Summer Tea Blend (TE55)

I am in need of a light, citrus-y blend today. I’m making short ribs which, while delicious, have the downside of taking all day to make. Sure, most of it is just time in the oven, but chopping the veggies, prepping the seasonings, searing the meat, and caramelizing the onions takes a good 2 hours of work. Plus having the oven on for 5 hours isn’t that pleasant. So, a light tea it is! I was looking for one in my sample bin since I REALLY need to cut down on the overflow, and this caught my eye: not because of the citrus, really (though that’s why I ended up picking it) but because of the name on the label. Upton lets you put a name on your tea under “Packaged for.” I suppose it’s so you can gift them to people, but I decided to be delightfully immature so all my tea from them is for Batman.

I’ve been looking for the perfect grapefruit tea: I adore grapefruit juice but the flavor doesn’t seem to transfer completely in blends. I’ve tried quite a few and so far the vanilla grapefruit from H&S is my favorite, but it’s still not quite tart enough for me. The dry leaves of this smell SO grapefruity, so my hopes were pretty high. Sadly, I think the base is way too assertive here: it’s very powerful and even a little smokey which I find odd. The grapefruit is there, but only really in the aftertaste, and the juniper is muted as well. However, it’s more pure grapefruit than any other tea I’ve tried so I am not giving up hope! I have enough left in the sample to try some other brewing methods to see if it will bring out the flavor better: I’m thinking the water was too hot, even though they recommend boiling.

This is quite pungent! Inside/Family Joke with my sister and I…years ago we sold Candles and one of the scent choices we could buy/sell was HEATHER and when we smelled the sample we both made a grimace-face and looked at each other and said…eeeweee! Heather Smells! Soooo…every once and a while when we smell something FUNKY we randomly say HEATHER SMELLS!

Fast Forward to this tea! As soon as I opened this packaged I made THAT face and had no idea what I was smelling. When I saw it was HEATHER – I laughed out loud and actually said HEATHER SMELLS in the middle of the office! THANK GOODNESS NO ONE BY THE NAME OF HEATHER WORKS HERE! teehee!

Yeah…so…this tea has…black tea, heather flowers, nettles, juniper berries, bilberries, natural & artificial flavor

The black tea is of medium strength but there is so much more going on here that is seems to be almost cancelled out by the other flavors! HEATHER really SMELLS! I can taste the various flowers and berries. The combo of the two provides a funky, tarty, bitter berry and bitter/stale floral taste. I can’t say that I love it. At times just when the berries seem nice the flower-power takes over and between the two bitter flavors colliding I’m just not sure about this one. It’s ok but I wish it wasn’t as bitter. And it’s not that the actual TEA is bitter – not that kind of bitter – but the flowers and fruit. Honestly, I think the reason I continue to drink this is the grapefruit notes…those are nice!

This one was so not what I was expecting but it was surprisingly amazing even better than I was expecting. I am fond of juniper and the thought of juniper and grapefruit intrigued me. I was expecting a stronger juniper flavor but it was opposite and the grapefruit was powerful in this one which was perfect, the taste at first is all grapefruit with a piney juniper taste following, it reminded me of a “wilderness tea” I had once made with lemongrass and some pines, I drank it warm as usual but im looking forward to trying it iced, im glad I accidentally got 2 samples of this one. Very good flavored tea :-)

I’m not sure how i feel about this tea. Man does it smell when you open the package. It’s also got a bit of a weird taste to it that i can’t place. it’s completely a factor of the tea, but again i’m just not sure how i feel about it. I feel like maybe it’s a better cold brew tea with a bit of sweetner to smooth things out. Least i’ve got more to try out.

Hello Steepster! Today things seem to be moving smoothly enough I can try a posting. Since summer is right around the corner Dylan procured some samples of iced tea blends.

This one is pretty good but heavier on the citrus notes than I typically take. Citrus here seems to be plenty of orange with subdued grapefruit and an almost pungent note in the background. I did feel there was a fruity sweet flavor that rounded all the citrus out nicely. The base is smooth and brisk without any bitterness or astringency. Not a bad iced tea really if you like the citrus. I think citrus piledriver would suit me better. I love that creamy addition to the citrus.

All I know is, don’t steep it for 4 minutes. Bleh! Smells so good in the bag, very strong on the grapefruit. I think it was a combination of that being far too long a steep along with the flavorings that just resulted in something purely gross.

Cold steeping it the next time around.

The Juniper and grapefruit in this blend make it an amazingly refreshing iced tea. It has become my iced tea blend and I drink it all summer.

Dry, this smells so heavenly I just want to sniff it all day – the citrus/pine scent that it gets from the grapefruit and juniper needles is amazing. Didn’t really come across very strongly when brewed, but I’m going to experiment with longer steep times/more tea to see if I can improve that, because if I can get this to taste as good as it smells I might die from the pleasure.