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This is a Dethlefsen & Balk sourced blend, and I’m uncertain if I’ve had it elsewhere, but I’m really enjoying it. I tried it warm and thought it was fine (I liked the hibiscus/cardamon combination) but it shines more as a coldbrew. It has a nice rich cherry flavor, in the vein of Kool-Aid/Popsicle and lacking any weird medicinal notes. The hibiscus is adding a lot of thick fruit punch notes. That little pop of cardamom in the background is nice even cold. Very quenching. It’s a nice enough cherry-leaning hibiscus fruit tea.

I usually don’t gravitate towards “sleepy time” tea blends because they tend to be chamomile-heavy or an overly-pepperminty herbal concoction to mask valerian foot-stink. But this tea, despite having both chamomile and valerian root got me interested, since the other ingredients seemed to lean in a sweet caramel apple sort of profile.

It smells really strongly of caramel, in both the dry leaf and the brewed cup. The flavor is very nice, too… it’s very sweet and has a nice caramel flavor, better than I find in a lot of caramel rooibos teas which tend to have a heavier red rooibos flavor than I’m getting here… I think the sweetness of the apple, blackberry leaves, and coconut is lifting it a lot (I’m also surprised that the coconut has held up nicely, I tend to avoid teas that have it like the plague not because I don’t like it — I love it! — but sometimes it is years after my purchase date before I finally get around to drinking a particular tea). There is a milder apple note that goes hand-in-hand with the caramel. I get a very subtle more herbaceous aftertaste (which is probably the valerian) but you’d really have to focus to pick it up. I’m really surprised how nicely all these ingredients have come together to make a “sleep” blend that actually appeals to me.

I’d recommend giving this a try, even to those that may find things like red rooibos, chamomile, or valerian unappealing (but do be warned this is not vegan/lactose-intolerant friendly due to the caramel/toffee in the blend). I bet this tea would also do well on gmathis’ “Will It Milk?” gameshow.

This tea has been my new cold mornings hot cuppa tea, and I’ve really been enjoying it! It has a lovely chocolately aroma with syrupy fruity notes on the nose. Chocolate tea in general can be hit-or-miss for me, but thankfully this one has a very nice chocolate flavor that comes off fudgy rather than oddly artificial or alcoholic, and it blends well with the black tea base which gives some backbone with the mouthfeel and adds a little bit of malty autumn leaf flavor in the background. The berry flavor in this tea is a melange of raspberry, blackberry, blueberry, and cranberry, and I mostly taste raspberry, with some sips getting a little more syrupy cranberry in nature. I’m not tasting the cinnamon that is in the blend, though.

This is pretty smooth, even with a decent steep time, and gives satisfying hot cocoa vibes. The website recommends making a latte with it which I haven’t tried yet, but it is on my list. It’s pretty great just straight-n-plain without the need of anything fancy. I shared some with my coworker and she also loved it! I think this scratches the “chocolate+berry” flavor profile very well while being a bit easier to access (in the US) than, say, Lupicia which has high shipping costs from Hawai’i.

I finally found another tea person at work, so I’ve been bringing her teabags of things to try, and today she brought me this, which I haven’t tried before.

I was a bit skeptical about grocery store bagged pu’erh, since that tea type is already not my favorite, but this is surprisingly pretty nice. It is very earthy and almost a little vegetal but it doesn’t taste “dirty” or “fishy.” I’m not getting the cocoa very strongly, but it does add a little richness to the base and the spices are quite lovely… the nutmeg is really popping for me which gives it a nice autumnal vibe.

I’m not sure if this is something I’d always keep in my cupboard, but I certainly wouldn’t mind a box of this around autumn when the mornings are frigid and gentle spices are so comforting.

I’m just finished off this box of teabags that was gifted to me from my friend Todd as a souvenir from his trip to Scotland.

The instructions say to use one teabag, but I found there wasn’t enough tea in the bag for a standard 12 oz. mug and the flavor of the cup was really weak and watery, so I had to use two teabags per cup. This provided a strong and flavorful cup with a very sweet berry aroma on the nose (makes me think of strawberry Jell-o) and a generic red berry flavor that has a sort of dessert-esque quality… there is something sweet here, and it comes off sort of biscuity? The citric acid adds a little bite to the end of the sip, particularly in a hot brew preparation.

