Suzi

‘Tricky Treats’ is a Halloween limited edition from SBS Teas. I don’t believe it was available this year, or if it was it came and went so quickly that it’s no longer on the website! That’s rather too bad, as it makes it hard to provide information about the tea, but I’ll try my best.

So in my bag of this blend I can see black tea, flowers (chamomile would be my best guess?) , little chocolate candies, cloves, cinnamon, and candy sprinkles. There’s also random chopped up bits of this and that, but I don’t know them by sight.

This is a sweet tea. It reminds me a little bit of a mild cinnamon candy. There’s the familiar cinnamon tingle, but the blend is more complex, with a rich ‘mulled spice’ flavor that is sweetened with the sugary taste of the multicolored sprinkles.

Side note: I’ve never seen sprinkles in a tea before. First time for everything!

Honestly, I think this blend really captures Halloween. It’s an adult flavor with warm spiciness and just a hint of trick-or-treaters’ candy. Quite yummy.

Yum! I steeped this the proper amount of time (for once; if you look over my tealogs you can see I’m a chronic over-steeper) and this tea is HEAVENLY. It tastes like french vanilla ice cream, but light and with enough black tea to prevent a descent into cloying madness. I’m drinking it straight out of the pot, but I’m sure that with milk this would be divine!

This is a sensitive tea, though. When I’ve made it in the past and steeped it 10+ minutes (because like I said, I am CARELESS) it was bitter and horrible, and my tongue was unhappy.

I bet this would make a great blending tea.

I have a mixed relationship with Red Rose’s Black Tea. On the one hand, this is the stuff my father drank when I was growing up, and sampling his cups of tea were a major part of what convinced me that tea was gross and for grownups – something I didn’t conquer until after a trip to England! On the other hand, I LOVED the little figurines that came in each box, and I wish I still had them because I think they’re cute and fun.

So tea = meh, ugh, yuck. (But I haven’t had it in ten+ years; I’m sure if I drank it now I’d be able to appreciate the flavor more.)
Packaging/promotional goods = AWESOME.

I probably oversteeped this tea; if it is not oversteeped it may also have been overheated, since the brewing instructions suggest using water in the 150-160 degree range and the water that comes out of our automatic heater is definitely warmer.

My attempt at brewing this Maté Tiramisu tastes like coffee, basically. There’s a bitter note to the brew that I assume comes from leaving the leaves too long, but it’s similar to the bitterness of dark chocolate so maybe it’s supposed to be there. There’s a nuttiness to the flavor as well. I like it well enough, and I think I’ll have to experiment further with this blend and see if I can bring out more of the tiramisu flavor with proper steep times and temperature. But for all that I screwed up, this still tastes OK. It would complement tiramisu or other sweet desserts quite well.

I like blooming teas, and Adagio’s were my first introduction to them. So I do have a special sort of nostalgia for them, even though I don’t like the packaging. (It seems like such a waste of material to have each bloom individually bagged and in a box. It’d be much more environmentally friendly to chuck them all in a tin or single bag, yes?)

That said, I’m not terribly enthusiastic about the Red Bloom. It’s a very generic sort of black tea (or maybe I just don’t have enough experience with unflavored black teas to differentiate between the many varieties) and although the amber liquid looked very pretty in my glass teapot (usually busted out only for pearls and blooming teas) and the unfurling of the flower is always fun to watch, it was unspectacular in flavor.

I usually can get two-three pots (I think my glass pot holds between 23-28 oz) from each flower before the flavor’s too weak to go on. It’s a great tea for showing off to tea newbies, but for the experienced connoisseur who prefers flavor over pretty tricks, skip the show and give ’em something yummier.

Bought at a Japanese market. I’m always on a quest for a good bottled tea, and at $1.69 this is pricey, but not excessively so. I grabbed it out of the refrigerated section so it’s nice and cold.

Green Jasmine is very refreshing. It’s literally just jasmine tea – no extra sugar or honey or random “flavors” added – with the floral notes of jasmine dominating. It doesn’t have a strong aroma, but what you can smell is (of course!) flowery. The green tea provides a nice complement to the flowers, making a very balanced flavor, but they are so well blended that it’s difficult to distinguish flavor components.

The only other bottled jasmine tea I’ve had has been Adagio’s Jasmine Anteadote (which I’ve logged if you want to read about it) which had a much stronger floral flavor. Green Jasmine leaves a slightly bitter note in the aftertaste, but it’s very satisfying overall.

I’ve been experimenting with Lupicia’s Lychee Oolong this week, trying to make it into something I like. I’ve drank it hot and iced; I’ve steeped it three minutes, five minutes, seven minutes, ten minutes. I’ve re-steeped and messed around with the amount of tea in my teapot, but I just can’t seem to find a happy combination.

The oolong is sort’ve a generic oolong, slightly smoky/dusty in flavor. The lychee is present in the aroma – I can smell it on the dry leaves and in the tea’s steam – but not really there in the flavor. There’s a slightly fruity aftertaste, but it’s nothing like the lychee-flavored milk tea I buy from boba shops.

