Raspberry Riot Lemon Mate

So I think going to the mall went well. I’ll give you no guesses as to where I was going. Since as you can see mall pretzel turned into this and 2 oz of Anjou Pear-adise since I’ve been dreaming about it for a week. I think it went well. I might have come off too into operational things because of my economics major but fingers crossed!

So I’ve been wanting to try this one for ages, every time I try to in a swap it is all gone. It was time to just buy some for myself. Let’s just say every time I crave raspberry lemonade, this is what I’m turning to. I can’t imagine drinking this hot, because it seriously tastes like a better version of raspberry lemonade. And as a bonus, it’s raspberry lemonade with mate!

Usually I can keep myself from eating fruit in teas but with three raspberries just sitting there on the surface during the 5 1/2 minute steep that felt like ages, I had to eat one. I’ll probably go eat the others too now.

I imagine this is probably tasty added to other things. I have a lemon green on the way, I can see this making it even more lemonade-like.

I didn’t even know there was hibiscus in here. Well obviously when I took the Finum basket out, it was evident but it doesn’t taste like it at all. I also get the strangest taste from it, like it’s effervescent. I bet this would be another excellent candidate for a tea “soda” too.

I just kind of wish there was a bit more mate because I’m feeling like today is just dragging, but I think that’s the fault of the weather and it’s pretty evident it’s affecting everyone else based on their driving. I had to go the most roundabout way to the mall, when it’s just 2 exits over with a simple pop on the interstate. But no. No, everyone wanted to be terrible. Thanks Isaac. Isaac the terrible.

Oh I just saw rosehips are in here too. Well clearly this isn’t the tea to drink if you want to taste your mate, but I am quite impressed with how both the tart offenders are actually matched well to the raspberry and lemon. This is tart, but it tastes tart from raspberry. And it’s still nice and sweet. In any case, seriously, who needs like those Crystal Light things when you can have this stuff? I can’t wait to cold brew it.

I see Teavana has free shipping, so I decided to sit down and give RRLM a shot in hot tea mode before I make an order. I’ve done this tea iced a couple times and it is amazing!

STEEPED: Deep red colour, smells tarty raspberry

TASTE: TARRRTT! WARGGGHH! I get the raspberry and lemon, but it’s really tart and strong! I don’t taste the mate as the tartness is pretty high. Okay, tart o meter is an 8 out of 10.

Sweetened, it’s not as tart (phew) and down to a 6 on the tart o meter and more mellow raspberry and lemon. Very nice raspberry flavor coming out here and natural tasting.

WHO WOULD DIG THIS TEA: someone who is not afraid of tart and likes raspberry.

COMMENTS: Yeah, I’ll order more of this tea – iced, holy cow amazing! Hot? ehhhh never unsweetened. Sweetened, not bad, but I rather drink something not that tart.

Now I’m totally buzzing away after all this caffeine, sweeet!

I’ve only had bagged mates before, and I wasn’t overly impressed. I basically concluded that if the choice was between mate and actual tea, I could see no reason to choose mate. So this is definitely not something I would have bought intentionally. It arrived as part of the Teavana tea of the month club classic plan and sat on my kitchen counter staring at me for a while.

I’m still off tea. Not sure why, I just can’t get motivated. I may have had too much of a good thing for a number of months and just simply burnt out. The 100 degree heat and stress at work and home could also have something to do with it, as well as the frustration with my Brita pitcher which decided to become a fish tank for a while. I seem to have eradicated the algae for now, but it was off-putting. It’s not just tea tasting that is suffering, it’s my workouts and my writing and pretty much everything else. I keep telling myself October has to be better because the first month of school will be past and the kids will have reestablished their routines at least. (On the upside, I’ve become interested in chess because my first grader has become interested in it, so I’ve been reading chess books and practicing on the computer trying to develop a game that isn’t embarrassing so I can keep up with him. I have something of a mental block about it, though. I keep telling myself I just don’t get it, so I don’t. See the rock, hit the rock.)

But back to this mate. I finally gave up and cracked it open.

The good thing about it is that you can’t taste the mate. Which if you like mate, is probably also the bad thing. It’s got chunky fruit pieces and blades of lemongrass and basically looks just like a fruit blend. Smells like one too, in the bag. It has a berry-ish, raisiny-ish smell. If there’s a mate smell I can’t detect it. I expected something sort of earthy, but it’s buried under the fruit.

It looks like a fruit blend after it steeps, too. It has that hibiscusy red color. I didn’t pile in the spoonfuls like I do with fruit blends because I didn’t want the mate to be too dense, so I get a Hawaiian punch colored liquor. It doesn’t have a lot of aroma, but what it does has a fruity edge. (Mostly it just smells hot to me, with maybe a disturbing twinge of overheated plastic. I’m using a glass cup so this is mysterious.)

Taste wise, it is basically a fruit blend. I don’t get anything that makes it taste like anything else. Which is a good thing, as far as I’m concerned, because if I could taste the mate I probably wouldn’t like it. As it is, it’s on a par with the average fruit blends I’ve had. Nothing that makes it unusual or unique, and at this point being an average fruit blend isn’t enough to elevate something like this to my shopping list. Particularly since I’m most likely to drink them at night and having the mate in this, albeit rather silent in its participation, takes it out of the running as an evening candidate.

