Jolly Jellybean

Well, no jellybeans for me! in the bag I bought anyhow.
Oh well. I dunno if it’d have made the tea any better. It was so generic. You’re basic fruity rooibos. I liked it, but I did not love it.
How sad is it that the above statement is the most complimentary thing I can say about anything in the spring collection? :(
Oh and there were little bits of rooibos floating around in the mug. I used my tea egg and that usually doesn’t happen with my rooibos’. In fact, tea bits is the reason why I use it with that type! (http://www.spiceandtea.com/images/Infuser%20Stainless%20Steel%20&%20Red%20Tovolo.jpg)

Maybe I did something wrong, but this really didn’t taste like anything to me.
I steeped for about 10 minutes, had close to 2 tsp of tea, and even had a jelly bean in there.

Well, I can taste a little bit of swamp water-ish taste, and I like that! But as the tea cools down, it tastes more and more like water. hum. Well, I got it just to get something, I didn’t really have anything in mind, so it’s not too much of a loss!

I might use up the rest or save some for a swap, we’ll see!

I’m finally getting around to trying this sampling sent to me by DaisyChubb (thanks … and sorry it took me so long!) I figured I had better get to trying it because the three jelly bellys that were in this sampling represented the last of the jelly bellys in the house (the large jar somehow disappeared) and I feared for these jelly bellys safety.

Oh… YUM! I like this. It is remarkably sweet, which should come as no surprise. It’s a bit like a handful of jelly beans that have been liquified and served warm. Sweet and tasting very much like jelly bellys.

I like that I don’t taste a lot of rooibos flavor here, just a slight woody/nutty note from it, mostly I taste coconut, pineapple and strawberry … in that order. Sweet and candy-like. If you don’t have a sweet tooth, this isn’t the right tisane for you.

Well things took a turn for the excellent. This tea was delivered (read: thrown at my door) and my mailbox had a $110 check from AT&T sitting in it since they made me pay my final bill at my old apartment twice. Glad they could sit on that money for months.

But now I have $110 back so I can feel less guilty about buying 100g of this tea, hooray! As soon as I saw it posted I knew it would be mine. I love gimmicky teas. I don’t even like jellybeans that much but this was too awesome to pass up.

As soon as I opened the bag it smelled so good. Pineapple, strawberry, coconut. It’s kind of lacking in the jellybean department but I guess it’d be hard to try to have enough tea if the weight was all jellybeans.

I went with “steep until the jellybean melts” while timing it. But after 9 minutes I couldn’t take it anymore.

Brewed, it smells kind of weird. But it tastes good. It’s very fruity, I get more strawberry than pina colada, and the vanilla makes it taste creamy…and it does have a jellybean aftertaste.

This is silly and awesome.

Another one bites the dust. Dang. I was excited for this one. Unfortunately the 10g we bought had absolutely no jellybeans in it. I think the jellybeans are going the way of the watermelon bits in Luscious Watermelon, aka being eaten by the staff. There weren’t very many jellybeans in the wall tin either.

Anyway, without jellybeans, this tastes like your typical bourbon vanilla rooibos with just a hint of fruit. I am disappointed. This is another one I will not be adding to my collection. I will rate if I ever get some with jellybeans in it.

Dry Leaf Nose: Rich rooibos with scents of pineapple and coconut – sweet with a touch of vanilla.

Liquor: Golden brown and clear. Sweet rooibos aroma with vanilla, coconut and pineapple notes.

Flavour: The cup is full, sweet, and thicker than expected. Coconut and pineapple notes mingle with creamy vanilla.

I like this! Hooray! It’s actually the one I didn’t really want to like as it’s highly ridiculous. But it’s fruity, it’s creamy. It’s a nice-looking blend, too. It smelled like Swampwater to me, and tastes like a sweeter verison I think. In fact, it tastes rather sugary to me! So sugary that I decided to be a diabetes nerd and check a drop of it with a blood glucose test strip. I was kind of surprised that the result was 3.6 mmol/L though I didn’t know if I should be, so I tried to calculate it. I don’t know if the unit conversion works the same way, but if my calculations are right that translates to 65 mg/dl, so I think this 500 ml jumbo-mug equals an almost disappointingly undramatic .325 g of glucose plus, I guess, probably the same amount of fructose? This is all very highly unscientific and I don’t know what I am talking about, but it was interesting and makes me better trust that DT’s assertion “our teas have all tested below 1 g of sugar per cup of tea (according to our steeping instructions)” applies even to a tea with jelly beans in it!

