Zen Tea

I really liked this tea, although I felt a bit stupid when it arrived. I don’t eat anything with dairy in it, and I assume most toffee is made with dairy. Whoops. I obviously wasn’t thinking when I ordered it. So I picked out the toffee, and made myself a cup.

I don’t think it suffered for having the toffee taken out. It has a really nice, light, caramel-like, buttery flavour. Like toffee, I guess (it’s been a lot of years since I had any). Very nice. I’ll enjoy the rest of my bag.

The lovely jasmine doesn’t hide here! Both the fragrance and the flavor are amazing. The flavor is mostly a sweet jasmine with a tiny hint of a vegetal green tea, which only makes the jasmine taste better. The steep cup is a buttery yellow. The second steep still has tons of jasmine, but the green tea is more noticeable. This would be high on my list of best jasmine teas. I could definitely stock this in my cupboard as my go-to jasmine tea!

You’ve got a couple days 4/20/13 to order from zentealife.com’s 20-40% off sale to get some of these amazing teas that they may be discontinuing!

And that is the last for my tasting note spree for today. :D

No ratings yet? This has a cut-tear-curl black tea base, so it isn’t one of those chais with only spices in the blend. I steeped for 7-8 minutes just after boiling the water, but there isn’t as much flavor as I expected. Not as much flavor as Zen’s rooibos chai OR their Energizing Chai which I absolutely love since magically there is also pu-erh and yerba mate in that blend (also, chocolate!) but it is SO SPICY. I have no idea how it is that spicy if the spices have to share the spotlight with other ingredients. But even though this was steeped for 8 minutes, the black tea base doesn’t get astringent at all. I would much rather buy the Energizing Chai blend. Anyway, this isn’t terrible but I didn’t really make it the REAL way. It’s one of those chais that will get lost among the similar chais I have. I haven’t found the perfect chai yet, but I would say Zen’s Energizing Chai is close to it… but that one may be cheating/isn’t a genuine chai since it has pu-erh and yerba mate in it. Yes, I spent this review talking about the Energizing Chai more.

Another sample I bought from Zen! This had a blend of ingredients that sounded nice and healthy and also… NO hibiscus! Many halves of cranberries fell into my infuser. I steeped this for eight minutes, as recommended, and I was worried that the blackberry leaves would taste funky if steeped for that long, but it tastes fine. I’m not sure if it was the stinging nettle, but my mouth did have something of a sting to it. There is a tiny bit of a cranberry flavor. Otherwise, the rest of the ingredients like to combine to make their own flavor. It does taste a bit medicinal, so there are teas that are more interesting and fun. But I like this one.

I just placed a Zen Tea order (taking advantage of their summer sale), so figured I should drink some of this before my new stash arrives. It’s a nice, light cup of tea. It tastes sweet but not artificial to me, but that could be because I have a habit of steeping at a lower temp than recommended, so the flavour might be less intense.

I like this one more than I thought I would. It’s pretty light tasting for a nutty oolong, and although I wish it was a bit richer in taste, it’s still pretty good. I guess nothing will replace Maple Pecan in my heart. If only I could justify a Butiki order right now.

Anyway, I do get a nutty taste and no bitterness from this, which is what I was looking for.

Goodbye O’Sullivan’s!

I think I spent $1-2 for this sample so I regret nothing. It’s ok, but it’s not my cuppa. I thoroughly enjoyed it this morning with a hefty amount of milk and sugar, but at the same time if I wanted milk/sugar I could have just started the day with coffee.

I said it tea peeps! Coffee! :O
(It’s funny that I spent so much time trying to tell the difference between Keemum vs Ceylon vs Darjeeling etc but I couldn’t even tell you what kind of coffee I like.)

So the reviews weren’t kidding. This is a STRONG breakfast tea. I steeped it for 4 minutes, and the result was a tea so dark that it might be confused with coffee. It makes my whole mouth go numb with that tacky-dry astringent feeling. It does get better after a few sips, but I thought I’d just try a dash of milk – yep. This is a tea that shines with milk! (And thankfully not much because I don’t like having to add to tea in order to enjoy it).

