Om

Another of those confusing black and green blends. What temperature? How long? Wish: that sexy Breville tea maker will have the right setting for something like this and take all the guesswork out of it. Getting to experiment = fun. Having to guess = not so fun.

I chose to go with three minutes and fairly hot water. I’ve mostly been making this tea at work anyway, where I have little control over water temp and less control over steeping time. I get distracted easily by work while at work and tend to oversteep. Which is as it should be (the distraction part, not the oversteeping part). :-)

Before I did, though, I sniffed the bags. I could smell the cucumber and something spicy. It took a minute for it to click, then I realized what spicy cucumbers are… pickles! Yeah. Pickle smell. I like pickles, but I’m not sure how I feel about them in tea. Seems like next year’s 52 Teas April fools joke waiting to happen.

The pickle smell becomes less prominent with steeping, perhaps because the peach fragrance emerges. It isn’t strong, but it seems to snatch whatever was making the bags smell pickley away from the cucumber aroma and renders it fresher smelling as well.

Flavor-wise, this is fairly unremarkable. There is a fresh note to it from the cucumber, and a slight sweetness, but not a lot else going on (not even pickle). It has a moderate amount of astringency.

I am considering two adjustments. 1. Lower water temperature, and 2. Sweetening it up a tad. I wonder what adding honeybush would do?

I get very excited by black and green tea mixes, this one was not the best I’ve had, but not bad either. The aroma of the bag is enticing, fragrant cucumber with a note of green, blended with the clean scent of cucumbers and peaches. The flavor of the tea is mostly green, I can taste a hint of black tea, but no cucumber or peach whatsoever.

Had hot with no additives and iced with no additives. I think adding sugar or honey would help to bring out the dulled cucumber and peach notes, but I will have to brew more and see.

I adore this tea. It tastes like the dry summer breeze. Whiffs of brittle pastures, sweet overtones of peach and cool shadows of cucumber. I am careful about the time I let it brew because it is very easy for it to become bitter, but I adore it just short of that point with a smidge of honey

A very temperamental tea, Om, but one of my favourites as well. Some cups are heavier on the peach; others are heavier on the cucumber. I haven’t pinned down what causes different cups to taste differently (when made the same way) but I love it regardless. I’ve settled on 190F and 4 minutes for this particular blend and it seems to work well: the black tea is noticeable and the green doesn’t become too bitter. (What bitterness there is I cover well enough with a bit of sugar.)

Hard to really taste the peach and cucumber; even with oversteeping it still has a strong taste of green tea. Good on the go but nothing special. Black tea is hard to taste.

When opened, the package gave a very calming scent of each of the green and black teas. You could smell the cucumber a lot and I figured this was going to be a refreshing tea. Once brewed, it had only the flavor of the green tea. Now since I am a green tea fanatic, I really liked the flavor it gave off. However, if you are wanting to taste the cucumber or peach I would not recommend this tea for that.

The notes of cucumber and peach blend well, and add a nice high note to the blend of black and green teas. Sweetened, it’s got a lovely flavor to it, and is making this a quite nice morning.

The description of this tea sounds so appealing. Sadly, it seems to taste like vomit.

I tried adding honey. It tasted like I had vomited up honey.

I tried it a second time, in case I had been on crack the first time. I may well have been, but that didn’t account for the vomit factor.

Perhaps this is because I have not yet reached enlightenment.

Had to oversteep but it was ok after doing so. Not much for aroma. You can taste the Green Tea but not the Black. Not really tasting much of the Peach or Cucumber either…pretty much Green. This was just OK for me. Not bad but not great either.