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This tasted quite good. It was spicy and almost creamy, with a hint of pumpkin. The flavors offset the Rooibos quite well. It would probably be even better if I used Honeybush as a base.

This is the last of my Stash samples until after the baby is born. This tea has a really unique taste. It’s a light herbal licorice flavor. I’m not sure if that comes from the lavender or the tulsi, or the combination of the two, but I like it. I’ll have to order more of this to see if it’s something I want to keep on hand.

When I started seeing all the positive reviews for Design a Tea, I decided I had to check it out. The variety of flavors really appealed to me since I can drink so few teas right now due to pregnancy heartburn. I’m not actually a huge fan of Red Rooibos, but it was the only tea without caffeine available as a sample, so I decided to go ahead and give it a shot. This one was alright. The rooibos is smokey, but not too bad. The flavor doesn’t really stand out, but it adds a pleasant faintly apple-flavored sweetness that helps balance the smokiness of the rooibos. I want to try a few more of my samples before I decide for sure, but I’ll probably try some of their Green Rooibos or Honeybush at some point.

My husband loves sweet tea. Lately I’ve finally gotten around to start making it for him, mostly because I got an awesome tea brewing pitcher at a sale at Teavana. I’m alternating making it with dirt cheap black tea, and more interesting (and expensive) stuff. This time I used 6 teaspoons Vanilla Oolong (Adagio), 5 teaspoons Cream flavored Black tea (Adagio), 1 teaspoon ground Vanilla Beans (Mountain Rose Herbs), 1 teaspoon Xylitol, 7 Tablespoons sugar, and 8 cups water. I cold brewed it, and it turned out quite nice. It was too sweet for my personal preference, but aside from that the flavor was very interesting. My husband said it tasted like a sweet vanilla coffee drink where you can’t really taste the coffee. I think I would really like the combination with less sugar. The cream and vanilla flavors complemented the black tea very well.

I picked up a box of this while on vacation a couple of weeks ago, and am just now getting around to trying it. I think it’s gross. It’s bland, and has a weird medicinal aftertaste from the Rooibos. Celestial Seasoning’s Mandarin Orange Spice has a much better flavor. I’ll stick with that in the future.

Yesterday my husband and I went to a family reunion. It’s a long drive, but it’s tons of fun and we see relatives we don’t see any time of year. As an added bonus, a close friend of ours who we don’t often get to see lives along the route, so we stopped in and visited her on the way home. My friend offered me some tea for the road, which I gladly accepted. I had a cup of this with plenty of milk and quite enjoyed it. It was a smooth, sweet chai with subtle, but pleasant flavors. I was surprised to see that it has such low reviews on Steepster. Maybe the milk made the difference? I’ll have to try it without milk someday to see if that changes my opinion.

Tried a variation on my pregnancy blend. I used raspberry leaf, apple chamomile, a honeybush/rooibos blend that I had added some vanilla extract to, a bit of ginger and some xylitol. It was somewhat sweeter, and the hay notes were much stronger. I really couldn’t taste much of the grassy flavor of the rasberry leaf this time. I was pleased though, since the apple chamomile and honeyroo were blends that I didn’t really like on their own.

I’ve almost finished the Pregnancy Tea I ordered, and I have a bunch of raspberry leaf from Rose Mountain Herbs, so I decided to try making my own blend. For my first attempt I added a bit of peppermint, a few small pieces of clementine peel, and a couple dashes of ginger. The flavor was fine, but it immediately triggered my heartburn, so I took a few sips, then dumped the rest and tried again.

For my second attempt, I added 1 tsp raspberry leaf, 1/2 tsp honeybush, 1/2 tsp chamomile, and a couple dashes of ginger. It was quite good, with a mild yet complex flavor, and it cleared up my heartburn right away. It tasted like a warm summery meadow- grassy, with undertones of hay, wood, flowers, and a hint of ginger. I think I’ll keep this base recipe and try adding different variations to it.

I tend not to enjoy chai that I buy premade, as it tends to be much too sweet for me, but while driving to the beach I was at Sheets and craving Chai, so since they have a whole bar of things to add to coffee I bought a teabag and added spices, flavored creamer, and milk. It was quite good. And it gave me a nice burst of energy to keep the trip from exhausting me too much.