Bigelow

I know this statement is highly overused but this Bigelow blend is like Christmas in a cup. I’ve been on a holiday fix lately so I broke into my stockpile of Vanilla Chai. Yum this blend gets better every time. You get the bold, malty flavor of the black tea base and it’s not hidden by the other flavors like some other Vanilla Chai teas I have tried.in fact, the fa flavors balance each tperfectly. You get a nice creaminess from the vanilla, the spice from the cinommon, clove, and nutmeg, and the black tea fla or. This is one of those chairs that I will never stop loving and I highly recommend it.

I’m not normally a fan of the Bigelow brand teas but these tend to be offered for free at offices and this is how I ended up giving this flavor a try.

The tea is okay. It’s not great but it’s not horrible either. Out of the flavors I’ve tried from Bigelow I’d put this on the side of offerings of theirs that I would try again. I probably wouldn’t buy it out of choice but if it was offered to me by a friend or office, I wouldn’t turn it down.

Plain Jane, like you find in a convenience store. Oh yeah, I got it from a convenience store.

My daily “Plain Jane”, drink at work tea.

Many thanks to Princess Cruises for turning me on to my “every morning Darjeeling “

Bigelow teas are a brand that I’m not a big fan of, but I was able to sample this tea from a local office during a visit. Out of the bag it smells great as it does brewing. I was excited to give this tea a try as my stomach was upset and the mint scent comes through amazingly.

Brewed for 3 1/2 minutes and this tea requires no sweetener, though I did add some as mint teas are not my favorite. This is one I’d go back to whenever I need a mint tea to ease my belly.

An entirely adequate chai-like tea.

This is a tea I had at a hotel. I like it less than other sleep teas I’ve had. The flavor is pretty muddled. I much prefer the Celestial Seasonings version where it’s pretty clearly chamomile and mint. Need to be careful with the steep times on this one since it can get bitter and strange. It’s okay.

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I do not have mood for gong-fu. I do not have mood even for tea, but otherwise the morning would not work.

Need tea. Which one? Why not freshest one I have?
Okay, took this one. It smells heavily after caramel. Aroma when boiled is rather salty + mineral. But this is Salted Caramel, so both scents are reasonable.

Liquor is cloudy, darker copper.

But taste? It is not so bad actually! I expected it much sweeter, but it taste actually like liquid salted caramel. It is not even too bitter (okay, I steeped just for 3.5 minutes).

Not my favourite, DF oolong is bit better. But certainly not totally bad.

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I save this one for cold mornings and watching mafia movies at night. It’s richly full-bodied and delicately sweet all the same. Seriously one of my favorite teas, although I docked it down 5 points because without milk and sugar I personally find it a tad bitter and acidic tasting. Amazing for dipping tea snacks in like stroopwaffles or cookies!

Lone teabag, kitchen clean-out. I know this one’s not old, though, unlike a lot of other kitchen clean-out teas I’ve been sampling.

Pretty lifeless black tea, bordering metallic, drying. The bergamot is nice enough, moderate intensity, spicy-citrus instead of soapy-floral. I think adding milk would drown out the bergamot.

This Tea had flavor notes that were balanced and I love it

I have several bags of this after my friend gave me his stash. Not a huge fan of cranberry or apple in tea, but this tastes okay. Very similar to other berry bagged teas. It reminded me of a less good Cranberry Vanilla Wonderland, which I would much prefer to drink if I wanted a bagged cranberry tea. So anyway, this tea is perfectly fine. It tastes how you’d imagine it would.

Ugh. I hate staying at my parents house. It interrupts my rouTEAne (Tea Routine). I ran out of my Citrus Green that I brought and all I have left is “Gypsy Cold Cure” which is medicinal. Anyway, to the parents cupboard I went and dug out a single bag of THIS.

It’s wrapped but I have no idea how old it is. Likely at least 5 years out of date. But I need something to drink so this gets the go.

Prepared with boiling stove water for 4 minutes. I have no idea how big the mug is though but I used one teabag.

Taste is… Ok, I don’t recall seeing BANANA as part of the name but boy is there a strong banana flavor. I’m getting a teeny tiny bit of pom here, but mostly just generic “tart” flavor without any real distinguishing characteristics. I’m also getting another fruit. Cherry maybe? It’s sweet, I’ll give it that. It’s actually not as bad as I was expecting. That doesn’t mean it’s good, just that it is drinkable. That banana flavor is distracting though and doesn’t fit the rest of the profile. This tea is trying to be too many flavors at once and none are really shining through very clearly. It’s like “Muddy Fruit: The Tea”. Oh well. If I don’t get fully sick soon, I can head home for next week and get actual decent tea on Monday. In the meantime, send me good tea vibes yinz, for I am sorely lacking them.

Well, at the parent’s again. This time I’m reviewing their go-to tea. This is the tea that my parents drink every night for dinner. Now, their recipe for this tea is 10 teabags for 2 qt, cold brewed for 12 hours. It makes a very strong magenta liquid. Flavor is very bitter when drunk plain. I do get the fruity flavor in the taste, but it isn’t as pronounced as I would like. Usually when I make this I have to use at least one full splenda per glass in order to make it palatable. It’s really not good tea, green or otherwise. I’m not even getting a lot of green tea flavor to this, just straight up bitter. I drink it when I come here, but only because they really don’t have much else to drink. It’s either this or water. All in all can’t recommend. It’s really bad.

