Southern Boy Teas

I got this from Lala a long time ago – so sorry it’s taken me so long to get to it , and I actually finished it off yesterday, but I was too exhausted (think i’m catching a cold) to write a note on it, and went to bed really early.

So I remember really liking it quite a lot, and wished I read tasting notes about trying to re-steep this one, since I sweetened the first batch a little too much. It was still really good, but a little candy-like, but again, probably because of too much sweetener.

I really noticed the blackberry, which I really appreciated since I love blackberries a lot. Same with raspberries for that matter. The raspberry I found in the aftertaste. I would drink this again, if the opportunity arises.

Thanks for sending me this, Lala!

I cold steeped this, as I do most all of my blacks, but it isn’t my favorite. It is flavorful, but I get a fairly prominent “soap” note that I usually only find with bergamot in earl grey. Others will like this for sure.

This was pretty good, considering I dislike artificial banana flavored things. But the flavor could be too mild for some.

Everyone seems to be giving this iced tea rave reviews which makes me a bit puzzled as I didn’t really care for it. Maybe it was the way I steeped it?

I put the pouch in one of those iced tea pitchers from Davids Teas and filled it half full with boiling water. The steep time was only about 2.5 minutes so I don’t think I oversteeped it – but you never know. After that I filled the jug the rest of the way with ice cubes and cold water – nothing too esoteric. I found that i just couldn’t taste much lemonade flavour in the tea – I maybe got a little bit of it when I added some sweetener but that might be because the simple syrup I used was lemon-flavoured.

So what do you guys think? Are my tastebuds just out of wack?

I’ve realized that like my love of peach, watermelon (melon flavors in general) are some of the great loves of my tea life. It is odd, I don’t love them in candy form, and while I very much enjoy the real fruit, I prefer berries. But in tea…something about melon of all kinds just sings to my heart. Maybe because berry flavors are good but truly underwhelming compared to the real thing, whereas sometimes the flavor of the tea is preferable to me to an actual watermelon if it is not at its best?

Whatever, I don’t care. All I know is that I cold steeped this to let the watermelon really shine without too much black tea taste overwhelming it, and I am happy.

I brewed a gallon of this and I’ve been drinking it all day. It’s really refreshing. The plum notes are more distinctive when the tea is at room temperature rather than ice cold. I really like how the plum and the white tea taste together. I like this a lot better than I anticipated, I expected I’d like it but that it’d taste rather ordinary to me – but the plum is really quite tasty.

I polished off a half gallon of this tea yesterday. The mandarin orange is strong and tastes authentic. The black tea sits off in the background, maybe a little hidden because of the stronger mandarin orange flavor, but I still taste the black tea. The mandarin is definitely the star of this show though. Sweet, juicy, vibrant.

My brother came over for his birthday dinner tonight and he requested a mint tea to go with the grilled fish we were having. He’s not usually a fan of mint, but we had some really phenomenal mint iced tea at a local restaurant the other day and he was wanting to see if we could replicate it at home. I also just bought a new pitcher from Samovar and have been wanting to use it so this seemed like a perfect idea. In the end, we weren’t able to use the new pitcher since it wasn’t nearly large enough for this tea, but we found a larger replacement and were still able to make it work.

The dry tea in this rather large teabag smells of chocolate and mint. I steeped it for three minutes as the package suggested and then mixed it together with sugar and water just as I normally would for iced tea. It’s very refreshing and tastes lightly of chocolate and mint. The chocolate is the more prominent flavor here, both in the scent and in the taste. It’s not a very strong tea, but I’m sure that’s because it is still warm. It will be much better once it’s had a chance to chill in the fridge.

This is one that I’m really enjoying so I would say that I would definitely consider purchasing this flavor in the future. Thank you, thank you to Nichole for sending me a couple of bags of this! I’ve been wanting to try one of the 52Teas blends for a while and this was a great first impression.

I took this from the GCTTB3 last year when it came around, and I finally felt lik making iced tea out of this today! However, I don’t think I let it steep enough in the hot water, since after I diluted it to its appropriate strength, it tasted somewhat thin and not very lemony. Kind of a grapefruit hint, but that was about it.

Hey, at least it’s a sipdown.

This one is actually pretty tasty, with lots of passion fruit flavour and subtle dessert vibes. The second steep had less passion fruit and more generic cake flavour, but it’s still good.

I cold steeped it in the fridge for +8hrs, instead of using the boiling water and ice cube method- for some reason the taste of ice cube water in tea bugs me. Second cold steep went through a similar process.