Also, I wish I understood science/math/WHATEVER.

a local friend gave this to me cuz she said she really didn’t like the smell. and i understand cuz i do think it smells a little strange. but the taste is pretty nice. it’s similar to other rooibos from davidstea. but it’s a nice slightly sweet nighttime tea. and there’s a little creamy tone that gives a soft coziness to the cup.

i moved my bedroom furniture around drastically. i do it often. just randomly move my furniture so that things feel new and interesting. i like to change things up. get a new perspective.

i also had a dream that i dyed my hair black. so yes it’s true i’m tempted. though the roots are awful and rarely worth it. (i’m a dark blonde. so as it grows out i end up looking like i’m going bald.)

Went to the store today and made sure they gave me at least one jellybean in my 10grams. Being a good customer must have paid off because I got three!

The jellybeans are awesome since they are Jelly Belly. But the tea itself is a novelty tea to me. There’s a slight peachish fruit flavour to it, but the vanilla base overpowers. Not a bad tea, but nothing memorable either.

This is nearing a de-cupboard, and I always hatehatehate removing teas from my cupboard without reviewing them (for my own records, if not for other people – I’m sure most people who were curious about this one have already tried it), but I have almost nothing to say about this one. Hence there being no review of it until, uh, June. I was excited for this because I love wacky teas, but eh. It’s just kinda meh on first, second and third impressions. And yes, I did get jelly beans in my sample, but I never honestly noticed them making a significant difference to the taste. I probably would have been better off eating them.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t dislike it. Actually, I think I steeped this cup longer than previous cups and it’s pretty good. It’s mostly got a strawberry flavour with something else fruity and sweet underneath that and an underlying creaminess to the whole sip. Not bad at all.

And yet, there’s a fullness to the sip that’s just missing. Even for a rooibos (which never has the fullness of flavour that I associate with tea-tea). I don’t know – it has the same problem that much of the spring collection did in that there are Swiss cheese holes in the flavour. It’s the kind of thing that makes me wonder if that whole collection was rushed for some reason.

And actually, it gets more hole-y as the cup cools. Some teas have more flavour when they cool – this is absolutely not one of them, as it tastes more and more like sweetened water as its temperature drops. Ick.

It’s all right, but I don’t mind the fact that it’s gone from stores/online only now at all. It was a cute idea for Easter, anyway.

Oh man did I ever think I wasnt going to like this one because I do not like jelly beans at all… I am suprized to say that I am pretty pleased with the spring 2012 collection… I didnt think I would like it but they are pretty good!
So this tea. Okay so I love coconut & hate jellybeans, lucky for me I didnt get any jellybeans in my sample pack. Oh man does this ever smell good when it is brewed. I did not expect such a nice strawberry scent. And it tastes like strawberries with a sweet hit of coconut. These flavours blend REALLY well with the red and green rooibos. Oh man its good. Strawberry is my favourite fruit and i just lovelovelove coconut. This would make a great night time tea because it is zero caffene; or just a good afternoon pick-me-up because it tastes really sweet and jolly i suppose lol. Oh no, I promised myself I would stop buying teas but I might just have to stalk up on this one… sorry mom!

thank you yet again momo, for allowing me to try this one! Yes, I love jellybeans! What a fun idea for a tea. I would hope there is at least one jellybean in the blend for each teaspoon that goes into the infuser. (I avoided the blue jellybean, as those are my least favorite!) I spotted an orange one. The tea DID taste like consistent orange, and after a peek in the infuser, the coating of the jellybean is gone. (I steeped right after the water finished boiling for around eight minutes.) Of course, there was sugar on the jellybean to make the tea sweet. But now I’m wondering if the flavor was from the tea itself, since it could have been the strawberry and pineapple flavors that made it taste like orange to me. Power of suggestion? I liked this one, though I would have liked a stronger tasting rooibos. It’s a fun tea and I like that in the picture, the yellow flowers make the jellybeans look like eggs in a nest!

This was better than I was expecting it to be.
I didn’t get any jellybeans in my scoop, but it was still very good.
I definitely taste the coconut, and it is a little creamy, which is good.
It is a little gimmicky but it is fun anyway.
It is a nice dessert-y treat at the end of the day.

Made a mug of this while I’m waiting for my Luscious Watermelon iced tea to cool. I got a small tin of it when it first came out; not a single jellybean to be found. I feel ripped off. It smells wonderful dry and I like all the other ingredients, but if the name says Jolly Jellybean and there are jellybeans in the ingredient list, then I should get jellybeans dammit!

It’s a nice tea when brewed. Creamy, slightly coconutty, sweet. I think my disappointment over the lack of jellybeans is colouring my judgement though. I have much better stuff in my tea stash than this, like Oh Canada and Coco Chai Rooibos. The second steeping wasn’t any better but it wasn’t any worse either.

