Lipton

Steepster was playing up for me earlier today, so this was actually written this morning.

My Dad and step-mom are busy setting up for my step-grandma’s 90th birthday today. The hubby and I went over last night to drop off some chairs for the big event. My hubby always likes to show up at their place right after dinnertime. Even though we always have tons of food in our house, he just loves my Dad and step-mom’s cooking, and they just love to feed us whenever we visit. It’s amazing that they always seem to have leftovers for him, as if they know he’s coming. It’s kind of cute.

My Dad offered me a cup of this tea. It’s not bad, in fact, this used to be one of my favorites at his house, but compared to the teas that I buy, it’s nowhere near my favorite. It has a touch more tartness than I like, and the teabag itself is only strong enough to make a single mug at the strength that I like. As far as grocery store boxed teas go, it’s still pretty decent, I just wouldn’t buy it for myself when there are so many nicer options that I enjoy.

I don’t… hate this tea, in fact I drink it when I go and visit my mum, so it has a fairly happy association for me. Still, it’s always given me the impression of tasting kind of… fuzzy. If it weren’t for the weird, fuzzy taste, it’d be any other cup of Lipton EG, but with it, it’s a bit like rubbing your lips against peach fuzz. I realise this is a strange association to have with a tea, but it’s true!

Good, but only in very small doses. This is not an every day tea, in my opinion. This is the tea you keep in the back of your cupboard and drink when you’ve run out of nearly everything else.

Last night at mom & dad’s. We were playing cards, when mom suddenly exclaimed, “Oh, I forgot to pour up the tea.”
“Uhm, how long has it been steeping?” I asked.
“Not long, I put it on just before you got here.”

Yeah, we had been there like an hour and a half. Typical glass of mom’s iced tea. Is it any wonder I seldom notice astringency?

Not sure now, what Lipton version I have noted drinking at Mom and Dad’s. Which ever, it was wrong, as this is what they stockpile. Boil a pan of water. Turn off burner. Add 8 bags and forget while playing cards. Remember sometime later and pour into pitcher. Fill rest of way with tap water. Put ice that has been in freezer a bit too long in glass and add tea. Ahhh. Yep, this reminds me why I bought my first box of Bigelow back in the day. I don’t even bother trying to introduce them to better tea any more. They love it. I love them. Happy times.

I cleaned out all but the necessary stuff in my office yesterday. Filled the truck with stuff. How did I pack it all in to that office and why? What is left is my radio, tea kettle, and tea. Yeah, another truck full :)

I drank this afternoon at the office, trying to compensate for yesterday’s caffeine overdose that kept me awake half of the night.
It wasn’t great, not a lot of flavors. The little flavors you get from this tea-bag does not taste like fresh peppermint, but felt as if the bag was very old and had been forgotten in a cupboard for years (which is definitely not the case given my colleagues consumption of this brew). I’m sure a second cup with the same tea-bag would be extremely watery.
A very basic herbal tea, not bad-tasting, whose main advantage is that it’s widely available and rather cheap.

I can’t drink hot teas still because of my surgery so I thought I would make some of this. This is my first bagged tea since I started with loose leaf a while ago, and man I was surprised. It was so bland and unflavorful, full of chemicals and artificial flavors, and all around bad. Looks like I’m going to have to find a cheap black tea to make iced from now on.

BLEEEEEARGH! This is one NASTY tea. I tried it just as I was coming out of my Lipton-induced shell, and it scared me right back in! It tastes burnt and all kinds of nasty. Never again.

So many negative reviews! As I saw one other reviewer say, this was my gateway drug to tea and typically my go-to when I’m at home. I have it both hot and cold (I’m from the South and a sweet-tea-a-holic.) and I think it’s a good basic tea. A good, cheap, basic tea.

Backlog: This was your average spearmint tea (fresh and minty) with a touch of a spicy cinnamon and a somewhat sweet taste..almost licorice.

First sips were fine but it seemed that the more I drank the more this licorice style flavour kept growing and I truly hate licorice. For me this was too interesting of a mixture, I like my mint tea minty.

Overall I found it a little odd with the flavour combination and I shall be passing this off to a friend instead.

Got this a while back to fill in for the Bigelow caramel vanilla I love so much (didn’t see it at the store). Definitely pleasantly surprised, first steep it smelled almost waxy, some odd smell to it.

