teataku

I keep going back to this one. It seems to be my go-to blending green tea. Usually, the dialogue (or monologue?) in my head goes like this: “Hmm, I’d like a green tea with X flavor, but we don’t have a green tea like that. However, I could blend the Emerald Buds with _________ tea and get the same effect. Let’s do it!”

So today, it’s Sunny Slopes, a decadent fruity concoction, with this tea. Not sure I’m as fond of this blend as I am of blending this with other things. Like spearmint (yummm). But I wasn’t feeling the mint tonight. I think, though, if I’m going to go fruity with this, I need to choose a simpler fruit profile to blend. The flavors just didn’t mesh quite right. Meh, oh well. I’ll probably still do a second steep. It fits the mood for now.

I really truly forgot I had this tea. Even though it’s been on my tea shelf, with all the other teas. I guess it just went into ninja mode… or I was wearing blinders. Anyway, I was craving a tea with chocolate in it one day, but I didn’t finally remember about this tea until the following day, when I was craving a raspberry tea. For some reason, my spacey brain remembered that this tea had raspberry, but not CHOCOLATE. (Shakes head at self)

Anyway, I wishI’d looked on here and seen the brown sugar recommendation before I made it, because the flavors just weren’t quite as present as I thought I remembered them being. I think this bears a do-over. But that is for a later post, because right now I’m holding a sleeping baby. :D

I had this tea this morning with my hospital cafeteria breakfast (which was filling and delicious, despite the fact that the cook seemed to think that a cabbage leaf was an appropriate garnish for a plate of pancakes). Anyway, I had to make do with ordering a cup of hot water to use for tea, so I have no idea what temperature it was steeped at, although it couldn’t have been more than about 180° F. Anyway, it turned out to be a wonderfully light complement to my bagel and strawberries (the hubby ended up eating the pancakes).

As a side note, the reason I’m in the hospital is because I now have a brand spanking new little girl named Charlotte! We’re both doing fine, and will probably go home tomorrow. :)

Backlog!

So, the hubby and I finally tried this one last night. I was in the mood for green tea, but I was despairing that our green tea stash is so low on variety… and then I remembered that we had gotten this one in the “happy bag!” It smelled so grassy/grainy, very hay- or wheat-like, that we just had to try it.

So glad we did! It steeped a wonderful lime-y green color (the hubby likened it to lime Kool-Aid), and it smelled of popcorn and matcha and wheatgrass. The taste was just what I wanted—fresh, light, and savory, like a smoothie made with green vegetables. Yum!

… I haven’t written many tea reviews lately because I just keep drinking the same teas over and over again, going back to old favorites that I’ve reviewed already. Like this one (although calling it a favorite is a bit generous—it was chosen more for the fact that it fit my mood than that it’s a favorite). I decided today is a pajama day, because it’s cold and I’m hugely pregnant and I don’t feel like going anywhere. I WILL do laundry today… but not yet. Right now, it’s Project Runway Australia and this tea, which is just the right combination of light and earthy that I was after. :)

No notes yet.

Hmm, I wish I’d have known this was a red rooibos before I selected it to bring to work with me today… Both the bag and the brew smell quite strongly of rooibos, pretty medicinal. However, from the brewed tea at least, I am getting quite hefty smells of caramel, like jarred caramel sauce after it’s been warmed. Not so much apple, though, and the chamomile isn’t earning it any points, either. (I’m only a fan of chamomile in certain applications, anyway, because it tends to taste like bland lemonade to me, without any of the citrus-y bite that lemonade should have… if that makes any sense.)

Whoa. In the first few sips, I’m getting nothing BUT apple and chamomile. The caramel didn’t show up until the fifth or sixth sip, and the rooibos has mercifully taken a backseat. The overall effect is not as unpleasant as it might have been, but still not something I’d ever think of and go “yeah, I’m in the mood for THAT.” I’ll probably finish this cup, but I definitely won’t be buying this. Thanks to IrishBreakfastLass for this one, though (I think… I may be remembering incorrectly who sent this to me, and if I got the wrong person, I’m sorry!). Glad I got to try it.

I’m… not sure what to think of this one. I don’t know if it’s the guayusa I don’t like or the peppers. This is the first guayusa tea I’ve ever tried, so I really have no point of reference for this. I get mostly an herbal-y kind of flavor, sort of like mate and rooibos and… rosemary?… all combined together. The peppers have QUITE a kick to them, which I’m also not too fond of (the hubby hypothesized that this might have been caused by an accidental oversteepage, which we were a little guilty of). Sweetening it only compounded this problem. We tried adding a little half and half, and initially it was a better, but it didn’t last long. I think I just don’t like it, to be quite honest. I’ve tried it all the ways I can think of, and I can’t make myself drink an entire cup. Maybe guayusa tea is just not for me… which is why I’m not going to rate this one.

I think I brewed this one too hot and scorched the peach flavor right out of it. Note to self: don’t do that! :(

This. ‘Cause why not? It’s 72-ish degrees outside, and I’m taking a break between cleaning spurts. Not much to say, had this tea before (although apparently I didn’t log it then… oops).

