Celestial Seasonings

I know a review won’t matter with 101 of them already and this one will get buried under the people that have multiple entries for this tisane, but I leave a note for everything so here we go.

I forgot how much I enjoy one of the old Celestial Seasonings stand-bys, stands-by, stand-bies. Immortal blends? Whatever you want to call it. Bright peachy sweet-tart, faintly herbal, little syrupy-thick, great hot or iced. The cream is present in the heavenly smell of the dry leaf as kind of a vanilla pudding note but I don’t think I get it in taste. I never not have a feeling of well being while sipping on this. Might take honey well if you like to sweeten your drinks. And you can leave the bag in a mug while you sip without developing any off flavors.

Different from most teas I’ve had. Good aroma but lacking in the taste department. Did mellow me out though!

I just bought myself an insulated teapot because I miss the teapot experience. The teapot is double walled stainless steel, but the spout and the cap are connected to the outer layer, thus the whole teapot still got quite hot to the touch, not as good insulation as a big thermos. But still fun to keep pouring myself small cups.

I drank through half the pot before I was sleepy enough to sleep, and today I just added more hot water to warm it back up. I’m really finding the taste of this one quite comforting lately, although I don’t use it as a sleep aid often, I probably should. The spearmint is what’s most noticeable, but I need to do a side by side with Tazo Calm which used to be my go to sleepy aid.

Had a nice cup of this before bed today. The usual – I feel like the Echinacea kind of coats my tongue in a weird way.

Personally this tea is my favorite. I enjoy the flavor it has because it taste sweet, but then again since I was a kid I had always mixed in honey or sugar (and a lot of it). I would always have it when I was sick or just to warm up during the winter. I don’t have any complaints.

I used to love this tea, but have found since that it has far too much cinnamon. It’s a strange feeling, being a cinnamon lover. Perhaps I only like this tea after it has sat out for awhile and it’s potency is a little lower.

A Berry Frui-tea July! I figured it was time for another bagged tea revisit, and I found this one at the back of the ol’ cupboard. I had five bags left, and figured I could do a cheeky sipdown if I made a quart of iced tea and used the last teabag for a hot cuppa.

I remember I used to really like this tea, and I’m very picky with bagged green teas. But now… ya… no. It just tastes odd to me. It just seems that bagged greens just can’t do it for me anymore. It at least doesn’t taste overwhelmingly-artificial-mandarin like most of the mandarin green and white teas I’ve tried of late, but the flavor tastes… off. A little… chalky, or metallic. I’ve had one other decaffeinated green tea before, and it also tasted metallic to me, so I wonder if my palate just picks up the processing those teas go through as having a somewhat metallic taste? I’m also finding that the green tea tastes more hay-like than grassy… but I imagine that probably has to do with the age of the tea, because… err… I just checked the expiration date on the box, and am not willing to admit that date publicly. (This is probably the SAME BOX I remember enjoying so fondly in the past! Daaaaaaaamn… I uh… should probably clean out my cupboards more often… At least drinking old tea never killed anyone, right?) I’ve certainly tasted worse (PTSD flashbacks to being a poor college student and thinking it was okay to buy Flavorite brand bagged green tea…), but this certainly just doesn’t taste right. Bleh…

The iced tea (brewed hot and then chilled) was only a slight improvement, but not by much. It still tasted very weak, and the same sort of off-putting hay/straw and metallic flavors seemed to be there beneath the mandarin flavoring. Meh.

All this did was make me want to steep my Green Tea with Mandarin Orange from TeaSource… The mandarin in that particular tea is a bit strong and a little artificial tasting, but the sencha base is really nice and grassy at least, and while the mandarin is a little cloying by itself in a hot cuppa, it makes a really nice cold brewed tea, and is even better steeped in lemonade. This just feels like a very, very weak comparison to that loose leaf tea now. Though I can see why I liked it back in the days before I had nice loose leaf teas…

I’m still not rating this as harshly as I feel I should, just based on the age of the tea, which may have a lot to do with the tea feeling so weak. But I still feel like that weird metallic flavor has more to do with the decaffeination than the age, since I’ve encountered that issue before, so it isn’t entirely off the the hook.

