Zen Tea

Not bad, not bad. A little weak this morning (yes, it’s still morning!) but nicely strawberry-y. Not nearly as much pure strawberry as the one from Herbal Infusions, though.

I forgot I had this tea until I was poking around for something that wasn’t “the usual” this morning. So I probably wouldn’t get it again, even though it is a pretty good strawberry tea. :)

Sip down, yay!!!

I overleafed this pot by a fair amount, but I don’t care as I’m trying to use up teas, and I get more strawberry this way.

And adding a little creamer makes this a tasty mug of tea for today.

It’s so weird, most of the teas in my cupboard right now aren’t actually black teas! This must be fixed! Maybe with another sample order from Zen Tea? IDK.

Anyways, I rummaged around and decided to have this one this morning. Yum. Yummy yum yum. I will be ordering some more of this one, although probably not a tin. I do like to have variety, and with the selection of flavoured teas I have I’m afraid I wouldn’t drink this one fast enough.

Second tasting note under the right tea!

I came home from work/school to spend another exciting 4 hours doing work. Yay!

So of course the first thing I did was make tea.

This is pretty good, I did a 2 minute steep with almost boiling water, 2 tsp leaves and a 16 oz mug. Something tastes a little off tonight, but that could be me (4.5 hours sleep! WHEE!), or the mug. Probably me. The strawberry is nice, but there’s not quite enough. I need a timer with seconds so I can do a 2.5 minute steep without having my phone in the kitchen.

Phones do not belong on counters when one is seriously sleep deprived. That way lies danger and sadness.

Edit: Apparently this is the same as the one by Zen Tea, as Zen Tea seems to be zentealife.com. Just FYI.

O tea, are you the strawberry tea of my dreams?

So far, sniffing it in the bag and sniffing it as it brews, I’m hopeful but not 100% pleased. Of course, my ideal might never be achieved by a tea, so I will be happy with “really really close.”

This company has free shipping in BC (right now at least) so I ordered ~$20 of samples to see what they were like, and to increase the stock of random herbals in my cupboard. Their samples are 20-50g depending on the tea, and they also included 2 smaller samples in my order. Yay!

I used 1 tsp per 8 oz cup, and almost boiling water. I accidentally steeped closer to 3 minutes than 2.5, so my initial (sans additives) taste was a little astringent. I added a little soy creamer and a tiny pinch of sugar.

And… I over steeped it. Still drinkable, but 2-2.5 minutes would be infinitely preferable.

The base isn’t super strong, and the flavouring is a lot more understated than Della Terra. I do like the flavour, so I hope I can come up with the perfect steeping parameters!

Goodbye licorice sleepy tea. :| I will miss you.

This is another one that I will want to either restock or replace with something similiar. Variety in herbals is needed as 70% of my non-caffeinated teas are rooibos.

Yessssssss. Did you know I like licorice? If you like licorice, you might like this tea. Oh, and I guess there’s cinnamon and fennel and orange in here too but mostly it’s just sweet sweet licorice.

I feel relaxed after drinking this, but I also feel like I should go and brush my teeth again too. Is it magic-stress relief tea? I don’t know, but at least I have a better idea of what kind of herbals I enjoy!

Enough left for one more cup of this one too! Haha, half sipdown Saturday? :P, I am going to try steeping this for quite a while, like over 7 minutes hopefully, to see how much more caramel comes out.

So I steeped it around 10-11 minutes, and there still was a big piece of caramel that was having trouble melting in my infuser! Haha, the flavor is very nice though, it definitely can stand up to a long steep. It’s not even too rooibosy to me, still very smooth and very caramel. Increasing rating a bit just because it’s so durable. See previous notes :)

Yum! I must be on a caramel kick today, because I have just been craving that flavor and most of the teas I’ve had today have caramel aspects/full caramel flavor lol. This is my before bed cup, I am almost at the end of my sample :( I much prefer this cream caramel rooibos than the DavidsTea one, this one is much sweeter and a perfect way to end the day! See previous notes :)

So I received this as a free sample from Zen Tea Life, and I was pleased to try a new rooibos and also to compare it to DavidsTea’s cream caramel rooibos. Dry, it smelled nice and caramelly, a good start. I was wary of brewing it so long, but the package said 5+ minutes, so I did 7. The steeped smell is still caramel, but I used the wrong steeper haha and there are bits floating all in my tea, didn’t use the fine enough strainer. Ah well, they’ve settled at the bottom to not bother me :)

Wow, this is caramel. This is super sweet, I actually am surprised it’s so darn sweet! This flavor goes very good with the rooibos, the caramel is definitely the strongest, but the rooibos is an excellent base. When compared to Davids, I think this one is doing the caramel much better, it’s stronger and sweeter!

