Celestial Seasonings

Good to see that you’ve moved on to corrupting others. ;)

YAY FOR LOOSE TAKE OVER!

welcome to the dark side.

Loose leaf is the only way to go… Well most of the time at least. ;)

Somewhere, someone is evilly tapping their fingers together. And maybe, just maybe that someone is me.

This is very commonly true of Celestial Seasonings teas. They are marvelous when fresh and not very good once they stale. They get too stale for my sensitive palate once they are about 9 months old.

If you turn over one of the boxes, you’ll see that they are dated. There is a white space with numbers and letters pressed into it. The day is first, then the month, then the last two digits of the year and then a letter. So if the number reads: 29OCT09B that means that it was actually put in the box over a year ago on October 29, 2008. All their teas are given a Best Before date of exactly one year after they are packed.

This makes it relatively easy to only buy Celestial Seasonings teas when they will taste good.

Totally unrelated comment (man I wish we had some sort of messaging system) but I saw you got your first Adagio order! So…what did you get? I went peeking in your cupboard but didn’t see any clues :-p

Whoa. That’s weird. Reminds me of those science “experiments” we used to do in elementary school. You know, where you pour in the oil and the honey and the colored water and it makes layers.

Also reminds me of when I went to camp and they used to dye the lake before the parents came to pick us up. The dye wouldn’t go all the way out to the edges of the water, so the edges would be brown but rest of the lake would look like we were in Maui or something. It also turned your legs blue.

takgoti, you went to a weird camp.

Don’t even get me started on the squirrels.

I…

You know what? I’m just going to walk away.

Nonono! You cannot drop that squirrel comment. I NEED TO KNOW.

YES, INQUIRING MINDS WANT TO KNOW!

@Auggy They rode around in this big fanboat and dyed it this really fake looking blue-green color. I think it was mainly because there was a golf course being built and it had been raining for a couple of weeks, so the cast off from all that Virginia clay and grossness had drained into the lake until it resembled the hue of poo. Red-brown poo. It was one of my favorite reasons to shout whenever my parents expressed interest in sending my brother and me back there: “They DYED the LAKE! It’s a CORPORATE SHAM!” [I didn’t even know what that meant, exactly, but one of my friends had said it and I thought it sounded reasonable.]

HAHAHA. Well now the squirrels are going to sound really anticlimatic because everyone wants to know about them.

They figured out how to get into our bunks through the crack between the roof and the wall [no clue how, because of the angling and whatnot should have rendered it physically impossible, but anyway]. Sometimes we’d come back and there’d be one of them running around, and once one jumped through while we were IN the cabin, but one time we came back from activities and there were about eight or nine of them flying around the room, knocking over things, and who knows what else. Never heard so much screaming in my life. They were smart little buggers.

I think that was the year they decided to put mesh up along the crack in the cabins. Not that I ever went back. I hated camp. Too much hugging and group participation and recycled food and bad singalongs to saccharine songs for emo me, and it meant that I missed a good half of the summer swim season. I told my parents that if they tried to send me back I’d escape to the main road and sell myself to the first passerby. Such a drama queen.

That was camp.

It’s funny, because I kinda like camping now, but that’s also probably because I have discovered alcohol. And nobody makes me make god’s eyes for an hour. Pointless.

fin.

Hope it works and you feel better soon!

I second the ‘feel better’ wishes. Peppermint is supposed to be good for stomach troubles so try to get a few cups of it down if you can.

Camomille can also soothe sore stomachs if you have some on hand. I tend to mix them together (and sometimes I add dried gingeroot if I’m nauseous) and drink them like that.

Thanks guys for your get well wishes! Jillian, I’ll probably have a little bit of chamomile before going to bed. I’ve had a headache all day too. :(

It’s a really clean and refreshing taste isn’t it?

I definitely enjoy a good mint. They’re fantastic after a huge meal.

Jilian and takgoti, is loose leaf mint really worth it? Is the flavor all that different from the bagged?

Well it depends, loose-leaf may be fresher, although I’m really not sure. I grow my own mint so I KNOW it’s fresh, but I have no idea how tea companies go about it. I do know that herbs tend to retain their essential oils better if they aren’t broken up until right before they’re used.

My advice would to maybe try some of each, bagged and loose, side-by-side and see if you can taste a difference yourself.

I’ve only had bagged mint…twice? I think that’s about right. One was from Tea Forte and one was from a company I don’t remember. Both of them were a sharper kind of a mint taste. Maybe edging on artificial a little.

That being said, mint is one of those things that I don’t think makes a huge difference from one to the other. For me, it’s more about the blend, and companies that know blend flavors well will likely have better mint tea.

This is just a very long winded-way of saying that you have a lot of choices, because all teas are going to vary from company to company.

If you want to read up on what some people are saying, a few that I can recommend with some authority are:

1. Tavalon’s Serenity. No one else on here seems to have tried it, but I had a sample of it and I rather liked it. The mint was subtle and worked very nicely everything else.

2. Samovar’s Moroccan Mint. This is my favorite mint tea because it’s got a prominent, but softer mint flavor. Sometimes it feels like I’m drinking mint chocolate chip ice cream.

3. Adagio’s Foxtrot. I haven’t tried this one yet, but a few number of people on Steepster swear by it.

Hope that helps?

Definitely helps from both of you. Thanks so much, guys! I can’t help but love the flavor of peppermint tea.

Jillian, fresh mint must be awesome to have! I bet you can make killer mojitos with it.

And tak, thanks for the super list! Tavalon used to have a tea lounge here in NYC; I’m pretty mad that they closed it and haven’t reopened yet, because I’d be able to go down and try this without shipping costs! And you are definitely the Samovar advocate, missy. :P

P.S. gasp Samovar’s shipping is $8.69 to my neck of the woods. That’s pretty steep!

