This is a queued tasting note.
While I love my early morning/afternoon cold brews on the walk to work, I got to thinking last week that it’d probably be really easy to do the prep work for tea soda (the syrup, basically) in the evening when I get home and then make the soda itself in the morning right before I leave. So, I field tested the idea with this one!
It actually was super easy to get everything set up to do the tea soda; with both evening and early preparation combined I think it took the same amount, or if not very close to it, to make the soda as it would to set up the cold brew and then later strain it in the morning. Here, the syrup was the more involved part (the at night part), but with cold brewing straining it definitely takes longer (‘cause you’re washing the strainer and mason jar in between). Morning with the soda was as easy as cracking open a can of club soda. So tea soda for the walk to work is definitely something I’ll be doing again!
As for the flavour of the tea/tisane – it was weird and I’m not 100% sure if it was in a good way. I definitely liked the plain cold brew I did of this one a while back – and I remember remarking that this would probably work as soda.
It definitely did for at least the first half of the soda; the cranberry was freshy and fruity with a fun apple quality, and almost a raspberry like top note. The carbonation suited the cranberry as well; it was a little like cranberry spritzer or Cranberry Sprite! The second half? Eh…
As I was walking (it’s a 40 minute walk) the soda started to go a bit flat – that I didn’t really mind, but it sort of welcomed a much more noticeably intense cranberry flavor that, without the carbonation, started reminding me of canned cranberry jelly, like you’d eat around Thanksgiving. On top of that, the hibiscus really started to build and the tartness was a bit too much as well. At this point I was fairly turned off. I actually don’t tend to like the flavour of cranberry outside of tea and this was too much of it.
I imagine if I continue with tea soda on the walk to work than I’m going to deal with carbonation loss – and I don’t think that’s going to be an issue with all tea soda; it’s just that the way this one was prepared didn’t work with it. I’m not going to call this a fail because the start was awesome; maybe neutral overall?