I’m not really feeling caffeine as I drink this. But maybe I’ve overwhelmed myself with increased coffee and Diet Coke consumption while I’ve been off tea and it isn’t making a dent.

This is a tea that is hard for me to review… Why? Well, I had it hot and thought it was absolutely awful. So bad that I forgot about it (or tried to forget about it) for a really long time. This weekend, I arbitrarily remembered it and decided that it was time to try it iced and if I still couldn’t stand it, out it was going! So, turns out, that iced it isn’t nearly as bad!

I brewed a large pitcher of it (8 cups) with 12 teaspoons of the tea. The dry tea was high on the raspberries and lacking in the mate. It is very pleasant to look at the big luscious looking dry berries, but when you want tea, the berries become more annoying than pleasant. The smell is very artificial, it reminded me of Kool-Aid (which I haven’t had since I was 8…). There was a powdery sensation to the scent, which was very disturbing. I can’t really place what it was, but it somehow brought the word “dusty” to mind every time I sniffed it.

I let it brew for hours, basically until the liquid was cool enough to put into the fridge. It was a neat bright pink color. It looked really cool in the sun as well as under the light of my fridge! : )

I sweetened it very slightly and it turned out to be quite enjoyable! It is just tart enough to remind me of fresh raspberries and smooth enough that it doesn’t become painful to drink (no excessive puckering…). The aftertaste is artificial lemon. It reminded me of candy lemon drops. Not terrible, but also not great. The downside to this is that I tasted no mate. If I think about it I get a tiny bit of something that is woody that maybe may be a hint of mate, but I have to put too much effort in to finding it, so I am just going to say that the flavor is absent.

As a fruity iced drink, I would recommend it. As a hot tea, most definitely not, no way. I am enjoying what I have of it iced and maybe, one day, I may get more.

Another tea down! :p
This has been an interesting tea. Most days that I crave this I really need something tart. That is my one warning about this blend. I think that this tea is very overpowering in the smell department.
The taste is slightly floral, tart and sweet. This would be a great summer treat for tart seekers!
a little note I wanted to note that my hubby, a non-tea drinker, wasn’t really impressed by this tea. He’s been helping me down some of these Teavana blends lately. While drinking the Zingiber he exclaimed that it was his favorite. I noticed that he didn’t finish his glass of this blend. So I guess this would be a no in his book. :p

Used the last of this today as a strong brewed iced tea. Love the tart berry flavor and the energy it gives me. I will miss you RL Mate, I don’t think I’ll be rushing to buy more just yet.

I did something a little odd with this tea…

I initially bought it at the request for a fellow steepsterite member who did not have easy access to Teavana. I thought the dry leaf smell was awesome! I thought it would make a great cold brew.

I remember drinking it hot at work, and liking it, but for some reason held off on posting any reviews. I have recently cold brewed it, and found it a little lacking in flavour than the hot brew. So, I wondered how I was going to bump up the flavour…well, I have this thing for orange flavoured Bacardi Breezer, but after a couple of glasses, the sugar content in the Bacardi coats my tongue with yucky sugar paste. How did I cut out the sugar? I did a 50/50 blend of Bacardi with this tea, and it worked really well…I still need to find a better ratio, but the Bacardi is no longer sugary, and the tea is more palatable as a cold brew with the mix.

I cold brewed this tea, and while it is good it’s not great. I enjoy the tartness of the raspberries, but there is a strange aftertaste – from the hibiscus maybe? – that I do not like. Also, this tea reminds me of Celestial Seasons Lemon Zinger. Given the difference in price the next time I’m in the mood for this type of tea I’ll just pick up a box of CS and find my caffeine elsewhere.

So, I wanted a nice boost of energy to get my day started, so I decided to go with this tea. I figured I’d go with a yerba maté over black tea cause I’d need the extra energy before I go into work later today since I’ll be getting out pretty late.

My tea blend isn’t straight RRLM though, I had a little less than 1oz of Maté Lemon Blast left over in my tea stash, and when I originally got the RRLM I barely saw any maté leaves in it (not surprising since most of their tea is stuff with fruit anyway). But I definitely wanted more maté leaves in the RRLM. Looking at the ingredients I noticed the MLB was just lemon grass and green maté, which are both in the RRLM, so I decided to just mix the rest of it in with the RRLM (2oz RRLM : 1oz MLB). Now this definitely has the amount of maté I’m looking for, and it only increased the lemon scent of the RRLM by a tiny bit.

The smell of this tea is pretty amazing, extremely fruity, I don’t notice any floral smells from the hibiscus or rose buds, only notice the lemony raspberry scents.

This tea turns a deep deep ruby red color, probably the darkest out of any of the teas that turn red that I currently have. The fruity smells seem to decrease a little bit after steeping.

This tastes so fruity and tart/sour (which is nice since I’m looking for that nice kick). I definitely am glad that I added the MLB to this, to give it a bit more of a maté flavor to it. I think this tea would be GREAT as an iced tea, but hot isn’t bad either.

2nd steep on this is ok. The brew is a light pink color now. It definitely loses A LOT of the tart/sour qualities. There is a slight sweetness to it now, and the mate is a bit more noticeable.

If you like fruity and tart teas, or if you want a nice refreshing iced tea to drink while playing sports or being active, I’d say give this tea a shot.

Steeped for four minutes and added cream at the end. It’s the only thing getting me through this conference call right now.