I was craving lemon last night and I had this ancient teabag from a teabox around. A good a time as any! I didn’t think this was too bad. Plenty of lemon that I could tell was from different lemon elements. I noticed the sweeter lemon verbena flavor. There was a hint of hibiscus which didn’t really hurt this blend, it gave it another layer of sour. haha. I didn’t notice any of the mint that was mentioned… I didn’t really want mint in this anyway. Not bad. I think Bigelow tends to be the grocery store teabag brand of choice for me… other than Numi maybe.

I enjoy trying out fancy loose-leaf teas- earl grey is certainly my favourite black tea. But at the end of the day, when I come back to a cup of Bigelow’s earl grey after all those fancy loose-leafs, I don’t feel like my tea quality has dropped.

I could barely taste the peach in the tea! It was a faint after-taste at best; at worst it was a slightly pleasant flavour of tap water. I promise you, I do not have a cold. You would be better off with a loose tea.

Tastes like walking into a candy shop that was opened many decades ago; it has a taste about it that you will fall in love with. It is full bodied, though a bit dry, like dark berries. I used to steal these from the tea area where one of my family worked, but I would love to have my own! Let it steep for around two-three minutes; it has marvelous potential and the rose hips balance the tartness of the berries perfectly!

Not quite as full-bodied as a fruity tea should be, leaves drinker slightly dissatisfied. Nevertheless, it is smooth, with perfect ingredient choices that completely complement each other. Slightly dry in the mouth; smells like a candy store. I would get this again! Steep a bit longer than most fruity/herbal teas for best taste.

- with milk and a spoonful of honey -
This was one of the few Earl grey brands I’ve tried that managed to disappoint me. Wouldn’t buy again.

So, when looking at the daunting task of my tea collection and getting things out of it, I decided starting with an “out with the old” approach would be best. I’m glad my spreadsheet is arranged by date, and this tea had an expiration date of November 2018. Uhh… okay. Well, that isn’t too far past, at least not so far long ago I’m not willing to try it. But if I’m not sold, I’m not going to feel guilty about simply tossing the rest of it, either. I think I probably put off this one because every other bagged Bigelow tea I ever tried I didn’t like. Yes, including Constant Comment. (And that may have entirely been up to the age of the sampler packets I received too, but I wasn’t about to spend my own money on a brand of tea I historically don’t like on a full box of it to test that theory…)

I used three teabags for 400ml of water in my travel mug, and did a brief 2 minute steep since CTC. And while this is probably the best results I’ve had with Bigelow yet… I’m still not really feeling this. The vanilla aspect actually isn’t so bad. It actually tastes a bit cookie-like… it’s reminding me of the flavoring from that Sugar Cookie Sleigh Ride by Celestial Seasonings I finally got to try last month. But even with the brief steep, the black tea is slightly bitter, and my main issue is the chai element… the spices are so artificial they are distracting and off-putting to me. I feel like I’m tasting that same weird artificial clove taste that I tasted in the Stash bagged Chai, and it leaves this really unpleasant taste on my tongue. The ginger flavor, too, feels overly pungent and artificial, how it is in too many bagged lemon ginger teas.

So, I realize it’s a bit of an oxymoron that I like the artificial sweet cookie-like vanilla flavoring, but can’t stand the artificial spice flavors. And the vanilla comes in first and is quite nice, but then the spice hits toward the end of the sip and lingers and sort of ruins it for me.

This isn’t so bad that I can’t finish this, and in the grand scheme of things, if I was at a restaurant and all they had was Bigelow tea, considering I’ve never liked anything by Bigelow before, if they had this one, I’d probably pick this one. If, you know, I didn’t just order Dr. Pepper instead.

Well, it’s Christmas at the parents house, which means I am cut off from my usual stash of brew. Instead, I find myself stuck drinking the only tea they keep in stock – Bigelow Plantation Mint. I brewed it according to their directions. I can’t say exactly what temp the water is because it was a stovetop kettle. I did follow the directions on the package and only steeped for 2 minutes. It was definitely long enough, the flavor is strong. The Mint of it is for sure present, and it sort of makes my mouth tingle drinking it. The mint flavor also lingers so it gives for a surprisingly fresh mouth feel after sipping. The tea itself is sort of an afterfhought here, and I really don’t know if there is any actual tea in this as it is hard to taste through the mint. Now, my mom has sworn by this stuff. According to her, a steaming cup of this with a shot of Paddys works wonders for a cold. I think I will let her have it. Back when I only drank grocery store tea, this was good enough. But now that I’ve been drinking higher quality loose leaf, this stuff is kinda bad. Nowhere near as bad as the cup I had today at the nursing home (That was something labeled as tea but I’m pretty sure was just sawdust they waved past a tea plant). But Plantation Mint gets a bye from me. Once I’m done with what I have I probably won’t buy any more. I can get better quality mint tea elsewhere.