Overall, this is quite nice! Definitely sweet, definitely desserty! A nice before bed tea, especially when I’m craving sugar. Haha, I currently am having Tostitos though, which is kind of offsetting the sweetness, oops my bad! Anyways, this is a very tasty rooibos, and I might have to order a bit of this in the future!

JennyFur was kind enough to include this as a surprise sample in our last swap.

I haven’t been a fan of rooibos blends so far. I have yet to try plain rooibos, but Im pretty sure I recognize the base after all the blends I’ve had.

It smells more of rooibos than marzipan, but the marzipan really shows up strong in the flavor. It’s one of the more authentic flavored blends I’ve had, no doubt.

I have had this tea many times now and it has become one of my favorites and one I will always keep on hand. I have it while I work and steep it many times and the taste changes each time but continues to be wonderful! coconut flavor but not overwhelming or artificial, I find it calming and soothing to me.

Last sipdown for the day! (201)

I had other cups but couldn’t log them all because we were doing our roleplaying game and that kept me busy.

This is a pretty decent cup. I haven’t been craving rooibos as much lately so I dropped the rating down on this from 90 to account for that.

But I’m pretty happy for this sipdown. It’s one of my oldest teas so that’s two birds with one stone! :D

I lied. I snuck in one last sipdown!

No idea how this compares to other chocolate mint rooibos’, but I will need to replace it. Chocolate mint tea before bedtime is kind of essential you guys!

Mmmmm. This is perfectly balanced between the chocolate and the mint. Is there rooibos in this? I love it. I think I’ll need to keep this in my decaf drawer forever…

Thank you JennyFur for this sample!

I brewed a couple of cups of this tea for my husband and I during lunch. The dry leaves and brewed tea both smell delightfully of toffee. The taste, however, does not. I suppose it could be described as nutty, but a very flat flavorless nutty. I was really hoping for better with this one. I love both white tea and toffee. If only this blend tasted as good as it smells. Oh well. Glad I got to try it out though.

Had a teapot of this lovely tea at “The Gilted Lily” tea house in Greensburg, IN. What a great taste. The waitress didn’t know which brand it was, and here I found it on this site! How do I get other samples? ….Tea Lover Maddie

I’m afraid I don’t “get” this tea. I see the big pieces of apple, carrot, and bamboo in the mix, but all I taste is the lemongrass. As my cup cooled off, I thought I got a hint of apple, but honestly I think it may have been my imagination, as I was trying to pick out flavours other than the lemongrass.

I like lemongrass, so the tea tasted fine to me, but I think I was expecting a bit more from it. I see that others have prepared this as an iced tea. It’s not how I usually drink tea, but I’ll try to remember to do this one iced next time.

I’m really hoping this is a decaf, since I started drinking it at 11PM. It really doesn’t seem like a decaf. I steeped for five minutes and the color is very dark. Rather than a Ceylon, to me the flavor profile is like an assam: deep, hearty, malty, bready, chocolately. No astringency. The dry leaves are very oaty. I’m not sure how it would taste different if it were decaf, but this is very delicious! I’m not even sure if I should be drinking a decaf this late, since I’m not sure if ALL of the caffeine isn’t here, or if it’s just less than usual. Very good! Sadly, I think this is another that Zen is removing from their stock.

This sounded intriguing! I couldn’t tell this is a decaf tea by the taste, other than it doesn’t taste as strong as a bold breakfast tea. The peach and ginger flavor is definitely present. I don’t love the peach flavor, but I don’t dislike it either. It tastes like a juicy peach but there is a tiny bit of a chemically flavor. The ingredients listed bergamot, which I thought was awesome, but I’m not sure if it is actually in the tea. Not bad as a decaf choice! Also, I was tired all day after drinking this in the morning, so yup — definitely decaf!

I like this one! There is such a nice mix of ingredients… all kinds of berries! No hibiscus! It isn’t a fake berry taste. It’s subtle enough that you can still taste the rooibos. I could have done without the blackberry leaves, but they didn’t make the flavor worse here. But the nice mix of berries would have been enough. It’s smooth and refreshing. This blend seems like a walk in the woods or something!

The more I drink this, the more I like it. Only the first steep, though. It’s pretty weak the second time around.

It makes me feel like I’m drinking dessert, and what could be wrong about that?

I’m bumping up my rating on this as I had a second steep and took it to work today. I loved it.