Four O'Clock Organic

I’m the last person to have Traveling Tea Box ‘A’ before it goes back to Momo. It’s been an interesting project to be part of, & although most of the teas in the box didn’t interest me much (to be honest), there were a few tasty blacks that I kept (& Momo is really going to enjoy the box when it gets back to her later this week!).

This tea did catch my eye. Why?
1. I absolutely LOVE ginger
2. I’ve been wanting to drink something without caffeine in the evening, as I’m a terrible night owl & maybe I’ll go to bed a little earlier…probably not…but it’s worth a try, right?
3. It contains chicory, which I actually like the taste of!
4. It doesn’t contain rooibos, which I’m not a huge fan of.

Some of us remember the good old days when more herbal teas had chicory in them, & I know some still do, but it seems like these days almost everything that is caffeine free is made with rooibos & honeybush. They don’t taste bad, but they tend to somehow get out of the filter/bag/strainer (even when I combine 2 methods of filtration) & end up in my cup. Then a piece attached itself to my tonsil, all it takes is one little piece, and ackckckck!

I’m pleased to say that this tea is quite tasty, in my opinion. It’s roasty & bold from the chicory root, a little heavy on the cinnamon, I can taste the licorice root (which I also love) & it’s nicely spiced like a chai of sorts. Little Terri & I absolutely adore Chai, so thank you to whoever added this to the box!

I want to start by saying that I actually don’t like licorice, I got the sample of the tea and thought I’d give it a try. The tea smells very much like chamomile to me. It doesn’t actually have a licorice taste, but every time you take a sip there is like a 2 second distinct “feel” of licorice. You don’t so much taste or smell it, you just kinda feel it. Better experienced than explained. One thing that does turn me off quite a bit is the splenda aftertaste, it’s lingering for a good 30sec after a sip.

An ok tea. Not really rewarding when you resteep, unfortunately, and there’s more raspberry than creme. All in all ok.

A lovely bagged tea with a strong, comforting fragrance. Tastes quite good upon resteeping, though a third resteep isn’t really rewarding.

I wasn’t sure I’d like a banana-based tea, but this one was a nice combination of a hint of the sweet flavor of bananas and the spiciness of cinnamon. Great for warming up with after spending time in the snow :)

So, I was at a PhD defense earlier this week, and picking up a titbit to munch on when the teas caught my eye. There were the usual Higgins & Burke teabags, and mixed in amongst them were some “Four O’Clock” teas! Not a company I was familiar with at all. And to top it off, they had a bagged straight white tea! So of course, I nabbed a bag and took it home with me (I of course had three partial thermoses of tea on the go then, so wasn’t planning to brew anything else up to watch the seminar).

Decided tonight/this morning was the time to brew this up before I forgot about it, so I did. Went with usual-ish white tea parameters as I really had no idea…. of course, it only just occurred to me to look on the packet for instructions, and there we go, I was good on time but a little high on temp (they recommend 85C). Ah well.

Now, I haven’t had many straight white teas, so that will make this a bit difficult (i.e. I won’t be able to tell what’s different between this bagged tea and a loose version of the same). Except… I just realized that bai mu dan is actually one white I have had straight! Hmm.

Anyhow, the flavour of this tea is rather familiar. I don’t know if it’s the same as the BMD I had previously, but that’s certainly a possibility. It’s vegetal, but not in that juicy/beany/chewy sort of way. More… grassy, almost, except that’s not accurate either. It’s a bit astringent, but I must say… it’s actually not bad at all! It certainly doesn’t taste “high quality”, but to me, it doesn’t taste bagged either – I’m getting a nice lingering “tea flavour” at the end of the sip which is not something that I’d expect with a bagged tea, though that said, I think I’ve really only drank bagged blacks before, and I don’t get “tea flavour” from blacks whether loose or bagged.

Anyhow, I’d probably pick this out again if that basket of teas reappears at the next thesis defence (which sadly, won’t be mine, although… sooooonnnnnn…….)

Apologies for this rather confusing log – my sleep schedule is impossibly out of whack, and I’m a little crazy right now…

Tea bag time!

As with all teabags, the aroma is very faint. There are hints of freshness, as the ingredients read natural fruit and vegetable pieces, but you mainly find the lemongrass dominating.

Steeping gives you a more fruitful aroma, with the lemongrass not too far behind. I think the apple pieces are dominating, which lends to it’s sweetness.

The brew is a deep and cloudy green, with a mixture of rouge tones, possibly from the orange peel and rose hips.

As I had suspected, it is quite a blend, with the rose hips and lemongrass seemingly fighting for dominance over the fruit. It is appropriately sweet, but there is a darkness to it, with the lemongrass brightening slightly.

Notice I haven’t mentioned cucumbers once, as it is nowhere to be found in aroma or flavor. It’s quite disappointing considering I bought it mainly because of the cucumber, but if I had read the ingredients beforehand, I would have suspected this would not be a cucumber flavored green tea, with just too many other flavors in the mix.

Nonetheless, it is an acceptable bagged green tea.

