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I tried this last night and really enjoyed it. I’ll admit that I tend to err on the side of caution with white and green teas, and always steep them at a low temp, even when the directions specify a higher one. It didn’t seem to hurt this tea, as there was a lot of flavour when I drank it. There was a sweet taste to it, which I tend to prefer, as it just feels wrong to me to add sugar to tea, and I would never remember to, anyway.

Another coconut tea to add to my collection. I still need to try them all side by side someday and find my favourite.

I finally tried this one again, as I’m trying to work my way through some of my suddenly immense tea collection. I was not impressed by this at all last time. I actually don’t mind it tonight. It has a light, nutty flavour that’s alright. It reminds me of some nutty white teas I’ve had.

I’m not sure if my tastes have changed over the last few months, or if my tastebuds were off before for some reason, but tonight I’ll enjoy my cup of this. I’m bumping my rating a bit, but not too much until I try it a third time. That’ll be the tie breaker.

I’m afraid I don’t “get” this tea. I see the big pieces of apple, carrot, and bamboo in the mix, but all I taste is the lemongrass. As my cup cooled off, I thought I got a hint of apple, but honestly I think it may have been my imagination, as I was trying to pick out flavours other than the lemongrass.

I like lemongrass, so the tea tasted fine to me, but I think I was expecting a bit more from it. I see that others have prepared this as an iced tea. It’s not how I usually drink tea, but I’ll try to remember to do this one iced next time.

I’m bumping up my rating on this as I had a second steep and took it to work today. I loved it.

I really liked this tea, although I felt a bit stupid when it arrived. I don’t eat anything with dairy in it, and I assume most toffee is made with dairy. Whoops. I obviously wasn’t thinking when I ordered it. So I picked out the toffee, and made myself a cup.

I don’t think it suffered for having the toffee taken out. It has a really nice, light, caramel-like, buttery flavour. Like toffee, I guess (it’s been a lot of years since I had any). Very nice. I’ll enjoy the rest of my bag.

I like this one more than I thought I would. It’s pretty light tasting for a nutty oolong, and although I wish it was a bit richer in taste, it’s still pretty good. I guess nothing will replace Maple Pecan in my heart. If only I could justify a Butiki order right now.

Anyway, I do get a nutty taste and no bitterness from this, which is what I was looking for.

I’m alternating sips of Coconut Green with sips of Coconut Oolong (also by Zen Tea). The tea itself is definitely more prominent in the Coconut Green. Coconut is there, too, but very lightly. This could be partly due to my steeping, however, as they recommend 85C, and I let the water cool to about 70C (I forgot about it) before steeping. It might have a stronger flavour if I used a higher temp. I’ll try that next time.

It’s good, but I think I prefer the Oolong a bit more.

ETA: I just mixed the two types together in my cup, and I really like the mix. They seem to balance each other out well. I’ll try steeping them together next time.

I had really high expectations for this tea. I read the reviews, I like oolong, and I like coconut.

It’s pretty good. The first steep had a fairly strong taste, and left a coating in my mouth that hinted at coconut, but also another flavour that I can’t quite place. The second steep was creamier, with a milder scent and taste. I think I prefer the second, as it doesn’t feel like it coats my mouth at the end. As a plus, there was no bitterness with either steep.

I think I’ve been spoiled trying so many coconut oolongs recently. I’ll enjoy drinking this one, but I may not replace it unless subsequent steeps really blow me away.

This tea is so good, especially on a miserable, rainy day when you want something comforting. It’s the kind of tea that I have the urge to buy more of, even though I still have an almost full bag in the cupboard.

My reward for cleaning the downstairs bathroom. After my last tea, I thought maybe my tastebuds weren’t working right, but I can actually taste the subtle flavours here. I expected it to just taste like a basic peppermint tea, but I really can taste the chocolate notes, mainly at the end of the sip.

It’ll never replace real chocolate and mint, but it’s pretty good for a mint green tea.

This cup of tea was a reward for cleaning the kitchen. As rewards go, it’s ok. There are quite a few ingredients, and I wasn’t sure how well some of them would blend together. Rosemary and rose, for instance, have very different flavours, and both are in this.

Honestly, I mainly taste the green tea base, and not much else. This could be because I just ate pasta with a strong pesto sauce on it, so I may not be picking up delicate flavours right now.

I’m glad I only got the sample size, as overall, it’s just eh.

I’m using trying new teas as a reward system today. I have family coming tomorrow, and I have a LONG list of chores to do today. As motivation – clean the bathroom = try a new tea. Clean the kitchen = try a new tea. And so on.

This is my “finished cleaning the upstairs bathroom” tea. I wasn’t sure if I’d like it, as Jasmine is listed in the flavours, but it’s pretty good. I don’t find it overly floral, which can really turn me off. It has more of a melon-flavour, which is what I was hoping for. Not bad. There are other melon teas I prefer (Butiki’s Cantaloupe comes to mind), but this is a very drinkable flavoured white. I steeped it at a lower than suggested temp, and there was no astringency at all. I’m not sure if there would be steeped at the 90C as suggested.

I’ve decided to ignore Tealux’s recommended steeping parameters. They seem to suggest the same thing for every white, every green, etc. For instance they recommend 1-2 tsp for 2-4 min at 90C for this tea. That’s a wide range. I do not like astringent teas, so I decided to steep it with 1 tsp for 200 ml of water for 2 min at 75C. It worked ok.

