T2

A Berry Frui-tea July! Decided to do another of my T2 fruit samplers, and I was extra careful with this one, only steeping it in a mere 300ml of water, when the sampler stated it was designed for 450ml, since I really wanted to ice this and didn’t want it to turn out weak-sauce like what happened to my Fruitalicious sampler.

I actually tried doing the “ice shaker” method for this sampler and that was my first time trying that, and I was surprised how well it worked! My hot tea was ice cold in seconds and, amazingly, it didn’t taste watered down! Success! So, the flavor. This tea has a strong grapefruit flavor, and I’ll admit that grapefruits and grapefruit juice isn’t one of my favorite things… that said, it has enough sweetness that it doesn’t have the sourness that I dislike in grapefruits. It is still a bit tart, but it is more of a citrus sort of tartness. It’s a very tangy grapefruit/lemon flavor, and a pretty nice iced tea. It is at least more unique than most of the T2 fruit teas I’ve tried so far. That said, still not a favorite, only because grapefruit isn’t a personal favorite flavor for me. I’m sure those that love grapefruit would really dig this.

A Berry Frui-tea July! I got this at the same time that I purchased my mass of cheap after-Christmas T2 samplers, but this was actually a highly-discounted tin of one of their old summer fruit tisanes that they had discontinued. The dry leaf has a strong coconut smell, but is also quite sweet, and almost a little nutty.

I made a cold brew batch and it steeped up a nice deep ruby red from the hibiscus in the blend, but it smelled like… a sort of coconut creme dessert? It just had a really overpowering coconut scent. Then there was something very off-putting about the flavor. It could have been amazing. The red fruity hibiscus base was nice, but there was this very strong coconut flavor that tasted funny. The dry leaf didn’t have that “expired sour coconut” smell to me, so I didn’t think the coconut in the blend was off, but the coconut flavor in the blend tasted really over-powering, unnatural, and there was something about the aftertaste that made me feel like an aerosol coconut sunscreen or body spray had been sprayed into my mouth. It just lingered in this odd way and didn’t feel… right.

So, then I decided to try making a warm cup. After that steeped up, I took a sniff of the cup, and I definitely got that acrid, sour coconut smell that I recognize immediately from rancid coconut in a blend. I still don’t smell it at all in the dry leaf like I usually do… there just must be too many sweet ingredients in the blend that are hiding it (the licorice root and brittle, maybe?) It also didn’t present at all in the aroma, or even the taste, of the cold brew. In the cold brew, it tastes like sunscreen, but in the warm brew, it’s that sort of sour/acidic flavor that tastes sort of… too much like being ill to be pleasant.

There is a good chance that, being this was a discontinued, highly discounted tea when I got it, the coconut may have already been off or close to when I got it. Had I thought about it, I may have been able to put the sealed tin in a foil-lined bag and stuck it in my freezer until I was ready to use it this summer, but I didn’t. C’est la vie.

Not the fault of the tea, and I probably should’ve thought about it before I went on a “ooo, lots of cheap tea!” ordering frenzy, to be fair, so I’m not even going to rate it. If nothing else, I’ve now had the lovely experience of tasting liquified sunscreen. I do think with fresh coconut this tea would’ve been amazing, because the base was great, very fruity and and juicy with a nice balance of tanginess and sweetness, and the coconut probably would’ve blended in nicely with the berry fruitiness if it didn’t taste like sunscreen or vomit. If T2 ever decides to revive this blend, I’ll try to grab it when it’s in season.

tl;dr: The wrath of coconut strikes again!

A Berry Frui-tea July! Another of my T2 fruit tea samplers, and probably the one that sounded the most interesting to me, considering it had a lot of ingredients I’ve never tasted before (dragon fruit, sea buckthorn berries, chokeberries…)

As per usual, I brewed this iced, though I did hot steep this one and then pop it into the fridge to chill overnight. Sadly, this came out really weak. It just feels too watered down, like water with a slightly tangy fruity flavor to it. I’m not sure if it’s really supposed to be this light of a flavor, or if my sampler was just not as potent as I was expecting…

These T2 samplers have always held enough tea for two cups (16 oz.) so that is how I prepared it (with 16 oz. of water) but it is definitely tasting like there is a major lack of tea-to-water here… so I’m guessing this sampler just didn’t have enough tea in it (it is a chunkier herbal). Since I only had the one sampler to brew up, I can’t exactly try again with only a single cup of water, either, because I really would like to see if I could get a stronger flavor out of this… meh. So disappointing! I’m going to leave this unrated until the day I can give it a fair shake… I’d really like to try it again, but T2, annoyingly, is one of those companies that doesn’t offer individual samplers (you have to get sampler sets and hope the tea you want is in one) and I don’t feel keen on getting one of their badly packaged 100 gram “cubes” just for a retry.

If anyone in the US happens to have some of this and would be willing to trade a sampler sized amount of this tea, let me know! It would be appreciated.

A Berry Frui-tea July! Decided to cold brew another of my T2 sampler stash. Their samplers are only enough to make half a quart, but at least it steeps fairly quickly as far as cold brewing goes. This is their Citrus Punch, which as far as I can tell, doesn’t seem to be available anymore.

