Green Pomegranate

Today I have not been lucky with tea. First I spilled my cold brewed EGC all over the floor, then I had a mishap with this one! The top seems to be kind of loose, and it exploded EVERYWHERE when I tried to move it. Thankfully, it exploded over the floor I’d literally just cleaned because I spilled iced tea… so at least I was able to salvage all of the leaves. However, they didn’t all fit. Somehow they fit before the explosion, but not after? Anyway, I wasn’t planning on making any of this today but I had a heaping teaspoon of extra leaves with no place to go so I made it hot over ice.

It’s a way I haven’t used to make iced tea in a long time, and I’m so used to cold brewing that I found myself pretty sensitive to the bitterness here. Granted, it’s very very mild and is probably because I spazzed out and the water was too hot, so I won’t count that against the tea. It’s just funny how smooth cold brews are compared to the over-ice method! This is a mildly tart, fruity tea. The raspberry is definitely front and center, though I don’t know if I would really identify the other fruit as pomegranate if I didn’t know it was there. To me, pomegranate is rich and silky while this is bright and fruity. Not exactly a negative, but I did expect more, well, punch and tartness.

This came my way via a survey I took for The Persimmon Tree Tea Co. as a thank you gift. (Love their smallest tins – too cute!) To take a saying that my husband likes to use: If it’s free, its for me!

This rounds out the 3 teas I tried cold brewing. To be fair, I have yet to try this as a hot brew so I’m not sure if it will taste different when made the traditional way.

First off, I followed the usual 1.5 tsp of leaf per 8 oz cup and brewed this for over 24 hours – longer than I meant to keep the leaves in.

This has a much more pronounced green tea flavor than I was expecting! It’s mostly green tea with a hint of tart pomegranate. The other cold brews I had (neither of which were from The Persimmon Tree) were more fruit-forward with a hint of tea base flavor.

Finding this out now does make me a tad nervous to try the hot brew on this one, but it doesn’t deter me from doing it either. I’ll try that at a later time.

I’m loving the aroma that is wafting up out of my tea mug at the moment. I can smell the pomegranate and raspberry and it smells wonderful.

And it tastes nice too. The flavors are light. The green tea is fresh and has a moderate vegetative taste – not exactly what I would classify as mild because it is much more pronounced, but it isn’t strong either. Somewhere happily in between. It has a very fresh, crisp sort of taste to it. Light and refreshing.

The pomegranate and raspberry flavor are also light, but I think it’s good in the case of this tea, because if these flavors were stronger I think they’d overwhelm the green tea. I like that the green tea is in balance with the other flavors.

Overall a light, sweet, tart cuppa that is quite enjoyable.

TTB-A sample, yet another with only a bit yet, and I fear yet another contaminated one based on the scent of the dry leaf. It’s like those teas with only a cup left don’t have enough of their own power to fight off the scents from all the other teas in the box!

I do taste pomegranate and raspberry (sort of unexpected in a tea called just pomegranate, but whatever) in the main part of the sip, but they are joined by a host of other indistinct oddness. It’s getting quite bitter as it cools, but that’s definitely not the result of contamination. Ah well, moving on.

I’m slowly trying to get into green teas, starting with flavored ones more. This one was cold brewed. I enjoyed the taste of the tea, but the pomegranate was more of a general tart fruit flavor. It wouldn’t make me think pomegranate if not for the name. I’ll see how the flavor is hot sometime.

Thank you to TeaEqualsBliss for a sample of this.

This isn’t a bad fruity tea, but it gets astringent quickly. It’s not
as exciting as the Green Caramel that I tried a little while ago, but it’s not bad. The tea smells very nice. I just prefer other flavored greens over this one.

Perhaps cold brewing might make this tea pop a little bit more? Although I am seeing other steepsters complain about bitterness on this tea, too.

I received a generous sample of this tea from the company for review and I must admit I’m a bit wary to begin with. It’s not that the tea looks or smells poorly in any way, just that the pomegranate aroma is quite sweet. Lately, I’ve been more drawn toward more naturally flavored teas, so I wanted to wait a little until I was more liable to enjoy the tea for what it is.

