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“TTB. Being an American that is allergic to dairy I am constantly seeing dumb things with dairy in them. When I first came across this bag tucked away amid the many others I immediately dismissed...” Read full tasting note
“I saw a Reddit post a few days ago from someone complaining that Twinings had added little mint candies to this tea and, if you’re looking closely at the leaf in the tea bags, I can see where the...” Read full tasting note
“Homemade Advent Calendar from Arby: Day 4 A green tea blend came out of the box on my random pull this morning, and although I fully intended to drink it, suddenly it was 6:30 p.m. and too late for...” Read full tasting note
“I’ve started to really enjoy having a peppermint tea after lunch. I prefer a creamy mint profile, so this seemed right up my alley. I also liked that it had a quite simple ingredients list:...” Read full tasting note
Herbs have a long history of documented use tracing back to Ancient Egypt, Ancient China and to the beginning of Ayurveda science in India. Herbal teas can be made from any combination of flowers, leaves, seeds, roots, citrus or berry fruits herbs and spices-which is why the number of unique blends available is virtually limitless. Camomile, Peppermint, Ginger and Hibiscus are some of the most popular ingredients used today.
Peppermint is thought to have originated in Northern Africa and the Mediterranean.This aromatic blend starts with peppermint leaves expertly selected from Europe, Egypt and North America and combines them with the rich, creamy flavour of vanilla to craft a velvety smooth tea that is sure to awaken all your senses.
Ingredients: Peppermint, Natural mint flavour, Natural flavour vanilla type
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TTB. Being an American that is allergic to dairy I am constantly seeing dumb things with dairy in them. When I first came across this bag tucked away amid the many others I immediately dismissed it. “What have they done this time?” Was my first thought. Maybe added butter flavor like they did in that Buffalo sauce. But curiosity got the best of me and I took it back out.
It does have a somewhat buttery aroma once it’s brewed vanilla butter with mint.The flavor is strong with mint but the vanilla finds its way around your palate. It’s quite unique actually… Mint overpowers so much generally that it’s all you taste and while this starts out with mint in your face the vanilla slides up quietly and leaves you with a gentle mouth feel in the after taste that is really quite nice.
That all being said I do grow and sell my own mint. And this mint is a bit stale in comparison
I saw a Reddit post a few days ago from someone complaining that Twinings had added little mint candies to this tea and, if you’re looking closely at the leaf in the tea bags, I can see where the confusion would maybe be coming from because there are super tiny white balls mixed with the peppermint. This is not candy, though. It’s actually encapsulated flavoring. Basically, a solid version of flavouring that “melts” into your tea as its steeped. Much less common than the liquid flavouring that’s usually added in tea production which then coats all the ingredients.
There are pros/cons to both types. Encapsulated flavouring is much less aromatic, so the dry leaf aroma of a blend could be significantly less impactful if this type is used. That can be a big deal for physical tea shops where customers might be smelling the tea out of tins before purchasing it. However, since this blend comes only in prepackaged boxes that seems like less of a concern. One of the pros to encapsulated flavouring is that it tastes much longer for any sort of flavour loss to happen due to aging. If I had to make a guess, I think that might have been why Twinings made the change? Regardless, to the best of my knowledge there has always been the same flavours in this blend and it’s just the format of them that has been updated.
Anyway, after reading through that thread I decided to pull this out and make myself a mug. It’s just so wickedly smooth and creamy/buttery with such a crisp, cooling peppermint. I love this blend a lot!
Interesting! But for a tea intended to be sold as loose-leaf, I would be apprehensive about the potential for settling-out of the capsules, producing inconsistent flavoring.
Very interesting to learn about encapsulated flavors, I had not heard of them before! I’ll have to keep an eye out to try them in a blend sometime. It doesn’t look like they are available to purchase in the private market yet, or I might be tempted to pick some up!
I guess that’s what the little white spheres are in Whittard’s Rose tea.
Okay, I found the rose tea… and have been reading everyone’s reviews. I’e never encountered these tiny spheres, myself, in any tea product.
http://steepster.com/teas/whittard-of-chelsea/87187-tea-discoveries-english-rose-teabags .
@ashmanra: “doll house potting soil” Ha!!
@gmathis: doesn’t everyone tear open their teabags to get a better look? !!!
I suspect Whittard couldn’t fit all their ingredients into a teabag without them rupturing (and was unwilling to use pyramid sachets). So they tried the encapsulated flavoring, and encountered problems with stratification when portioning. So they ground-down the solids to make everything closer in size, by which time they’d ended up with a very different product. Or maybe Roswell_Strange has further insights as an actual expert. But that’s a good lesson for folks sharing a TTB, to tumble the tin/pouch before withdrawing a sample, to ensure even mixing and representative sampling!
Yes, the Whittards blend uses encapsulated flavouring! But I highly doubt the cut size for the teabags has anything to do with not being able to “fit” all the ingredients into the bags – the way you go about formulating teabags is just typically much more different than loose leaf teas (based on presumed customer use cases). Smaller cut size = predicability/consistency in dosing out the saxheta during manufacturing, which is done by weight, and more surface area for the tea to steep which makes for a faster and stronger infusion, generally.
Also, yes, to TeaEarleGreyHot’s point – one of the disadvantages to encapsulated flavouring in loose leaf tea blends is that it does settle. To be fair, this happens to a lot of ingredients with smaller particle size and greater density, but it is one of the factors of why encapsulated flavouring is just less common in LLT.
**dosing out the sachets
Awesome insights, Ros, thanks!!