I’m pleasantly surprised with how much tea I got out of the tea bag, but I wish I didn’t have to pay $4 for one session with a re-steep (14g of fannings). Iced tea goes so quickly!

Both the boyfriend-creature and I really liked this one it has a great mix of juicy, ripe raspberry and blackberry flavours that stand out well with about two tablespoons of sweetener per 2L pitcher. I’ve switched to using simple syrup in my iced teas as I’ve found that agave alters the flavours too much and honey is too difficult to dissolve. Still I know I’m using much less than the commercial iced tea preparations use and I find the end result is much tastier and thirst-quenching.

Yum! Love me a banana flavored tea. This one sadly didn’t have a lot of banana flavoring but the taste was still good. I really like the black tea base SBT uses and it works with the flavors here really well. I was able to get a couple sweepings out of this.

Here is the rest of my review:

http://sororiteasisters.com/2015/05/09/blueberry-and-banana-iced-black-tea-from-southern-boy-teas/

Yum, Yum Yum!

I am really enjoying this. I think I’ve steeped it 3 times. Really happy with it. It doesn’t really even taste like tea. The more I steep it tho, I am picking up more of the sweet creamy flavor that the honeybush is providing. This will be perfect for this summer. The strawberry lemonade tastes fresh and doesn’t taste artificial at all.

Another sample from a tea friend that I have been remiss about writing a tasting note. For those who have sent me samples, I will get to them…I promise :) This one comes from Lala.

Part of the reason why I took so long to get to the SBT’s that were sent, was because I’m used to doing cold brews, so I was afraid of screwing up the samples, by hot steeping and then cooling. I decided to ‘get over it’ and finally brew this up, as recommended by the steeping instructions. So I had to figure out two things…a quart vs a litre, and do I have something large enough to brew this in that was glass. Google helped me figure out a quart. I found a glass teapot that was a little smaller than what I required, but not by much, so I went with that.

Brewed and cooled with a little sweetener added. Yes, it is tasty. Sweet, fluffy cotton candy. YUM :)

Thanks for the sample, Lala!

I cold steeped this for about 12 hours in a litre of water. I figured I’d need to dilute it and I was worried that it had over steeped, but it’s actually pretty perfect just the way it is.

The lime and cola flavours are distinct but not over powering. The black base is there in a supportive role. There’s the slightest hint of bitterness and astringency but not in a bad way at all. This is super refreshing and easy to drink.

It tastes like it would be good with a bit of sugar, but I’m drinking it straight and I’m really happy with the way it tastes. I will probably even try resteeping the bag (though I’d be surprised and impressed if I got another good steep out of it.)

I could see drinking this one a lot.

Fruit loops. Kinda reminds me of fruit loops! Honeybush is so much better then rooibos. Very light on flavor nut still good.

Backlog:

This tea was odd for me because I found that I liked it better “room temperature” than served cold out of the fridge. I found that the flavor delivery was stronger when I let the tea sit on the counter for about an hour to lose the chill before I started drinking it. When it was cold, I found it difficult to discern the peach and creamy vanilla notes. I tasted the sweet, buttery flavor of the green tea just fine, but the flavors didn’t really shine through the way I had hoped they would.

Until it lost the chill, that is. Then when it became more ‘room temperature’ I found the peach and cream flavors popped.

Backlog:

I really enjoyed this as an iced tea. Usually I drink the spiced teas hot, but, as an iced tea this really is refreshing. It’s a little sweet and a little spicy. The citrus notes are bright.

I also mentioned this before, I think, but I really do like the black tea base that Frank has chosen to use for his iced tea blends. It’s a nice, smooth, flavorful black tea. I don’t get a lot of astringency from it and it’s strong enough to hold it’s own with the strong flavors.

Tasty and refreshing.

Another one down, and this time no waste! This is my favourite SBT to date, albeit out of only three, and the only one I have managed to finish fully before it started to taste of fridge. As with the others I’ve tried, I brewed the teabag for 3 minutes in boiling water then topped it off with cold water and left it in the fridge. I added four teaspoons of brown sugar, but I don’t think that did much, as the resulting tea was not very sweet. I think if I had added more sugar the syrupy pop taste might have came out more.

As it was, the black tea base was more prominent than the cola and lime. From the strength of the scent from the teabag, I thought it would be stronger, and I personally would have preferred some stronger flavouring, so I think I will cold brew next time I make an SBT, but I know that Frank wanted the focus to mainly be in the tea, with the flavours enhancing it in the background rather than taking over, and so for that I think he’s done a good job. It does make sense really – if you want to taste lime cola and no tea, you buy lime cola. If you want iced tea with a hint of lime cola, this is the one to go for.

