Numi Organic Tea

This didn’t strike me as anything amazing. I thought it was taste great with the cinnamon rolls I had for breakfast. Maybe the cinnamon rolls stole the show.

Tasty and intense!

A little too smoky for me, but better than peppermint.

this was one of the best tea’s i have tasted so far..i cant wait to try more numi tea’s

I have never met a rooibos I didn’t like. Of course, I haven’t met many, so there’s still time. Anyway. Indian that I am, I saw “chai” and “rooibos” on a box and of course had to buy it. I’ve just steeped my first cup and know that I’ll be returning to buy more when the box is finished. This tea is yummy! Because it’s got that chai flavour, I’m tempted to add milk to it and see how it tastes; I might try that next time. The only thing I don’t love about it is that the clove is overpowering. Maybe it’s just my dislike of clove, but it’s like the loudmouth of the spices: it keeps stepping on everyone else’s (nutmeg, allspice, ginger) heads and shouting, “Me! Me! Me!”

This tea was absolutely delicious! When you open to pouch you can immediately smell the aroma of the chocolate and spices of the nutmeg and cinnamon. The tea’s steep time was longer than it would call for but with this tea, the longer the steep time, the better the tea in my opinion. All of the flavors come together and give this tea a nice relaxing cocoa taste which is good for the days like today where it is rainy outside.

And bye bye. I’m having my last bag of this at work today. I won’t miss it, but I salute it for trying. :-) And for its role in helping me learn what I like and don’t like.

Looking forward to the day when I have to figure out the logistics of bringing loose tea to work!

G’day mate. ;-)

I am a babe in the mate woods. The only ones I’ve tried are this and the Tazo lemon. I have no idea what mate tastes like on its own, but my experience of these two drinks leads me to believe that the analogy mate-is-to-tea as chicory root-is-to-coffee may be apt. Or veggie burger-is-to-hamburger. If this is the case, I expect I am not destined to become a mate drinker. I am too much of a purist, and I tend to fixate on the thought that I’m drinking something that is ersatz something else, rather than something to be appreciated in its own right. This won’t keep me from trying mates, but it may keep me from cultivating a taste for them.

In any case, this one also has lemon myrtle, which is my bane. The Tazo has lemongrass, which I find more pleasing as a lemon flavoring. That said, this has a certain smoothness that feels creamy in the mouth and the green tea adds some “green” flavor as well. I have had this one several times and though it isn’t bad, I don’t expect it to grow on me.

Sipdown no. 25 for the year 2014. The entire family joined in, as there were exactly four bags left.

Personally, I’m glad to see it go. It was purchased as an experiment more than anything else and it has served its purpose.

The kids REALLY like it, though. I hope I can find something else they’ll like just as much so I won’t feel like I suck as a mother if I don’t restock this. ;-)

Still not my fave, but seemed like a good one to try on the kids. They like it better than I do, which is somewhat surprising given that it is less sweet than what they’ve tried so far (honeybush). Glad to have found appreciators in the household so I can finish out the last few bags.

It doesn’t have the natural sweetness of the red version; the sweetness here, such that it is, comes from the honeybush that is added in. The taste is decribed as woody on the box, but it seems to lean more toward reedy/grassy/twiggy to me. It has the taste of something that is supposed to be good for you (and this is supposed to be good for you). By that I don’t mean medicinal so much as health-foody. Though the taste isn’t the same, it’s the same sort of feeling I get from drinking wheatgrass or eating carob — virtuous as opposed to decadent, and I guess I’m looking for my tea adventures to be more Dionysian.

Although I’ll give it a few more tries to give it a fair shake, I don’t think I’m going to find this is for me, at least by itself. Good to know what it tastes like without additives (except for the honeybush), though, in case I come across green rooibos blends in the future.

I’ve been over caffeinating myself with all this wonderful tea, so I thought I’d seek out a good decaf and maybe sleep a little better at night — so I could wake up refreshed and ready to drink more wonderful tea! This is my second decaf attempt and neither has been what I’d call overly successful. The results have been choices that are serviceable but not very inspiring.

This one has ingredients similar to the Tazo Green Ginger, of which I’m not much of a fan, minus the pear. (Green Ginger has lemongrass in it, though it doesn’t claim a lemon flavor in its description of itself.) I like Ginger Sun better than Green Ginger, mostly because the ginger is milder and tastes more natural to me in Ginger Sun. There’s more sense of balance to it as well, though the green tea is a shadow of itself compared to some other Numi green bagged teas I have tried. You can tell it has been de- somethinged, which is my basic beef with most decaf’d drinks.

