Herbal Infusions

Sipdown! Made up the last of this yesterday. Delicious as always. I’m now out of cacao, but will hold off getting some for a while, since it’s pretty readily available.

Nearly out of this now, so I probably shouldn’t have had it again, but oh well. LBCG will have to tide me through until I can reorder it. Made in a travel mug again, and just left it steeping while I drank it. Not even that annoying when bits get in your mouth, because they kinda taste good :P

Drank a couple mugs-full of this on the weekend. Left the leaves sitting in the mug the entire time, which works just fine for this sort of tea, and it was delicious. About as close to hot chocolate as one can get without the big caloric hit.

Still like this one just as much as previously – like a sugar-free (and dairy free) hot chocolate. I accidentally left the infuser at my boyfriend’s place, though, so probably won’t get a second infusion. Sucky :(

Mmmmm, after the success of my last bag of Cacao Mint, I was craving more chocolate, so brewed up some of this (of course, I neglected to finish off the last of my original bag, which would have been a sipdown… sigh). Anyways, it was delicious as expected. Chocolatey and just a hint of sweetness, and three good infusions total.

yep…still prefer just plain ol’ cacao from HI…though HI’s customer service and communication with their customers is so awful, it’s hard to justify either. I’m actively looking for an alternative to their cacao as a result. this one is mint and chocolate but it’s watery and wimpy. so meh. even after a 15 min steep

SIPDOWN! Figure i might as well finish this one off today since it’s the straight cacao that i prefer. Not that I have any of that one left but hey, not to worry! Still enjoying this one and it’s nice to start my day off with a few good teas (i’m ignoring the first two i drank today). Costco trip later this afternoon once my other half is off of work. I don’t really want to go since it’s a little chillier out there today but i figure i’ll just pack some tea and get through it.

choco mint! thank you :)

Popped this one into a mug today so see how it compares to the straight up cacao from Cha that i had earlier. I hadn’t been impressed with the vanilla one way back when, so i didn’t have high hopes for this one. Truth be told though? This is actually pretty good. I can see this being a decent enough replacement for the mint chocolate from the Persimmon Tree that i like in a pinch. I still MUCH prefer the straight cacao one though, so I will be looking to add that one to my cupboard eventually. Thanks indigobloom for sharing this one!

Sample sipdown!! yeehaw :P
Hmmm, I don’t mind this at all, for a green. I’m very picky about my green teas…
The dry leaf aroma, as Sil mentioned, is intoxicating. I wish I could have a perfume like that! Very fruity, like stewed plums. Compote anyone? Steeped, not so much, unfortunately.
No matter! The flavour is pleasant. Definitely plum like, in a natural and subtle way. With a little sugar(1/3tsp), that part emerges a bit more… moving from slightly tart, to that same stewed plum profile from the dry leaf.
The green tea part, well I like that to! It has a certain bubbly like effect on my tongue that I am getting a kick out of. That must be the guayasa!
Funny, when I first sipped, I was immediately reminded of a rather similar tea… Ume Vert, from Lupicia. But then as I got through my cup, I noticed a few differences, despite the fact that my Ume sample was gone eons ago. shrugs
So overall: Yum! I’d buy more, one day.

I love this tisane!!
Hot, it’s a cup of soothing creamy orange yummy. A little rough on my throat for an herbal, but then it IS lapacho and I figure there is no way around that.
Cooled down to room temp, it looses most of it’s punch. Maybe next time I’ll add a dash of sugar and see if that holds better, because I was so looking forward to having this iced over the summer, or as a popsicle.
So here is my rating…. Hot: 85, Cooled: 65 Overall: 75

1 tablespoon for 248 ml
Infused for 8 minutes

Cacao base with spice flavour in the background. I much prefer the pure cacao base which really allows its full flavour to shine.

Thanks to Indigobloom for sharing this with me!

SIPDOWN! (300 to go)

Thank you Indigobloom for sharing this on with me. The dry aroma of this is delightful! it really is a nice plum, green tea smell. When it’s brewed though, the scent becomes more green tea than anything. While drinking this, i get slight hints of the plum but nothing that really shouts out to my tastebuds. It’s a pleasant enough green tea but nothing to write home about on the plum side.

Whoops, missed logging this sipdown! 817.

Definitely tastes like mint hot chocolate, but my previous opinion stands that too much of the cacao deliciousness is overwhelmed by the mint, which makes it not much better than a mint rooibos/honeybush or mint chocolate black, except that it’s technically a herbal with no funky flavour (though in my experience, mint chocolate HB is usually free from weird flavours).

