Smooth Strawberry Dream

This smells like strawberries and cream. VERY intensely scented. It’s yummy smelling. I was going to say this was my Rooibos of the day but technically it’s honeybush, I guess. This was a gift from Ashley. Thanks so much!

This is very sweet but not tart. This is also very light tasting…not mellow, but fluffy…lightweight, that is.

I would say this is pretty good but nothing tremendous. I am going to try it iced because I think it was more meant for that…or at least it seems to be…more of an iced flavor instead of a HOT Cuppa.

GASP Steepster ate my review of this! Bad, bad Steepster! It sort of poofed when I clicked the button. BOOOOOO.

Okay, um… let’s see. Dried blood, strawberry strawberry strawberry, ice… where did I even start? I doubt I can type that all out again, so I’m going to summarize.

1. PRETTY LEAVES: They’re red and green and caramel-bits and yeah. Look at the picture. I’m lazy now.

2. DARK INFUSION: Steeped it up for around 8 minutes and it’s the color of dried blood. Also, there are bits at the bottom that are positively black, and I’m sort of scared of them, so I’m using my spoon to stir it up. Also, note: afraid that tea might stain teeth, spoon, mug. Brush teeth after!

3. SMELL: Burnt sugar and heavy strawberry in the infusion, completely strawberry in the dry leaves, medicinal in the wet.

4. TASTE: “Oh hai, I’m a strawberry, if you’d like to become one, just drink Smooth Strawberry Dream!” Seriously, tart-strawberry mixed with the slightest hint of caramel and finished with a sweet honeybush note. Sometimes a bit too tart at points, and the strawberry gets overwhelming. As is cools, the caramel peeps out a bit more. Just a tad more.

5. VERDICT: If strawberries are your fruit of passion, drink this and you’ll be happy. I tend to prefer strawberry paired with heavier stuff (like black tea, like Mariage Freres and their Marco Polo and now I’m craving that instead of this). Might be good iced?

6. SADDED: Note disappeared! Pout. I’m so copying this one so it doesn’t eat this one as well!

The Final Sipdown: Day 14.2

I’ll confess: I dumped my entire sample of this [thanks teaplz!] into the strainer. I figured it was honeybush, so it wouldn’t really make a difference and I’d just steep it at the shortest end of the recommended steep time range. The tea brew was dark, dark, dark which made me nervous, but I could smell strawberry from a few feet away, so I figured it probably wasn’t horrible.

And it wasn’t.

But it also wasn’t fantastic.

This seems to be a theme for me.

The smell of the strawberry was strong. It was accompanied by a strong smell of caramel. Both of these components were present in the taste of the tea, albeit the caramel was rather weak and only appeared at the front of the sip and at the tip of the tongue, and the strawberry was disappointingly watery.

Also present was a medicinal taste that seems to accompany a lot of these honeybush/rooibus flavored blends.

When I think about this tea, I keep thinking, “That wasn’t too bad.” But really, when I have a solid stack of really great herbals at my disposal, why bother?

Also, does anyone else think that Smooth Strawberry Dream kind of sounds like a race horse name?

Teas Downed: 23

I have too much tea.

This was on the shopping list because I thought I was out. I was straightening out the tea collection, when I realized that the old webtea tin (does it age me? Anyone else remember this company?) still had some Smooth STrawberry Dream in it!!! Joy!

This is my absolute favorite rooibos. The first one that I actually liked, and one of the few that I’ve liked well enough to thing about reordering. It doesn’t come accross as rooibos to me, instead the strawberry and the caramel take center stage. I guess that’s why I like it so much!

I haven’t tried it iced, and I haven’t been in the mood for iced tea lately, so I’m drinking it hot today. I’m not sure how long I let it steep, I did a little bit of cleaning in the aquarium while I was brewing the tea. (Using a battery powered vacuum, which is fast, but that’s probably a review for a different website.)

So, it’s 2am and I’ve had a lot of caffeine today. A lot. But I’m not tired yet (not really surprising, huh?) and I want some tea. Since I really don’t need any caffeine right now, I went with this lovely fruit smelling beastie from the delightful teaplz. And it does smell lovely. Light and fruity, though maybe not quite strawberry… I’d vote for raspberry or an unripened blackberry, but that could be the smell of the leaves – berry leaves pretty much smell all the same to me.

I’m having trouble identifying the smell of the tea. Fruity, tart… sorta strawberry-y but mostly not. A smell of burnt sugar, maybe caramel. And sour. I’m typically okay with honeybush – not in love or anything, but okay with it (rooibos typically is the evil one) – but I’m thinking that the sour smell I’m getting is the honeybush. As the tea cools a bit though the sour smell melds a bit with the fruity-that-we-shall-call-strawberry to make a sour gummy fruit smell. This could be interesting.

Actually, it’s surprisingly mild. Woody but not sour (hallo honeybush) with a tart almost-strawberry fruit taste coming through, especially on the aftertaste which is pretty much all fruit. Ultimately though, it just doesn’t work for me. The flavors aren’t quite right and just don’t mesh for me. Additionally, I keep smelling sourness as I sip and that’s not cool (also not cool is the aftertaste I’m getting that seems remarkably related to that sour smell without actually tasting sour). I do like the fact that the flavor isn’t overwhelming though so that keeps it from being a bad tea (I realize my rating seems to contradict that but I had to go right below the yellow face). And in a running theme, the husband likes it more than I do so I’m the lone voice of ‘meh’ for this tea.

When I stop at TeaG, I always get a tea to go, iced, to try yet another tea. I tried SSD today, and it was tasty. It was sweet, light in strawberry flavor, and had a rhubarb like tartness to it. It has a caramel finish, alittle burnt at the end.

I want to try all their strawberry teas to make a final judgment, but this one is nice.

The smell of this tea after steeping is, like the name, of a smooth strawberry scent. I expected the taste to be similar to that of flash frozen strawberries that all the cereal companies use these days. Thankfully I was wrong! This Honeybush tea is naturally sweet, yet the flavors of strawberry and caramel add perfectly a dash more sweet in a warm and subtle way. This was a great tea to start a chilly Monday morning with!