Dang it! I was in the mood for something fruity. If anyone has a good lychee tea to recommend, please do!

When I was a little girl, we’d go to the Renaissance Fair every summer, and at some point during the day my mother would buy me a monkey’s tail. These treats were bananas dipped in chocolate and frozen – perfect in the scorching California sun. Now you can buy these frozen bananas in most grocery stores, but at the time this was the only place we knew to get them – so it was a special moment.

This happy childhood memory is what I wanted Banane Chocolat to invoke. It’s a nice, solid black tea. Lovely with milk. The banana is strong enough. Reminds me a bit of banana chips. The cocoa is more elusive. It’s there, I think…I can taste a little bit of its bitterness. But it’s either very light or overwhelmed by the banana.

I might try adding a little more tea next time for a stronger flavor, but I used 1.5 scoops when 1 is usually plenty. This may just be a very lightly flavored tea. Not a perfect imitation of a monkey tail, but there’s enough of the treat there that my nostalgia is satisfied.

So ‘Crimson Nectar’ was the third tea from Tea Forte that I tried, and the first that had a real noticable flavor. That’s the good news.
Now the bad.

Ugh. Hibiscus. It makes tea such a bloody bright red (actually, it’s more of a cough syrup red, not so much the red of blood, which turns rather brown as it is exposed to the air…but I digress, in a rather gross direction) and it tastes gross. Sharp. Thin. It stabs my tongue.

As you may have guessed, I don’t care for hibiscus one bit, and it is the dominant note in ‘Crimson Nectar.’ There’s also a taste of orange’s acidity, and a strange sweetness to the aftertaste. It’s like cake frosting, that aftertaste, a buttery vanilla that I don’t think occurs naturally anywhere on God’s green earth. It’s a heavy synthetic finale.

The teabag actually smells rather nice. I would totally buy a candle with this scent to burn. But ugh. What a shrill, shrieking cup this tea makes.

I have to admit that I am quite fond of the format of Tea Forte’s teabags. The cute little pyramid with the leaf poking out of the top…it just looks so cute!

After steeping for five minutes, I pulled the teabag out and set it aside. The tea is not as dark as I expected – a rich amber color – and smells heavily of cinnamon. My mouth is quite wimpy so I immediately set out to get a couple of ice cubes to add to the brew before my tasting.

It’s very light…I mean, I can barely taste anything but the cinnamon and the slight astringency of the black tea. Maybe the faintest hint of a citrus. I popped the tea bag back in and will let it steep a little longer; hopefully that’ll force some more flavor out.
As I’m waiting, I’m considering the source of this tea. My brother gave me a box of assorted Tea Forte flavors, but I wonder if it’s an old box? I’ve only tried two of the teas so far, this one and White Ambrosia, but the flavor’s been miserably weak on both blends. Maybe the teabags are just ancient and that’s the problem…

After steeping for another five minutes, the orange flavor comes out a little stronger but this is still dominated by cinnamon. I can smell cinnamon; I taste it when I drink…so I guess if you want a cinnamon tea, this is the way to go. It’s a little sweet and it makes the back of my throat tickle a little.

This is spicy and warming, but it just isn’t as…exciting as I hoped it might be.
Man, that teabag is cool looking, though.

Last night I went over to imabandgeek4eva’s house for brownies and tea, and after perusing her tea collection I picked out Peach Tranquility for us to drink. I’d never had it before, but peach is always good, right? Plus, black tea + late at night = no sleep = bad for work the next day (like my math?) so an herbal blend with chamomile seemed like a promising nightcap.

P. T., it turns out, is an AWESOME blend. It has a lovely delicacy and a smooth, even texture. Of course there’s the peach, which is like the light sweetness of a fresh white peach rather than the heavy, cloying flavor of canned peaches. Chamomile and rosehips add to the mild, subtle flavor. I want to emphasize that it is a light tea, not a weak tea.
Great for sleepy time. It’s not an instant knock-out, so while we were socializing I was fine, but instead of tossing and turning for half an hour before finally going to sleep I was out like a light after my head hit the pillow. Sweet.

Imabandgeek4eva blended it with Silver Needle White tea, and the combination worked really well.

This is a neat idea, ‘cool brew’ ice tea. I’m often without a handy hot water source when I’m at work or at school, so when I saw these I wanted to try it out immediately.

It’s OK. I mean, for $5 a box I’m not expecting the same quality from Teavana or high-end tea brands, and I figure some flavor has to be sacrificed for the convenience of brewing without hot water. The black tea is pretty weak, naturally, just a basic orange pekoe made from low grade tea leaves. The peach tastes OK for the first steep, sort’ve sweet-and-not-quite-peachy-but-a-nice-addition-to-weak-tea, but if you try to use the teabag again the peachiness disappears and it’s replaced with the definitive flavor of orange peels. Turns out that’s the third ingredient listed :-p

Not bad for the price, and the convenience is nice. But not a favorite by any means.

The description of this tea sounded wonderful. From the package:
“A fine white tea seamlessly melded with vanilla and slices of coconut.”