Drinking it though, at least when I’m in the mood for something sweet, is lovely. About a teaspoon of sugar and a little bit of caramel creamer, stepped for a good 5-6 minutes, and I could drink a few cups of the stuff quite happily. The little edge of bitterness keeps it from sickeningly sweet (at least for me).

Someone gave me a gift card to drugstore.com, so of course I don’t buy anything but tea. :) Grew up with the plain old Lipton tea bags, but these are their attempt to keep up in the growing loose tea market. First sniff smells to me like pure strawberry. Not overwhelming, just a nice light hint of strawberry. Supposedly there is passion fruit in there, which I’m not quite sure that I could identify if I tried :). After steeping, the liquid is a medium colored brown and smells wonderfully sweet, and less like strawberry. My guess is that is the passion fruit chiming in. Served iced, its a very nice light sweet fruit tea, predominantly tasting of strawberry. Pleasantly suprised for a bagged tea.

I loved this green. It actually has less antioxidants than the regular green which doesn’t make loads of sense since it’s marketed as superfruit but okayyyy. Anyway, it’s fruity and light and I thought it was good. Didn’t try it iced, but I bet it would be great.

I found this one weird. It’s supposed to be plain green, but it tasted like it had licorice root in it.

My senses of smell and taste are starting to come back, so I decided to try something new. I picked this up at my local Asian market a few weeks ago, as I had my eye on it before.

It’s a standard black tea with a distinct puerh flavor. It falls on the bold side, and brews up dark. The flavor is hearty and smooth with just the barest hint of bitterness. It definitely tastes aged to me, with that woody, musky taste, much like a puerh. Something about it reminds me of creeks I used to see in fall, when they would get dammed up by autumn leaves. Honestly, I’m surprised at how much I like it. Especially since Lipton makes it, of all companies. Of the black bagged teas I’ve tried from the First Oriental Market, I like this one the most.

White teas are my favorite because of their light, subtle, often beautiful tastes. This tea does not disappoint. It is an excellent blend of the flavor of the tea and the flavor of the fruit. A sip begins with the smooth, refreshing taste of the white tea and then finishes with a lovely blend of the mango and peach flavors. I think I taste more of the peach than the mango, but I’m okay with that!

Lipton Black Pearl is a very pleasant surprise in good quality, especially since it is coming from the tea company whose name is often used as an adjective to describe poor quality tea. Black Pearl is a surprisingly smooth black tea that does not have any traces of bitterness and one that I would view as being worth buying again. Sure it would be easy to find a better quality black tea but the fact remains for its price range and being a grocery store black tea I think it would be hard to beat.

I have this tea every Wednesday, and until I saw the package I had no idea it had coconut in it. So it gets bonus points for being able to disguise coconut, but at the same time it’s bagged tea. I doubt there’s actually any coconut in it.

It’s pretty good. It doesn’t taste fresh and amazing like loose tea does, but as far as bagged goes it’s pretty good.

After being surprised by how good Lipton Black Pearl was I decided to try their pyramid chai tea. Sadly this is not made out of the same high quality tea base as Black Pearl but it is still drinkable at least. The spice level is a bit low and bland when it comes to chai teas but not too bad as to give away the rest of the box. But it is a given that I will not be buying this tea again once it is empty.

A very interesting and summer feeling herbal tea, which reminds me of a mix of fresh spearmint and watermelon. Which I find all the more interesting considering that the tea contains spearmint but not any watermelon so it must be the mix of the citrus and other herbs that when mixed together recreates the flavor of watermelon.

Hmmmmm… I don’t know what it is about this tea because back in January I LOVED IT. Seriously, I got some of it to try from starberry and immediately went to the store to pick some up. Only to find out that this particular flavor has been discontinued, or at least I couldn’t find it on Liptons website, the internet in general, or any nearby store. BUT, it was at Starberry’s walmart so she picked up a couple boxes for me.

I brought it to work because I haven’t been drinking my bagged tea at home a lot; I just have so much loose leaf now! I figured this would be a great way to get through the neglected teas in my cupboard. Yesterday, I cracked into this stuff and was surprised at how.. grainy? it was. You definitely get that melon taste at the end, but the first sip is bitter. I thought that maybe I just oversteeped it yesterday since its a green tea and I might as well have just left the bag in my mug with how long I steeped it. Today though, I steeped no more than 4 minutes with the same result.

I DON’T KNOW! Maybe after drinking so much better quality teas I’ve just become a prude, haha.

Anyway, the mediocre work tea list ever expands!

This is a nice tea if you want something simple.