Yay, samples! This came in the monthly newsletter, and I was very pleased when I took it out of its package! This is, again, another very impressive fruit flavored tea from Lupicia. The apple definitely makes itself known, both in the smell of the loose leaf and after it’s been steeped. Even unsweetened, the mouthfeel of the tea is very much like the juice from a tart, fresh apple. The green tea base is quite lovely, too—vegetal and slightly astringent, which pairs quite well with the apple. Well done!

Okay, so I know I’ve been saying red rooiboses aren’t doing it for me nowadays, but having had this one before, I knew that the rooibos flavor is just a side note in this particular blend, so I was okay. Plus, I blended it with Teavana’s Cha Yen Thai, one of my absolute favorites of theirs, which added some excellent spice and coconutty depth. The chocolate flavor came out right near the end of the sip, which was just perfect. I highly recommend doing this blend, if you happen to have both of those teas. They are similar enough not to clash, but different enough that each of their quirks (the coconut and the chocolate) still shine through well enough. Sort of like well-adjusted siblings.

This tea smelled AMAZING loose. A friend of mine had bought it, and when I went to visit her earlier this weekend she let me try it. I took a big whiff, and was absolutely mesmerized by the almond-cinnamon-sugar cookie smell. I steeped myself a large cup of this one, using two full scoops instead of 1 1/2. It steeped up a wacky candied apple kind of color—bright pinkish red, with some few hints of yellow mixed in. Anyway, I took it with me to the couch to let it cool off, sniffing as I went. There was a LOT of sweetness, totally adding to the whole candied apple picture, with some hints of cinnamon. I realized that I couldn’t smell the almond quite anymore, but I wasn’t worried.

I took my first sip… and then took another one, just to be sure. Yep, it was still there. This tea had the completely unmistakeable taste of oatmeal. Apple flavored oatmeal. With maybe a LITTLE caramel in there somewhere. No almond, not even a little. I looked through the reviews, and no one else seems to have had that experience with this tea, but… it was uncanny how much this tea made me think I was drinking oatmeal. It was a little bland, too, like someone had forgotten to put cinnamon in the oatmeal, or had tried but not put enough. I do encourage you to try it yourself, because your taste buds might not react the same way mine did. I don’t think I’ll be buying this one, but I’m glad I got to try it. I may give it another go at a later point, maybe blended with something else.

Aha! I found you. I sampled what I believe was this tea today at The English Tea Room (at least, the description from the menu and the description here on Steepster were almost identical to one another, both specifically mentioning Spanish orange and white chocolate). They’re not terribly good about advertising exactly where their teas come from… I’v known for a while that they do source at least some of theirs from the Metropolitan Tea Company, but I was rifling through Culinary Teas’s selections, and many of them look and sound familiar, so I think they source some from that company as well. Anyway, I had a pot of this with my chocolate chip cherry scones (divine!) and my eggs benedict (sumptuous!).

The aroma of the tea was very much white chocolate, which impressed me, but I couldn’t detect very much orange. The same held true when I tasted it—no matter what I did to it, I couldn’t make the orange flavor come out. The white chocolate was there, though, and the tea base seemed to be light and not overpowering. Tasty, but I wished I could’ve tasted the orange. So, meh.

Had this one in the cast-iron today with about 1 and 1/3 scoops of spearmint. I’m rather fond of adding spearmint randomly to this one and other straight middle-of-the-road green teas. We have a TON of loose dried spearmint, which we use a lot in iced tea. The hubby bought four ounces of the stuff a while back, not realizing that four ounces of spearmint, which weighs hardly anything, would be a severe overload. Oh, and did I mention we also have a spearmint plant that is extremely prolific? X-P So this was my daily attempt to tame the stash. Steeped twice (so far).

So, I have been EXTREMELY impressed with all of Lupicia’s fruit-flavored blends I’ve tasted so far. This one is no exception! The loose leaf smells like a fresh pineapple, none of that dried or candied stuff. Fresh pineapple being one of my favorite snacks in all the world, you can imagine how happy that made me. It’s so much better than eating candy. :3

Anyway, this tea is immensely satisfying as a dessert tea. I’m actually missing the oolong flavor just a little, so I’m going to re-steep this to see if maybe the oolong comes out a little more (it being a Taiwanese oolong really intrigues me, even though it’s not a very dark one). This tea gets two thumbs way up!

No notes yet.

So, I’ve been somewhat underwhelmed by the maple-y flavor of this tea before, so I decided to up the ante today and do a double-strength steep. I used a rather larger than normal size mug, just to be on the safe side. My plan was to steep it for as short a time as possible, but I ended up steeping it a teensy bit longer than my gut told me to… and the result was VERY astringent, even with sugar. I attribute this to the fact that there’s basically tea dust in the bag, instead of distinguishable leaves… a quality issue that RoT teas frequently have. :/
Anyway, the tea was WORLDS better after I added about a tablespoon or two of milk to my cup. Mmm, maple-y goodness! I didn’t even really have to sweeten it all that much (been trying to do less of that anyway). The pecan flavor isn’t all THAT strong, but it’s there. So, the moral of the story is that milk makes this tea quite delicious, but without it, it’s almost not worth drinking.