I’ll be in the minority on this one, I guess— I love it.
It has just the perfect amount of maple sugar in it to give it the woodsy, butterscotchy maple flavor without being sickeningly sweet.
The ginger is warming and gives it a nice spicy edge.
You can’t really oversteep it— it’s very low maintenance and suitable for busy work environments, like most CS teas.
I brewed this with hot water from the office coffee machine in my Tervis. I’m drinking this decidedly autumnal/ wintery brew in the middle of summer for the anti-inflammatory properties of the ginger. This honestly tastes loads better than a straight ginger or lemon ginger infusion, or the turmeric ginger tisane I’ve tried (although the turmeric ginger tea works the best medicinally).

May Flowers! This is the final of the four fruit teas I’m revisiting from the Celestial Seasonings fruit tea sampler! And since I had enough teabags of this one to make it iced (and that’s how I tend to prefer my hibi-hips teas anyway) this one was hot steeped and then chilled so it was icy cool!

Hmm… I may have to take back what I said about the True Blueberry being my favorite of the bunch (though it may be an unfair advantage, since I did get to prepare this one iced instead of warm). But I do think of the Celestial Seasonings fruit tea sampler set, this one works the best for me. The flavor is, once again, quite strong, but I think of all the flavors the raspberry blends the best with the tangy fruit notes of the hibiscus base. And since they blend so well together, the raspberry feels a bit more natural and juicy. It’s also easily the least obnoxiously sweet of the teas to me; there is a touch of berry sweetness there, but the tart and tangy notes are more dominant, and feel more natural of ripe raspberries to me. So of the four fruit teas, I think this one blends the hibi-hip base and flavoring the best, and tastes the least artificial of the bunch. It’s probably tangy enough that some folks may have to sweeten this one, which I would not say for any of the others in the sampler set.

May Flowers! Onto the True Blueberry from the Celestial Seasonings fruit sampler! There was only a teabag of this one left, so this is a hot steep.

The blueberry is definitely a step up from the Country Peach Passion and the Black Cherry Berry. Unlike the Country Peach Passion, this one is back to that fruity hibiscus base that I personally enjoy (which I’ll still admit I enjoy better iced, though with the warm blueberry flavor it isn’t too bad, since it reminds me a bit of warm blueberry pancake syrup). Unpopular opinion, I know, but I really like the tangy fruitiness a nice hibiscus/rosehip base provides. The tea has a strong blueberry flavor and a lot of sweetness, which really gives me the impression of a plate of blueberry pancakes (or at least blueberry syrup!)… but again, I just find the overbearing artificiality of the flavor a bit much (I have a feeling I’m going to be feeling that about all these fruit teas…) It’s not… bad, exactly, I just wish the volume was turned down a few notches. But, overall… a quite satisfying bagged tisane. I still need to revisit the Raspberry Zinger, but I have a feeling if I was going to pick up just one of the four flavors in the fruit sampler, the blueberry might just be it!

May Flowers! Since I started this trip down memory lane by finishing off my expired since [date redacted to protect my shame] Black Cherry Berry, I may as well go ahead and do the rest of the Celestial Seasonings fruit sampler.

I always remember Country Peach Passion being one of my favorites, if I am recalling correctly (at least, I have vague memories of getting an additional box of this one separately from the fruit sampler at one point in time, way back in the day). That may also be why I had a few more teabags of this one left than the others, so I decided to make a quart of iced tea to sipdown this one.

