QuiltGuppy select Send Message

This was my second time trying this tea before reviewing. I can’t figure out what I’m doing wrong. 190/3 min. There’s so much fruit in it that I thought that I could add more tea to the water and come up with a better flavor. It’s so extremely tart that it’s undrinkable without copious amounts of sugar… which I almost never do, but I had no choice as we were running late this morning. I cannot taste the tea at all. It’s hidden behind a very tart fruit flavor that causes such a pucker that I can barely drink it. Once sweetened, it’s much more tolerable, but not very pleasant. I used 4.5 tsp/16 oz of water. The only nice thing I can say is that it looks beautiful when dry!

Mmmmmm! This is one of the closest teas to my beloved (and discontinued) Sweet Lily White from Teavana. One of the things I really dislike is having to use 1.5 times the amount of tea just to get a decent taste. It’s so worth it, though! From the first sip, this tea was heavenly. It’s very sweet, almost nectar like in taste. The lychees feature prominently and the tea somewhat takes a back seat in the first steep. (In subsequent steeps, it does come forth.) There is no bitterness or dreaded vegetal tastes to be had and I’m in love with it!

I decided to try some of the different milk oolongs I had today. This was the first. It smells nice. Steeped 195/2 min. The milky scent is still there, but I’m not finding the richness in the taste. The tantalizing scent is there, but then it seems to lack the flavorful follow up. It’s nutty, but not as creamy as I had hoped.

The second steep confirms the lack of creaminess. I’ll try adding more leaf on my next go.

With all the positive comments I’ve read about pineapple sencha lately, I just knew it had to be good. However, I didn’t expect this tea to completely blow me away… and it did! Den’s Tea does a phenomenal job with its teas. The sencha is so very green and inviting and the little chunks of papaya scattered throughout contrast nicely. I loved looking at it and breathing in the fresh, pineapple scent. (At first it smells a bit too pineappley… similar to pineapple in syrup.)

I always worry about cooking my green teas and ending with veggies, so I took a lighter route again. 185/1 min. Now, the pineapple scent is subdued, but still very present. There is something else weighing in on the aroma, but I can’t quite place my finger on it. It’s a heavier scent, more vegetal and I’m a bit worried about the flavor this tea has. Until I take a sip…

The taste… amazing! First and foremost, I taste the pineapple. It’s still ever present, but is not too sweet. I can pick up papaya in the aftertaste, perhaps coconut, too. It’s a sweet/nutty combination of flavors. There’s a slight bitterness to the tea, not too much. Most surprising of all is the body of this tea. It has a thickness to it. I can’t believe it is just water here and not something heavier. There is most definitely a buttery creaminess to it. I think that’s what I was picking up in the aroma… butter. It’s a very interesting combination and an extremely pleasing experience. This tea is wonderful!

Here’s another beautiful looking tea. The chunky fruits among the black leaves are stunning. The scent is a bit dark. I’m imagining that it must be a dark, heavy tea. So, in preparation, I’m adjusting my steep. 185/3.5 minutes. I also added 1.5 times the amount of tea.

I can pick up a fruitiness in the tea, with a deeper syrupy scent that I’m attributing to the fig. The tea is not all that dark, but I’m still glad I adjusted the temperature. There seems to be a nice balance of the fruits to the tea. As expected from the scent, there is a syrupy sweetness to the tea, not quite on par with a fig flavor, but slightly deeper, more like dark corn syrup that has been toasted. The oolong is present and does balance well with the fruits. I like the idea of pairing fig with oolong, but it feels as if the other added fruits didn’t quite connect and blend as well.

Wow. And WOW! This is really, really good. I can’t believe I put it off for so long…

It’s a neat tea, one that I can definitely share with my children. It’s caffeine-free and when it steeps, it turns a hot pink/red color. (Slightly murky though.) The “tea” is basically chunks of stuff. Almonds. Dried apples. Cinnamon bark. Other stuff. It looks lumpy. Anyway, I decided to go heavy on the tea and toward the lower end of their recommended steeping time. I put 1.5 times the amount of tea into the Breville. 205/5 min. It’s outstanding! It smells like an almond cookie straight out of the oven with warm applesauce. Like liquid comfort. It’s very sweet tasting and that sweetness increases as the tea cools. Actually, I’ve found that I really like this tea the longer it cools, around an hour after being made. It’s then that you can really taste the different flavors that are fused together in this cup of cookie heaven. I couldn’t drink it every night, but we’re ordering the large tin of it as it’s a winner in our home!

I’ve been on a bit of a coconut kick this week. So, I plucked this one out of the inbox that I created next to my teapot. It smelled wonderfully of fresh coconut when I opened the bag and I set the timer and went to bed. 165/2 min.

It still smells delicious. The taste is nice. It’s not quite what I had hoped for. I thought I’d encounter a fresh coconut taste, as the aroma implied. However, it comes out as more of a sweetened coconut flavor. Like a Mounds candy bar. It’s a bit too much and it does overpower the sencha base, which is very difficult to discern. Still, it’s a nice tea, very slightly bitter, but overall very pleasant.