Boulder Blues

I am drinking this cold-brewed today using my handy-dandy new filtering spigot tool called “Steep & Go” (also from The Tea Spot). It is really good. It does not need sweetening, it has a mild sweetness all on its own. The strawberry flavor is especially noticeable in the aftertaste with that berry tingly sensation that I can feel and taste. The rhubarb gives a little tartness to the drink while the strawberry gives a very pleasant sweet berry taste. The green tea is mild and refreshing.

Nice! I’ll be reviewing this as a hot tea later, and I think I’ll hold off on the numeric rating until then.

I kind of sucked this one down a bit quickly. I didn’t realize how thirsty I was!

I couldn’t decide if I wanted it hot or cold, so I went with cold. I was afraid my water temperature was a bit too high, and it somewhat tastes that way, the green tea is just a touch on the brisk side, but doesn’t taste too bad.

This isn’t bad, I thought a strawberry rhubarb tea would be awesome but I don’t think I think too highly of rhubarb. I will not give up on you though, rhubarb, you have too awesome a name.

It has a bit of a strawberry rhubarb pie taste to it. It’s sweet like you’d expect from macerated strawberries. I think I may like it better hot, so that was a failure on my part to try it cold first, but I also wanted to be able to drink it immediately.

I’m just about finished cold brewing this.

Dry – I LOVE the way it smells! Juicy yet Creamy Strawberry and Rhubarb! I love the Strawberry and Rhubarb Combination of flavors with/no/in almost anything!

Cold Brewed this is refreshing yet not overly flavorful. Much like my first attempt I jotted down earlier it makes a great flavored water but I’m missing a lot of that POW from the actual tea.

Again – not bad tasting – just not overly flavorful tea-wise. I will hold off the rate this until I try it hot!

What I can taste – is nice! The Green tea first followed by gentle hints of Strawberry and Rhubarb.

OH!! I took a gulp and can now taste the rhubarb paired with a lovely creaminess! Perhaps this is a chugging Cold Brew??

Looking forward to the HOT version.

For future cold brews with my new Steep & Go I think I am going to jam-pack as much as I can in my stick and do it that way…

Although I am a fan of both Sencha & Dragonwell, this tea was just so-so for me. It smells wonderful, but…meh…really it’s just that when it comes to green teas, I’m pretty much a purest, with the exception of jasmine.

I’ll try cold brewing it next time, maybe I’ll like it more that way…

Wow, this one is unpopular on Steepster. I didn’t expect that since it’s one of the Tea Spot’s signature blends and top sellers, but you can never tell. I received this as a free sample with my last Tea Spot order. This tea intrigued me because I love rhubarb, but I am not really a fan of strawberries in any form (including flavoring) other than fresh, so I wasn’t jumping to try it. But I get to anyway, I guess!

The dry leaf smells pretty candy-ish, but at least in a way that smells like the flavors it claims (sweet strawberry and tart rhubarb) instead of some generic fruit candy flavor. At first I thought of strawberries, but as I smelled it more I was more convinced of a rhubarb aroma. Steeped it smells like a pretty good blend of the two, with some underlying creamy notes. Some people are getting vanilla, but me, not so much… it actually reminds me more of these odd rhubarb and custard hard candies I bought in England one time.

The flavors remain pretty candy-ish and give the sensation of being sweet even if the tea itself is not sweet. I do get some of the fresh, slightly grassy, somewhat buttery dragonwell in the main part of the sip. The whole thing really does remind me of a strawberry-rhubarb pie when you cook down the fruit in sugar and it gets almost painfully sweet. All in all I enjoy it much more than most people here, though I won’t be needing to buy any more once I’m done with my sample.

Thank you DHart1215 for this Sample!

My daughter and grandchildren came over this evening to cool off in my pool (a plan I had when I moved in to my condo to ensure more family visits!). The teens watched the younger boys while my daughter Annalisa and I had time alone to chat and drink tea.

I was careful not to steep the tea too long. An earlier test had gone wrong and produced a bitter brew at 3.5 minutes. An adjustment to 2 minutes was just right.

Taste:
The scent and flavor is fruity and sweet but light. I didn’t taste any rhubarb which would have been warm, almost peachy and a little sour (rhubarb is hard to discribe). Even the strawberry was not very berry.
I’m not saying that the tea lacked fruitiness…there is strawberry and it tastes nice but it’s light.

Adding sweetening helps intensify the strawberry flavor.

When the tea cooled, the flavor changed. There was astringency from the green tea (which was not a bother), and a sour note that was what I would expect from rhubarb. With the strawberry flavor, this was better tasting cold than it was hot.

Some like it hot. I like it cold!

I like to alternate between black and green teas in the morning so as not to over-caffeinate myself. This was what I chose for my morning green. The leaves smell rather sweet, they are quite long dragonwell leaves.