Speaking of how components in a blend may segregate in their bag, I today happened across this short youtube video that explains stratification (sometimes called “the brazil nut effect”) perfectly!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DOilqjKEhqo
This has been very educational!
Homemade Advent Calendar from Arby: Day 4
A green tea blend came out of the box on my random pull this morning, and although I fully intended to drink it, suddenly it was 6:30 p.m. and too late for anything caffeinated. Soooo I chose this one instead.
I’m a sucker for all things creamy peppermint, and butter mints are very nostalgic for me, so this tea is always going to be welcome in my household! I’ve had this one a few times before and it definitely hits the spot. A very calming and pleasant nighttime treat.
Flavors: Creamy, Peppermint
Yum! I like Twinings’ Christmas candy cane mint blend (can’t remember the exact name at the moment), so this has got to be close and equally good.
I think it’s Peppermint Cheer?
My local grocery used to carry this and I was in love, and then they stopped, and then I was heartbroken.
Yes, Peppermint Cheer, and a good reminder to dig through my random stash (um, er…) stashes of bags, because I may have a handful left!
Anyway- the tea itself is as expected. Pretty much peppermint with a very subtle vanilla flavor. It really does taste like a buttermint.
Flavors: Creamy, Peppermint, Vanilla
Tastes just like the little mints they had by the register at this little Italian restaurant when I was a kid. Also, people always had them in a little candy dish when there was company, or for the Holidays. This tea is a relaxing wonderful memory.
Nice mint flavor with a bit of creaminess. They could get away with amping up the creaminess even more, but the flavor was pretty good. Some murkiness appears as it sits. Overall, a solid bagged choice from the tea box. I grabbed a few bags and finished them all in no time.
Happy birthday to my bestie Todd! And Happy National Mojito Day! Today the prompt is to drink a tea with either lime or mint flavor notes. At one point in time I actually had a lime and mint “mojito” inspired tea, but it has been long gone from the cupboard now. I couldn’t find any teas in my current stash that combined both, so I’ll be drinking a mint tea and a lime tea today!
I’ve had this box for a while, after my local grocery sent me a dollar off Twinings coupon and I felt the need to use it, but this is my first time breaking into it. I do like mint tea to soothe my tum on bad GI days, and was curious how I’d feel about this one that mixes a vanilla flavoring with peppermint, as opposed to just plain peppermint whole leaf or a good peppermint/spearmint/lemongrass blend.
A single teabag in 350ml of 205F water, left soaking. I really enjoy the aroma coming off the cup; there is a sweetness to the peppermint that does remind me of a peppermint candy or the namesake, a buttermint.
Mmm… yes, this is quite nice! It isn’t as crisp as drinking a full leaf peppermint herbal (this is peppermint fannings with a lot of the mint taste coming from flavoring), but the mint flavor is pleasing and I do like how it pairs with the vanilla flavoring. Neither flavor is overbearing and they meld together nicely. As my cup cools a bit and I continue to sip, I have a nice cooling sensation building on the back of my tongue and throat, and the sweet vanilla does lend a sort of sweet cream note that really does remind me of a buttermint.
Flavors: Candy, Cream, Mint, Peppermint, Sweet, Vanilla
The particular bag of this I brewed from spent a not-insignificant amount of time in a hardhat. While that probably didn’t add to the flavor, it sure did add to the feeling. The bag resisted opening like some loving god was doing its best to help me. I fought it, exercising my right to screw up royally, and won. My prize was the definite odor of dentist toothpaste, so strong and true I felt the grit in my mouth and winced. The steam smelled better; had the heat burnt off the dentist toothpaste? I detected a hint of creamy vanilla in the steam, but was hesitant to believe it.
In the end, it left me confused. The leaf smelled horrible and brewed a particularly unappealing hue of yellow. And yet, it only tasted of mint and a non-descript fattiness that I suppose is meant to be vanilla. It reminds me of when you eat an avocado, that smooth not-quite-buttery flavor left in your mouth after you swallow. Butter’s isomer? Unpinpointable. Slightly plasticy, but I wouldn’t notice if I weren’t drinking out of porcelain. Buttermint hurtles towards you like a runaway train and dissolves into mist. It’s kind of nice- after the first few seconds of preparation.
Flavors: Butter, Creamy, Mint, Musty
Buttermints are an “old fashioned” hard candy popular throughout the UK, though my understanding is they’re particularly popular in England – though I know them more from the Scottish import store I grew up living near. Think like a buttery toffee flavour mixed with a soft peppermint note.
I’m trying to think of a North American equivalent and, frankly, blanking on one. The only thing coming to mind atm is Rhubarb Custards, which are also a British hard candy.
Anyway, the point being that Twinings is trying to emulate a specific but actually quite common/nostalgic regional flavour. It just so happens to be one that is far less well known (and therefore maybe assumed to be weird) here in North America.
Yup, sounds weird to me. No assumption needed. :-D
Ah!!! Thank you for the insight. I’m a big fan of Japanese foods and such so buttermint doesn’t seem to weird. I’m just glad it doesn’t actually have butter XD
I used to make something called Buttermints at Christmas and I assumed that was what this tea referred to, but I was wrong! They were candies made with butter, confectioner’s sugar, and peppermint oil and they were really just soft mints. They are pressed into molds or can be rolled into “snakes” and then cut into “pillow” shape. I did pillow shape, roses, and leaves. They were delicious! The butter is there just to bind the sugar together and you don’t particularly taste butter.
I use the same molds to make rose-shaped sugar “cubes” for tea parties. You mix regular sugar (not confectioners) with the tiniest bit of water and press it into the molds and then let it dry.