leaf in hot water Send Message

Picked this up on a trip to Asia last year, and only got around to trying it now. Comes in loose leaf in a standard sized tin, so I used the Bodum infuser for this. Its a fairly standard tasting black tea, I brewed it strong at first, 1 tsp for 5 min in 1/2 cup water, and then mixed in 1/2 cup hot milk to get a really milky black tea with no sugar. Seems like it will make a good breakfast tea. I’m going to try it next mixed with coffee and see if it goes well! I find combining tea & coffee gives a nice extra boost which I’m sure I’ll need when work starts back up next week…

Love the concept, not so much the taste. I drink it because it reminds me of being at a spa, and I feel like its doing wonders for my skin but excluding that psychological aspect, the flavour combo with cinnamon and florals isn’t quite for me.

Refreshing tea perfect for summer afternoons! I’m a sucker for apple and fruity flavours, this has it all and also blended with mint for an extra refreshing kick.

Decent infuser & cup set that can be interchanged with others. Great alternative to a teapot when I’m the only one drinking tea, or if my partner and I have different tea cravings at the time. I often use just the infuser filter and cover with an everyday mug, as I’m afraid of shattering the glass Bodum cup especially when it has no handle. However most mugs don’t retain heat as well as the double-walled glass of the Bodum cup. Its also visually appealing to have around.

If there was one thing I would change, it would be the filter material. A metal mesh would be better as I found with dark teas, it stains the white mesh of the filter and doesn’t get as clean as before after washing.

The coconut aroma was amazing, combined with the sweet mint aromas. However, taste-wise it was a strange combo – the mint was more prevalent and coconut more subtle, so it was more of a fruity-mint tasting brew, where the coconut was smelt more than it could be tasted.

Rooibos generally has a sweet note on its own, and it feels like a stroke of creative genius to use this to create a guilt-free dessert. This is a great tea to quell (somewhat) the afternoon sweet tooth cravings, as the smell is heavenly, a caramelized warm sugar aroma. Its another tea where adding a touch of honey would help enhance the taste – I tried it without sugar as I wanted to experience the tea in its ‘natural’ state. Overall, its a good distraction to ward off afternoon cravings – pair this with a piece of fruit and you just might make it through the rest of the workday :)

One of my favourite fruit based teas. I fell in love with the smell of berries in the store, and can completely visualize the reason behind the name – any bear would be attracted to the sweet smell of the dry tea! That said, I find that the sweetness doesn’t quite translate into the brewed tea, so this is definitely best drank slightly sweetened with honey or whatever your ‘poison’ of choice might be. It feels like its one of those teas where you might have to use more than the recommended dose to really satisfy. Overall, its a fragrant but girly tea – my partner did not like this in the least, but thats okay – best saved for girl talk occasions ;)

I tried this out for 2 reasons – the citrus flavour, and the fact that mate was touted as a possible caffeine alternative. The blend smells lemony and refreshing, however the tea itself is quite bland and does not have a whole lot of flavour on its own. I felt a bit more refreshed after drinking it but not for very long, which I attribute more to the psychologial boost from my partial-ness to lemon rather than to the mate caffeine content itself.

This is a green tea mixed with brown rice grains that have been roasted, some to the point that the kernels have popped.

Once steeped, it develops a light roasted aroma, combined with the fragrance of green tea.

What I found outstanding about the tea was its balance of green tea vs. roasted rice flavours. They were balanced well, without one overpowering the other (as is the case in cheaper supermarket blends). I also found with my 1 min 15 sec steep time (approx.) it extracted the flavour well without much astringency.

Overall, a pleasantly light tea.