Wild Berry Zinger

Last night I was heading into my bed to read before sleeping, when I absolutely had to have a cup of tea to take with me. Now, sometimes I thinking about it before hand and make a cup of tea to drink while I read while I’m getting ready to shut down for the night and head into the bedroom. But no, last night I already had the lights off, the heat lowered, the computers sleeping, book, cel phone, and water in hand, heading into the bedroom, when I realized I had to have tea, that I would be preoccupied wanting tea while I read if I did not make some. So I put down my stuff and headed back into the kitchen, prepared to out of bed a bit longer while I made tea.

This brings me to a problem I keeping meaning to query my fellow Steepsterians about. What do you drink when you want tea late at night?

I’m talking 9/10pm when you’ll likely only drink a cup or two. I don’t want to drink a black tea because even though I’ll occasionally have one while making dinner, with dinner, or right after dinner, it’s just too late to have one that late. I don’t want a green or white tea because I’m likely to drink only one cup and feel like I’m wasting the multiple steeps I could have had from those leaves and I personally am not comfortable leaving wet tea leaves over night. Which leaves me with herbals. I like rooibos but I’m low on it and often don’t feel like it that late at night. I tend not to like chamomile straight or in blends where it’s a dominate taste, but I don’t mind being able to taste it in blends so long as it isn’t the strongest flavor. I don’t mind hibiscus cause I like tart things so I wouldn’t avoid it but I wouldn’t go out of my way to find it either. So far I’ve had a hard time finding non-rooibos herbals that I like and want to drink, not just this is okay and I can finish the box/tin ones.

So part two of my query, Steepsterians, is to ask for your herbal recommendations. I will also take good rooibos recommendations, since not many of you drink it, and I’m open to them, but I’m looking for mainly herbals to consider.

Now back to my regularly scheduled late night tea story. Barbara, my mom, brought back a ton of teas from the Celestrial Seasonings plant in Denver, CO, when my dad, my sister, and she were visiting my sister’s boyfriend who was stationed there with the Air Force. One box that she gave me was a sampler of their fruity herbals.

As someone who also readings “junk food” romances, I’m also embarrassed to admit that I kind of like these teas. I enjoy fruity teas and herbals, when I’m in the mood for one. And while these aren’t as good as others I’ve had, they are decent and I don’t mind the tartness from the hibiscus.

I did steep this tea less than the recommended four to six minutes and with water below boiling. It could probably be steeped less time and with cooler water. It was still a dark purple-red. It tasted fruity and tart with a general berryness. It filled my late night need for tea.

Now this one’s a teabag courtesy of one of my roommates (who is away for the summer).

Brewed aroma here is definitely more fakey-cherry. Cherry cough syrup-y?

Flavourwise, I’m again getting a similar sort of sweetness. It comes up a bit sooner though, and doesn’t linger as long, so it’s much more bearable. The hibiscus is also done reasonably well in this blend, with the tartness not overwhelming everything, even though this steep is just as epically long as the other. I’d have to say that the Tea Forte version, comparing them side by side, has a more tart berry sort of flavour, whereas this one is more of a sweet berry flavour. Both blends have the tartness of hibiscus of course, but the berry flavour itself is different.

I have to say, both definitely have their merits – I’m more familiar with Celestial Seasonings, so their ‘zinger’ blends typically taste “right” to me, but the Tea Forte version was interesting and different. The sweet aftertaste would therefore probably be the only reason I’d pick one (CS) over the other (TF), in general.

Fun experiment – I’m definitely almost asleep now.

I’m still chilly – hope I’m not getting sick! I decided to make a lazy herbal bagged tisane with some honey. I chose this one because it’s the one flavor in my CS sampler that I haven’t tried yet.

It’s quite good! Sweet/tart with the honey, fruit punch-like. It is hibiscus-y so if you don’t like hibiscus you won’t like this. All in all, not a bad lazy tea bag, but I wouldn’t buy a box of it (but I do plan on buying a box of raspberry zinger. I have such a soft spot for that one!).

Another one I found in the previously mentioned Big Tins of Mystery! It was out of a Celestial Seasonings sampler pack that a former friend (we fell out, probably for the best) once sent me for my birthday along with a few other things from CS. I remember being quite taken by the boxes. Pretty pictures. They had actually made an effort on decoration. I wasn’t particularly interested in the actual contents though, which I found disappointing on account of 75% of them being herbals. I don’t care about tisanes. They are not tea and they are not interesting. (And many of them aren’t that well tasting either) Oh and FYI as a personal little peeve, rooibos falls under this category. It is not tea.

Anyway, berries! I like berries, so while I haven’t bothered to look at the ingredients, I’m feeling semi-confident. I mean if I only have one bag out of a whole sampler pack left, then surely the others must have been used up, right? And if I didn’t like them, there would have been more than one left, right?

It smells like… sweets. Not particularly fruity to be honest. Rather more synthetic and very very sweet. I do notice though that it gets a highly suspicious bright red colour while steeping. This is worrying. I have some very bad experiences with that particular colour. I haven’t even tasted it yet and already I’ve poured the rest of the water into a small pot to heat it up and the kettle on with water for a pot of emergency Lapsang Souchong if I’m right.

Okay. Here goes. takes deep breath and summons all reserves of courage

Ack! Yuck! Spitty!

I was right about that bright red colour. It tattles about the presence of the dreaded hibiscus. That stuff seems to be in just about everything and I just can’t get it down. To me it has a dreadful metallic sort of taste that reminds me most of all of blood. No thank you, says I.

It’s a mystery though that there was only this one bag left. I must have traded the others, but why did I keep one?