In taste, I get a sweet rhubarb, but not much strawberry or pure vanilla flavor. The dragonwell base comes through strong in this one and the fruit is more of an aftertaste. I smell the vanilla and strawberry in the wet leaf, but just don’t taste it. This is a decent cup, I’m glad to have tried some. Thank you Jaime for sending some my way.

I’ve recently been introduced to loose leaf teas, so this would be my first log. First, I should mention that finding a pocket of time during the day to have tea uninterrupted is pert near impossible. More times than not I start drinking the tea hot and finishing it up room temperature. I find boulder blues to be pleasant to drink from hot to room temperature.

I rarely select this to drink, and that is sad.

I rarely select it because it’s so… unassuming. It looks like a pretty plain green, smells like nothing special, and… rhubarb, really? (I know some people are really into making pies out of rhubarb and whatnot but I’ve never done that okay it sounds weird without personal experience.)

But that is sad because every time I actually have this tea, I quite enjoy it! The flavor isn’t in-your-face, but it’s the kind of subtleness that you really notice so long as you take your time with it. (And really, what is tea if not an excuse to relax?) I’m not sure if it reminds me of any of the individual ingredients, which either means they blend together well or that it’s super rhubarb-y and I just don’t know because I’ve never had that one. Or both? There’s a slight sweetness, enough to make me feel like sweetening is unnecessary but not so much that it seems like I’m drinking dessert — which is a great quality for a fruit tea to have, if you ask me.

A nice cup to relax with!

I realized I hadn’t made a green tea in my One-Touch yet, and decided I needed to fix that situation this morning. I picked this one up earlier this week whilst on a trek to Whole Foods for tea (though they didn’t have the one I wanted). I’d never seen tea with rhubarb in it before, so I grabbed it.

The smell is very berry, and chocolatey, with some grassy in there, too. I taste the rhubarb first, and then the berry/fruit (not sure I’d call it a true strawberry), and then green tea (which has a very good green tea taste). It’s extremely sweet, almost as though syrup has been added. It’s not bad, just very different for me, since I don’t sweeten tea. This tea would be good as an after-breakfast dessert tea. I think for me, though, it’s way too sweet to have first thing after rolling out of bed.

This tea smells fruity, yet subdued when dry. The scattered flower petals are beautiful. I went light on the steep 175/1 min as I wanted to avoid cooking the leaves. The description of this tea has to be incorrect as it doesn’t mention vanilla. Either that or I totally missed it. I’m getting a very big vanilla scent and flavor. I do not like vanilla, nor would I have purchased it had I known. The sweet vanilla flavor so permeates the tea, that I cannot focus much on the other elements. I can taste some fruitiness, but am not enjoying this, so I can’t report any further. It lingers far too long in my mouth and nose.

Smells of strawberries which carry over slightly diminished in the steeped tea. Smooth with elusive sweet fruit flavors.

1.5 teaspoons to 12 ounces of water (boiled, then allowed to cool 3 minutes) was a perfect balance. I used a teaspoon of organic honey to sweeten it a bit. I don’t drink this tea often enough – I really enjoy the subtle floral notes. It ended a little bitter, so I think I’ll shorten the steep time when we meet again.

Surprisingly, I really liked this tea. The rhubarb saved it from being too seet and the base tea – Chinese Dragon Well is excellent.

My sense of smell must be stronger than my palate because it smells like a delicious chocolate berry smoothie I used to make but it just tastes like standard green tea. I agree that it would be lovely with a side of chocolate.

Update: Some turbinado sugar helps bring out the flavor and there is definitely a lingering flavorful aftertaste.

Double update: After the 4th cup of pondering where I’d smelled this before it finally hit me. Chocolate strawberry bubble tea! I was madly obsessed with that stuff in college.

I got this as a free sample so at least I’m not out of any money. The name of this tea is a turn off…I hate Colorado, let alone Boulder, so…When I opened the pouch, I was excited…it didn’t look like much beyond dried grass shavings with some purplish fronds mixed in, but it smelled just like strawberry Bubble Yum! I couldn’t wait to steep and taste! Granted, the loose tea unfurled beautifully and looked quite pretty, but my excitement waned as soon as it hit the mug. The delicious aroma disappeared and the tea resembles old pee. The taste, super light and unremarkable. I didn’t even want to waste any sweetener on it. Not knocked out, not disappointed. I’d drink this again if I absolutely had to, but I’d never buy it.

Brad – liked it. Want to try it again. Rating:90

The label says “gourmet green tea” but it has many non-tea ingredients. Should state on the front that it is a very floral infusion.

Also, I’ve found it impossible to brew without a bitter, almost acrid, aftertaste. The aroma is fruity and wonderful, but the aftertaste is unpleasant.