New Tasting Notes

Drank some of this in an attempt to help with my stress. No such luck, but it tasted good.

A new bag. Ok, now bear w/ me. I’m going to attempt to make this chai w/ milk. I’ve never added milk to a green chai before. I just can’t fathom the combo. So here it goes…

1 bag (steeped an extra min to compensate for the milk) steeped in 3oz water, then added 3oz milk and reheated.

Ok… Um… Ew… The liquor (is it still called that when it’s part milk?) is a yellowy-green color that makes it look really raunchy except for it isn’t chunky.

The aroma is that of a very light chai, but I don’t smell the milk so I’m absolutely thrilled!

Ok… Um… Wow… I’m shocked… This didn’t make me puke! The spices come across 1st, then the creamyness of the milk (but no hot milk taste thank God), and last the green tea. I’m surprised that can be tasted.

Conclusions: Not nearly as horrible as I expected, but I wouldn’t drink it this way again. Milk spoils the wonderful flavor of the green tea.

Sipping a nice cup of Margaret’s Hope Darjeeling – what a great accompaniment to reading about Victorian England :)

I have never tried pomegranate, so I can’t say for sure if I’ve tasted it in this tea. This tea is good nonetheless. Very slightly and mildly fruity. It tasted more like a basic black tea. I added milk and sugar. An alright blend.

Tastes cardamom-y to me. If I didn’t know that’s what I was tasting, maybe I’d think it was vanilla or hazelnut… but probably not. On the upside, I don’t mind cardamom. Gets sweeter the longer the bag sits.

This is so far my preferred jasmine tea variety. I do make sure to steep it quick or I find the bitterness goes up sharply. It has just the right mix of tea to the floral of the jasmine for me to enjoy both.

I find this tea to be overly perfumy and a very bitter oolong. I dislike this one so much that those two things can sum it up.

This is one of my favorite daily drinkers, as I like to call them. The most predominate flavor is pineapple, and I honestly don’t get much ginger out of this at all. (Then again, I might have burnt off all the taste buds I have with all the crystallized ginger I eat on a regular basis.) It’s a perfect tea for a morning pick-me-up and that is why I drink it so frequently.

Yay, my samples from Golden Moon are here! Woo!

I thought I’d start off with this one because I need some caffeine and the honeyed description sounded delicious. I used about half the leaves in the packet in 8 ounces of water. There is a sweet, honey like flavor, but it’s the kind that I’ve found in a lot of black teas. I think that good black teas tend to have a delicious honey/black tea/sweet aftertaste, if you know what I mean, and this tea has lots of that delicious aftertaste.

The flavor of the tea just seems like “default black tea” flavor, with very nicely executed “good black tea honeyed aftertaste” flavor. It’s just a little tannic, but I didn’t have any trouble sipping my cup without sugar or milk. That kind of smoothness without milk or sweetener is pretty rare for breakfast bends.

Personally, since I drown my tea in milk and honey and sugar, I would rather have cheaper, lower quality, ground up Twinings English Breakfast. It’s not nearly as smooth or honeyed as this tea is, but I don’t mind, since I’m going to smother it in milk and honey anyway. However, I think this tea would be perfect for those times you just want a nice, clean cup of delicious black tea. I might just keep this one in stock for those times, since I’ve tasted very few plain black teas as good as this one without additives. Yum.

From Janefan!=D

I find it weird that there are both real cardamom and cinnamon as well as cardamom and cinnamon favors. Weird and stupid. On the up side, the bag weighs 2.3g=D

When I take the bag out of the wrapper cardamom is the dominant smell which is refreshing because a lot of chais are way over board on the cinnamon.

I decided to steep this for 3 min because I’m drinking this clean and I didn’t want the tea to get bitter or the spices to over power it.

The liquor is darker than your average unflavored green tea due to the spices and the aroma is a good blance of tea and spice, most of which is cardamom.

The flavor is much like the aroma, except there is an added sweetness from the green tea. A very good bagged tea.

I found this to be mild, which sometimes is nice. It is especially pleasant in that it isn’t bitter at all and the blueberry flavor was really all I got out of it. However, if you are expecting a fruity kick as you would get out of the other Superfruit teas from The Republic of Tea, you will be underwhelmed.

This tea tastes as though it is just some mulling spices in a bag, and not in great quantity at that. There is no discernible apple flavor at all, and we suspected that this “tea” would be better if it were in fact brewed in boiling apple cider. But we never got to try that theory, and we all found this to be incredibly disappointing.