ETA: I retract my earlier statement. This is now my preferred way of consuming a mint chocolate beverage. Yum.

Fairly tasty chocolate mint tea, pretty much like mint hot chocolate. Yummers. The mint, however, covers up some of the chocolate goodness, so it’s not as obviously a better chocolate flavour than… chocolate flavour in other mint chocolate blends, so I’d be torn as to whether I’d want something like this when I could have a more easily obtainable mint chocolate rooibos. That said, there is definitely no funky rooibos flavour, which is a plus. I suppose, however, that this may not be caffeine-free, since chocolate does contain caffeine?

Thanks for letting me sample this one as well, Indigobloom!

Sipdown! Thanks to Indigobloom for a sample bag of this tea.

I found that it was not noticeably different from the regular cacao tea, though I didn’t brew them up side by side to really compare. Therefore, it tasted pretty much like hot-chocolate flavoured water. Tasty. I wouldn’t bother with purchasing the vanilla flavour myself though, just would stick with the plain.

I’m a little excited now…I just meant to get the teas out on the table for tomorrow’s packing up swap stuff..and uh 2 hours later all my packages are bundles up and just need addresses before they’re ready to go out! It also means that i’m now in a great place to have a bunch of sipdowns tomorrow bwahahaha! which is good since i added 3 teas to my cupboard tonight.

I brewed this one up and sadly, forgot about it for an hour…DO NOT DO THAT! it makes it taste not as good. lol I really wanted cacao..but i only have enough for a small cup and that’s being saved for tomorrow…

so the trick to this one is making sure your cup has a slice of the dried orange in it… that make this much tastier…though i still miss the vanilla :( It looks like ESP emporium has an orange vanilla version i’ll have to try someday :)

So the bad news? This used to be orange and vanilla and had a much creamier creamiscle sort of taste. the good news? I still like it :) Though truth be told i really liked the vanilla/orange thing Herbal Infusions had going on with this one. I may have to see if i can find a way to replicate it. Dropping the rating a bit since the tea has changed, but it still generally tasty. :) Of course now this also makes me wonder if they’ve changed their cacao tea from when i fell in love with it…

Final count: 168

Sipdown…and i’m SOOO SAD! I wish I’d accosted Indigobloom for more than a cup of this one. I don’t have the same issue with Lapacho that the girls do – for me it’s just another honeybush.rooibosy whatever leaf thingy dingy :) (yes technical term)

This smells heavenly and steeps to a delicious creamy orange brew. On a random side note, this would probably make some seriously kick ass tea infused vodka for my next experiment. This really is an orange creamsicle in liquid form, just a little less sweet, making it PERFECT.

Honestly…i’m just going to go see if i can eek out a bit more from my leaves….i hope. please. YUM!

SIPDOWN! This one is interesting. I probably should have started with the regular version of this before the vanilla one but you only live once! :) This isn’t a bad tea but there’s a weird taste going on that i don’t like. I have a feeling that if this was just cacao, then i’d likely enjoy it a bit more. We’ll see, as i have both the mint and the regular version from my swap this weekend.

Thanks to Indigobloom for passing along a sample of this one yesterday! Also, sipdown!

I’ve had a lapacho orange (without vanilla) before, and don’t recall being terribly enamoured with it, but after giving her pouch of this a sniff, I felt it was necessary to try this. The orange flavour here is quite strong, and combined with a lovely creamy aroma (vanilla), which came off as almost a yogurt-type smell when I poured the leaf into my infuser.

Flavourwise, this is actually rather good. Very orangey, in kind of a cross between orange pop and fresh orange sort of way (but thankfully not orange peel!), which is tempered by a creaminess. (I really seem to like citrus cream teas, though I don’t much care for citrus in tea by itself despite loving lemons/limes!) The lapacho isn’t even really causing “scratchy throat syndrome” too much (maybe a little), which it usually does for me.

I don’t think this would be a tea I’m too likely to purchase for myself, only because I’m wary of lapacho for a few reasons, and don’t like that it makes my throat feel scratchy, but the flavouring is pretty great here. If the base was honeybush or something, and the tea tasted the same, I’d probably knock my rating up to about 90, but given that it’s not a tea base I favour, it does lose a few points. I’m curious, however, how this one would be iced and/or made with milk and frozen into popsicles… (it tastes like a creamsicle, and how awesome would it be to have healthier creamsicles…)

ETA: Re-steep in half the water still has flavour, but I’m not in love with it.

1.5 tablespoons for 375 ml
10 minute infusion

Authentic chocolatey flavour. Thin mouth-feel. Slight woodsy note.