The tea had a strong peach aroma, but the flavor just… doesn’t hold up for me anymore. It may just be the more chamomile-heavy base of the blend (I’m not much of a fan of chamomile), but honestly I think it’s because I have started drinking too many loose leaf peach-flavored teas, which have such a natural flavor, that feels really refreshing and isn’t so overwhelming, and the flavor here just tastes… like fake-peach, like the kind of peach used in candies. It’s really sweet and really strong. It’s passable, but… meh. Honestly, it just feels like a bit much for me to drink this plain. I could imagine it possibly making a decent mixer with a rather plain bagged black tea to make a decent sweet peach-flavored iced black tea, though.

Full review: https://teatimetuesdayreviews.wordpress.com/2017/08/08/tea32/

May Flowers! This is another bagged tea revisit; I only had one bag left of this in my cupboard and it’s rather old, so I figured it was time to sip it down. This is a hibiscus/rosehips blend with black cherry flavoring, and while I usually make teas like this iced, since I only had a single teabag of this left, I opted to just make a warm cuppa.

Though taking hibiscus warm isn’t my favorite (I prefer it chilled), that is actually my favorite part of this tea; the slightly tangy, fruity flavor of the hibiscus is very pleasant. It’s the black cherry flavor that I don’t care for so much. It’s very strong, sweet, and tastes very artificial; somehow I just can’t shake the feeling that I’m drinking liquified cherry Life Savers, and if it weren’t for the overbearing sweetness, the black cherry flavor itself reminds me far too much of cough syrup. The tea doesn’t have that medicinal edge or bite too it, but the strength of the flavor is on par with liquid medications and somehow brings my mind to those associations; I think that is why I would prefer a little softer touch.

This was a perfectly drinkable cup, but this isn’t a tea I’d care to restock.

Nothing to rave about, but the lemon and lavender make a pleasantly soothing combination, and at least there’s no hibiscus. Also it’s a good excuse to break in my new pot and cups :)

This is a good cup of relaxing tea. Tastes exactly like it’s name-chamomile and lavender.

I recently opened the box of this I’ve been saving for the holidays, and I’ve already had several bags. The flavor is so buttery and delicious. It’s like an actual sugar cookie. I’m going to have to order some more boxes of this. I use two bags for 18 oz of liquid, and I add sugar, milk, and vanilla. It’s one of my very favorite teas. I’m sorry it gets so many negative reviews. It really does need those additions to make it great, but I don’t hold that against it because it brings the buttery flavor that I rarely see in a tea.

Chai to Stay Dry! Decided to do another bagged tea revisit. This one fit into my chai theme for the month, but is a decaffeinated chai, making it a nice pick for a Sunday evening when I have work in the morning. I remember enjoying this one a lot in my early tea-drinking days, but I also remember liking Stash’s Chai Black, and when I revisited that tea, I found it extremely clove-heavy and just too artificial-tasting in its spices. So I’ll admit, I was a bit worried I’d have that same experience all over again.

I made a big cuppa of this (with the teabags removed, loose-steeped in my gravity-well infuser, since I find the paper of the bags sometimes comes out in my bagged teas), and settled in to watch Twitch streams with my cuppa. And… this tea totally holds up! This may be only the third (or maybe fourth?) bagged tea I’ve revisited that I still really enjoy! It has a rich, spicy flavor, but there is a good balance to it. I get a burst of cinnamon at the front of the sip, with some cardamom and clove toward the finish. It’s a fairly strong and lingering spice, but the tea has a sweet vanilla flavor to the base that is just so pleasant. Because the spice in this blend does come off a bit strong for my personal tastes, I like adding a bit of sweetened vanilla almond milk, which accompanies the present vanilla flavor very nicely, but if I had a bag of this on the go, I would be fine taking this plain.

Guess I’m learning the hard way that i am just not that big a fan of herbal tea. I much prefer black or green.

This tea however, is bearable because of the strong peppermint that masks the herbal tastes.

I like this one for a different take on Lemon tea, especially with fish this goes well.

An excellent afternoon tea to go with chocolate