Write a tea journal, see what others are drinking and get recommendations from people you trust. Sign Up or Learn More
To wind down my day I of course reached for a sweeter tea. I thought of this one right away. As it was steeping the smell was so soothing and decadent. The first sip had at first that chai taste and then a little of the herbal peered through. I only got one chocolate chip so it didn’t really stand out. Next time ill look for more chocolate chip and it will be perfect! Definitely worth trying and would be even better with milk!!
I really need some more herbals and non-caffeinated blends. I have drank myself down to one Teavana blend that I want to drink, a few medicinal staples, and a slew of hibiscus-based fruit blends that I am not interested in drinking hot. Well, it will be summer soon and I won’t want to drink hot tea in the evenings at home.
This is one of those hibiscus blends, but it benefits from having lemongrass and ginger in the mix as well. Still, it’s tartly fruity (though less tart than it could be) and not quite what I wanted tonight. Ah well.
I opened this ounce of tea for the first time yesterday to make iced tea with it. Between my lackluster experience with most MBSC teas and my waning interest in flavored greens I just never had enough initiative to open the pouch.
I thought making a pitcher full of it might use it up, but when I measured it into my 40oz bodum pitcher it was maaaaybe half of the pouch. Cold brewed overnight, and it was pretty decent. Not awesome, but decent. The green was a bit grassy and the citrus edging on bitter in the cold brew. I suppose I should some time try it hot to see how it plays out but like I said, I have little interest right now. Sometimes an improved palate can be annoying.
No notes yet.
Sipdown, 179. Cold brew.
I’ve been drinking a lot of cold brews at lunch so I took the rest of my sample of this (probably 3/4 ounce) and made a pitcher of iced tea with it. I haven’t logged my previous cups but this is the final cup of it.
This is pretty tasty as a cold brew. The white tea is slightly vegetal but mild and generally nice, and the pomegranate is pretty juicy and not too fakey tasting. Of course it isn’t totally pomegranate, and there are possibly some other things going on. Rose hips add a tartness and slight berry flavor, but it’s thankfully not overdone. All the same I’m not too sad to see it go.
Sipdown, 194. Cold brewed this one. I know, a winter blend is somewhat odd for a cold brew in the spring, but I remembered this one being appley and I have been enjoying appley cold brews.
Unfortunately this didn’t really pan out. There was some off taste to it, slightly chemically or artificial, and not enough apple. It was drinkable but perhaps I should have saved this for another hot brew. Ah well, it’s gone now!
thank you so much Dinosara! I had a tropical flavored tea once that tasted really weird and fake. Thankfully, this one is much much better. It actually tastes like tropical fruit on a nice yet mild black tea base. I didn’t see very many mango pieces in the mix though. It’s very juicy, if that’s possible. I like it!
I’ve been craving rose lately (but strangely not giving into the craving), and today I decided to try this one again, which I haven’t had in quite a while.
I like the combination of flavors here, especially rose and lemon. I love rose and lemon. The other herbs (rosemary, sage), are not very prominent, and just lend a kind of herby feel to the whole thing. The gunpowder green is kind of boringly grassy without much to it. Classic example of an interesting flavor combination in a tea that is made less successful by use of lower-quality ingredients.
Thank you, Dinosara for this sample!
This was a serendipitous find for me. Dinosara accidentally sent me the wrong sample, but she was sweet enough to let me keep it and give it a try. For some reason I have always stayed away from passion fruit. I’m not sure why, I have simply never wanted to try anything flavored with passion fruit. My mistake because this tea is good!
The fruit flavor is sweet, and the smell made me think of summer. I did add some sugar to my cup to bring the fruit flavor out a bit more. Since this is my first time trying anything that taste like passion fruit I don’t have a lot to compare it to. All I can say is I enjoyed it. I wish the base tea were stronger, but all in all this is a tasty tea.
This is a tea that all women should have in their collection! It was given to me by a fellow witch friend when I was cramping on my period and it caused them to go away! She recommended that I drink the tea once everyday for the 3 days before it comes on and I won’t have any cramping or other typical period problems. Smells and tastes very cinnamony and fruity.
I’m not sure I remember who I got a sample of this from. DJBooth? Whoever you are, thanks for sharing!
