anyway… so maybe, maybe… I should consider it as the company I will order from soon?

Sipdown! Not too sad about this one. I’ve enjoyed it, but I’ve had my fill for now! Last cup of the pouch had all of the cayenne dust at the bottom, so it’s very spicy. A fitting finale for a dragon-inspired tea!

From the Caffeine-free/Decaf Traveling Box.

Mmmmm smells so much like a hot chocolate milkshake. It does taste like it too, but only if it’s freshly hot. I think it’s difficult for teas to combine with chocolate, but with this one it’s alright.

I was tempted to pick out and eat the caocao nibs.

I had this tea when I was feeling under the weather, and honestly, this tea worked great for me. I haven’t been able to find it in a while but I am still searching. If anyone knows where I can get it contact me – Mickey Markoff

Slowly but surely I am getting through this tea. If nothing else, it is hydrating. This particular cup tastes like plain honeybush and nothing else.

Not counting the tea I reviewed last week, I have 21 different flavors of SBT teas in my cupboard. I’d better get drinking! Thank God it’s finally warm enough to enjoy iced tea. The dry leaf aroma is divine. Very lime-y in a fresh, authentic way. It even smells creamy, mmm!

My husband stole a sip while he poured me a cup and said, “It’s good, but it’s too buttery for my tastes.” Well, good! All the more for me then! The nerve of him to steal a sip without asking anyway. :P I’m perfectly happy to lay claim to this entire pitcher all by myself because this is super yummy!

Although my husband described it as buttery, I’m not sure I agree. I find it creamy, smooth, luscious, and delicious! It’s equally lime and cheesecake to me. The black base here is not bitter at all, and the flavoring is much more authentic tasting than the lime in the Cherry Limeade SBT. I love this one so much more.

The base is about even strength with the added flavorings, which is especially nice. I added some agave and it complements the cup perfectly! This is exactly my kind of tea. Yummm! I need to pick up some more of this. I think this is the most cheesecake I’ve gotten out of any 52teas blend to date. It’s not tangy, but it is creamy and delicious. I call it a success!

At first taste, this tasted a lot like a plain black iced tea with a shot of melted lime jello in it. It was sweet and limey, but dominantly the tea flavor.

About halfway through the sip, though, the lime becomes more tangy, sharp, and natural tasting like a fresh key lime. There does seem to be an amount of tart creamy cheesecake flavor hiding underneath it, as well.

This one didn’t really grow on me until I had already reached the bottom of my pitcher (Sad!). I don’t know if it strikes me as a reorder, but I definitely ended up liking it better than my initial impressions had me thinking.

Better hot. I love the apple flavor with the touch of caramel. The oolong they use is good but I don’t think it’s anything special.

It was such a lovely weekend; such a shame I had to get up and get ready for work this morning. The winds were really howling in the middle of the night, and I woke to a fairly chilled room and only wanted to burrow further under the covers and make the world go away. But alas, that was not to be. Such is the story of my life.

So I chose this tea to have in place of breakfast, because we’re sort of out of inspiring breakfast options. So a strongly flavoured black that happens to also taste like banana medicine fit the bill perfectly. I’m a little worried that this tea doesn’t keep nearly as well, although admittedly it’s still only in its original foil packet, but I found the flavours a touch muted this morning. I maintain that a three minute steep is the way to go to extract all the flavour possible while keeping the sometimes finicky base at bay.

A great first cup, that’s for sure.

I don’t know the last time I had iced tea, but I guarantee you it was from a mix and not real tea.

I’m getting my wisdom teeth out on Wednesday, and stocking up on really soft foods. I read that neither hot stuff (like hot tea) nor soda isn’t going to go over well, so I decided to make a pitcher of one of the iced teas to have on hand for when I want something to drink! I decided to make a pitcher of the Razzleberry.

I steeped the large teabag twice, and added enough water/ice to make a gallon of iced tea. I thought this was pretty good tea, and will definitely be refreshing as I recuperate. I have another pouch (I got pouches of iced tea as part of the Kickstarter campaign) of Razzleberry, but I’ll be wanting to try one of the other ones first! I’d buy this again.

From the Caffeine-free/Decaf Traveling Box.

A nice dessert tea. The dry leaf smells like a pastry and looks pretty with the coconut bits. The coconut flavor stands out more when the tea is steeped, but I can’t taste any cheesecake. The texture is a little creamy.

As the weather is considering a change to the warmer, I’ve been trying my hand at iced teas. Mostly cold brewed, and Hubby is enjoying most of the experiments right now since the weather is still not quite iced tea season for me… although I have tried a few. MissB was so gracious to share an iced tea blend of this and several others for me to experiment with. :)

Being my first iced tea blend from Southern Boy Teas (52teas), I thought I do the unmentionable and cut the bag in half and do a partial batch… Just in case I had a fail. Wanted to be sure I had a chance at redemption.

I first hot steeped the half bag to make a qt of tea, pouring that directly into a Mason jar full of ice when the steep was over. I then removed the bag, and the leaves that had escaped, into another Mason jar and cold steeped that overnight. The hot steeped version was almost bitter and although it smelled of strawberry, it was richer in the black base flavor than anything. I saved the hot steeped tea until the next day and combined the two into a 2qt pitcher … Eeks, is that allowed?!?! I’m thinking next time I may try to cold steep first and then hot steep later as MissB suggested, but I was so excited I forgot to double check which to do first if I wanted to try a double steep.

We enjoyed the tea with our dinner and it was a nice refreshing tea. It smelled much like a strawberry milkshake, but tasted better… Richer. A touch of sugar brought out the strawberry and made this a nice treat. My 8 yr old son tried it and said it was good, but not a favorite… I’m thinking when we try Monkey Fart he will go bananas over that one.. ;)

I’m not used to flavored iced teas in the summer… having grown up on Lipton w/loads of fresh mint, Gonna take a little getting used to added flavors in cold blends, but I think I’m going to really enjoy the variety. Hubby is really enjoying trying new things already and always comes home saying how much he liked whatever I had ready for him that day to take to work.. I’ve sent several and he’s only come home with one that was just ok. :) So much better than grabbing a soda… In so many ways! Love it!

I wanted to like this one so much more than I did. I don’t know why I didn’t. It was chocolaty, rich, but just didn’t do it for me. I thought about adding milk to it to see if it helped me like it better, but didn’t feel like getting up. Maybe next time.

In a timolino for work, no additives.

This was really coffee/cream rich today, and tasted especially cakey. The chocolate/oolong were both much lighter in flavour/presence.

Morningstar and I were on break together today, and while I was drinking my tea she asked me to explain what each of them were, so I broke down the ingredients to this one and my cold brewed Lime Chiffon and when both smelled/sounded good to her I split each 50/50 with her so she could try them out.

This was her favourite of the two (I’m thinking because she’s a coffee drinker normally, or maybe because it was hot). Honestly, it was my favourite of the two (today, anyway) as well. I think I must have successfully converted her to tea though, because she said she’d pay me back if I ordered a pouch of it for her. I was really sad when I had to tell her this one isn’t sold anymore.

I promised to bring in some other ones I think are similar for her to try, though. That seemed to make her pretty happy. I think I might bring in Tea Desire’s Latte Macciato (because of the coffee/chocolate element) and then a Bourbon Black (because I know she likes booze) early next week for her to try. And maybe DT’s Choconut Oolong…

It was a cool bonding type moment, though!

Sipdown!! (162)

Thank you Kat_Maria for the opportunity to try this tea. There is a little more heat in this cup than the last but still nothing close to what I expected. Plus, still no banana. I am grateful to have gotten to try it but I can’t help but feel disappointed.