I may change my mind if I ever get to try this with jellybeans. For now, I don’t think I would get this again.

Just catching up on some ratings, I’m so bad about doing them on the days I actually drank the tea.
I was certain that I’d like this one because its fruity and has jellybeans. I’ve only made this one once, and I think maybe I used too much leaf (okay fine, I was digging around for jellybeans and used extra leaf in the process). I also may have oversteeped it just slightly because I wanted the whole jellybean to melt. It didn’t.
Bearing these brewing errors in mind, it was not bad. The flavouring was nice, but didn’t seem to mesh well with the earthiness of the rooibos. The rooibos was very strong in this one (likely because of overbrewing/too much tea), and it almost had a sort of sour note to it. Not fruity-sour, more like…earthy-sour. Fermented. Not my favorite, but I do plan to re-try this one brewed properly. I suspect that maybe I just don’t like the taste of red rooibos, because Birthday Cake has the same earthy-sour/fermented note and has a red rooibos base.
At any rate, I’m not going to give up on this one yet because I didn’t make it correctly.

Well, I have this one since 1 month and a half.
Sadly, i’ve never made any review of it.

The jelly bean seems a little inappropriate for a tea.
Which surprised me. It’s… right!

The blend is not too much sugary.
Instead we got a sweet sugary blend!
I don’t know why but I smell a little…
Pineapple taste in it?

Am I wrong?
Anyway, everything’s fine.
Try it out by yourself!

First an experiment:
When I first heard about this tea, I thought it was a cute novelty thing but was skeptical about the jellybeans actually adding anything to the tea at all. So I bought some jellybeans, same brand they put in the tea, and steeped a cup of about 30 jellybeans alongside my cup of this tea.
You guys, it was a lot grosser looking than I thought it would be. I had bought random flavours just like they put in the tea, and it ended up a very muddy looking opaque liquid with little white bits floating(??). I was expecting basically just a cup of hot, slightly sweet water. But it actually had a much stronger flavour, slightly fruity MAYBE, just very very sweet. After a few sips it became kind of disgustingly sweet actually.
So anyway, I guess they might add something to the tea after all.

Okay so this tea:
I was sad at first that it smelled so much like Swampwater, which I couldn’t stand. But to me this is actually like a much better version of Swampwater. Maybe it’s the vanilla, it’s very creamy and nice. There’s still a tiny bit of what I didn’t like about Swampwater in there, so I probably wouldn’t go out of my way to buy a bunch of this again. But I like the rooibos base, I think there might be more of the red rooibos in this one. Pretty nice and it does seem like a spring-y tea. Also, I must be lucky, cause there were loads of jellybeans in my 25g bag! (Or am I unlucky for paying more for the jellybeans than the tea?)

I didn’t steep this right. I added my water and then got distracted by a shiny thing. I seriously need to start using a timer. That said, rooibos is usually pretty forgiving. I’m trying to decide if the rooibos taste is far enough in the background or not for this one, and possibly due to the longer than average steep, I think it may be further up front than I normally care for. I got a little over 25g because I was worried I might not get enough (or any) jellybeans in my bag if I went for a smaller one.

The smell on this one is pure awesomeness, and it looks pretty effing amazing too. The taste seems much, much milder and less sickly candy sweet than you might think by sniffing it and seeing the jellybeans. Again, this could be my faulty brain-dead brewing techniques from this evening.

Like just about all of the rooibos teas from DAVIDs that I have tried (and liked), this tastes juicy and I think it would be great to make iced tea with in the summer. I think I might prefer this over Green and Fruity, but it has been a while since I had that last (been saving it for the summer). I think I might still prefer Orange Blossom to this, or it is a close tie, though my beloved Alpine Punch is the clear rooibos winner.

Not bad, tastes like a less-weird version of Swampwater in my opinion! I was apparently one of the lucky ones that got 4 jellybeans in a 16g bag, so I made sure to steep one in my cup this evening.

The dry tea smells vanilla-y and fruity, but with less guava scent than Swampwater. And taste-wise it is very much the same; I don’t think the jellybean added much. Perhaps it also depends on which flavour you get – it was a red one in this cup. The bag contains two more red ones and a pear one (which I just ate… heehee :D)

So nothing objectionable, but in the dessert rooibos department I still lean towards Alpine Punch :)

Thank you Tattooed_tea!
This is a pretty rooibos with all the colors and petals in it. This has a weird fruit flavor to it. It kind of reminds me of fruit punch. I can taste pineapple and coconut. And maybe a bit of vanilla. There is different fruit flavors with each sip but that darn coconut just keeps wanting to over power them. I like it and I’m happy I got a chance to try it, but this may be one of those teas I just don’t run and order right now.