The black base is a touch astringent, but nowhere near as bad as it was when I oversteeped the last time, and it has a nice malty note which is interesting with the cola. Both the lime and cola come through together at the end of the sip, and it’s quite an authentic lime cola flavour. The scent is more ‘cola bottles’ but the taste is not as artificial. I managed to finish off the quart of tea in two days, which is saying a lot for someone who rarely drinks iced tea. I wanted to make another quart but the teabag, although kept in an airtight container, went mouldy overnight ):

Sipdown 24/304

Backlog:

I was really excited about this blend. A cookie dough flavored iced tea? YUM! I was just a wee bit unsure of how well those flavors would translate to iced tea though, but I had faith in Frank’s ability to make it work.

Really tasty! Really, really tasty! It takes a few sips for the flavors to adjust my palate to the idea of tasting cookie dough in an iced tea. But once those flavors developed, I couldn’t stop sipping. This pitcher of iced tea disappeared in record time.

Sweet, notes of buttery cookie dough. Hints of brown sugar and chocolate. And I really like the black tea base Frank has been using with his iced teas.

This is quite sweet on its own so if you’re one who sweetens the pitcher … you might want to taste this one first. It’s good unsweetened!

Please check out Frank’s Indiegogo campaign: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/southern-boy-teas-organic-flavored-iced-teas/x/4481332

Sipdown (129)!

I’ve tried dozens of 52Teas blend, but this is actually my first tea from the Southern Boy line. I’ve never purchased a SBT blend for a couple reasons; I’d never want two quarts of the same tea around especially if I’m the only one drinking it, overall I like hot tea better, and I just prefer cold brewing over making iced tea.

But, I recieved this one from, presumably, VariaTEA and since she was nice enough to send it I’ll certainly give it a fair chance. I waited to make it until my trip though; between me, my two siblings, and my Mom that’s definitely enough people to drink it – and my brother HATES hot tea but likes iced or cold brewed tea. Frank; he’s totally your target audience; doesn’t drink hot tea, has lots of disposable income since he’s 16 and working, and the conveniance of using a teabag totally appeals to him. We actually made this one together; it was fun getting him involved in the process.

I don’t know how I feel about this one; the jug of tea itself looks pretty unappetizing; it’s like a really, really murky/cloudy dark, dark brown or black colour and it’s leaving a black rim of scummy stuff around the top of the pitcher. Very unattractive looking.

But it doesn’t taste too bad; it’s got a thick mouthfeel and a very candy-like pear flavour to it. A little artificial, but not so bad. I taste a lot of the black tea; but I’m not so into it; I don’t like the black tea 52Teas uses very much; it has a really distinct taste to me that I’ve talked about in the past. It’s really quite starchy tasting today; and with so much of it? Nah; there’s no way I could go through a whole pitcher of this. The two smalls cups I had? Yeah, that was passible, but anymore and I think I’d be headed for Nope Mountain.

I hope the pretty overwhelming complaints about the SBT/52Teas black tea base is something that LiberTEAS will take seriously. It’s stopped me from enjoying several 52Teas blends that I’m sure I’d like otherwise.

But getting back to this one; I just overall feel a little torn. I like pear, a lot, and other than a subtle artificialness the pear in this is spot on. Candy like, but good. The rest? Well, let’s just see I don’t pity my Mom having to clean out the pitcher once they finish this one off. I just feel very “meh” towards this sweet starchy pear sludge.

Maybe if I were gonna try another SBT I’d pick one of the newer ones with a honeybush base. I don’t mind Frank’s honeybush that much, other than the occaisonal pepper flavour that pops up.

My weekend hasn’t quite gone as planned, so it looks like this will be my only sipdown. Hey, incremental progress is still progress.

I always break open the SB teabag and divide the leaf so I can make multiple cups over time instead of one big pitcher, trying the tea both hot and cold.

The dry leaf smells precisely like you would expect it to – chocolate and malty. Hot, the front of the sip is sweet chocolate. It quickly transitions into a nutty maltiness that reminds me of a lager. Not bad.

Cold, the nutty maltiness is even more prominent. The chocolate flavor seems to have almost evaporated. As with the marshmallow treat genmaicha, I find this one more pleasing hot than cold.

I got the silly idea to try this one carbonated. I would not recommend doing that. It ends up tasting way too malty, like chocolatey root beer, and not in a good way.