I got this one for my husband because he seems to like these hibiscus based Zinger teas. I have a mug of it and it was okay. Very tart though with just a hint of berries. I’m making a pitcher of cold-brewed. I hope that cold-brewing it brings out the sweetness of the hibiscus like it did with the Tangerine Zinger.

This smells mainly of hibiscus. I’m also one of the rare people on here who really loves the tart flavor. This somehow tastes more of cherry than anything else. There is a bit of raspberry in there too, but it is pretty artificial tasting. It reminds me a bit of the forest berries tea by Adagio without the black base. It isn’t terrible, just not the very best. I’d say I’d drink it just for something fruity.

So in paying attention I’ve established that my review of this tea yesterday was actualy a review of Black Cherry Berry. Sad to say, if that was supposed to be Black Cherry, it was not a good rendition.

Though, in actually drinking the wild berry tea, I like it! Seems redundant considering the other berry teas they make, but maybe they wanted to corner the market.

Edit – Rating is going down down down as it gets more bitter despite not continuing to steep. Stick with Blueberry – Check!

Definitely my favorite of the Celestial Seasonings Zingers I’ve had. I love the hibiscus, the blackberry, and the cranberry notes that are in here. It’s a fruit-punchy tea that wouldn’t appeal to everyone (if you don’t like hibiscus or tart, stay far, far away). I love all things fruity and naturally sweet with that edge of tart, so this tea is delicious.

This was part of a sampler pack of fruit teas. I wish there were more variety packs from CS, because there’s a lot of flavors I’m interested in trying, but they can be hit or miss and I hate to buy a box I’m not going to want to drink. I’ll probably grab a box of this one next time it’s on sale.

Last night I went to Walmart a little tipsy, and ended up spending $100 on a Keurig Brewer. They had intrigued me for a while, and I was surprised to see one for only $100. After looking for K-Cups a couple different places, I wasn’t too excited about their options for tea. I read quite a few reviews that told me just tossing in a tea bag was a bad idea…but I just couldn’t resist.

First I tried a white tea in the Keurig, and was pleasantly surprised at how tasty it was! I was so excited to be enjoying such yummy tea in under 2 minutes, that I just had to try a second bag. In the mood for something fruity, I ripped open my wild berry zinger out of my fruit tea sampler and decided to give that a whirl. I was pretty excited when I first smelled it, but didn’t want to get my hopes up. Fortunately I was not disappointed!

It tastes very similar to fruit punch to me. And I’m a huge fan of fruit punch. :) I suppose it has some tartness to it but it’s not overwhelming. I’m really curious to see what this tastes like iced. I bet with a bit of stevia it will be delicious! Hoping I can find a box of this this weekend- since it’s from the fruit sampler I only have 2 or 3 left.

One of these days I may try steeping this in my teapot just to see how it compares to the way it tastes from the Keurig. This machine of course doesn’t replace my kettle/teapot but I definitely see myself using this on mornings I have to be to class by 8, and at night when I just don’t have the energy to mess with steeping the old-fashioned way!

I’m excited I can make using of my new brewer without having to spend $12 for 16 cups of tea!

Strong, full bodied berry flavor. Although I prefer to drink it unsweetened, other people tell me that the “zing” is too overpowering. I always buy this in boxes of two, since it’s one of my favorites.

This is certainly the best of the ‘zingers’ none of which are very good at all. I add one packet NuStevia to one cup boiling water. It’s OK.

I’ve hated tea for most of my life, I thought it tasted like boiled grass and could not figure out why so many people drank it. Then I spent a couple of weeks in Israel where it was rude not to drink tea offered to you and I developed a taste for the lemon and mint tea that everyone seemed to serve. So when I came back to the States I decided to dip into my mom’s tea stash to find other teas that I actually liked.

I started with the Wild Berry Zinger from Celestial Seasonings because it didn’t sound too grass-like, unlike all the herbal teas we had in the cabinet. It’s not bad. I can definitely taste the fruit but the flavor isn’t too overpowering. I don’t actually know much about tea, so it’s hard to review, but for a first tea to try, it’s pretty good.

Super tart and fruity. I usually add a bit of sugar to balance out the tartness, but when I’m craving berries this hits the spot. A good tea for people who don’t normally like tea, as it mainly tastes like fruit.

Got this as part of my Celestial Fruit Sampler. I like this one a little bit more than the blueberry one, which doesn’t surprise me much. Not quite as tart as I expected, but I do get a bit of tartness. The berries lend it a nice sweet flavor/aroma that I personally enjoy.

The berry flavor is pretty faint compared to the sour hibiscus. Not bad with some honey, but not very fruity.

I got this tea for work, and it was pretty good. I went so far to bring some home so I could have it there as well. There are definitely a lot of different berry flavors going on which kind of threw me off, despite the name. I think I was expecting to me almost more blueberry-esque only to get a lot of tart.

I wouldn’t get it again, but I did enjoy it while I had it.

Very refreshing and tangy. Feels good to the stomach: it isn’t very sour.

This one is definitely heavy on the cherry flavor. I’m not a huge fan but I’ve made two huge pitchers of it iced and drank quite a bit so it can’t be that bad. My boyfriend seems to love it iced and unsweetened as well. I tried it hot but it was too heavy on the cherry. I liked it better with some lemon in it to cut the sticky sweet-ness of it.

I loved this tea it’s so fruity

Almost too fruity in flavor. Sometimes tastes like the berry is artificial. Super sweet, too much in my opinion. The color is so intense that you would think food coloring was added. But, it is cheap and bagged, so easy to brew quickly. Not the best herbal out there.