Caribe

So…I may or may not be broken…..this is supposed to have guava and strawberry in it and smells DIVINE but….why don’t I taste guava or strawberry? I feel like all I’m tasting is the black/green blend. Perhaps I need to add sugar? I’m so used to NOT adding sugar to teas that I never know when it would be better if I did. Usually, I brew this cold and really like the overall taste. I still can’t say even when it’s cold that I get all that much fruit flavor. But, I had it hot for the first time today and will probably only brew it cold from here on out.

Also, how bad would it be if I stashed the last sachet under the driver’s seat of my car? I bet the smell would last halfway til forever!

Tea & Cards TTB

I woke up this morning feeling like complete crap. Sinuses are out of whack, this week continues to be a cluster of stress, and I despite what was an actually decent night of sleep for the first time in a few days, I just felt exhausted 5 minutes after opening my eyes.

This was one of the teas I had set aside from the Tea & Cards TTB to try at work and I’m really glad I chose it this morning. Very refreshing. Tropical, fruity and just what I needed. It reminded me a bit of the Mighty Leaf Tropical Green Tea, but with a lot more flavor and complexity.

I marked this one as maybe for my next Harney & Sons order. Though who knows when that order will be… I have a lot of tea to sipdown before that can happen!

This is an enjoyable afternoon tea. It is quite sweet with guava and strawberries added. It is mild with little bitterness or astringency. I will try it iced another time. The sour taste of the guava does a good job of offsetting the sweet taste of the strawberry. I steeped this with 2.5 tsp of leaf for 3 min in boiling water. I would have used 190 degree water but I forgot it was a mix of black and green tea. It looks like just black tea. It has very dark sweet smelling leaves.

It taste fine but I can’t get past the dry leaf smell. I was going to give to a former coworker who liked it but he left before I got a chance to. My brother thought it smelled like the candy peachie-o’s which seems like an accurate and nicer comparison than I would have used. It seems many people enjoy this it’s just not for me.

H&S sample cube 3/18

This one smelled like fresh fruity sweetness the moment I opened the package—which made me a little wary, because flavored teas often don’t taste nearly as good as they smell. In fact, I’ve started to think there is an inverse correlation between the two…

Fortunately, this turned out to be much better than expected. I got enough out of the sachet to make one glass of iced tea and a small cup of hot brew. The iced version is very much your standard “tropical iced tea”, but the black tea adds more body to it, so that there isn’t the bitterness or tartness that you often find in a fruity iced green tea. The color of the brew is somewhere between that of a green and black tea as well. The hot brew is much richer, with a strawberries-and-cream effect. When hot it’s more reminiscent of a black tea (think a blended breakfast brew), but tempered out just a little by the presence of the green. Overall I’m pretty impressed!

Does anyone in the us want to try this tea? I don’t like it enough and I have a lot of it. I want it to be gone so I can get something else!
Its my second black of the day and I need something to wake me up, it works well for that and I think those who love floral and tropical would love this tea

I feel certain I posted a note of this one before, but I can’t find it now. This is a sipdown for what its worth, but is not my first try of this tea.

Dry: Black tea with a greater part green leaves, though in the picture from their website it looks the other way around. I am not sure if I got the bottom of the bag in my sample, but a lot of the bits are small enough to go through my infuser. So that’s not great. It is pretty otherwise with marigold and cornflower petals (yellow and blue) and the dry leaf smells very tropical. Reminds me of passion fruit!

Steeped: Light to medium brown clear liquor. Smells like hot guava if that makes any sense. Where I grew up in S. Florida we would have guava treats that my Cuban neighbors used to make. These remind me of them before they cooled down.

Taste: I realize this is supposed to taste like guava, coconut, and strawberry, but I am only getting hibiscus and guava. It is actually probably the most tangy tea I’ve ever had and I am not sure tangy + tea go together that well. I actually still like it somewhat because I happen to love guava, but I wouldn’t say it is a leading contender in the cupboard and others might like it considerably less as guava is one of those tastes that some people love and some people passionately hate. It was fun trying you Caribe, but time to move on!

For a flavored tea, this was light and enjoyable. The black and green teas together was perfect for a morning wake up slowly tea :)

A flavorful tea as long as you do not over steep it. I’ve found that two minutes is sufficient.

Got this as a sample sachet in my last Harney order. When you open up the sachet, you really do get a smell of Caribbean fruits! It was a short mental vacation to the beach :)

The liquid is less fruity than the smell of the dry tea would suggest, though. Not sure how I feel about green-black tea mixes. Don’t think I’ll be investing in this one.