IKEA

Given the price-point and that it was a peppermint tea, I wasn’t expecting anything too amazing. This tea, however, is surprisingly delicious! There is an almost cream-like, smooth element to the mint, maybe from the licorice root. The result is a tea that reminds me more of an after-dinner buttermint than a traditional, red-and-white striped peppermint. It is smooth and soothing. I have had it hot and cold and I like it both ways.

I really like this tea pot. For $10 you just can’t go wrong. It’s made of quite durable glass, has a well fitting plastic lid and a very fine, durable steeping basket. It’s fine enough to steep rooibos without loosing any through the mesh. It pours perfectly with no dripping. And the minimalist design pleases me.

One of my favourite features of this pot is that the steeping basket fits perfectly in almost every mug I own (the perfect diameter to fit into the mug, and tall enough to come right to the lip,) so it’s excellent for making just one cup of tea, if a pot is too much.

I am on my second pot. The first one held up well for quite a while, and then a big chunk of glass just popped out of the bottom one day when I put the pot down on the counter. My second pot has seen regular use for over a year without any issues.

Backlog, from the Here’s Hoping tea box

I love IKEA. I love their bistro, cafeteria eating, furniture displays, wandering in the showcase, digging in the As Is section, assembling my cool furniture and all their cool swedish goodies.

Finding this IKEA tea was like “WTFBQQ they have loose leaf tea?” I’ve drank their tea at the bistro, it’s like that red rose stuff.

Taste? Ehhh, I thought it wasn’t bad. Tasted like black tea (malty with some bitterness) and artificial blueberries. It was much better iced – turning into that classic snapple like iced blueberry tea. If this IKEA tea was hella cheap, I’d buy it just for making pitchers of iced teas for the family. Other than that, probably best to find a better quality blueberry black tea.

First cup of the morning from the Traveling Tea Box. I didn’t even know that IKEA made tea! I saw that it was a blueberry black tea and knew that I had to try it. One of my favorite teas is The Republic of Tea’s Wild Blueberry.

Sadly, this one is lacking. The dry leaves smell more of malty black tea than blueberries. I was expecting a strong blueberry scent while the tea was brewing, like other blueberry teas I’ve had. I couldn’t smell anything at all! There is only the faintest hint of blueberries if you put your face directly in the cup. The flavor is robust and malty, with a light blueberry aftertaste. There is a hint of bitterness that lingers, even after adding milk and sweetener. I’m glad I was able to try this tea, but I think I will stick to my juicy, bursting-with-blueberry-flavor Wild Blueberry tea. :)

One of our foster kittens just stuck her face in my tea! She has actually done this every day since she has learned to jump up on the table. As soon as she hears me making tea she comes running. All annoyingness aside, it is pretty cute. She’s the runt of the litter and we found out yesterday that she will be staying with us for two more months since she needs another (sigh) hernia repair. I am not complaining – I love that little tea drinking cat!

-Dry blend has medium black tea leaves and twigs.
-Dry leaves smell of malty black tea with a blueberry aroma. Tea liquor aroma is lightly of sweet blueberries.
-Tea liquor is a cloudy very dark brown color.
-Robust malty flavor and finish. Faint blueberry aftertaste with a touch of bitterness.
-Best with milk and sweetener.
-Poor tea. Very weak blueberry flavor with a lingering bitterness.

I adore This tea, but am unable to use the sliding rating scale on my ipad. Anyway, I fear this tea may have been discontinued by IKEA. The Friggs is not black tea, and it comes in bags (I prefer loose). Does anyone have info on whether Ikea has permanently discontinued this tea? I am having a hard time getting clear info from Ikea.

Lightly sweet with many hints of berry flavoring. Overall a satisfying (and satisfyingly inexpensive) loose leaf tea from one of my favorite places, Ikea.

Just had to add another note to this as a follow up. I had tea in this last weekend. I never ended up drinking it. 28 HOURS LATER and it was still 106 degrees F. Not hot, but also not room temp. After 28 HOURS….

Finally got my hands on one of these. After Em’s review, I had to try one!

It keeps things just as hot as they go in for hours and hours and hours. A great thing to have at your desk if you work where you can’t get up often to get more hot water. My mom wanted one for just that reason and I believe she’ll love this.

The only downside for me with this is that when I take tea on the road (which is when I have the most issue with not being able to get more hot water readily) is that it isn’t a thermos you can drink from. You do need a cup or something to pour into. (Duh – been since grade school since I had a thermos – there is a cup built in as the cap) Also I’d like for it to hold more than 2 cups to be a viable travel thermos.

And it is very thin. Going to have to buy a bottle brush to clean it.

Thanks Jillian
I brewed this one “lukewarm” for about 8 minutes.
It’s a very weak black tea base with subtle blueberry flavor going on.
This is pretty good cold but lacking for a HOT and Strong Black tea or Flavored Black Tea. Regardless it’s alright cold. Nothing much to say about it, really, that hasn’t already been said.

I’m happy I was able to try it and would probably exclusively drink this cold.

A good morning tea to drink with milk, with a light blueberry flavor.

Just picked one of these up at IKEA yesterday. I LOVE it! I boiled water and poured it in to see how long it would retain heat. It’s been over 12 hours and the water is still hot enough to burn you. How can you beat $6.99? I look forward to taking extra tea to work and enjoying several hot cups!

