The Herbal Sage Tea Company

So in trying to figure out my weird tainting of my tea this afternoon I tried the water from my kettle again and my boyfriend also agreed it tasted a bit funny. The water is very hard here so even though I filter it, I had some mineral buildup on the inside. I brought it home and boiled some white vinegar in it (thanks Michelle on Steepster forum, for that tip) and now it is sparkling clean. Trying it out now and hopefully everything is back to normal.

I am having some of this tea because I haven’t been feeling 100% lately, so I figured it couldn’t hurt to take some precautionary teas. I think that the taste is gone but I am not entirely sure. I mean, this tea is fairly medicinal, so it’s possible that its just that. I mean, it’s certainly not savory like before.

I picked up a tin of this tea last month but am just getting around to trying it this month. I will likely only log this once, but I wanted to do a note for the taste of this. Raspberry leaf is pretty much the only herb I use medicinally, but it’s one thing that I am so glad I heard of. Thanks to Steepster of course!

This has got to be the fluffiest leaf I have ever seen. It also has some “heavy bits” too, hibiscus and some stalky thing that doesn’t look like anything on the ingredients list, but the main part of this tea is as fluffy as cotton tufts. I guess raspberry leaf must have some inherent sweetness to it, because this has a similar sweet note to my Birt&Tang raspberry leaf tea bags, though less extreme. The hibiscus is well deployed; tart but not sour, making this taste more raspberryish. The sage leaf adds an herbiness that is very pleasant. I am quite enjoying this blend. It’s nice to have something this pleasant that is also medicinal.

I kind of wanted something else tonight, since I drank three pots of this yesterday (even though I didn’t log them all), but then I was like… I should drink this, it’s good for me. Of course it’s also pretty tasty, but you get bored of things after a while.

The good news is that I think my illness is waning… Felt better today than I did the days before. Hopefully I will be at 100% by the time of my interview on Tuesday.

I decided to restock a “cold/sick” tea from my local tea blenders, especially since they specialize in herbal teas. When I asked for a cold care tea at their booth at the farmers market, they recommended this one with the elderberries.

I have to say, I rather like these somewhat medicinal blends. There is something about the combo that doesn’t seem like I would like it, but then I do. Maybe it’s that I don’t think I would like spearmint in a tea, but then apparently I do. There are hibiscus and rosehips in this, but they are deployed with a deft hand… it is not tart at all, nor even all that fruity, considering. Just pleasant and herbaceous, and nice for a cold, though I do wish this blend had some slippery elm in it for sore throats (they have another cough-specific tea that does).

This tea company is a small outfit located in my new town of residence. I have seen their booth at the farmers market for a few weeks now but I always assumed they had only herbal teas, and thus I wasn’t too interested. But I stopped by the other day and notice that they had a tin of this tea, which I immediately wanted to pick up because it is rose and Earl Grey. Even though my boyfriend objected based on the fact that is named after a rival Big Ten team (his alma mater was Big Ten).

It smelled nice and bergamotty, with a hint of sweet rose. After brewing the base tea came out and smelled pretty good… like a nice Chinese base, I’m guessing Keemun. Unfortunately although this tea was pretty tasty to drink, because the base is indeed a nice Chinese tea or tea blend, there isn’t nearly enough bergamot OR rose in this for me. I will probably up the leaf and see if I can improve it, because it was a little weak overall anyway.

Finally a red blend that I like. Met the “Tealady” at wholefoods tonight and sampled this tea. I then proceeded to purchase this tea because it tasted so nice. Slighty sweet and nice on a sore throat.