The Republic of Tea

In general, I’m not usually a fan of The Republic of Tea. Their tea bags don’t have strings, which I find very annoying and unhelpful, and they usually brew a barely flavored cup of water. So, why did I purchase a tin of 50 tea bags the last time I was in the local market? I don’t know. Something about the graphic on the tin and the name, Comfort and Joy, just called to me.

Well, if I try and compare this tea to any full-leaf, loose variety I have in my cupboard, it’s not going to stand up to the competition. Yet somehow, I find that I’ve been really enjoying this tea for what it is: a simple, easy-to-brew, nothing-to-clean-up-afterwards, perfect-for-the-evenings cup of tea.

Since I have a pair of tea tongs, I’ve gotten over the fact that the bag doesn’t have a string. And really, there’s nothing easier than sticking some water in the microwave and popping a bag of this tea into a mug for 5 minutes. When it’s done, I toss the tea bag and there’s no further clean-up necessary! I always use a dishwasher-safe mug, so there’s really nothing easier when I’m in the mood for a simple cup of tea and don’t feel like going through my normal, more involved brewing process and the clean-up that’s required afterwards.

It is rather lackluster in the flavor department, so I brew one teabag in about 6 ounces of water. This produces an enjoyable cup that usually disappears quickly. The flavor profile is mainly orange peel and cloves with a light, smooth, black tea base and a hint of licorice. I actually quite like it! It’s plain and simple and doesn’t pretend to be something it’s not. I can sit back and drink it without feeling like I have to analyze the cup and take notes or otherwise confer a lot of attention on it.

I just sip and relax and concentrate on something else, like a TV show or movie that I’m watching with my husband, as my cat curls up on my lap and purrs contentedly until he drifts off to sleep. Drinkable? Absolutely. Comforting? Yes, indeed. I may not stock it forever, but I am definitely enjoying this tea for the moment.

At the lower-mid scale of my ‘standard cuppa’. It might have gotten a higher score from me a year ago when I was just starting out with the wonderful world of tea.

Don’t get me wrong, and I still recommend this for making blends, but I have been spoiled by several seasonal/holiday blends and now this tends to fall short, and requires a bit of modification to bring it back up to my new taste preferences.

My recommendation is to add a little Vietnamese cinnamon to boost that component, a little fresh lemon zest or orange peel for more bitters to balance the profile, and a few cloves, this augments it sufficiently to bring it back to the good/awesome level and use it with blends that scream for mulling spices.

I have a love/hate relationship with this tea. I loved it when I first started drinking it, but now it tastes so extremely bitter and bleugh. It’s too much everything—spice, bitternotes, everything.

It’s a shame, I typically love seasonal teas. Plus, now I’m stuck with a completely undrinkable tea.

Oh gawd please no. There are some things in life you just can’t “un-taste”, and this is one of them. It smells okay, a lot of anise/licorice, so I thought it would make a good blend with some other teas, but once brewed it was horrific. The liquor tastes like a musky, stagnant pool of muddy water in the Amazon filled with fire ant poo and rotting tree bark.

Not that I have ever tasted musky, muddy, stagnant water from the Amazon filled with fire ant poo and rotting tree bark, but I imagine it would be pretty close to this brew.

Ugh, this one actually went in the trash after several attempts to brew it with various techniques, none of them resulting in a cuppa I could finish, let alone take more than 3 sips of. Tasted of chemical cherries and bitter green tea that’s been put in a pot of water and boiled for 30-45 minutes. At first I tried my usual 175F/1min/2tsp-cup “let’s meet” brew and got an industrial-chemical-bitter liquor that looked like green tea. OK, maybe its a bit delicate so change to fresh leaves, bring the water down to 160, a quick rinse to recover the leaves and then a 30-sec infusion. Now I had watery/diluted industrial-chemical-bitter liquor that almost looked like green tea. Definitely not a gyokuro so no need to try 120F@10sec, so I switched gears and followed the recommended steeping instructions on the label — 200 F for 3-5 mins??! Ummmmmm OK, what have I got to lose.. I hit the “200” button on the kettle and stop myself from reflexively reaching for a tin of black tea, say a little prayer to the tea gods they don’t strike me with lighting for this blasphemy, and prepare to soak this sencha for 3 minutes. Now I had concentrate of industrial-chemical-bitter liquor that looked like massively over-brewed green tea, the bitter receptors on my tongue cried out in horror as a sip washed over them. I knew it was coming but no amount of preparation could have steeled my taste buds for that sludge.

