Stash Tea

I really wanted to like this one – the ingredients sounded lovely and delicious. Unfortunately it was very spicy and overpowering with too many competing flavors. Several of the ingredients toned down would greatly improve this tea. Tasted 09.2018

Smells like almond and cherry – really lovely. Tastes rich but not overpowering. Finished the container quickly between me and Todd. Tasted 09.2018

Minty with a little sweetness at the end. Soothing when hot. I don’t really like iced tea so I haven’t tried it cold. Super similar to other mint teas – would be interchangeable with any of them. Tasted 07.2018

Tastes like cinnamon and ginger. Initially really good, but then I started to feel uncomfortable with a burn at the back of my throat after each sip. Todd really liked it. I started to feel nauseated and was unable to finish it. Tasted 09.2018. 1/10 for me, 8/10 for Todd

Initially this tea smelled like a strong candle, which is a big aversion to me. But I sipped it and it was rich and caramel-y and complex. It grows on you with each sip. It also improves in the mug/while it cools and airs out (like wine?).

Steeped for 3 minutes, but tasted like very very dilute root beer. The smell is spot on, but the tea tasted like nothing. I tried steeping it longer for more flavor, tried the tea both hot and cold, tried making Popsicles – but no matter what I did it still tasted very dilute with almost no flavor. I really wanted to like it b/c they captured the smell so well, and I love root beer, but it just doesn’t taste like anything. Tasted 09.2018

Light, pleasant, warm – nice in the evening. Has a holiday feel. I do feel like it could easily be substituted with another holiday tea and I wouldn’t notice. Really anything with cinnamon in it could take its place. Tasted 09.2018

Per directions, steeped 2 bags for 3 minutes, poured over ice. Tasted watery and bitter – it made me grimace when I drank it. Mixed with the iced tea with Raspberry Hibiscus, Melon, Raspberry Pomegranate. Mixture made it more drinkable but still not something I would choose to drink – still forcing it down to not waste it. Tasted 08. 2018.

- with milk and a spoonful of honey -
One of my favorite Earl grey teas for use in Royal milk tea. The bergamot flavoring is very strong making it overwhelming to drink straight, but with milk and honey it’s like having dessert in a glass.

Teabox… Thursday? Extra teabox tea this week, because I’m feeling in a hibi mood tonight and saw this single teabag I snagged from the Discovery Teabox. Thank you Skysamurai for organizing and all participants of the box!

So this is a hibi/rooibos blend with pomegranate and cranberry flavoring. Stash is one of those bagged tea companies that is pretty hit-or-miss for me… I love their hibiscus tea Apple Cinnamon Chamomile, but hated their Pomegranate Raspberry Green Tea, so I imagine this could go either way for me. Perhaps the hibi will save it for me, or perhaps their pomegranate flavoring will be entirely unappealing to me again… or, if the scent I’m getting through the bag is anything to judge by, it could be the rooibos that will be the problem. I normally have no issues with medicinal notes from red rooibos, but this tea actually smells like cough syrup through the paper bag. Hmm.

Well, let’s steep and see…

The tea does have a strong tart, fruity aroma, but it does still smell a bit medicinal just from the aroma to me. The flavor is… yaaaa, I am definitely picking out that cough syrup note. It’s not horrible, but it is there. I honestly don’t get it from rooibos often, but I’m getting it from this one. Maybe there is something about the tart, fruity cranberry flavor paired with the rooibos that is bringing out that particular medicinal flavor note and really making it have those “black cherry cough syrup” vibes. If it didn’t have that rooibos base, this might have actually worked for me, because I think the hibi and cranberry flavor pair okay, and I’m really not making out the pomegranate flavor much.

I’ll finish the cup, and try to convince myself it’ll keep me from getting a sore throat/cough. But it is another miss for Stash for me, unfortunately.

Another step back into the world of teabags. This tea explodes with color the moment the bag hits the water – there is that much hibiscus in it. The end result after 4 minutes brewing is a deeply purple tea. I would recommend not getting this one on clothes, it may be hard to remove the stain. Anyway, I tried to drink this without sweetener, but the tartness was just too much for me. It was borderline SOUR. So 1.5 splendas later and it is actually quite tasty. You still get that bitey tartness but without the overwhelming sour note. I can definitely taste the hibiscus and the raspberry. The background citrus notes are refreshing and give a fresh feel to the mouth when sipping. I am happy to say I really do NOT taste the licorice at all. If it is there, the sweetener took care of it. All in all, a very tasty fruity tea. Just be sure to add sweetener or you will probably scrunch up your nose at the sourness of it.