Okay so I stayed at B & N a long time yesterday (long enough to try out 2 teas). This tea my husband encouraged me try because it was the only tin left of it’s kind while the others were stocked pretty full (he assumed it was the best since it was closest to being sold out). Not that it was hard for him to talk me into trying a new tea or anything :) but I usually don’t just pick white teas I don’t know why but I think it may have something to do with their lack of full body flavor. At least that’s what I typically think when I try white teas but this one was totally different it was surprisingly full bodied and the taste of the fuzzy peach filled your mouth. The color I found surprising as well in that it’s not clear it’s not even close to clear it’s amber in color and the smell it sooo nice it’s peachy but not in an artificial type peach way in a natural peach way it’s a soft peach smell but not as soft as one might expect for a white tea. I tried two teas yesterday and I think I might have to go back today and pick them both up :))

I brought the tea bags home in there respective cups and resteep and while the the taste was a little fainter than the original brew it was still quite enjoyable and was definently a true reflection of the original steep.

I’m currently watching Hockey Night in Canada and trying to corral my ever increasing tea collection. I didn’t need more tea. But I got it. So yeah, the corralling thing is gonna take some time.

I have a little stack of teas that I’m almost out of and this was one in that stack. I decided to make a big ole cup with the remainder of the leaf. Not only could I use a big cup of tea, it will be nice to unclick the “In Your Cupboard” button on something.

So this one is a big favorite of takgoti. She was nice enough to send me some a bit back for me to try. Honestly, I never quite got it. I adjusted the parameters some and got it more my speed but it still never quite fully clicked with me. It was good, but I was missing the love takgoti had for it.

This cup? Has the love. Maybe because I went a little heavy on the leaf, maybe because this tea does best when brewed in large quantities. I don’t know. But this is good. Fresh and rich with a bit of a sparkling floral top note. Not delicate but not heavy handed either. Just a really good, fresh tasting, comfortable, tasty green oolong. And I’m not reminded of being made to eat cattail leaves by my dad, which is always a bonus.

I’m sad that it took me until my last cup to discover the pretty of this tea, but I’m really glad I have. I’ve upped the rating a bit to reflect the yumminess.
8g/14oz

I tried this today at Barnes and Noble while shopping and it was so good. I totally agree with the other reviewers in that this tea is a tasty green tea and you get hints of coconut and I don’t taste the ginger very much at all but just enough to give the coconut a briskness it also does seem to have a buttery taste to as other posters mentioned. I am definitely adding this one to my list of “To buys” from Harney and Sons.

I have always enjoyed chai tea. This particular one has curled black tea leaves, cinnamon chips, dried ginger and open cardamom pods. It has that wonderful smell of mixed spices even before brewing. I take my chai with milk and honey. I don’t know if it is because the cardamom pods are open compared to some of my other loose shai tea but this one has a much heavier cardamom flavor. The cinnamon and ginger are really just backgraound notes.

Third infusion is a bit weak, which you would think I’d remember by now. Oh well.

Oh, god. We sell this stuff at work (Whole Foods) and I LOVE IT. Yes, it is sweet, but not cloyingly in any way. The light carbonation and slight flavor of fermentation remind me vaguely of GT’s Kombucha, but sweetened up for a normal palate (read: ex-soda drinker). It does taste like jasmine, not in an overly perfumed way, like with Rishi or Teavana jasmine teas, but in a pleasant, non-overpowering way. Like I said, I love it. Any time we crack open a bottle I’m first after the customers with a sample cup in hand…the only downfall to me is the price.

I bought this to go with some homemade Indian food, and because it was purely herbal and wouldn’t keep me up afterwords. I made this with hot milk and a dash of honey, and it was a great chai. It resembled the chai I’ve gotten in Indian restaurants a lot more than anything else I’ve ever bought, despite it not having masala as a component. I like that I can combine this with green, black, or rooibos tea depending on my mood.

I think I might actually like this better than the masala chai from Adagio. The coconut bits adds a nice kick to the taste. I like to drink it with a bit of milk (as I do with most of my chai).

Chocolate and peach. The scent is very peachy. Almost artificial. I was drinking this without sugar, but I needed to add it. It didn’t seem to help much though. Unfortunately, this wasn’t one of my favorites. Tasty but something seemed off about it.