North African Mint (organic)

Day 9 on my Advent Calendar

This is another tea i’ve been meaning to try happy to see it in the calendar.

dry leaves i mostly smell mint and i’m also picking up the fennel from the seeds.

liqueur is a nice dark caramel color and smells like peppery mint

Time to taste: mint and the fennel licorice and then it leaves a nice sweet note on the tongue, very refreshing! and very christmassy to me as we usually have fennel on the table to munch on while we play cards.

So the tea is supposed to be an “intense combination of spices and mint”. I’m only tasting the mint flavor with a slight hint of spices. But this is still a really yummy tea for after lunch. It smells wonderful too always a plus!

Full disclosure: this is my third cup of green tea already today. Last night was a little rough, so I’ve been self-medicating. 1) Detox (Organic) from David’s Tea; 2) Electric Lemon from David’s Tea; 3) North African Mint from David’s Tea.
You know… this one.
I’m on a bit of a no-milk teas kick (I have almost a need to cloud my black teas and most tisanes and rooibos, so that leaves the earthy greens in my arsenal.) I did slip some honey in, though, because the throat, she’s not doing so good these days.
I don’t know what I think about the smell of the dry tea. I certainly don’t get a “mint” smell from it, like I love and am used to, but it has a firmly enigmatic and foreign sense to it.
Steeped it in my infuriatingly pine-green-interiored mug (but it’s such a great size and shape that I can’t stop using it), so I can’t tell if it has any colour to it. I suspect it has darkness, but can’t (am too lazy) to confirm.
Oh, THERE that mintiness is! It’s hidden in the warmth of steeping! It’s not as toothpastey as I tend to find peppermints. All the other spices really keep it in check. I am absolutely getting cloves in the smell. Very nice. The licorice is largely hidden, and the ginger kind of lingers in your nostrils as an after-smell.
First taste is a punch to the mouth. I took too big a gulp (because I steeped it so low and it’s so cold here that tea gets undrinkably cold very quickly, so I’ve developed the habit of chugging my tea. There’s so much happening. Heat, coolness, spiciness, body… let me take a proper sip and try to figure out some of this craziness.
Gingery burn is the first thing that happens. It teams up with the pepper and lasts as long as the tea is in your mouth. Immediately above that burn is the cold of peppermint. It’s a very nice sensation. The fennel and cloves almost make me feel like I should see my breath in a puff of ice crystals like I was outside on a very cold day.
I have to be honest and say that this little tin sat in my World Tour box for a long time because I just didn’t want to try it; that was a mistake. I’m finding that the teas I wind up liking the most at David’s Tea are the ones that I hesitated to try. I can see replacing my current mint (which was ruined by going to a different format and which will remain nameless) with this green tea version. Yum!

Not going to lie, this one is awesome! Nice and complex with all the spices. The pepper and cardamom work really well with the mint. I did find the tea wanted some sweetener, so I added a tsp of natural sugar. :) So good. In fact, the wife had an upset stomach last night and I made some of this for her. Helped her settle down.

This is quickly become a favorite tea. I really enjoy the suddle hints of mint with the nice spices in it. It’s a very warm and relaxing tea. Great relaxing tea!

I received North African Mint the other day from a friend who was giving me some of the teas which she didn’t like. I’m a fan of minty teas, so I figured that I would like North African Mint given the name.

Unfortunately I didn’t taste much (if any) of the mint flavour, and instead I could only really taste the spices. Unsteeped and steeped, you can smell both the spices and the mint, but the mint seems to be drowned out in the actual taste.

The spicy taste wasn’t bad, but it was only okay at best. I was a bit disappointed (Despite going in with low expectations.) Maybe I just didn’t get a good mix of the ingredients, so I’ll have to try this one again sometime.

I picked up 10g of this yesterday and am drinking it for the first time now. The smell is really strong and minty but with a bit of a twist which I can’t really describe. This tea is really different from any thing that I would normally drink. I do like it but I can’t see myself drinking it every day. This is one I would definetely recomend to anyone who likes mint and bold flavours. I find that the mint in this tea is what you taste first and the other ingredients follow as the mint mellows down. For all the bold flavours, it is really not overpowering like I expected.

Nooooooooooooo :( licorice root ruins this one for me. It has a beautiful spicy dry smell, but the licorice root is just too much. It really hangs on, even for the second infusion.

I really enjoy this tea, it has a wonderful blend of flavors. I especially love the hint of black pepper.

This is a great mint tea. I like the green tea base as opposed to the plain mint herbal tea you often get. The licorice and cardamom add nice layers of flavourful to this tea. I like it best as an after dinner tea to aid in digestion.

This is one of my favourite North African/Moroccan mint blends! The cardamom! Cinnamon! This is the drink of hospitality for a reason! It’s always a hit when I serve it in a teapot to my friends. I love how the different flavours meld together to create a beautiful tea. Notes of licorice are present as well. Tea can be fickle – I recommend a little higher than a normal green tea temperature, but certainly not anywhere close to boiling. It can turn this tea very bitter. It’s a lovely addition to my permanent tea collection.

Keep in mind that I a) love strong teas and b) love chai blends and herbs that other people may not necessarily find palatable in tea. Especially licorice, pepper, cloves etc.

Finally, after a string of steeping disasters and teas I really don’t care for, I’ve tried one that I quite like.

