Trader Joe's

There isn’t anything to report for this. It tastes like honeybush + rooibos. Makes a nice iced tea, hot tea, and latte. Can’t go wrong, really. It takes cinnamon honey and agave syrup fine, but I prefer the natural sweetness of the honeybush. Natural notes of minerals and woody herbs.

I consider this to be a slightly better than average tea. I am unlikely to buy this one again as it reminds me of Celestial Seasonings Tension Tamer, which I prefer more.

As with Celestial Seasonings, I tend to have a love/hate relationship with the tea offerings from Trader Joe’s.

This tea has a nice herbal flavor and did not require me to add any additional sweeteners which is a preference of mine.

I’d recommend it to folks even though it wasn’t a big hit for me.

This is a surprisingly good cup of tea! I remember being at a Thanksgiving celebration and the host handed me a cup of tea after dinner. I drank a sip and said wow, that is a nice cup of tea! He said: Trader Joe’s English breakfast tea. I said really??!! Wow!!! Just goes to show that really tasty tea can come from the most unexpected of places…

Another of the Trader Joe’s teas I purchased this week. This is basically Celestial Seasoning’s Sleepy Time. It is a delicious blend of chamomile, peppermint, lemongrass, spearmint, passionflower leaf, orange flowers, and blackberry leaf. I found it tasted mostly like spearmint/peppermint/chamomile and I didn’t taste the other ingredients as much. This brews really well hot or cold; I enjoy one tea bag in 500mL boiling water brewed 4-5 minutes and then I add vanilla almond or soy milk.

The best part about vacationing in the US is that I can go to Trader Joe’s. I picked up a number of bagged teas (all decaf/herbal tisanes) because most hotels only have lame English breakfast/green teabags. I didn’t realize there were 40 teabags in the box, so I guess I’m going ot be drinking this for a while to come.

This was not as brisk or acidic as I expected. If anything, it was more pleasant than English breakfast often are. Malty, thick mouthfeel, very flavourful. I really enjoyed mine with soy milk, but I imagine it would take well to being enjoyed straight. No sweetener needed, the leaf doesn’t need it. Nothing really stands out about this blend, other than not being unpleasant in any way (doesn’t over steep quickly, is smooth and palatable). This would make a really nice daily drinker in the evening.

Finally, there’s real tea to be found in grocery stores! I almost never reach for bottled teas because I find the majority of them too sweet and weird tasting. The one exception however are the unsweetened bottled teas sold at Asian grocery stores. I am partial to Ito-En’s Golden Oolong so I was excited to spot this at Trader Joe’s which looks suspiciously similar to Ito-En.

This tea is very clean tasting and refreshing. It has a full yet delicate peach flavor balanced with a slight bitterness in the finish. The mouthfeel is velvety smooth and silky. There’s definitely some flavor differences between this and the Ito-En Golden Oolong. I remember the latter being stronger with sandalwood tones and spice. The Ito-En bottle notes that it’s made from Tieguanyin and Huan jin guei . However this one doesn’t say what variety of oolong is used leaving one to speculate. My guess is it’s a dan cong due to the peachiness and light body. Those who enjoy darker teas may prefer the Ito-En. But as a green oolong aficionado, I liked the Trader Joe’s variety better.

This bottled tea really exceeded my expectations. At $1.19 a pop, it’s a good value and about a $1 cheaper than Asian grocery stores. I hope Trader Joe’s keeps this around as it’s a great on the go option and hopefully will help introduce the masses to quality tea.

Kinda stanky

Trader Joe’s never seems to disappoint. Really enjoyed!

I found this in the cupboard and tried it again. Yep, wayyyy too sweet, and in the artificial sweetness way. I ended up doing a cup of this, and a cup of ceremonial matcha, over ice. That makes it tolerable, but it’s still artificial sweetness. I have like 25oz now in my tumbler, so I’ll go through this cup, and maybe decide by the end of this whether to keep or dump the rest of it.

Another sipdown of a nice no caff. option. I love this blend too, but it was getting older and I need to make room for my newest rooibos blends.