Popular Tasting Notes
From the description, it sounded like it would be super yummy. I smelled it in the store and it smelled like a nice spice cake. After brewing it? I completely hate it. There is something artificial tasting about this tea. After trying to make it work for the last 3 brews (tried adding honey, rock sugar, adding soy/almond/regular milk), I give up. It is not the tea for me and in fact, drinking it makes me slightly nauseous.
Preparation
I have a bit of a sinus cold and that is throwing off my taste just a little, so I tried a cup of this after work. Just what I was looking for, straightforward, uncomplicated berry goodness. I really love the tartness the berries achieve without actually being overly sour. I enjoyed my cup and need to try this one hot more often!
A perfectly balanced ginger tea! The lemon makes it. Very smooth flavor, goes down nice and easy. A good anytime tea, and I like it because it’s low-maintenance to make. I still prefer the Bigelow version of lemon-ginger tea with the probiotics, but this one is a good alternative.
Sipdown!
I’m trying to get through a lot of my teas so I have only the very best in my cupboard.
It’s going to take a while.
I’m drinking this one down today. It’s so fruity and delicious! I could see this one making a good iced tea for those that like iced tea. (I only like rooibos and herbals iced).
This one is very similar to one that I already have in my cupboard from a different company, with the exception of this having actual real fruit in it! I love that. It’s not just wisps of flavour but real full flavour. But again, still very similar to what I have in the cupboard right now.
I enjoyed this one but won’t miss it too terribly this time.
I picked up some of this tea during the Boxing Day sale. I was expecting it to be a more subtle cherry flavour to balance with the white tea, but it is much stronger than that. I can also taste some of the artificial flavouring in this tea, and it is not pleasant. I’ve tried brewing this tea hot and iced, and I find that I enjoy this more as an iced tea.
Overall, this tea is okay, but I don’t think I need to buy more when I run out of it.
Flavors: Cherry, Cherry Blossom, Floral
Preparation
When I started seeing all the positive reviews for Design a Tea, I decided I had to check it out. The variety of flavors really appealed to me since I can drink so few teas right now due to pregnancy heartburn. I’m not actually a huge fan of Red Rooibos, but it was the only tea without caffeine available as a sample, so I decided to go ahead and give it a shot. This one was alright. The rooibos is smokey, but not too bad. The flavor doesn’t really stand out, but it adds a pleasant faintly apple-flavored sweetness that helps balance the smokiness of the rooibos. I want to try a few more of my samples before I decide for sure, but I’ll probably try some of their Green Rooibos or Honeybush at some point.
Flavors: Apple, Smoke, Sweet, Wood
Preparation
This one is very sweet and perfect for my early morning wake up. It had just a hair of astringency but not enough that I minded. It was light enough to be good for a warm morning, but had a bit of toasty going on to make it good for cool mornings as well. Handy, because we have had both here in PA over the last couple days.
Preparation
I made an account just to complain about how bad this tea is (and remind myself to never buy it, ever again). This tea tastes like soup to me. Maybe some people are into that, IDK. I’m really not. It’s not appetizing at all. I’ll just pop over to the closest Thai restaurant and order some Tom Kha rather than drink a “tea” that tastes just like it.
Oh, and it has no chai taste whatsoever. None!!
Preparation
I probably wouldn’t purchase this tea if I was at a tea house but when I am at a coffee/tea cafe this is a good choice, especially if you are getting tired of having the same selection of Darjeelings and basic greens. (nothing against them but it’s always the only selection!)
This is a full flavor with a taste of orange and chocolate. I am not really sure where the pu erh taste comes in….This seems much more like a black to me. If you are looking for a pu-erh then I would look elsewhere because you are not going to get that infamous pu-erh flavor out of this tea. This is much more of a dessert tea.
Flavors: Chocolate, Malt, Orange, Smooth, Sweet
Preparation
One fresh sampler of the Spring Collection in my teapot, amazing? Well, it’s good but it’s not amazing. The smell is amazing! But, the taste just… Taste like any other lime-tea i’ve tasted. I’ve didn’t even taste any little subtile aftertaste to make a difference with other lime-tea.
Overall, the quality of taste is great. If you want a daily lime tea and you love black tea, buy it. If you like green tea more than black tea, buy “Lime-Bang” which is way more impressive.
Preparation
“The seas were angry that day, my friends. The tiny ship was tossed, to and fro, until it came to rest upon an uncharted desert isle. And on that desert isle, we drank this tea. Because the rum. Was. Gone.”
I’ve been meaning to purchase my dear Plunder and Grog for a long time, and I’m thrilled that I finally did. This tea very much reminds me of my still-current favorite, Zeppelinmobile, except it adds cocoa and spice, and insodoing takes the Zeppelinmobile flavor profile to the third power. (In fact, I could have called it, “Zeppelinmobile Puts Out to Sea with Air Pirates.”)
Yes, yes, I created this blend too, which offers up a veritable buffet of personal-taste rhetoric, but it also fits into its piratical name like a glove. (Pirate gloves: for the buccaneer who wants ter’ keep the blisters off his lootin’ paws!) For the swash-curious, my thinking process for blendin’ the gloves off of Plunder and Grog went as follows:
1) What do pirates need to eat? Citrus, if they want to stave off scurvy. Cue the blood orange tea, which is tart-yet-mellow here, and smells divine.
2) What curses do pirates undergo? Aztec ones, since Aztec ghosts are kind of incensed about, oh, you know, their descendants being enslaved by the Spanish for a few measly centuries. Cue the chocolate chip tea, which serves up a splash of cocoa in the background of this blend.
3) Where do pirates travel? To exotic places that have exotic spices, exotically. Cue the chocolate chai tea, which lends another deliciously-smelling, spice road-meets-cocoa kick to this tea.
Drink up, me hearties, and on ter’ the haikus:
Cocoa-orange a day
will keep the doctor away
if apples don’t work.
This tea’s a treasure!
Now I’m off to braid things in
my hair. Pass the koal.
And here’s one to grow on, since I haven’t been able to tealog it up on a regular basis, and because, well, I can’t seem to shake the pirate theme today:
Puffy shirts and grog,
jumping from high places, then
laughing: piracy.
Preparation
This tea smelled so good I had to try it, despite the fact that I don’t usually go for the overly-sweet cake-y teas. Which is exactly what this is. Red Velvet Cake tasted like butterscotch ick. The birthday cake collection was rooibos so I gave that a complete miss (just the smells turned this owl’s stomach). Coffee cake on the other hand… was worth trying.
In hindsight I probably shouldn’t have done it as a latte – the milk brought out the sweetness a bit too much. I’ll try steeping it straight next time. All I can think is, this would probably blend well with a chai or something to balance it out. Perhaps Sugar and Spice… oh, and can we take a moment to talk about how saddening it is that the autumn teas are gone?!
Anyway, sweet is the word here, but in an actual tastes-like-cake way, so its not all that bad. Wishing there was more coffee in this one, then again maybe there’s the answer to the blending, Coffee Chai.
Hm. So many questions.
Tastes like a roasty, chocolatey Wuyi oolong. The leaves have that similar dark green sheen.
After a 1:00 infusion, this Iron Goddess gives off a beautiful nutty aroma though slightly bitter taste.
Increasing the rating a bit because this tea is forgiving, even though I forgot about the second infusion and steeped it for 4:00, it still tasted good.
Flavors: Chocolate, Nutty