Anyways, I was not in the mood for caffeine so I thought I’d go ahead and make this one. I was also hoping that this might be a tea that would take milk and sugar well because I was in the mood for something chai-like without actually being chai. Tasting this plain, I would say it would simply be over powered by any additions. The orange here tastes a bit stale, but I don’t know how old this is. The spice is weak and the black tea was not memorable. I was hoping for something that might be reminiscent of Christmas, but this isn’t really all that Christmas-y.
I think we will finish this tea easily since husband likes the fruity flavored teas. I think I might be able to drink this down with some honey. Normally, I only like honey in tea when I’m sick, but this tea could use some flavor modification.
Hmm, I could have sworn I would have done a review for this tea already, but perhaps not. I am in any case almost finished with the large sample from MBSC, though I think I gave some of it away. I am drinking it this morning for the benefits of the raspberry leaf in it, which has helped me out in the past. I thought that another raspberry black tea that I had was the same as this one (i.e., sourced from MBSC), but it appears that it is lacking the raspberry leaf, so I may be looking for a source for that in a bit.
Anyway, this tea is tasty enough, with a nice sweet-tart raspberry flavor, and enough raspberry leaf to do the trick. It’s not quite enough of a draw to make me want to repurchase, mostly because the black tea is kind of meh and I want some straight raspberry leaf for future months.
Going thru some teas I haven’t tasted in a while. I’m having one last cup of this before sending the rest to LiberTeas! I thought I sent some a long time ago but it doesn’t look like I did! So sorry about that LiberTEAs! You will be getting this one soon! :)
This one was sent to me by brandy! Thanks so much!
Hmm…… it’s odd how there’s no info OR reviews for this one…………
Anyways, this is a backlog. One reason I hate doing backlogs is because even if I don’t forget how it tasted, I literally ALWAYS forget my brewing parameters… Sorry folks!
Anyways, I iced this one (double strength then over ice) to compare it to Adagio’s raspberry black tea. And oh my goodness. This one is so much better! No sugar needed to be added to this one! It tastes like a real, juicy and perfectly sweet-and-tart raspberry! None of that fake fruit crap! And I could taste the black base, it’s pretty nice. My guess would go to Ceylon but I’m not 100% positive on that… goes to check hmmm there doesn’t seem to be any info on the website so I guess I guess I’ll stick to my Ceylon assumption.
This one was super yummy! Thanks again brandy!
This one is one of the many delicious looking samples sent to me by brandy3392. Thanks!
I thought this one was a rooibos because in the little baggie there was this red powder covering everything, making it look completely red, so I thought it was rooibos. However, it wasn’t until I measured it out into my strainer and came here to see if there was recommended steeping time that I learned that it was a black tea….. Oh well, too late now!
I like this one! I can definitely see how it could get bitter easily-I steeped with a lower temp for only 3 minutes and it is verging on the bitter side so next time I try this one I will make sure to only do it for 2.5 minutes. I really like how I can taste the black tea. The flavoring is definitely on the back side for me. I get a really nice and sweet mango flavor, a little artificial but that’s okay because I love EVERYTHING mango. There’s also a nice passion fruit flavor (side note: DID YOU KNOW THEY MAKE PASSION FRUIT GREEK YOGURT?! I got some at the store today and I’m so excited to try it!) that I get. As this one cools the flavor comes out a little more. I thinks some sweetening could help elevate the flavors a little more but I like it where it is right now!
This is yummy! Thanks again brandy3392!
I was thinking this would be a really good iced tea, and I’m glad I was proved right! For a black tea, this made a really light infusion. Excuse me for my naivete; I don’t often drink black teas. This was really awesome though! It was so fruity and the distribution of the fruit tends to be in the palatal region of the mouth, rather than somewhere further back in the velar region, like the Happy Tea.
I have been craving an orange black lately, so I reached for this sample we got in a swap. I was unfortunately disappointed. It was an overwhelmingly average black tea with a faint hint of bitter orange peel at the tail end of the sip. Sadface. This calls for a gaiwan of something wonderful.
This is seriously fruity. It’s so delicious and fragrant, I don’t even know where to start. The mixture of red in the leaves is really nice too. You won’t be sorry that you tried this tea.