I like mint, and I love all of the spices in this tea, so the only question was how well would the green tea meld with their flavours? Answer: Really well. Mint is definitely the dominant taste, but the green tea and spices help to give it a mellower, sweet taste. I would not really term it as spicy, though.

Overall, a very pleasant cup of tea. I’m not sure that I’ll ever wake up in the morning and go “I NEED to drink North African Mint today”, but I’ll probably drink a cup whenever I stumble across it in my cupboard.

When it comes to green tea (and white and oolong teas, for that matter), you should never steep it with boiling water. Slightly cooler water is needed, or else you’ll scald the leaves.

There are three methods that I know of in order to reach the ideal temperature. One is to let the boiled water sit for a few minutes. Another is to temper with cold water, and a third is tempering with an ice cube. In the second and third case, you’re technically using boiling water, but you’re making sure to pour the hot water over the colder parts, and not directly on the tea (if at all possible).

Over my three forays with green tea so far, I’ve played once with each of these methods. To date, I’ve no favourite. I do, however, think that I’d feel much more confident if I had a thermometer handy so I could measure how hot the water was, and making sure I was staying close to suggested steeping temperatures.

In time, I’ll work on that, and find what does work best for me. If anyone has any best practices, I’d love to hear them.

Anyway, on with the tea of the day.

Steeped: 1.5 tsp in tea ball, brewed in-cup. Brewed with boiled water tempered by ice cube.

First cup: Steeped 3 minutes.
The mint is definitely the flavour that comes out strongest in this tea. The other ingredients seem to work to intensify the sensation of mint, without actually taking it over. I can smell the spices and the ginger far more than I can taste them, but the ginger’s sweetness certainly does come through, and I have to guess that the tingliness which I would associate with the mint is actually coming from the spices as well. The overall flavour seems very simple and well-put together for all the ingredients, though.

Second cup: Resteep. Steeped 4 minutes.
The mint less prominent this time around, though it’s still detectable. With its fading, the complexity of the tea’s flavour seems to rise as the spices gain prominence. There’s still a sweetness that hits at the back of the throat, and the different kinds of heat and spice all hit at slightly different times, making for an interesting experience. It seems slightly less cohesive, but still very complementary.

Third steep: Re-resteep. Steeped over 5 minutes.
Still very strong flavour. Again, the spices are coming out more than the mint, but still in a very complimentary way.

Overall impression: An interesting flavour. Goes from deceptively simple to more complex, while still maintaining a strong flavour profile over several steeps, and evolves over the course of them. If I wasn’t so full of tea right now, I’d probably see what a fourth steep was like.

My rating: 80. A-. I like a tea that will last over time with a good amount of flavour to it. Not sure if I would buy it for myself in large quantities, but still something I’d keep in mind for sipping now and again.

Continuing on my recent kick of minty teas…

This one surprised me. A lot. And I’m still unsure whether that is a good or a bad thing.

There’s not a lot of mint in this. The spices don’t really hit the tongue; they’d rather attack the back of my throat. Not a fan of the liquor’s smell (odd, considering I really enjoy the dry scent). And yet, I am sitting here sipping away… Not enough flavour to really like it, yet conversely, not enough of anything to hate.

Hello, Fence, my name is Kay! Mind if I sit on you for a while?

This is a nice, relaxing green tea for difficult days. When I am stressed out with work, this blend really helps me get in the right state of mind to cope. I do not find the liquorice overpowering, it is actually balanced quite well with the mint.

Day 70 of my 101 days of DAVIDsTEA challenge. Catching up on the backlog!

1.5 tsp in my teaball, brewed in-cup.

This is easily my favroutite minty tea that I’ve tried so far (perhaps tied with Santa’s Secret, but that’s more of a chocolate mint…). The green tea mutes the mint just enough to make it delicious but not as overpowering as I sometimes find mint to be. Second steep was just as good as the first.

This is a great tea for relaxing at night, I find. Definitely something worth having in a tea stash.

Smells nice and minty fresh.
Not a fan of ginger but I don’t smell it and hopefully won’t taste it.

when brewed the smell becomes super pepperminty and has a kick of ginger(unfortunately).

A very nice very solid green tea that does not taste like green tea.

Tastes exactly like a mellowed down peppermint tea with a kick of ginger spice,which I actually didn’t mind.

A good drinking experience but not unforgettable.

Great for sore throats and colds.A good wellness tea to keep as a staple in your home.

this is so good, and whenever someone has a stomachache or sore throat, I break this out. drizzle the pot with honey, pour the water, steep, and pour. good for what ails ya.

Not my favourite, but I would drink it once in awhile. Even though I love mint teas, the black pepper really threw me off. It is still ok, I would never buy a large quantity though.

This tea tastes like… if mint tea and chai tea had a love child. The cardamom is a sweet surprise to my taste buds! I was disappointed to find another tea in my calendar with licorice in it, since I haven’t enjoyed the last few, but I don’t mind how it mellows this tea out so nicely. I’m usually pretty lazy about watching steeping times. But I’ll be careful with this one. The longer it steeps, the stronger the licorice gets.

Anywho, I’m pleasantly surprised! With all the mint teas in my tea stash right now, I’m not sure I’ll be buying this one right away, but I do like it!

This is my day #9 of the David’s Tea “24 Days of Tea” advent calendar.