I used this as the base of a chai. Wow, it was delicious. I opened up 3 teabags and added 1 C of water and 1.5 C of vanilla almond milk. I added 2 tsp of cane sugar and steeped for 10 min on the stove. It was better than hot chocolate. The spice is mild, but it is there.

I haven’t tried this straight yet, and seeing how good it was as a chai, I probably won’t. It would likely be a bit weak as a straight tea.

Adding milk and a bit of honey seems to soften the taste of the chicory root a little bit and now it does come across a bit more like gingerbread. Still not my favorite, though it isn’t terrible or anything.

The teabags themselves are annoying the heck out of me because they break open so easily and it’s a pain to have to pour the tea through a strainer after I steep it to get all the bits out. :/

The dry teabag smells more like cinnamon candy hearts than gingerbread I’ve gotta say. It’s better flavour-wise though it doesn’t quite hit the mark. It’s the chicory root that partially to blame I think as that seems to come out most prominently. It’s actually a fairly nice blend of flavours in my opinion but they should have called it ‘Holiday Spice’ or something, rather than trying and failing to get their customers to believe that the tea is supposed to taste like gingerbread.

Loved this te, very chocolately and very good.

I am not a huge chai fan but for a free sample I can’t complain. I actually liked this tea. It wasn’t anything special, mostly just easy drinking, not too overpowering, but nothing too memorable either. Wouldn’t buy it for sure, would I drink it again if offered – probably. I’ve had worse chai teas :P

Steep it for a while in very hot water, then add a bit of coffee mate! Yummy replacement to a chai latte!

Sad to say, the first tasting of this tea is “meh” – very weak, perhaps because of a lack of a black or rooibus base tea. Not strong or spicy. Will try again with some black or rooibus tea, and also with two tea bags. Added some vanilla coconut milk and agave nectar, but didn’t “decadent” it up much. Disappointed thus far…

I really love this one when I’m craving a sweet treat. I find it best with vanilla stevia and milk. I don’t usually sweeten tea but I find this one needs it to make it decadent enough to satisfy.

Earl Grey is hit or miss for me. I used to love it as a wee tea drinker, and at some point I simply stopped liking it (I’ve never heard anyone else call it a “gateway tea”, but…). The bergamot in this is very subtle, though, more flavouring the chocolate than the tea itself – analogous to dark chocolate with traces of candied orange peel. There’s a sweet raspberry note, and the chocolate is a pleasant “dry” cocoa in the style of Italian biscuits (rooibos, cocoa shells, carob). All in all it’s a very well-balanced blend.

This is from Four O’Clock’s organic line – it’s one of those little silky pyramid bags rather than a paper tea bag.

I am not allowed dairy products until tomorrow, but it was too late in the evening for caffeine. I was limited to my small collection of caffeine-free tisanes, but I didn’t want anything fruity. I wanted something heavier, like tea. But the chai rooibos just wasn’t that heavy. So I decided to experiment. I made it with hazelnut-flavoured coffee whitener (not mine, but my mother’s), with honey and vanilla extract mixed in. I don’t know, I felt like something heavy, spicy but sweet. …I want spice cake. Hrm.

Coffee whitener is quite odd, but I liked the hazelnut taste, so overall it turned out all right. Warm. Plus, it rids my mouth of the, uh, copper taste. Stupid wisdom teeth.

Firstly, thanks, Jillian!
Secondly, I should know better than to do light, delicate little tisanes with break room tap water.
Thirdly, this is nice and pleasant and summery, but I’m not getting any cucumber—just the lemongrass. A very hot, humid weekends looms; I think this will be great iced.

Addendum: VERY tasty iced.

I’m logging this again to follow up on my note to self: try it with some black tea, and see what happens. Well, the only black tea on hand here at work is Bigelow’s English Breakfast, which I usually avoid if at all possible. The combination of the two, however, was fantastic! See my note, here: http://steepster.com/teas/bigelow-tea/4311-english-breakfast?post=43843

Surprisingly sweet. Wish there was actual tea in this, though! I may combine it with some black tea and see how that works. It didn’t go well with milk, but maybe soy or rice milk would work better.

I tried this at the recommended steeping temp and it isn’t terrible it’s just kinda…blah. It has a weak green tea taste with lemongrass dominating the flavour. For a tea that has so many ingredients in it I was expecting more complexity. This could easily br mistaken for a lemongrass tisane of some sort – which is fine if you like that sort of thing, but I’m not a big fan personally.

The stuff in the mesh pyramid teabag looks interesting; I can see bits of citrus peel in addition to the lemongrass, what looks like some calendula petals, and other bits and pieces – in addtion to the green tea. It smells primarily of green tea and lemongrass and I’m not picking up anything I might identify as cucumber, but what does dried cucumber smell like anyway?

The steeping parameters raised my eyebrows – 4-5 min at 95 ºC – for a tea with (supposedly) sencha in it. So I backed off the temperature a good 10 degrees which might have been a mistake since the resulting tea was disappointingly weak. It mostly tastes like a lemongrass infusion with a few other vague herbally things mixed in. I’ll lay off rating this tea until I give it another go follwing the steeping instructions more closely.