I tried adding milk and sweetener to this tea like some people suggested, but I didn’t find much of an improvement. There was maybe a tad more blueberry flavour but not enough for me to revise my rating of this tea. This is one tea that’ll probably go up for adoption some time in the near future.

Eh, I’m not terribly thrilled with this tea. Supposedly it’s blueberry flavoured but I’m not tasting much beyond the basic tea base. There is a hint of blueberry but it’s too subtle for this tea I’m afraid.

There was really no flavor here, blueberry or otherwise. It’s usual that I can’t taste any blueberry flavor in teas. And the black base for this was very mild and flavorless too.

I am logging this as a sipdown (102) because even though there is a little left, that is going into a blend of iced teas, so this will be the last unadultered session that I have with this tea.

I had a ton of this tea. An entire 100g pouch (which is a ton for me!), and I didn’t even like it that much. I’ve also had it for probably 4 or 5 years. But I did find that I enjoyed it well enough cold brewed, so that’s what I’ve been doing for the last couple of months… regular cold brews, nearly every other day, and now it’s gone. It was kind of one of those teas I never thought would be gone, haha.

I cold brewed this tea again, but this time it’s somehow thicker and creamier. It’s a weird sensation. Still a flavorful and tasty iced tea.

I’m bumping the rating up into the 80s on ths one because I’m really enjoying it iced! I cold brewed it last night for about 24 hours. The liquor never got very dark, which was initially disconcerting, but it’s still full flavored. A solid black tea base to hold it up, flavored liberally with vanilla and gently with the sweet-tart fruit flavor of rhubarb. The vanilla really brings out the caramel notes in the Keemum, and the rhubarb kind of sits back behind everything else, adding a fruity and almost floral flavor to the vanilla. This tea now reminds me of some other, higher quality tea, but I can’t place it now. Perhaps even one of my French ones, because it inexplicably made me think of Paris while I was drinking it. In any case, I’ll definitely make this one iced again!

I picked this tea up ages ago on a whim at Ikea because I love rhubarb, and it was on sale. Brewed up the tea is a deep reddish brown, and it has a pleasant aroma and flavor. It’s nothing truly outstanding, but certainly a nice cup when I’d like a fruity black tea that’s not berry-flavored. So many fruit black teas seemed based in berries, so this is a nice departure. The rhubarb doesn’t make the tea tart, and I have a feeling that the vanilla assists with giving it a smooth and somewhat creamy taste, as it keeps a low profile otherwise. Not a tea I’ll reach for all the time, but a solid, tasty tea nonetheless. Oh, and I’m not sure what the sell-by date on this bag was, but I’m certain I’m way past it and the tea is still flavorful. Then again I have a jasmine tea I bought in China 7 years ago and I still think it tastes fantastic, so what do I know. :)

The blueberry flavor is subtle, which is a good thing for me. It’s a nice aromatic mid-afternoon or morning tea.

LIght vanilla/fruit aroma to dry leaves. Full-bodied but not overpowering once steeped. Fragrant with vanilla notes. Mild flavor. Watch “sell-by” date when purchasing at IKEA.

Oh, steepster. The reasons for my absence are manifold but positive. A book to write, a new boy to date, a birthday month and much travel, two separate bouts of illness (flu, 1; head-cold with lingering cough, 1) which may or may not be related to the aforementioned travel, and the fall video-game release blitz have together conspired to keep me happily drained and preoccupied to the extent that what little remaining energy I have has been diverted to things other than writing tasting notes. I have been sticking with tried and true favorites. I have not purchased tea in over a month. This may be a good time to purchase lift tickets in hell.

But!

Last night I was feeling bored with the usual suspects, and I’ve had this left over from my swap with Auggy, so I decided to give it a brew. I didn’t notice until I actually sat down with it that it also contained vanilla (I probably could’ve deduced this from the name, admittedly) — but that is, in fact, the greater portion of the forward flavor in this cup, and it dominates the aroma. Once you sip, you get the warm fuzzy tongue-hug of vanilla immediately, and this gives way to a noticeable sweetness and the very, very slightly sweet flavor rhubarb mixed in. It’s not quite tart the way that rhubarb is, but there’s an astringency in the cup that seems to play into the memory of that tartness…and it’s not rhubarb-as-seen-in-strawberry-rhubarb-pie, but rhubarb the way it tastes when you get stalks of it fresh and eat it that way, only scaled back and toned down enough to not cause your mouth to pucker. It’s a very subtle flavor, but not difficult to spot — maybe ‘gentle’ is a better word than ‘subtle’.

Something about the tea reminds me of the flavored blends from 52teas — the apple flavors in particular. I don’t know if that’s the leaf or just a consequence of the rhubarb flavor. I am indecisive.

They say ‘Keemun’ for the leaf. I can see it. It just doesn’t have much character as Keemuns go; most of what you’d expect from it gets swallowed up by the vanilla, which is perhaps the point.

Not bad! Not something I’ll be looking to replace, but I like it better than I thought I would, and I’d be interested in trying other teas like it — which is apparently not as unlikely as it sounds; in searching for this online I discovered another vanilla-rhubarb tea from Sweden, produced by Friggs, whom I know from previous conversations with a Belgian friend of mine produces some kind of magical blabar (blueberry) tea. And I remember that because, blabar is an awesome word for ‘blueberry’, and anytime my friend says ‘Friggs-Blabar’ it entertains me.