Zen Tea

My thanks to Zen Tea for the sample.

Dry, this smells sweet, very toffee-y. Steeped it smells very similar, just less sweet.
This is lovely, but I am partial to white teas it seems. Tastes exactly as it’s described with a sweet toffee and nutty toasty flavor.

Sip down! Which is totally weird because apparently I never logged this prior to the sip down. This is a nice enough vanilla black but I prefer the version from steeped and infused. Th black is a little lighter than I’d reefer and the vanilla not as strong. Still I’m grateful for the sample from zen tea!

got that one during the 50% off from Zen tea and finally received it today after thinking it was lost in the mail ( won’t let that change my note Zen tea can’t control the postal service after all and they where nice when answering my numerous email )

I don’t really like being with lot of people so holiday like Christmas are not really for me during this one i mostly stay in my cave with a thermos of hot water and some tea listening to ac/dc and playing online game my thermos get only 2 cup of water in it but well it’s better than nothing.

My first steep of that one was a failure not enough leaf probably the smell was really nice but the taste was not there so i won’t give my note from that one.

My second steep on the other hand was awesome i didn’t want to toss the tea without at least another steep but having spill some water not enough was left for a full cup the missing water was replace by some Southern comfort ( i think it’s some kind of spiced rhum with peach taste in it ) the peach from it as make all the flavor from my weak tea appear it’s not something i would do normally but meh it is the holiday after all it was a winning choice since it’s saved my tea so my note come from this steep for now till a try another normal steep

For some reason I kept putting off trying this tea. I don’t know why…maybe because I have been drinking more of the “holiday season” teas and this bag just wasn’t striking my fancy. Anyway, last night I decided to try this… AND NOW EVERYTHING IS RIGHT IN THE WORLD! Okay, maybe a slight bit of exaggeration, but I was really, really impressed with this tea. I had two cups last night and started my day with it as well. The tea is fragrant, floral and fruity and it carries right over into the flavor. It doesn’t need anything added to make it enjoyable. Love it as is!

I finished this up today too! All the teas I packed for today were sipdowns! #sneaky

I probably shouldn’t have brewed it because I was feeling a bit meh while drinking it, but I THOUGHT it sounded good.

It’s true. I bought this tea just because it says monkey picked. Then I looked it all up on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_picked_tea. Neat stuff!

I wonder what the difference between this tea is, and Zen Tea’s TieGuanYin(Iron Goddess Mercy). Just the monkey? I bought both so I guess I’ll have to try and get back to you.

This is a stronger oolong than I’m used to. It’s dark and roasty, but there’s a bit of sweetness there too. I’ve had this before and I know it holds up nicely to multiple infusions so I will sip away at this all afternoon!

… and think of monkeys.

Finishing this up tonight. That was a huge sample you sent me, cavocorax! But yummers, jeez.

Yum! Had this last night as a bedtime snack with many gummy candy spiders. :D

Had this last night and it was delish! Good to have evening tea options. Going to have to get K to try it; he loooooves raspberry.

Backlog! I had this last night before bed. I forgot how yummy it was. The cranberry is there but it’s not too tart and it’s not too overpowering. There is nice lemon notes, too :]

I can’t believe that there are no tasting notes for this tea! I’ve been wanting to try this one for a good while now so I was happy when I saw the sale.
I love the sliced cranberries with the green leaves and lemongrass. This tea is not only beautiful, it’s delicious! It has the perfect tartness from the cranberries and a nice lemony flavor going on. It’s a very light tasting herbal. Probably one of my new favorites!

So. Not much to say for this note. I drank a pot of this while working late at night and having an intense conversation about airplane stuff in the tea chat. And being very frustrated at my data.

Unlike my other Zen Tea tea that I had yesterday, this one has aged quite well. I put a little more in and I brewed it for a little longer and it is very very very tasty. Sweet at the beginning and nicely tart at the end of the sip. Citrus and herb and just all around good. I don’t remember who suggested this tea to me tonight but thanks!

Craving a soda so badly but there is none in the house and I’m not going to the grocery store to get one so made a pot of this instead. First cup I put a bit too much sugar in and it overwhelmed some of the flavours with sweetness. Second cup with less sugar and it tastes much like my previous tasting note indicates.

Now to go try to figure out what I lost when all my browser tabs closed without my permission.

This tea is so pretty to look at with the leaves and hibiscus flowers and fruit pieces. The smell of the brewed tisane comes across as mostly orange and eucalyptus with a note of grapefruit.

Drinking it is quite good, citrus comes through the strongest followed by the hibiscus and eucalyptus afterward and I can catch a hint of lemongrass at the end of the sip. Really very well done with no single flavour overwhelming the rest and the orange and grapefruit are well balanced against the herbs in this concoction. This is a tisane for gulping as well as sipping as the flavour hits the entirety of the mouth and lingers pleasantly at the back of the tongue.

