The Republic of Tea

Got an amazing swap package from*Darby* yesterday, which was filled with tons of these Downton Abbey teas. I don’t even like that show, but if it’s a RoT tea, I need to try! :P
Decided to start with this one since it’s an herbal, and I really need to relax after my trip to Vegas.
The dry leaf smell made the ideas of this tea being mainly rose confirmed in my mind. But while it steeped, the rose aroma was totally replaced by raspberries.
I thought maybe it would still taste like roses, but maybe intertwined with raspberries.
And I was totally wrong.xD
There was no flavor of rose at all. I actually found myself a little disappointed. It seriously just tastes like raspberries. Maybe a hint of something flowery, but definitely not roses. Apparently this has hibiscus in it, but I didn’t taste any of that either!
Oy.
This is not a tea for me! >< This was my first tea of the day too, and since I didn’t drink anything yesterday, I was excited to be home again and drink a crap load of tea. Hopefully the next ones won’t be nearly as bad!
Never been into raspberries. I imagine if you love those, this would be a great tea for you. But just not for me. Thanks for the sample, Darby!

This is one of my favorite “dessert” teas—I definitely have to be in the mood for something smooth and very rich. I have the wee bags of this. I would not guess by the taste that it’s a black tea blend, but rather rooibos. Maybe that’s just me. :)

Anyway, the almond vanilla taste is great, but perhaps on the chemically side, which is why I didn’t give this a 100 of pure delight.

This tea is a good relaxant so it gets some points for that to counterbalance the relatively uninspired flavor profile. The spearmint is on the muted side and the stevia gives it a slightly ‘sweetened’, as opposed to naturally sweet, flavor. It’s pleasant enough, just wouldn’t buy it for the flavor alone.

Went to Fresh Market today and they had this on clearance. I’m a big green rooibos fan. Figured I’d grab it. Brewed it up and the first smell has a very nutty smell. First sip is the same. Not tasting the coconut but as it cools, each sip I’m picking up other flavors. It’s decent for a bagged tea. This one is probably headed to work with me.

Yum! This is quite tasty. The ginger in here is more like a candied ginger rather than fresh or dried/grated ginger. Not artificial at all, just lacking that bite you get fresh. I made it a bit light with 1/2tsp to 4 oz vanilla soy & 4 oz unsweetened soy. Next time I could definitely add a bit more. I also think this would be fantastic for mixing. I could see it being delightful with blueberry matcha and I’m dying to try it with the sesame matcha Cameron B. so sweetly gifted me.

I love the packaging as well. It comes in a resealable zip bag inside of a nice cylindrical tin. I picked this up in my grocery store at $14 for 43g/1.5oz which I think is a decent price compared to other flavored matches, and especially considering the package. I’d love to try their yuzu matcha in the future, but sadly I can’t find it locally and Republic of Tea’s website charges $18.50 not including shipping which I find a tad pricey.

I got this sample in my December RoT catalog and am finally getting around to trying it. I was excited to see that this was a green rooibos, since most of the other chocolate peppermint teas I’ve tried have been red rooibos and can tend to have a woody aftertaste. This one has a nice smooth peppermint flavor as I’m sipping it, but the strong stevia aftertaste completely ruins the experience for me. I wish companies wouldn’t pre-sweeten their teas!

Finished the last of my sample yesterday. Ah, it’s just so delicious!! I love it so much! ^^ Can’t wait to get more of this tea myself!! :D :D :D
Thanks to The Cookie Lady again! Keeps getting me hooked on these RoT teas! :D

Backlog:

Holy Shanghai!!
Another RoT that I am beginning to fall in love with! It feels like people usually give bagged teas a bad rep, but I keep trying RoT teas and end up really loving them! They make such excellent Dessert teas! _
I think I actually like this better than Lupicia’s version of a chocolate and banana tea. In Lupicia’s version you can taste the black tea base too much, and it’s incredibly easy to over-steep it, which sucks for me because I am infamous for over-steeping.
This tea has a rooibos base, and the chocolate and banana flavors are both strong enough to cover up the woody rooibos flavor.
Plus, this tea is decaf! Perfect on sooo many levels!
I can over-steep it, and it will be fine.
It’s the perfect blend of chocolate and banana.
It’s the perfect dessert tea to satisfy my dessert cravings.
Anddd it’s decaf!
Ahh this is a must buy on my list. Thank you sooo much for this sample, The Cookie Lady! You keep getting me hooked on RoT teas! :P

This is the tea that got me into drinking tea more than just randomly. This spurned my whole sale change from drinking tons of soda during the work week to drinking tons of tea and a soda for lunch. This tea got me with its intoxicating aroma of Cinnamon and Orange. Orange being one of my favorite smells, and foods. I love orange in many different capacities and figured it couldn’t hurt in a tea. I had always wanted to try red tea so this was me dipping my toe in. This tea while you would think could be very overpowering with taste is not, its very light and the cinnamon and orange pair together amazingly. Something about the soft woodiness of the Rooibos really melds well with the Orange and the spice of the Cinnamon. A definite try if you are a fan of citrus teas or red teas in general. Feels like it would work on both the cold winter night as well as a summer day.

Oooh, I quite like this! I’m not a huge ginger fan, but I love gingerbread, and this smells exactly like the gingerbread from a box my mom used to make 10 zillion years ago when I was a kid! It definitely has a ginger flavor, but it’s more a “baking ginger” than a zingy, fresh one. A touch of cinnamon, and a touch of vanilla or cream or cake flavor…I added some sugar to it, as I felt like something very sweet tonight, but it probably didn’t require it. A bit of milk would probably taste good, as well, but I wasn’t in the mood for it this time. I got a good 10 oz from my one steeping, and it tastes sufficiently strong, so maybe mine was fresher. I did get it straight from RoT, not retail, so that may have helped.