Yesterday I was thinking that I would just have enough rose teas to make it through today. Then I realized… that’s silly! I have way more rose teas than that, but it can be hard to remember all of them in my stash. This was one I had forgotten about, but sure enough here it is, all rosey and lemony and a bit herby. I kind of let it over cool before I got to it, so I’m not sure if the slight bitterness is coming from that or just that I should drop the steep time. I am getting a hint of smoke from the gunpowder green thsi time as well. Still a pretty decent tea. It reminds me a bit of the rose oolong from Tea Licious that I finished up the other day, but I prefer that one (no surprise, it’s an oolong).
Thanks to Dinosara for this one. The black tea base in this is really good. I was enjoying it quite a bit. There is a faint taste of ginger and I couldn’t taste the peach at all. So it’s not bad but it could use a little bit more.
I wasn’t feeling an oolong this afternoon so I decided to dig out my big box of MBSC samples and try something I hadn’t had before. Of course this one jumped out at me as fairly seasonally appropriate. It is getting chillier, though overall it’s not really as cold as might expect for this time of year.
The smell of the dried leaf on this one is very orangey/appley, and surprisingly not very spicy. The steeped tea actually takes on the aroma of mulled cider, with a little black tea added in (actually that gives me a fantastic idea… black tea in the mulling spices for cider!). It actually smells really good, but I worry that I’ll get disappointed expecting mulled cider taste, especially the sweetness.
Wow, I really really like this one! Even though right before I take a sip it seems like I’m going to be drinking mulled cider, and afterward it’s clearly not. The actual flavor is similar enough to mulled cider yet different enough that I’m not disappointed. And the big apple chunks in the blend do lend a light appley sweetness to the tea. The spices in this are not individually distinct in the flavor but definitely add up to a nice blend, and I think that adds to the mulled cider feeling. I think I get a faint hint of rose in the aftertaste, but it is barely there.
I haven’t been super impressed by the blends I’ve gotten from MBSC not because they were bad, but rather because they just weren’t fantastic and I’ve been drinking some really fantastic teas lately. Also their black tea base was a little meh, which I can tell is the case here as well, but there’s enough other things going on here that it’s not as distracting. I do wish this blend had a higher quality tea base, because it’s one of my favorite “winter” blends I’ve had so far. It should be called Spiced Apple Cider!
Tea of the afternoon……
I was pleasantly surprised with this one. I was expecting something similar to Adagio Blackberry, but I have to say I like this one more. This black tea base is nothing spectacular, but it is pleasant enough. I don’t feel like it it is something I would rush out an buy, but it is enjoyable. The blackberry seems less tart than Adagio’s. Thank you to Dinosara for the sample!
Steeped by the normal method….
When I made my groupon order from this company, I ordered a sample of nearly every fruit-flavored black tea they offered. So far I haven’t been very impressed with the low-quality black tea base they use, but I am getting pickier and pickier. I don’t think I’ve ever had a blackberry flavored tea, but I do love to eat blackberries… they are one of my favorite berries. This tea doesn’t smell great, though. When I smelled the dry tea I thought maybe it was just some cross-contamination from other teas in the box, but the steeped tea smells like it too. It’s hard to place or describe, but suffice to say it’s not good.
The taste is… odd. It’s not bad, let’s start with that. The tea is very slightly bitter (curse that low-quality black tea base), and the flavor is I guess blackberryish. I guess. It’s just not what I was expecting. Now I want to go get some blackberries and make sure I’m not going crazy.
It’s kind of weird that the description of this tea says nothing about what “fruit” is in the flavoring of this tea, just that they are summer fruits. For me, ambrosia is a creamy fruit salad with marshmallows; sorry, my southern is showing! I doubt that’s what they’re going for here, though.
The steeped tea indeed smells like fruit and black tea in a way that is both nice and a bit worrisome (the scent of bitterness?). Fortunately, no bitterness in the taste. I would say it’s peachy along with some other fruit, but I really can’t identify them. The black tea base is present in the flavor and is decent but not great. Overall I’m left with a feeling of ‘meh’… this tea isn’t bad, but I’m not going to be craving it.