I hate wasting tea, but what I threw in the trash wasn’t tea so no sweat.

Medium floral notes in smell and taste. Very light hints of flower greens, like a slight scent of a greenhouse from 100ft away on a hot day. Has distinguishable sour mineral notes I’d expect from a Tie Guanyin and barely distinguishable smooth/creamy pine but not a “coat-your-mouth” silky kind. None of the toast/smokiness or woody flavors develop throughout the infusions and generally a tad weak for the variety.

Balanced but light, missing some traditional characteristics of a Tie Guanyin and does not change all too much over multiple infusions (other than just getting a bit weaker).

Still a good starter for the price and better than others I’ve had.

This just isn’t that good.

Sipdown #58, ending my day (unless I make another cup) at 358 teas.
This is yet another tea from Sil, & it’s a pleasant, mildly dessert-like cup to end my day with. Thanks!

I’ve been drinking this tea for decades. It’s delicious and beautifully balanced. My favorite herbal tea of all time.

I absolutely love genmaicha. If I could pick only one tea to have around, it would probably be genmaicha. I like it with a couple of sugars, but today I got the notion to add some of the vanilla simple syrup I made the other day. It was rather great with a touch of vanilla on top of the toastiness.

This tea tasted quite a bit like confetti cupcake Pop Tarts to me. I didn’t get much caramel if any, but that doesn’t really bother me, since I’m not a big fan of caramel beverages. Oddly enough, I’d eaten confetti cupcake Pop Tarts about an hour before I tried this tea, which is probably why the taste correlation struck me so much. I prefer my cupcake flavor to be solid and, well, cake-like. Liquid cupcake didn’t do much for me, so I don’t foresee myself buying any of this flavor. I am happy that the vanilla didn’t taste artificial or leave that weird alcoholy aftertaste.

This was a sample from the RoT catalog. I just can’t stand to throw out perfectly good tea, so I decided to get this over with and make it this morning. I had recently subjected myself to Teavana’s Pumpkin Spice Brûlée, and when I when I smelled this tea bag I expected a similar super artifically-sweet cloying mess. I was pleasantly surprised that the flavoring was a relatively clean nutty vanilla. I still wouldn’t ever pick this up. The black tea base is pretty flavorless, but it’s maybe convinced me that vanilla + black tea isn’t always distasteful to me.

Smells like any other generic almond black tea. The first sip was a bit bitter with a soapy vanilla aftertaste. A little further into it and some sips are better than others. Some are a little more smooth and some are like the first. After a while it all turns into a soapy taste. What a horrible thing to do to almonds. Not impressed.

Picked up a couple cups worth of this tea in the bulk section of a local grocery store yesterday. It is black, it is vanilla, it is almondy. Very true to it’s name with no surprises. It is quite drinkable, but there is very little wow factor to it. It seems to loose a lot on the second steep. It is kind of just meh.

This was the freebie bag in the latest RoT catalog that landed in our box. It smells luscious—like a Yankee Candle. Flavor is not unpleasant, by any means, but not getting any caramel out of it. Saw another note that mentioned hazelnut, and indeed, that’s more accurate. The ingredient list puzzled me. I have no animosity against either blackberry leaves or carob, but wondered what they’re doing in a brew with this moniker.

Ah, well—it’s warm and sweet and I’m cranky and cold. Surely it’ll help with one symptom or the other.

(However, a disclaimer here: wasn’t paying attention to steep time; I may have gotten a bit too impatient.)