Upon opening the tin, the aroma was quite sweet and fruity. Though it is not in a sugary way that you sometimes get with flavored teas. So it’s definitely a good start! The appearance of the dry leaves is quite appealing. With little dried bits of pomegranate in the mix, it gives me hope for a very nice, natural flavor. I’ve noticed with some other pomegranate flavored teas that the aroma is more powerful than the actual flavor, so everything so far indicates something I should enjoy.

As suspected, once brewed, the sweet flavors are absolutely muted to a mellowness that is absolutely pleasant. The green tea taste is perhaps muted more than I would prefer, but I definitely am enjoying this tea more than I anticipated when I first popped open the tin.

To come down to it, this is a tea I will happily enjoy on a relaxing morning when I am looking for a light pick-me-up. My next experiment with this tea will be to make it iced and see how that goes. I have a feeling I’ll enjoy it even more like that!

Everything about this ‘sings’…“pleasant”. It smells lovely, looks pretty, and tastes great! It’s a lighter brown in color post infusion and the flavor is wonderful.

The Raspberries and Pom are tastefully done and paired nicely with the gentle green tea tastes. I’m so thankful this does NOT have hibiscus in it! Woot! Awesome!

There is a hint of tang but an invited one…not over staying it’s welcome – I like that.

I paired the end of this cup with a new product called Matcha Fruit Energizer from Jamba. It had Pineapple, Almonds, Cranberries, Cranberries, Thompson Raisins, Yogurt Matcha or Matcha Yogurt Raisins, and Cherries. Very Very good stuff! Great snack!

And it went well with this tea! :)

Had this last night, since I couldn’t think of anything else to say about the tea I last logged, I gave up on writing about this one at the time.

This is alright, it’s not as fruity as you’d be lead to believe by the name. I think pomegranate must be actually very difficult to duplicate in tea. This is just a bit tart, not really like a pomegranate, but more like berries.

Didn’t have any issues with bitterness, there’s enough for one more cup and I might give it a short cold brew and see how it is.

My brain is exploding on how The Persimmon Tree has two sections here, some teas on one, some on another, blllarg!

After some quick house cleaning, I’m ready to get cracking on more NaNo writing! I’m behind by a lot! WWah! Rest assured, I have plenty of material!

DRY: Sweet sweet pomegranate with a tart twist. Delicious! I love how the Persimmon Tree has amazing smelling teas.

STEEPED: again, delicious pomegranate smell, green gold coloured tea. I went with a 1.5 minute steep for 175f. 2t for a cup.

TASTE: Green base that is slightly savory, but also a touch silky and a little floral. Very lightly flavored pomegranate with a very light and natural pomegranate tart peeking out – just a tiny bit of tart, and is actually tasty. Great pomegranate aftertaste that is naturally sweet, the tartness not messing with it. I can tell if I over steeped GP that it’ll get bitter.

CHECK OUT THIS TEA IF: you want a lightly flavored green, with the ability to do a lower temperature steep.

COMMENTS: Dang, Persimmon Tree, always expertly flavored teas! If you can get this steeped just right, it’s pretty good! However, I can see this tea not being for peeps who want a strong fruit flavor. I enjoyed this and will try the rest of my sample iced sometime.

This was a very interesting tea which demanded attention to steeping details to avoid bitterness while retaining the more pleasant and ephemeral fruit flavors and aromas. The dry tea which to me brought memories of sweet hard candies which seemed to be the sum of pomegranate and raspberry scents. After steeping the tea the ephemeral fruit scents had vanished entirely from the mixture of torn/cut tea leaves, stems and pomegranate pieces.

Now, for the important part – the liquor. I steeped the tea at the recommended temperature of 175degF (thermometer) and sampled the liqid in 30sec intervals over the recommended steeping time of 1-3mins. At times greater than 1.5 minutes the tea became too bitter for my taste without any increase in fruit flavor – I also tested the effects of a higher temperature steep at a mere 7deg increase – ie 182degF – where as expected the unacceptable bitterness appear earlier but, also, the delicate and apparently volatile fruit flavors could no longer be appreciated well in either liquid or aroma.

Moral of the story – as others have also noted – this is a very nice delicately flavored green tea where all the flavor and scent components can be appreciated at their best if attention to preparation details are carefully followed. I enoyed both the taste (uniqueness of pomegranate with hint of raspberry) and aromas – and the challenge – of selecting the brewing conditions which were optimal for my preferences.

Worth the effort!