I’ve got a bunch of fresh herbs that I grow and it’s really nice to have fresh ingredients for seasonings and whatnot. Actually, mint if dead-easy to grow if you want to give it a shot yourself. :)

P.S. $8.69 is nothing! Samovar’s shipping fees are something like $20 bucks to ship here in Canada (and they used to be $40!).

@teaplz Hee, Samovar is definitely my tea bff, but I wouldn’t recommend anything I didn’t think was worth recommending! I’ll admit that whenever I put an order through with them I usually go over whatever their free shipping quota is. I don’t think I’ve ever paid shipping from them.

If you’re thinking seriously about ordering from them, the coupon code cozytea will get you 20% off through December 1st. And if you REALLY want, I can send you some samples of some of the tea I have if you want to get a feel for looseleaf before you take the plunge. No pressure, I just know how intimidating it can be!

@Jillian I kill plants. It’s what I do. And hey, at least $20ish is a start! I think that’s pretty standard to ship out of/into here. I blame customs.

Okay, Jillian, your shipping cost woes beat the pants off of mine. :( That stinks!

takgoti, I cannot let you send me samples of your tea, because I’d have absolutely nothing to send back to you at the moment. It’d be tea giveaway, not tea swap! :( I might have to pass on Samovar for now and focus on cheaper loose leaf.

Hee, I made the offer knowing you probably wouldn’t. It’s really not an issue for me to send you a little bit of what I got, but I don’t want to guilt you in to anything. I’ve gotten started on many things because of the generosity of others to share what they had, and I really don’t mind paying it forward. If you’re game, take a look at my cupboard and see if anything interests you. If not, no worries!

@Takgoti, Yeah it IS better than fourty-friggin’ dollars but the fact is that I don’t see why they have to charge that much just to essentially go through customs. Shipping rates from other American tea companies like Harney and Sons and Adagio are quite reasonable. Not to mention that if companies in China (ie. Tea Spring) can ship their teas to ANYWHERE in the world for a flat rate of 5 or 6 bucks, then why the Hell are these few companies gouging international customers so badly?
/end rant

@Jillian I dunno, but I know that if I look up how much it would be to ship a 1 lb box from here to Canada it’s at or around $20 depending on size. I’m guessing that it all has to do with what they can work out with their shipping company/ies. I have zippy insight on the internal mechanics of how companies work that kind of stuff.

teaplz Also, I should add that my email's heather.takgotigmail.com if you want to reach me there.

Jillian, Golden Moon (http://www.goldenmoontea.com/Shipping_W304.cfm/) has shipping to Canada that’s $5 a pound. I’m getting their sampler set in the mail, and I just figured I’d tell you that that seems fairly reasonable a price.

takgoti, awesome! I’ll be e-mailing you soon, then! How much does it usually cost to package up/ship tea? I’ve been curious about this.

@Jillian herbals are always best home grown IMO as well. Definitely can’t beat the price, especially for an organic version:) While I don’t drink herbals solo, I REALLY want to get into planting herbs and edible flowers to blend w/ my store bought teas. Kind of like baking a cake yourself- you get even more satisfaction out of it when it comes time to eat (or in this case) drink it. I wish I could grow the tea myself too… :(

@teaplz I use boxes that I have lying around and other whatnot, so all I pay for is the shipping. Usually it’s somewhere around $7 domestic.

Sounds good teaplz nice review I do enjoy mint teas.

Temporary insanity maybe? ;p

Yeah, I hate when the company ruins a perfectly good fruit tea/tisane by adding a ton of hibiscus. For future reference any of the CS teas with ‘Zinger’ in the title all have enormous amount of hibiscus in them. Bleh.

Yeah, my infatuation with CS doesn’t stretch any further than their box design. I’ve never been tempted to get any of it now that in later years it’s been available in supermarkets over here. This was a reminder as to why.
(That goes to show how ancient my teabag here was. When I recieved it, CS was only available here in an extremely limited selection at an extremely limited number of places)

Well their Christmas teas aren’t bad at all I’ve found, although that might just be nostalgia talking. ;)

I used to love Celestial Seasonings. I grew up with the back when they were teeny, tiny herb company in my home state of Colorado. I used to adore Pelican Punch, which was a tea aimed at children that had vanilla, mint, carob, fenugreek and some other herbs in it. I missed it so much that when we went on a tour of Celestial Seasonings a few years ago, I begged them to bring it back. They offered Red Zinger instead which is totally NOT the same.

Real tea in my house growing up was Lipton’s tea bags steeped forever until the tea was terribly bitter. It wasn’t until recently that I discovered how magical and non-bitter real tea could be if it was made correctly.

I agree with your negative ratings on this one…I didn’t like it either!

I haven’t had this one, but I’m not a fan of the hibiscus invasion into every single fruit tea I see! The other day, when I tried a Tazo African Red Bush, there was the dreaded hibiscus! Is it really necessary?

I mean its good of you like really sweet

But its almost to sweet. And the hibiscus is definitly strong in this one!!!

A lot of teas can actually be cold brewed, it just takes a lot longer, usually. Of course, you’d probably still be using the lower quality teas, because broken leaves leech out more quickly, and there’s not much quality to be drawn from them with properly tempered water anyway.
As of such, cold brew is a good way to get rid of teas that refuse to steep well in hot water. I know I have to do that from time to time.

Hope this helps!

I’ve tried cold-brewing a couple of different teas before, but like you said, it takes a lot longer, and I’m definitely an impatient sort. :-p But it might be worth trying, since I have sooo much tea and unreliable access to hot water!