I wish I had a better sensory vocabulary to describe the nuances of teas. Or maybe I just need better tastebuds. This tastes like water with a delicate vegetal flavour to me. Very drinkable, but not knock your socks off amazing.

This is a backlog from this morning. I made a thermos of this and drank it all through the day. The ginger and lemongrass balance each other well and the type of oolong used is perfect with the flavours. The end result is a nice, light, smooth cup of tea.

While running an errand today I walked past a Teavana that I had no idea existed. I managed to do my errand and then somehow found myself backtracking to Teavana. I tried to resist, as I’ve never been in one before, mainly because I know that you have to buy 50g min, and I prefer to try smaller amts of new teas.

I walked in anyway. I’ve been having good success with oolongs lately, so I gravitated to those. After checking out some of them, I ended up getting 50g of this one, as I was seduced by smell of the potent spices. It wasn’t until I was halfway home that I looked in the bag and thought, “Wait a second, where’s the oolong?” All I could see were spices.

I brewed up a cup, and did see a few broken leaves in the pot (6 to be exact). Not very impressive as an oolong, but I gave it a sip. OMG is this sweet. The cinnamon is strong and overpowers everything else. It’s almost sickly sweet. Now I understand why the SA suggested mixing it with a black tea. At the time, I wondered why, as it was already a tea mix. Now I understand. You need something to cut the sweetness.

I may experiment adding some other spices/herbs to this to balance out the flavours, or add some plain oolong to it. Otherwise it’ll just be an expensive bag of spices sitting in my cupboard forever.

I’m bumping my rating on this one a bit, as I finished my sample and then felt the need to buy a bag. That’s the sign of a good tea.

The first steep is the best, but the second is still pretty good.

I quite liked this one. It may not be the highest quality white tea, but the flavouring makes up for it. Winterhaven’s tasting note says there were chunks of strawberry in the tea mix. Mine doesn’t have any, just strawberry flavouring, so I’m assuming that the tea has changed a bit in the last couple of years.

It has a very nice, light, juicy strawberry taste. It’s very smooth with no astringency. I liked it both hot and cold.

I like most of Pukka’s teas. This one is a bit mild in taste for me, but I guess that’s what you get with a chamomile base. I taste chamomile and a hint of licorice. I’m afraid I don’t get the vanilla at all.

I’ve had a raging headache all day, and this is a nice relaxing tea to have before I go to bed.

I drank this right after TeaFrog’s Gingerbread Rooibos, and they remind me a bit of each other. The orange taste is dominant in this as in the Gingerbread one. It’s pleasant, and the flavours all blend well together, but other than that it’s kind of bland to me. I steeped it for at least 6 min, so I don’t think that’s the problem.

Love is my last tea before I try to go to sleep. Wish me luck. My neighbours apparently got a karaoke machine and all I’ve heard for the last 5 hrs is really bad renditions of some songs which will forever be ruined for me. They show no sign of stopping anytime soon, and it’s almost 1 am. They really shouldn’t be allowed to sell those machines to just anybody. Apparently I’m not feeling the Love right now.

I would rename this tea Orange Almond Cake, or something along those lines. There’s no ginger, which makes it very un-gingerbread-like. It is a pretty good rooibos, though, in the sense that you don’t really taste the rooibos itself. Hopefully that made sense.

Orange is the dominant flavour, with almond following right behind. I maybe get a hint of the cardamom, but I can’t distinguish the coriander from the rest of the blend (probably a good thing). There’s a nice sweetness to it which makes sugar unnecessary.

I have a sample sized package of this tea. It didn’t have brewing instructions on it other than to say that it could be steeped for up to 5 min. I decided to err on the side of caution and used 70C water and steeped it for 4 min. It turned out great.

There is no astringency to it, even after 4 min. I can taste the tea base, but the mango clearly shines through. I’ve thought that other companies have had decent tasting mango teas, but I think this is the best I’ve had. Although it’s suggested that it’s good iced (I looked at the website after I made it), I prefer it hot as I feel the flavour is more pronounced.

I’m still not a huge fruit tea fan, but this one is pretty good.

This tea (tisane to be proper, I guess), is really awesome looking. It’s mainly made up of big chunks of star anise, aronia berries, and rose petals. I used half the sample packet to make 1 cup. It smells like a cross between an intense fruit punch and pink bubblegum.

Brewed, it’s a deep wine red colour. Very pretty. Hot, I don’t like it. Cold, not a big fan, either, although it’s a bit better. It has a tartness to it that reminds me of hibiscus, even though there’s none in the mix. It’s an interesting tea, but it’s not for me.

Personally, I’d call this tea Christmas, not White Cloud. It’s a beautiful, cheery mix of red rosehips and berries, green mint, and white (I’m assuming the burdock and ginseng). It smells strongly of peppermint, even though it’s not the primary ingredient.

I bought this one to try because the ingredients have so many good health benefits (for the liver, kidneys, and adrenal glands). I was hoping that the blend would mask the not-so-great flavours of some of the components. For the most part, it does. It’s not a fabulous tasting tea, but the peppermint really covers the taste of the rest without being in your face. A good, healthy, tea.

I had a cup of this this morning. I’ve been rationing it, as I can’t justify a Butiki order right now to replace just one tea (shipping to Canada isn’t cheap).

I LOVE this tea. That’s it. That’s all. I LOVE it.