I don’t know that this is going to replace any of my favorite black breakfast teas. But that’s actually what I liked about it. Tasting lighter, and feeling lighter in my mouth was just a nice, pleasing way to wake up. This might become a nice weekend tea for me – when I don’t need the harshness of a work wake-up!

This is so delicious. I love earl grey but the bergamot in some brands is too heavy. That isn’t the case with this tea. Maybe the vanilla tempers it a little bit? You can taste the lavender at the end of each sip but it’s not overpowering at all. Very smooth taste.

I took a road trip this weekend down to Monterey as a reunion of sorts with the other two lady coworkers. The one who still lives in the Bay Area was kind to pick me up in San Francisco on her way down from the East Bay. We took the coastal route, Highway 1, and stopped for lunch at a Mayan restaurant in a house called Cafe Capistrano in Half Moon Bay. I had a killer meal of cochinita pibil and a mug of this tea.

The tea was not so good. I mean, it was good enough but not what I was expecting from a Chai Spice tea. In a 16oz mug, 1 bag produced a cup tasting purely of moderately spicy cinnamon oil (almost artificial like red hots) and clove. The ginger and cardamom were nowhere to be found. I think brewing this in a smaller amount of water would make an overwhelming cinnamon tea. The black tea base added some body but I couldn’t taste it. I am happy that the restaurant provided a decent selection of bagged teas in a basket and that I wasn’t served Lipton.

Oh my god berry. Lots of berry. Overwhelming berry. Berry up front and proud. If you are looking for a berry centered, berry flavor dominated tea, this is it. The berry flavor itself is good, I have to admit. It’s crisp and wet and refreshing, just as it should be. I have a hard time calling this a “tea”, or even a “blended tea”, since there isn’t any actual tea in it, but hey, it still hits the spot. Does the job. Berry well.

Loved this tea! I was weary of the lavender at first, but it’s not overwhelming at all. The bergamot really works well. To be fair, I absolutely adore earl gray teas, so putting bergamot in any tea can’t really go wrong for me. All of the flavors of this tea go really well together.

Very pleasantly surprised by this tea, I was expecting the peach flavor to be overwhelming but it is actually just right. Very much enjoyed this tea!

Holiday Tea-son! This was a teabag I found in the Discovery Teabox, so thanks to Skysamurai for organizing and all participants of the box! I haven’t tried this before and it fits my holiday tea theme, and though I usually switch to herbals in the evening, white tea is pretty light on the caffeine and it hasn’t gotten too late yet so hopefully this should be okay. I’ll definitely switch to an herbal pot right after this cuppa!

The brewed tea looks and smells like a cup of peppermint herbal tea, which I suppose isn’t so bad considering this includes ginger root, since a lot of bagged teas tend to way over due it with the ginger (and tend to have a somewhat nasty sort of ginger taste, too… at least, many of the bagged grocery store variety citrus/ginger teas I’ve tried have had that problem). The aroma actually has a sweet minty scent, and I wouldn’t even suspect there is ginger in this tea.

Honestly, I don’t notice much difference in this from drinking a peppermint tea, other than it tastes a little sweeter, which I am going to assume must be some mild floral aspect from the white tea, since there is no indication any flavors have been added to this tea. I do appreciate that the mint isn’t quite so strong as many mint herbals are, it comes off a bit softer and sweeter, but otherwise it’s just a mint tea. And I am appreciative that the ginger is no where to be found in the flavor. The mint/ginger combo, however, would make a nice tummy tonic, so maybe that is why it is included?

Very nice ginger tea with the perfect balance of peach

I really enjoyed this tea! Only one warning, this tea is STRONG! I feel like there are is a lot more tea in these tea bags, so I suggest making a large up, or steeping for less time. That being said, this tea was delicious and not overpowered by bergamot, which is what I find to be my issue with most Earl Grey teas. I would totally recommend this!

Stash is discontinuing this flavor, so I figured I’d try it before they did.

It’s alright, but really not that great. It might be better if they didn’t try to cram way too many different things in it. There’s chocolate flavoring, white chocolate flavoring, tiramisu flavoring, and coffee flavoring in there along with cocoa shells and cinnamon. As a result, it’s hard to pick anything out; it’s a muddle of chocolate, white chocolate and cinnamon with a vague hint of coffee in the background and oh yeah, some tea and possibly tiramisu. Maybe if they left out the cocoa shells, chocolate flavoring and tiramisu flavoring, sticking only to white chocolate, coffee and cinnamon it’d have been better.

I’ll drink the rest of what I have since it’s not terrible, but it’s not like I’d stock up on it before it’s gone.