citrus kiss

My sweetie likes lemongrass and I thought I’d had this herbal tea once when I was at his house so I picked up a box recently. It’s made with decaf green tea, lemongrass and various other herbs. When you put the brewed tea to your nose it smells a bit like lemon pledge, eww. To me the flavor is just so over the top, sickening sweet. They definitely overdid the stevia in this blend. I wish tea companies would stop doing this. Most of us have access to sugar or sweetener of our choice so why not let people sweeten to taste?

It’s kind of rare that I don’t want to finish a cup of tea but I can barely get started with this one. Ick.

I’m usually easy when it comes to tea, but I just couldn’t get through this one. It was overly sweet unlike any other tea I’ve tried likely due to the stevia and had an overwhelming chemical after taste that sticks to the back of your mouth. I wanted to like this tea but just couldn’t get past the after taste. On a positive note it did smell nice.

Backlog

I forgot to take tea to work on Monday, so I had to make due with what was in the break room. I found that someone had been adding new teas (other than Lipton) to the tea basket in the break room. I figured that this would be better than that…..WRONG. It was unnaturally sweet & tart. I threw the cup out & had eventually gone to the gas station down from my job for a cuppa coffee (which ultimately was better than the tea).

I had this one yesterday. For the life of me I can’t figure out why it is so badly rated. Other than it being a tea bag, the big complaint seems to be the added stevia. While stevia does have a bit of a saccharin type bitter aftertaste, I think it fits this tea. It gives a little sweet kick at the end. It certainly isn’t as sweet as anything pre-sweetened at Starbucks. I also found this to be fairly complex for a lowly bag, and the flavors are light and airy. First I taste the combination of lemongrass and lemon myrtle. It achieves a very nice balance of citrus flavor. It isn’t candy and certainly isn’t furniture polish. Next I catch a brief brush of rose. It isn’t perfume or gross. It is actually quite pleasant. Late in the sip I notice the chamomile and blackberry leaves. Possibly along with the citric acid, they add just a slight tartness before the stevia kick finishes it off. As I said, I don’t get it (the hate). I might not want it all the time but would definitely drink this again. As for the aftertaste – it didn’t offend me, even so, to me it is just an opportunity to have a snack with my tea.

Yuck. Disgusting. I can only taste the stevia. It’s like drinking sugar water with a twist of something vaguely fruity.

PASS. If I want a Sprite, I’ll crack open a can of it. I don’t want my tea to taste like it.

The stevia in this tea made it too sweet and gross. Bleh.