Unfortunately, the execution is pretty weak. The little pyramid teabag is cute, but I’m not convinced it helps the tea steep any better than a regular tea bag. The brew itself has no flavor, and I can’t even smell the white tea, let alone taste it. It’s like drinking slightly dirty water – doesn’t taste pure, but it doesn’t have any discernable flavor. There’s a heavy aftertaste of coconut and cheap vanilla.

I guess if you’re aiming for a ‘seamless’ integration of flavor elements, this achieves the goal because no individual note can be detected in the tea. But man! The aftertaste feels very heavy and sticky in my mouth. It’s almost gross.

This is one of my favorite teas from Adagio. Chocolate in a tea rarely works for me, but when coupled with the strawberry of this blend it tastes wonderful! The strawberries aren’t cloying or screamingly artificial, as sometimes happens in other strawberry-flavored teas.

Note: This is not a tea that ages well. Order it fresh and drink it up; the flavor difference between a fresh batch from Adagio and old leaves that have been around the house a year or longer is really, really noticeable.

So I guess it’s a little weird to rate a pre-brewed bottle of tea, but let’s face it – sometimes you really want some tea, and you’re stuck at school where you have no access to brewing equipment so you just have to buy whatever the cafeteria has in stock. So you debate between Nestea’s sugary-sweet “tea” and Snapple teas, and finally you spot the Lipton PureLeaf line. What the heck makes this sugar-infested beverage pure, you wonder? I have no freakin’ idea. You can barely taste the black tea. The strong flavor of citric acid (for tartness!) and sugar – we can pretend it’s raspberry-like, but really it is its own synthetic candy-like taste – is not the worst drink out there. It’s miles above the tea you get out of a soda fountain, which is just sugary water with tea flavoring (according to me, anyway.) But it doesn’t hold a candle to the stuff you make yourself at home.

This is really pleasant. Pouchong is a very light oolong, without the smokiness that I normally associate with oolongs. I have no idea how Adagio’s Pouchong compares with other Pouchongs, but my unsophisticated tongue thinks that this is great when you want something delicate and light.

A nice, basic jasmine tea. The floral notes balance the bitterness of the green tea, but it’s not the most exciting drink. I’ve had better jasmine teas from specialty stores, but if you want something quick and cheap from the grocery store, this makes a decent brew.

Lupicia has a lot of flavored oolongs, and they’re a really mixed bag. The super-sweet, almost cloying melon did not match well with the oolong, in my opinion. Rather than getting a unified blend I could smell a melon scent and taste the oolong tea, but I couldn’t really taste the melon flavor. Rather disappointed, but I did use one of Lupicia’s teabags – next time I’ll try to loose tea and see if it’s any better.

The flavor of Jardin Sauvage is very zesty and energizing. There was a familiarity to each sip that tantalized my curiosity. I recognized the taste; it was a flavor I’ve encountered before. But what it was, I am not sure. When I asked my brother, he tasted and declared the tea tasted of white/clear gummy bears. He tasted again, and said maybe a lime jello.

I don’t know that either of those is quite what I’m tasting, but it’s definitely a sweeter citrus-like flavor.

I’ve never had green rooibos before, but I really liked this blend and I’m normally not especially fond of red tea. Jardin is extremely refreshing and fun – I love it!

I really like the bottled Jasmine Tea from Adagio, and whenever it goes on sale I stock up. It’s VERY flowery, which I like, so jasmine fans should rejoice and try a bottle! Works double time as a refreshing drink and breath freshener :-p

It’s been a while since I actually tasted rum, but I wouldn’t say this tea tastes of it. Instead, the flavor is a light black tea with a slight flavor note that almost seems like a berry. It’s very mild, a good basic tea. Steep it for five minutes and mix in some milk and sugar for a tasty treat.

If, like me, you often forget to take your leaves out don’t despair – this tea has a slightly astringent quality when over-steeped but it isn’t unpleasantly bitter. Oddly, the word I would use to describe the aftertaste of over-steeped Rum Tea is ‘chewy’, but anyway. I often over-steep my tea so I’m always on the look out for blends that won’t be ruined if I do, and this is one of them.

Man, I always manage to oversteep this, so it always has this bitter aftertaste. Otherwise, the flavor is very mild, sort of a light neutral fruity flavor.
It’s a good blending tea, I think, if you want to try to punch up another drink with some antioxidant goodness, but it’s too fussy and easy to screw up when brewing, and even if you manage preparation times properly you end up with a rather weak tea.

I’m so bummed that Rose Marzipan Delight has officially been discontinued and my local Teavana is completely sold out. It is such a beautiful tea. It is sweet enough that extra sugar or honey isn’t needed, and the flavor complex and balanced between nutty and floral.
It’s also one of those rare black teas that doesn’t get overwhelmed by bitterness if you aren’t paying attention and forget to take the steeping leaves out after a few minutes.

One of my favorite teas. It’s very green and fresh tasting. I don’t get an overpowering blast of heavy cherries, more like a light fruity breeze. Perfect for iced tea.