Overall a very nice blend.

This tea has reached it’s end. This is a sipdown and gladly so because this tea did not age very well. Nearly a year after my last review, the main dominating note is sour hibiscus and not much else. There is no remaining cream and even heavily sweetened, it isn’t very pleasant. I think I prefer this one fresh and if I restock I will need to drink it up within the first 9 months or so.

This tea was very much on the more hibiscusy side of life today. More sour than I like it. Made it to share with my new(ish) friend who was helping me clean today. She said she liked it.

Brought a bag of teas to the coffee shop today to drink while I hang out there. It takes effort for me not to turn into a hermit when I’m depressed so I try to be out of my house when I can stand to be. I usually end up in a coffee shop or restaurant. Although I used a lot of their hot water that they gave me for free, I did order a drink and a food item to justify taking up their space for hours.

So I had 2 12-oz cups of this with unknown temperature (they quoted me at 190, but it just doesn’t feel that hot to me when I was testing it). First time I put the recommended amount of tea in the bag and it tasted as good as I remember, but much weaker. Possibly age? I’m coming up on a year for this tea rather quickly. Second cup I put about twice as much of the dry tisane and it was much stronger, that nice red colour that hibiscus lends although I usually hate it because it’s too sour, but it’s really pretty okay with a bit of sugar in this. It tasted much better the second try.

I also had an actual conversation with another coffee patron. Nice guy, cute, younger than me, told me he thought I was 26 or 27, which was flattering. Apparently I have vocabulary patterns more common to people younger than me, but I do spend a LOT of time on the internet. We talked for over an hour about ourselves and aspirations and jobs and such. Conversation started because I was airing out my new tattoo after the first washing (about an hour after the tattoo artist finishes with the painful part). So that was pretty nice. Don’t know how we haven’t run into each other before, but overall it was pretty nice, and I usually avoid human contact when I’m not feeling good. Guess I was having a better day than I thought. Anyway enough personal stuff. Hope you all are doing well and enjoying the weekend.

Totally accidentally added milk to this. Definitely don’t like it better this way. Detracting from the taste considerably.

It is still strawberry-y and creamy but I think I pretty much ruined this cup. I have one other from this pot and I hope I remember not to put milk in it. I’ve been drinking so much black tea and I almost always put milk in that that the change to a herbal fruit tea just sort of threw me when I was making this. Ah well. Note, this tea does not take milk well at all.

Just opened the package for this today and I figure now is as good a time to try it as any.

The smell of the unbrewed tisane is absolutely delicious, like a strawberry sundae or a strawberry and cream smoothie. The smell of the tea itself after brewing is delicious also, but the hibiscus comes through also, making it much more sour than the dry tea itself.

I’m currently waiting for the tea to cool down a little so that I can drink it without burning myself and hoping that the cat that just came over wanting attention doesn’t knock it all over my computer. That would be bad.

Oh my Flying Spaghetti Monster, this stuff is delicious. The strawberry and cream flavours come through strongly but not overpowering and the hibiscus hides in the background and manages to keep from being too sour and instead helps to tie this all together. The flavours mingle wonderfully and I think this is one of my favourite tisanes yet.

Still a very good tea, even with how old it must be now (I’m afraid to check). The raspberry is a little bit up front and much more in the aftertaste and it’s quite creamy. The rooibos is pretty subdued to my taste buds, which is good because I’m not a huge fan of it.

Such an enormous task list at work today, hopefully this tea will help me get through the morning items.

Sweet and creamy. Had a not very good day but better than yesterday. Currently doing data entry work, which is tedious but I asked for something mindless but necessary and these databases are a mess.

Drinking this again after forever. One of my friend’s friends (who is becoming my friend) is helping me clean my place and she can’t have caffeine so I made this and it’s still really good. I put in a bit extra because it is so old at this point.

A bit too much milk in it, I think, but it did bring out the cream flavour very nicely. I still love this combination of flavours.

Now normally I don’t like rooibos very much, so I went out on a limb a little when I bought some of this tea from Zen Tea (and it comes in such a pretty tin too), but I find I’m actually quite enjoying this. The raspberry and vanilla flavours mingle very nicely with the rooibos so that nothing is overpowering anything else. The raspberry and vanilla flavours are definitely distinct and strong, but also well balanced and the rooibos is there but not quite as…rooibos-y as I’ve tasted in other teas.

All in all, I quite like this tea, next time I’ll try to drink it while it’s warmer rather than putting it down and forgetting about it until it’s barely above luke-warm, tasty as it is at this temperature.

My daughter chose this as her after school tea, and she asked me to share a pot of it with her. I love sitting and talking to her about her day over cups of tea. This tea is sweet and fully of juicy strawberry notes. There is also a good bit of vanilla which adds a creaminess to the tea and a nice rich flavor. It’s a really nice tea and one I’ll continue ordering from Zen Tea for as long as they have it in stock.