So the search continues.

Sipdown no. 134 of the year 2014.

Not something I’ll buy again unless I get talked into it by children, as there are so many other things I’d prefer to drink than plain red rooibos regardless of brand.

However, if you like plain red rooibos, you might like this. It has a distinct vanilla note, and it doesn’t have that pencil shaving thing going on that some rooibos does.

Made some of this for the peanut gallery tonight.

Peanut number 1, the elder, announced that he preferred it to the green version of last evening. Which I thought was amusing because the green version had honeybush in it, which is a flavor he particularly likes. About ten minutes later, he announced he really didn’t like it all that much.

Peanut number 2, the junior, said he really liked it, drank his down, and asked to drink his brother’s, which I nixed because number 1 is now probably coming down with whatever the rest of us already had.

I found mine rather meh. I remembered it being sweeter and having more of a vanilla note than I tasted tonight. But perhaps I’ve still got muscle memory of all that honeybush we’ve had lately still on my tongue and it’s that it suffers in the sweetness department by comparison.

I’d been wanting to try a plain rooibos so I could have a frame of reference when evaluating rooibos blends. This is actually pretty tasty on its own. Sweet, with honey and vanilla notes, and a tea-like flavor that is smooth and slightly toasty. I would probably pick a tea over this on most occasions for the flavor, but could see being in the mood for rooibos on its own every once in a while, or substituting it for tea to avoid caffeine if I’m overloaded (the couple of decaf teas I’ve tried haven’t been very good; I don’t like decaf coffee either).

Steep Information:
Amount: 1 teabag 2.6g
Additives: none
Water: hot spigot water, 1 mug (12 oz?)
Steep Time: a little over 5 minutes
Served: Hot

Tasting Notes:
Dry Leaf Smell: chai-like, spicy
Steeped Tea Smell: chocolate, nutmeg, vanilla
Flavor: chocolate, nutmeg, rooibos, earthy
Body: Medium
Aftertaste: nutmeg, cinnamon, warm spicy
Liquor: dark cloudy reddish-brown

Steepster Traveling Teabox Tea

It doesn’t have quite enough kick to be a chai. With all the rave reviews I was expecting something a bit more amazing. It is a nice spicy chocolate tea, but not something I am going to go out of my way to try. I am very glad I got the opportunity to give it a try via the teabox as I am not sure I would have been pleased to end up with an entire box of this tea. There are so many teas out there I want to try that i don’t want to be stuck with good tea, I want to only stock up on amazing tea.

Post-Steep Additives: none

2 parts honeybush + 1 part lime = yum!

I tried this tonight with one bag of the lime and one bag of Tazo Honeybush. While I don’t think I got the ratio right (it could take even more Honeybush-to-lime), I can see this being a good way of ratcheting up the sweetness of the lime without adding sugar or honey. The Honeybush significantly accentuates the natural after-sweetness of the lime, and makes it even more lime Sweet Tart-like. A fun experiment.

It’s like a lime Sweet Tart! Yes, it’s definitely tart out of the gate, but surprisingly, I’m tasting a sweetness to it as well that shows up after a few seconds. (And I’m not using any additives.) There’s no bitterness; a big plus. I could see keeping this one on hand for when the mood strikes.

lovely floral scent, lightly sweet and tart at the same time. Soothing with a plesant aftertaste. The only draw back for me it that it leaves my mouth a bit dry. Brews up a lovely amber color.

My husband Will just tried this one…here’s his take on it….
a little bitter but still pleasing to the pallet, has a semi-sweet aftertaste, leaves your mouth a bit dry, and has almost a soy taste to it as it settles in the cup….brews up a pale greenish-yellow. Pretty normal as far as green tea goes. Good.

Yay! My order from Numi arrived! Perfect timing to have an Easter tea with the ladies of my family on Sunday! I’ve been craving this particular tea since I first tasted it, but none of the stores near me sell it. I ordered it and now I am impatiently waiting for the delicate blush colored tea to finish cooling so that I can take a much awaited sip………mmmmmm perfect! Smooth and refreshing with a floral aftertaste. Almost like biting into a fresh rosebud.

I got this in a variety pack and I will most definatly be buying this one again. Lightly sweet with a beautiful rose smell, it’s not over powering so I could easily drink this tea all day long. I think it would be even better if I wasn’t so impatient and steeped it for just a tad longer and maybe just a tad less sugar added as well.