Yummy! It’s not refined, but it’s kind of like junk food in a cup. I’d rate it higher, but it has no subtlety to it. However, sometimes that’s what you want. :)

This one is just utterly OK. It was a bit weak, which is always a negative for me. I added a little sugar and milk, which were nice, but it was just kind of blah. I mostly got the chocolate and strawberry as aftertastes, but they were there. I agree there is a kind of dustiness about these flavors, and it’s a bit more cocoa than chocolate. I do give them high points for not having anything that tastes artificial, though. I have a few bags of this, and may try it again with 2 tea bags in 12 oz or so to see if that helps. It’s worth keeping what I have, and drinking it, but I probably won’t be rebuying it.

This one is another cupboard staple for me. Relatively inexpensive and available most of the time at my grocery store make it a standby. We’ve called it “tummy tea” for years, and it’s perfect for when there’s a little indigestion or sour stomach. That having been said, it’s also nice on its own. It’s mild but distinctly minty, with just a little softening from the lemon balm. A little sweetener brings out the flavors immensely. It’s one of the few teas my kids will drink, as well. This one is very comforting to us – it’s mild but still has plenty of flavor, without that in-your-face mint jolt many mint teas have.

This was definitely an impulse purchase I picked up today at the store. I’ve been wanting to try it for a while, but I don’t have such a great track record with Republic of Tea.

In the bag it just smells like rooibos and artificial flavoring. I ended up steeping this for 7 minutes. At first I didn’t taste much flavoring at all but as the cup cools, it is coming out more. I get a bit of almond and creaminess which I suspect is the coconut. It does have a very artificial flavor IMO.This was better with a bit of soymilk but I can’t say I’m a big fan and now I have a whole tin of this stuff. Perhaps I can find a way of making it more palatable. Ugh.

p.s. – it is better when steeped for 5 minutes instead of 7.

A fantastic pumpkin spice tea! I really love the flavor. I may let mine steep a little longer than some but I like the flavor bold (I do add a splash of milk and some honey to make it more like a slice of pie in a cup). I didn’t find that a 6-minute steep soured the flavor at all.

Overboard TTB

The tea box arrived today, and after a quick look through I have twenty-something teas I’d like to try. Looks like I’d better start sippin’!

The name of this tea sounds so good, but I remembered that both rosebudmelissa and jewledthumb said it was bitter. I decided to lower the water temp to 200°F to see if that would help. The good news, I’m not getting any bitterness. The bad news, I’m not getting any maple either. There is a nice pecan flavor that I find rather enjoyable. I added a little sugar to see if I could coax some maple flavor from the tea, but sadly no. Ooh, but I do have maple leaf cream cookies. Let’s forget for a moment that it’s not even noon yet. The tea and cookies actually go together very well. The sweetness of the cookie really highlights the nutty flavor in the tea.

As a nutty tea this is good. If the maple flavor was present it’d definitely up the rating.

I drank this tea all through high school, I’d take bags with me to school and make tea in classes with cool teachers. it was my first experience with a higher quality tea. At first I thought sage was just in a name because I didn’t taste it at all. I love the fragrant blackberry steam to this day. Its a really delicate tea, I couldn’t find any regionally characteristic black tea taste. But I still drink it constantly, at least until I find a better go to tea. Even then i’ll still drink this out of nostalgia.

Soo you know what’s lame?
On BF Cost Plus had an AWESOME sale on tea. And there was a RoT that was half off and I had been wanting, so ordered two of those, and figured since I got those, I’d also pick up this since it was so cheap. The only reason I got this was because I got the other teas.
Then like 2 weeks later they sent me this tea and said the other item was backordered. I was fine with that, because I’m cool for waiting for a good tea. But THEN I got an email a couple days ago saying that they couldn’t get their backorder items and that they canceled my order. It’s so frustrating!
I ordered this tea when it was in stock. I’d understand it more if it had been a tea from like a different country that they couldn’t get more of. But no! It was the freakin’ Republic of Tea! >< Like seriously. I’m never ordering from Cost Plus again. They suck >>
Anyway.
This tea.
It’s actually pretty good. I am too lazy to actually make legit matcha these days. But I’ve always liked the flavor of it. Steeped this for a little less than a minute and a half and it was perfect. It’s creamy and not too bitter or strong. A very nice matcha.
While I’m pretty upset about not getting the teas I mainly wanted, at least this one wasn’t a total waste of money. I wouldn’t buy more of this, but I’ll enjoy drinking the 49 tea bags I have left. xD

I’m a lazy iced tea maker—usually the bag stays in the water for hours. I heat up one quart of water just below boiling (usually in a retired mason jar, in the microwave), toss in my sweetener of choice and the bag, screw on a lid, and let it sit on the counter to room temp. Then I put it in the fridge and drink it cold. Delicious! This tea does have more basil than I expected, but it wasn’t an unwelcome surprise. The basil is only slightly spicy. ;P Very different, but very yummy! :)

Overboard Traveling tea box

I am so glad I didn’t pick a tin of this up. It’s bitter and almost has a cardboard note (can cardboard be a note?). Anyway, I steeped for 3 minutes, tasted a bit and added sweetener. With sweetener, I’m still getting the cardboard note, but at least it’s only 6oz since I used 1 bag.

hmm… This is one of those teas that tastes nothing like what you imagined. More like, they put the literal ingredients and expected them to taste the same after being dried then having hot water over it.

Tastes good, just, not really like what I imagined. They did a great job, really. I guess I was just hoping for something a bit lighter. Quite full bodied.