I guess it’s silly to want strong tea but not astringent tea eh?

ETA: Oh snap! This was my 300th tasting note. I had planned to pick a more exciting tea (or a more exciting entry). Oh well! 300 is pretty impressive since I’ve only been active since October!

I’m alternating sips of Coconut Green with sips of Coconut Oolong (also by Zen Tea). The tea itself is definitely more prominent in the Coconut Green. Coconut is there, too, but very lightly. This could be partly due to my steeping, however, as they recommend 85C, and I let the water cool to about 70C (I forgot about it) before steeping. It might have a stronger flavour if I used a higher temp. I’ll try that next time.

It’s good, but I think I prefer the Oolong a bit more.

ETA: I just mixed the two types together in my cup, and I really like the mix. They seem to balance each other out well. I’ll try steeping them together next time.

I had really high expectations for this tea. I read the reviews, I like oolong, and I like coconut.

It’s pretty good. The first steep had a fairly strong taste, and left a coating in my mouth that hinted at coconut, but also another flavour that I can’t quite place. The second steep was creamier, with a milder scent and taste. I think I prefer the second, as it doesn’t feel like it coats my mouth at the end. As a plus, there was no bitterness with either steep.

I think I’ve been spoiled trying so many coconut oolongs recently. I’ll enjoy drinking this one, but I may not replace it unless subsequent steeps really blow me away.

Another sipdown! Quite a few today :) this rooibos has been a go-to in evenings for quite a while, and for days I don’t want caffeine. It has a subtle raspberry flavor and definitely a hint of vanilla. For rooibos, it is actually quite well done. I might order this at some point in the future, but I still like my green rooibos blends more than red, and I have more red ones to sip down first. See previous notes on this tea :)

Brrrr it is so cold here today, definitely fall weather moving in it looks like. My office, of course, feels about 5 degrees colder than outside lol, so I froze all morning and drank this tea. Not a bad rooibos, I am running low on rooibos’ haha I should buy some more from DavidsTea I guess. Anyways, I am trying to continue my caffeine hiatus, so this was the tea of the morning. Now time for more caffeine free chai! See previous notes on this tea :)

I quite enjoy this rooibos. Normally I mix in half a tsp of Della Terra’s Vanilla Cream Rooibos to give it some extra creaminess, but tonight I just steeped for around 7 minutes with just this tea and it taste pretty good. Light, fruity, and sweet – perfect for before bed. And I have to go there soon, tomorrow is my university convocation! It’s finally here! No more student status officially after tomorrow. So big long day ahead, and I need sleep so I look half decent in my new summery dress :) see previous notes on this tea.

Now I have made this tea into a Raspberry Vanilla rooibos! I added about half a tsp of Della Terra’s Vanilla Cream rooibos to just under a tsp of this and voila! Raspberry rooibos with a cream soda aftertaste :D next time though, I might put in a full tsp of the raspberry one, as the vanilla is almost stronger than it haha. I also might steep longer than 5 minutes, maybe 6, as Zen Tea Life’s is very good at 6 minutes. Pleased with my experiment though! See previous notes on these teas :)

Oh, and I am getting a sore throat, which is definitely not good. I have two more finals, I can’t get sick yet! D:

Oops, I forgot to log this last week! This is a decent tasting rooibos, the first time I steeped it I did for 4 or 5 minutes and got more rooibos flavor, so this time I tried 6 minutes and it is much tastier! The raspberry is the predominant flavor, and a pretty good raspberry at that, I don’t get very much vanilla, might have to try mixing this with some of my vanilla cream by DT and see if that adds a bit more. Mmm, as I keep drinking this I am liking it a lot more than the first time I had it. I maybe should have gotten more than 1 oz of this, since it was only 80 cents for an ounce! But I have quite a few other rooibos’ that I need to drink as well. But this is tasty, and I’m happy I got a bit of it at least :) hopefully it is not discontinued in case I want more in the future!