This is a pretty standard hibi-hip blend. The base is a very thick fruit punchy tart/tangy hibiscus. I also pick up a subtle note of lemon zest, and more prominently, notes of orange and, oddly enough, coconut, though there aren’t any indications of it being in the blend (unless that is one of the added flavorings?) The blend is tangy but still quite sweet from all the added apple, and a nice iced tea. I actually think that surprise coconut flavor was my favorite part, since I wasn’t expecting it.

I suffer from terrible period cramps and haven’t found anything other than painkillers to make it better – until I found this tea. Apart from how delicious it tastes, I believe the chamomile/lavender blend in this tea has amazing medicinal properties that relaxes me so much that it actually cures my cramps! Don’t know what I would do without this tea. Also perfect before bedtime. I can’t recommend this enough!

One of my favourite teas from T2! I am a huge fan of coconut and this tea has just the right blend of coconut, pandan and genmaicha. It tastes like yummy roasted kaya but without the sweetness. I much prefer this to Ette tea’s pandan chiffon cake. I brew a cuppa every morning for a guilt-free kaya indulgence. Highly recommend for an authentic Singaporean taste!

239/365

This is the last of the T2 samples I have in my cupboard, and since it needs milk and I’m not at work, it made sense to finally get around to it. It’s inspired by gingernut biscuits, which I quite like, so I have high hopes for this one!

In practice, it’s maybe not quite what I expected. Gingernut biscuits, to me, are a relatively sweet thing, and I know T2 can do sweet flavoured teas pretty well. This blend is much more on the savoury side of things; less gingernut, and more chai. There’s plenty of cardamon and clove (which I enjoy) plus a hefty kick of ginger (which I’m not so keen on). I can also taste orange, which I wasn’t expecting; there’s a little juciness, but it’s more pithy than fruity on the whole. As it cools, I can detect a little liquorice root – not enough to be obnoxious, but a little all the same. It feels fairly redundant, really, since for the most part it’s drowned out by the spices.

This isn’t one I’m particularly keen on, so I’m not too sad that it was limited edition. Most of the samples I tried lived up to their names pretty well, but this one fell a bit short. It’s not bad as a chai blend, but I was expecting something more.

A Berry Frui-tea July! Another T2 sampler sipdown! I usually prepare these iced, but this one had yogurt granules in it, so I decided to just drink it as a hot cuppa instead of waiting for it to chill (I didn’t want to cold steep it since I wanted the yogurt granules to melt, and was feeling lazy to wait for the hot tea to chill, so figured, eh, a warm fruit tea with my raspberry jam toast at breakfast certainly can’t hurt!) I wanted to use the sampler up and it makes two servings, so I used my big ol’ 16 oz. mug and had a large double-sized cuppa. Such a bright red infusion on ol’ Red White and Blue Day, too!

The dry leaf had lots of apple in it, but the brewed cup definitely smells very strawberry. It has a very rich berry profile, but that could be because I’m drinking it warm rather than iced, and I find that hibiscus tends to have a thicker mouthfeel to me when prepared that way (which is why I prefer these kinds of teas iced). There is a sweet strawberry top note, but the hibi-hip gives it an underlying dark berry flavor note that follows. There is a nice juxtaposion of sweet and tangy fruit notes that play on the tongue — it starts sweet, has a tangy mid-sip, and ends sweet. It’s really nice! There is a lot of tart ‘n tangy hibi-hip, but the apple and yogurt add a lot of sweetness to the cup too, and I’m really enjoying how those flavors mesh with each other. I’d probably like this more as an iced tea, but am pleasantly surprised how enjoyable this was as a warm cuppa. Something about the warm strawberry was very relaxing, reminding me of hot pastry filling.

FInished off the last of this sample from variaTEA yesterday. I’ve had it before so i knew what to expect. Soft mango but still tasty :)

Final Count: 55

Latte Sipdown (621)!

Pretty average in terms of flavour/experience – more black tea notes than mango so it felt kind of just like drinking an English Breakfast latte with a hint of mango. Still tasty, and it’s hard to have a bad latte experience. Just nothing “wow” about it.

Happy to have finished it off – gotta get in those sipdowns!

From earlier in the week.

I’m trying to chip away at some of the very generous samples that VariaTea sent my way a while back, and this is one of those teas. I mostly like this one; but this cup was more stonefruit like in terms of taste to me than mango, which is what it’s supposed to be. Still a tasty flavour though, even if it wasn’t spot on.

A VariaTEA share!

I was expecting just a plain, straight black tea blend so I was definitely surprised when I cracked open the sample bag and smelled fruit. Definitely not a traditional breakfast tea! I spent most of my time drinking this trying to place what exactly the fruit was; it seemed both like a tropical fruit and a stone fruit to me. I think, if forced to, I would have guessed peach. Turns out it’s mango, which I can see now in hindsight. Apart from that this was pretty smooth; malty and buttery with just a bit of a floral undertone.