While I’ve had a few warm cups, mostly I’ve worked my way through this box making liters of cold brew, for a sweet and refreshing fruity and thirst-quenching drink.

I quite like this, as long as it’s brewed strong! Thanks, Todd!

This tea is cocoa shells mixed with chai spices. The preparation instructions on this tea say to use 1-1.5 teaspoons but prepared this way, the tea is really weak… since the base is cocoa shells, it just comes off a bit watery and the flavor came off really strong on the anise, tasting like the much cheaper and more accessible Stash “Licorice Spice” teabags from the grocery store. I really needed a stronger “base” and it was pretty decent brewed with an additional plain breakfast black teabag, or a teabag of Sobacha to keep it herbal for an evening drink.

To get anything close to “dark chocolate” like the name, you need to use a lot of leaf per cup, which used up the 50g within a few servings, making it not a very economical tea. But when there is an over-abundance of cocoa shell, left to steep for a hefty time (I just leave the bag in the cup), it does get pretty chocolately and less licorice-y. The pepper is pretty strong though, which adds to that “bittersweet dark chocolate” flavor but feels like just a bit much.

A nice, rich cup is very nice, but for how impractical it is to get a good flavor it isn’t anything I would recommend or seek out again.

I’m pretty sure this is a blend of Adagio’s “Rooibos Caramel” and “White Pear.” I’ve always liked Adagio’s “White Pear” which is fortunate because this a blend like this, no matter how much you shake up the bag, the rooibos falls to the bottom and what is left at the top is mostly just the white tea, so the majority of my cups have just been the pear-flavored white tea with the tiniest hint of caramel rooibos. The white tea is a mix of dewey floral and hay and the pear flavor works really well with it, and it shines even more after I’ve fallen asleep on the couch and wake back up to find an ice-cold cup waiting for me.

Now that I’m on the last cup in the pouch, this cup is all the red rooibos that shifted to the bottom… even with that abundance in this cup, I pretty much just taste the white pear. I get a bit of the woodiness of the rooibos, but the caramel flavor just isn’t popping at all.

I love the idea of caramel flavor mixed with pear, but this tea just doesn’t succeed at it. I do enjoy the pear, but there is no reason to get this over just ordering the plain “White Pear” straight from Adagio.

I’ve been making this as a cold brew, and it’s pretty good. The lime flavor is present, but not quite as strong and juicy as I would like… It has a nice citrusy tang, but pales in comparison to the lime flavoring used by 52Teas. The oolong provides a pretty vegetal backbone that enhances the slight cucumber notes and goes nicely with the citrus, too. It’s pretty gulpable as an ice cold drink.

I suspect this is a blend of Adagio’s “Rooibos Caramel” and “Rooibos Cinnamon Apple,” and I really like this combination. It has a strong cinnamon aroma which made me expect one of those strong Market Spice/cinnamon candy-esque rooibos blends, but it isn’t like that in flavor. The caramel flavor actually comes through the most, with a little apple sweetness and the cinnamon a lighter note that lingers a bit after the sip. I actually get the mix of caramel and cinnamon apple pretty well, and they are flavors that I quite like on the strong rooibos base. The rooibos flavor is very strong here, though, so I wouldn’t recommend to those that are red rooibos averse. I’m enjoying my cozy warm pot of this tonight with some pumpkin choco-chip cookies and leaning into the autumn vibes (it’s not that cold yet here, but the trees are shedding like crazy!)

I went through my entire package of this preparing it coldbrew, and it was absolutely delicious! The melon flavor is really sweet and juicy, that sort of hybrid cantalope/honeydew flavor I get from other Japanese melon-flavored products. The base oolong is very silky and smooth with a bit of a fresh green vibe that carries the melon flavor perfectly. I probably should’ve tried this with some added sweetener and carbonation just to see how close it could get to melon soda, but just as a straight coldbrew it was perfect. Very gulpable. I really love Lupicia’s flavored oolongs for coldbrew!