The hubby pulled this one out for a post-dinner tea this evening. Sitting here waiting for the water to be hot, I took a good whiff of the teabag. I kinda wish I could smell the oolong, but all I get is the pomegranate (which smells quite juicy and enticing, don’t get me wrong). :) My sense of smell has not QUITE recovered from the sinus funk I was struck with last week, so the subtlety could very well be escaping me.
At last! it is steeped. And now it smells really floral to me… which only seems to confirm that my olfactory sensors are just bonkers right now. I’m still liking what I smell, though, so I guess that’s good! The oolong smells really fresh. And I love how transparent and good-quality the Harney tea bags are- you can see the leaves unfurling just as well as you can in a loose tea infuser. :)
Wow, I will be resteeping this one! The pomegranate and oolong are so well-balanced in the flavor. So yummy! Definitely worth your money; a very mellow and unassuming flavored oolong.

Was gonna choose my Yogi Immune Support with echinacea tea this morning, but my fingers grabbed this one instead. I was actually surprised at how much I enjoyed it, despite having not been fond of the strawberry flavoring in the past. I agree with some other posters, the amount of tea in the bag leaves a little to be desired. I almost steeped mine with two bags instead of one, but decided against it at the last second.
Anyway, perhaps the fake-tasting strawberry doesn’t bother me so much when I’m sick. The chocolate flavor came through okay, and the rooibos hid in the background most of the time. Enjoyable enough. :)
Side note: I’m surrounded on both sides by snoring cats. XD

I had this later in the day yesterday, when my throat was not quite AS sore. I mixed a little Pineapple Kona Pop in there too, because I like that tea more when blended with things. It’s fine on its own, but its flavor profile is a little shallow. A lot of pineapple, a little hibiscus, a little rosehip, but not much else. However, mix it with something like Blueberry Bliss or Sevenberry, and it adds a little something to an already pretty good fruity herbal tea.
Anyway, enough about that one. I’m actually not terribly fond of Sevenberry by itself either, but mixed with PKP, I drank it quite eagerly, despite having oversweetened it just a bit. The rooibos in heavily flavored teas doesn’t bother me so much, which I suppose is one thing that Teavana does very right, in my book. Sevenberry is pretty heavy on the fruit, with some help from a few other herbs to give it that tart winey flavor that Teavana was going for. It’s about as close as a tea has ever gotten to tasting like grape juice, at least as far as I’ve experienced. Worth trying, but not my favorite.

I drank this yesterday, so this is backlogging. I suppose my lack of “wow” could very logically be blamed on one of two things: my tastes being off because of sinus issues, or the tea being a little old and having lost some of its spiciness over time. At any rate, it was chamomile, and while I’m sick I try to stick to herbals. The weather here suddenly got cold and dry, and I woke up two mornings ago with a whopping sore throat and sinus woes. My tea reviews until this clears up might not be very exciting.

So, the hubby and I actually first tried this tea when we got a sample bag of it attached to a box of their normal Chai last autumn. We saw a full box of it this season and immediately snagged it, because we really liked it when we first got to try it!

I had never tried an apple flavored chai before, despite the fact that when my husband and I picked it up, we were like, “This pairing is so intuitive, why haven’t we encountered it before?” I had just never seen any company that I normally patronize do a blend like that—I’m now aware, after having poked around here on Steepster, that plenty of other companies have done blends like this. Well, let me assure you, those of you who are fans of those other blends—this one is tasty. The apple flavor may taste a little on the fake side, but as small as the teabags are, I wouldn’t expect them to be able to fit many apple pieces in there. So, apple flavoring it is. I don’t mind it so much, since I have my chai with sugar and milk anyway.

So far, I am really loving this company’s flavoring techniques. I opened the bag, stuck my nose in, and WHAM! was hit in the face with grapefruit-y goodness. The base tea seems to be some sort of Dragonwell-like grade of tea, and smells very grassy, like matcha. In fact, when it steeped, it had some minimal green froth at the top, which also made me think matcha, because that’s the only green tea I know of that does that. The label doesn’t say there’s any in there, but I am wondering…

Anyway, the grassy green tea scent took over when I steeped it, which was to be expected. Generally speaking, green tea tends to take over any flavoring it’s blended with, unless it’s a particularly potent flavoring (which you would think grapefruit would be, but somehow, it didn’t surprise me). I could detect a TEENSY bit of the grapefruit in the smell, but only if I stuck my nose right up on it and hunted for it.

Anyway, it also didn’t surprise me that I had to sweeten this one to make the grapefruit flavor shine. That’s okay with me—when I eat grapefruit, I sweeten the mess out of it. This was a thoroughly enjoying cup, from beginning to end. The cooler it got, the more the grapefruit came out. The hubby came in the room and wanted some, so I made myself a second cup with him, and I sweetened it even more. I didn’t like it as much with MORE sugar, believe it or not (we really like our tea sweet)—it threw the balance off. I’m very impressed, and I will drink this one with enthusiasm!