infused1 Send Message

This is a backlog from this morning. I made a thermos of this and drank it all through the day. The ginger and lemongrass balance each other well and the type of oolong used is perfect with the flavours. The end result is a nice, light, smooth cup of tea.

While running an errand today I walked past a Teavana that I had no idea existed. I managed to do my errand and then somehow found myself backtracking to Teavana. I tried to resist, as I’ve never been in one before, mainly because I know that you have to buy 50g min, and I prefer to try smaller amts of new teas.

I walked in anyway. I’ve been having good success with oolongs lately, so I gravitated to those. After checking out some of them, I ended up getting 50g of this one, as I was seduced by smell of the potent spices. It wasn’t until I was halfway home that I looked in the bag and thought, “Wait a second, where’s the oolong?” All I could see were spices.

I brewed up a cup, and did see a few broken leaves in the pot (6 to be exact). Not very impressive as an oolong, but I gave it a sip. OMG is this sweet. The cinnamon is strong and overpowers everything else. It’s almost sickly sweet. Now I understand why the SA suggested mixing it with a black tea. At the time, I wondered why, as it was already a tea mix. Now I understand. You need something to cut the sweetness.

I may experiment adding some other spices/herbs to this to balance out the flavours, or add some plain oolong to it. Otherwise it’ll just be an expensive bag of spices sitting in my cupboard forever.

I’m bumping my rating on this one a bit, as I finished my sample and then felt the need to buy a bag. That’s the sign of a good tea.

The first steep is the best, but the second is still pretty good.

I quite liked this one. It may not be the highest quality white tea, but the flavouring makes up for it. Winterhaven’s tasting note says there were chunks of strawberry in the tea mix. Mine doesn’t have any, just strawberry flavouring, so I’m assuming that the tea has changed a bit in the last couple of years.

It has a very nice, light, juicy strawberry taste. It’s very smooth with no astringency. I liked it both hot and cold.

I like most of Pukka’s teas. This one is a bit mild in taste for me, but I guess that’s what you get with a chamomile base. I taste chamomile and a hint of licorice. I’m afraid I don’t get the vanilla at all.

I’ve had a raging headache all day, and this is a nice relaxing tea to have before I go to bed.

I drank this right after TeaFrog’s Gingerbread Rooibos, and they remind me a bit of each other. The orange taste is dominant in this as in the Gingerbread one. It’s pleasant, and the flavours all blend well together, but other than that it’s kind of bland to me. I steeped it for at least 6 min, so I don’t think that’s the problem.

Love is my last tea before I try to go to sleep. Wish me luck. My neighbours apparently got a karaoke machine and all I’ve heard for the last 5 hrs is really bad renditions of some songs which will forever be ruined for me. They show no sign of stopping anytime soon, and it’s almost 1 am. They really shouldn’t be allowed to sell those machines to just anybody. Apparently I’m not feeling the Love right now.

I would rename this tea Orange Almond Cake, or something along those lines. There’s no ginger, which makes it very un-gingerbread-like. It is a pretty good rooibos, though, in the sense that you don’t really taste the rooibos itself. Hopefully that made sense.

Orange is the dominant flavour, with almond following right behind. I maybe get a hint of the cardamom, but I can’t distinguish the coriander from the rest of the blend (probably a good thing). There’s a nice sweetness to it which makes sugar unnecessary.

I have a sample sized package of this tea. It didn’t have brewing instructions on it other than to say that it could be steeped for up to 5 min. I decided to err on the side of caution and used 70C water and steeped it for 4 min. It turned out great.

There is no astringency to it, even after 4 min. I can taste the tea base, but the mango clearly shines through. I’ve thought that other companies have had decent tasting mango teas, but I think this is the best I’ve had. Although it’s suggested that it’s good iced (I looked at the website after I made it), I prefer it hot as I feel the flavour is more pronounced.

I’m still not a huge fruit tea fan, but this one is pretty good.

This tea (tisane to be proper, I guess), is really awesome looking. It’s mainly made up of big chunks of star anise, aronia berries, and rose petals. I used half the sample packet to make 1 cup. It smells like a cross between an intense fruit punch and pink bubblegum.

Brewed, it’s a deep wine red colour. Very pretty. Hot, I don’t like it. Cold, not a big fan, either, although it’s a bit better. It has a tartness to it that reminds me of hibiscus, even though there’s none in the mix. It’s an interesting tea, but it’s not for me.

Personally, I’d call this tea Christmas, not White Cloud. It’s a beautiful, cheery mix of red rosehips and berries, green mint, and white (I’m assuming the burdock and ginseng). It smells strongly of peppermint, even though it’s not the primary ingredient.

I bought this one to try because the ingredients have so many good health benefits (for the liver, kidneys, and adrenal glands). I was hoping that the blend would mask the not-so-great flavours of some of the components. For the most part, it does. It’s not a fabulous tasting tea, but the peppermint really covers the taste of the rest without being in your face. A good, healthy, tea.