I wasn’t a huge fan of this tea. It didn’t really have much of a chocolate or ginger taste. It was too heavy on the black tea base.

This definitely makes me happy! I love the combination of peach with the rooibos base. This tea is great hot or cold!

Sipdown. I’m not sure how much this resembles “English Rose” anything—I had rose tea many times this summer when I went to England, and I can say with confidence that none of the blends contained hibiscus. Surprisingly, though, this doesn’t smell all that bad. It’s like freeze-dried raspberries or candy. Not what I expected when I read that I was getting a rose tea, but still not terrible.

I can’t help but like RoT, because they were the first real tea I drank. They’re also the only brand I can find in stores anywhere near me. I will admit, though, when they’re good they’re good and when they’re bad they’re awful. I got this with their catalog and won’t be buying any more because despite the nice smell the hibiscus in this completely takes over. I think I’ll ice it to see how it does and then rate it.

ETA: This is not bad iced—it tastes like the freeze-dried raspberries I get in the smell. Decent as an iced tea but I taste zero rose whatsoever.

I don’t like hibiscus or roobios much so I didn’t really care for this one. I’ll try it iced tomorrow & that might bring the rating up a bit. I never did taste the vanilla, though I could just barely smell it.

I really like this combination of plantain, coconut and green rooibos. I enjoy green rooibos, but don’t have many blends that feature it. The scent of this tea is of sweet plantain. It reminds me a little bit of banana baby food — mushy, creamy, strangely comforting. Sipping… there is a very nice balance of plantain and coconut here. The coconut adds a rather tangy note to the otherwise sweet and starchy plantain. The rooibos gives the cup a lovely freshness.

I’ve noticed that I have to be in the mood for this particular blend, but it’s delicious & really hits the spot when I do drink it.

The first several times I made this it disappointed me. I just kept thinking it was too weak. I later realized that I needed more than 1 teabag in my giant mug (since it calls for 1 teabag per 6oz of water) Oops. Adding a second one greatly improved things.

I wanted to love this one. I mean, peppermint & chocolate? What’s not to love? It is a pleasant enough tea but I think I expected more chocolate flavor. Also, I’m not a huge fan of roobios. Milk & a tiny bit of rock sugar do improve it I think. Right now it is one of my best decaf options for sipping on whilst reading in bed. However, I probably won’t purchase it again anytime soon.

Edit: I cold-brewed this & am trying it that way this morning. It is even mintier this way & pretty refreshing. I poured a bit in another cup & added some vanilla almond milk because I was curious. It did nothing for it.. Since the chocolate flavor is even less pronounced when this tea is cold, you just end up with weaker peppermint flavor (though there is some chocolate in the aftertaste).

One thing to be aware of: This team gets kind of slimy. I didn’t notice it when it was hot (though it might have been the case then too). But when I removed the tea bags from the cold tea, lots of slimy residue. Ick.

This was a sample with the RoT catalog. I maybe overstepped it, but that really can’t explain away how bad this tasted. Hibiscus and rosehip are both kind of sour/tangy and did not go well together in my opinion. The raspberry flavoring was very strong, but the rose was almost undetectable. I only took two sips, however, before pouring it down the drain. Maybe it was the stevia in this that really turned me off, because I really didn’t like that this was both strongly sweet and strongly sour.

I really like this tea! I’m inexperienced with unflavored green tea, however, because it seems difficult to find where I live. I bought this at whole foods in the bulk tea section. I steeped each batch of leaves 3-4 times and while they began to lose flavor around the end, it’s possible that this is my own fault for not properly adjusting the steep temperature and time for each steep.

Also worth mentioning is that there is no temptation for me to add anything at all to my tea once I taste it. Usually I want to add a touch of honey or light agave to my tea, but not this tea. There was no bitterness, even though some of the leaves escaped my porcelain steeping-strainer-cup-thing (what are these called?) and I let them sit overnight in the bottom of my unfinished teacup. I drank some in the morning before running out the door and was surprised to find that my tea wasn’t bitter in the slightest! I will be buying this tea again.