A little relieved about this sip down. I polished it off cold brew style. Weird, right, a toffee white cold brew? Yeah, it wasn’t great. That dry note in the base that I was experiencing earlier was only emphasized even further, and again, like it was hot, it was a little watery despite being generous with the amount of leaf.

Not one of their best, I’m afraid.

My Zen Tea order came in like, what, a week ago or something? But I kept putting off trying anything.

Dry, this smells like a pleasantly mild toffee. It has a drier scent to it in the background too.

First steep is pretty good. Like a watery toffee, quite inoffensive. It’s the second steep that’s really meh though, almost like cardboard. I think most of the flavouring was leached out the first time around and now I’m left with that dry tone I can smell in the background in the dry leaf.

It had a good start. I appreciate that it’s not overwhelmingly sweet, no crazy oil scum ring like you can get with some flavoured teas out there. Just wish the base was better, I think. I’m sure that’s the main problem here.

I don’t know why I went for this one. I’m usually not a ginger fan. But this one is nice! I could drink it. It has a nice flavor to it with a deep dark red steep color. It’s tangy, spicy ginger and a lovely rooibos, so it’s simple. It will be a nice blend if you are a fan of both ingredients. But like I said, ginger is one of the three tea ingredients I don’t like, but this cup isn’t a problem. (Do I ever NOT like a tea? hmm..)

I’ve been on a new-tea-spree lately, so tons of tasting notes. Sorry about your dashboards, everyone! Hopefully they will slow down soon, but I can’t make any promises!

I had this one this morning. This is certainly what I consider the keemun flavor, and a very delicious one, too. I’ve had a couple keemun teas and this is what I expect a nice keemun to taste like. I must admit that the only keemuns I’ve tried have been from Butiki and Teavivre and this one is just as good! The first steep is a tiny bit smoky, dusky, plum-like. The second steep has more of a chocolate flavor and less smoke. I like either steep just fine! I’d keep this one stocked if I needed a keemun permanently in my stash. I think it might be one of the teas that Zen is discontinuing. oh no!

I really needed a comforting tea since this weather is really getting me down. It’s either snowing or raining.. now the ground will take forever to dry up. Then it will be raining again. Last year, the nice weather was so EARLY and it seems endless. ah.

Basically my entire Zen samples order was because I wanted a marzipan tea. And this sounded perfect. And it IS. The fragrance is super delish and the taste is exactly the same. It is almondy with a bit of cherry. Exactly like marzipan. Somehow rooibos is already very sweet and a bit like cherry and almonds. So it makes for a nice base! This hits the marzipan nail on the head, and perfect for my marzipan cravings. This is definitely second steepable since it is delicious in an entirely different way — the flavor morphs into something even sweeter. It kind of reminded me of marshmallows a bit but that might be the suggestion of the mallow blossoms… Sadly, I think this is one of the teas that Zen is getting rid of. I knew I should have ordered more than a sample. You have until April 20th to order some on sale!

This is tasty! The Chocolate and the Mint and the Rooibos Combo is darned near 1/3,1/3,1/3 and meshes really well with each other. It’s similar to a few other Chocolate Mint Rooibos’s I have had from other companies so it doesn’t really stand out apart from them but it’s darn tasty, too!

Had this last night, the sample size from Zen Tea is huge! I think I have two more left, even.

The last of the free samples I got from Zen Tea! This is quite good and nothing I would have bought, so doubly enjoying it. Lemongrassssss~!

I’m always on the search for nice and tasty new black teas, but this one isn’t very unique. The flavor isn’t very delicious or noticeable. This one would suit if you just wanted a black tea to go about your day, not really something to sit and savor. The dry leaves are very black. After a four minute steep, there is a medium body but it is a bit astringent with a tiny bit of a smokey flavor… not really much else to comment on. This isn’t a terrible blend, but there are so many more interesting black teas out there I would rather drink. But maybe a different steep would result in a much better cup…