Pretty nice, actually.

I tried this tea in the T2 store and immediately had to buy it. It’s sweet and fruity, and delicious as both a hot tea and an iced tea.

Tried this at Christmas and I thoroughly regret not buying it before they ran out. It was fantastic hot and, surprisingly, as an iced drink!

I desperately hope they bring it back.

Absolutely delicious! Tastes just like a hot cross bun. I’ll definitely be getting this at Easter every year.

I also didn’t find the cinnamon overpowering at all, so maybe it depends on the box.

A Berry Frui-tea July! Hey look, I found a tea with a name that nearly matches my theme name… works for me! This is another from the Great T2 After Christmas Sampler Haul of January 2018, and I’ll likely be whipping up the other fruit tea samplers I nabbed then during this month, too. Since they only make two servings, they don’t take long to chill when I brew them up iced (my preferred way to drink fruit infusions!) and are easy sipdowns (and I could use some freed up cupboard space!)

This is a fairly standard hibi-hip fruit infusion, that reminds me a lot of TeaSource’s Red Berries in flavor. It is a little less punchy than some infusions I’ve tried, with a fairly strong dark berry/red berry sort of flavor. I taste a lot of blackberry notes, rounded out with a tangy raspberry/hibiscus base, and a touch of a strawberry sweetness on the finish. It’s a very refreshing tea. As per usual, probably not the sort of tea the hibi-hip naysayers are going to enjoy, but if you like semi-sweet tangy fruit teas, it’s quite nice. I’ll probably be enjoying a lot of these types of teas over the summer.

223/365

This was my second watermelon tea of the week, and the second that was slightly disappointing. Bird & Blend’s tasted to me mostly of pineapple and coconut, but this one is mostly liquorice and mint. It reminds me very strongly of Teapigs’ Liquorice & Mint blend, in fact, which I dislike intensely. There is a little watermelon here, mostly in the mid-sip, and it is sweet and watery in a way that’s refreshing and pleasantly flavour accurate. It’s totally surrounded by the heavy dankness of mint on one side, and the intense sweetness of liquorice on the other, so that the overall effect isn’t particularly one of watermelon.

I made this one as a cold brew, and I think that was probably the right way to go. I don’t think it would be any more successful brewed hot, but I’ll give that a try in time just to see. Maybe I should put this one in lemonade? Or try and make an actual sorbet with it?

I think I can see what T2 were trying to achieve. Given that the flavour is watermelon sorbet, it’s like the mint is providing the coolness and the liquorice the sweetness. I get it, and I think it’s quite clever, but I don’t think it really works. Both of those flavours are far more powerful than the watermelon, with the result that it just seems to get squeezed out.

Are there any really good watermelon teas?

I tried this as a tea lemonade once and now I keep having it that way and have worked my way through the large amount of leaf I’ve had for quite some time. It’s very nostalgic because it tastes like a mango lemonade I used to get at a restaurant my aunt would take me too.

I made this tea this afternoon as a tea lemonade and intended to take it to my room and drink it while I listened to my income tax law lecture for this week. Then a lot of stuff happened around the house in preparation of something for my nephew that is happening tomorrow and I didn’t get a chance to drink it…or listen to my lecture.

So, it’s now 10:15 at night and I am finally drinking it. Still have not listened to my lecture, which is bad since I need to listen to it for tomorrow afternoon. Instead, I am listening to Roswell Strange’s podcast, Geek Steep, which is far more interesting! I am really enjoying it and definitely recommend it for all! I might be biased but it’s a lot of fun!

This tea is so awesome as a tea lemonade. Just juicy mango and great lemonade flavor…from the lemonade.

I used to love getting a fresh mango lemonade from a restaurant called Oliver and Bonacini when I was younger. My aunt would take me and my cousins when I slept over at their house. Then we’d get to go to indigo and get books. This, as a tea lemonade, tastes just. Like. That! So it’s nostalgic and deliciously mango to compliment the lemonade.

Also this is surprisingly comforting during an otherwise shitty weekend. Even this tea lemonade had its issues. I ended up oversteeping the tea because the first mug I pulled out broke when I dropped an ice cube into it. Saturday morning, my sister woke me up because our aunt in Israel messaged to tell us our dad in LA had a heart attack. He’s ok and my aunt is a doctor and said his heart attack was best case scenario of heart attacks. Before that, we learned my sister’s blood pressure has gone up and the doctors are worried about preeclampsia. So all in all, a shitty weekend. But the tea is good so there’s that.

One of my friends from work traveled all the way to Australia and returned with T2 teas for me. Unfortunately they were 100 gram boxes of tea with no way to seal the packet once opened so it took me a while to buy tins to put these in which meant it took me a while to try this. However, when I finally did, I did enjoy this tea.

As a breakfast blend m it was more brisk than I usually prefer but it wasn’t astringent which is nice. Also it was definitely a black tea with mango flavor as opposed to a mango black tea which basically means the base and the fruit were present and fairly equal in strength.

Check out my full review here: http://sororiteasisters.com/2018/06/14/brisbane-breakfast-from-t2/