Snake River Tea

I pulled this 2018 acquisition as my next caffeine-free nightly tea to work through. I’m surprised I haven’t tried this yet, as I love lavender-forward teas!

This is a very sweet tea! Not the puckeringly-sweet licorice root bomb that their “Spa Day” was, but enough that I question why they felt the need to add licorice root and stevia leaf to this one. I’m not getting a distinct flavor of either of those things, but the sweetness of the tea is pushing the vanilla flavor into a sort of “over-the-top” vanilla frosting note, and the rooibos base tastes like pure, golden honey. The lavender is absolutely lovely, giving the cup a lovely fragrance and plenty of lavender flavor (I find a lot of lavender teas are quite light-handed with it, moreso than I personally would prefer, and this is definitely in the camp of generous lavender). Sometimes I get a vegetal-bitter quality from lavender that is too strong or brewed too long, but thanks to the sweetness of this tea, I can leave the fillable teabag in the cup indefinitely and it nevers goes bitter.

It could do with a little less sweetness, but I’m happy with the flavor overall.

I wanted a break from the sweetness of Psychocandy, so I pulled a different old herbal from my stash to stick in the Sipdown Corner that might be a little more… herby. Ooof, this tea might be sweeter than Psychocandy?! I knew this had licorice root in it (I’m one of the few people I know that actually likes licorice root) but I was not expecting this tea to be forward-and-center full-on licorice root dominant. It’s very sweet! I get a little mintiness in the background, but I’m only getting a faint hint of tulsi and I don’t taste the fennel at all. Really, this is a cup of licorice root with a faint minty backdrop.

If I were in the mood for something really sweet, I’d be fine with this, but as I very much wasn’t in the mood for something like this tonight, it just feels really overwhelming. I’m curious if every cup will be like this, or if I just happened to get an odd scoop. I think if my next cuppa is this sweet-strong I’ll mix with a bit of my plain peppermint stash to see if I can even out the proportions a bit more.

Definitely not a tea for licorice root-averse. I’m a fan, and even I’m finding this a bit much!

I’m tired and my head is starting to hurt. My grandma on my mother’s side passed today, after choosing to end nearly a decade of dialysis which had grown very painful this last year. I was in full support of her choice and glad her pain is over. My grieving is mostly manifesting in just feeling a deep sorrow for the grief my mother is going through, and trying to be there for her as much as I can despite the fact I live in the western US and she lives in the eastern US. I guess the service will be held online due to That Thing That Shall Not Be Named. I wonder what that will be like…

This is my next old matcha that is now a smoothie target. I got it from an independantly owned teashop in Boise, and though they list Aiya as one of their matcha suppliers, they don’t have any flavored matcha, so I have no idea where they are sourcing this particular one from (or I’d list it under the appropriate source… sorry!) Mostly I’ve been making pina colada-esque concoctions, but I decided to mix some of this straight into an ice cold water bottle and do the “mad shake” to try it plain, to get a sense of its flavor as a matcha on its own. Unlike the Mint Chip, this one does have that noticable grassy flavor, but it is very sweet from the sugar (not a complaint for me, I can’t handle the bitterness of matcha straight up). The coconut is coming through toward the end of the sip, more pronounced at the back of my tongue. It is more of a gentle touch than a strong hit of syrupy coconut… to be honest, I like both flavors depending on their presentation. I think the coconut adds to the sweetness/balance of the matcha in a way that makes this easy for me to drink in straight water, and normally I have to take my matcha as a latte. Perhaps on days when I just don’t have time to mix up a breakfast smoothie, I’ll just dump a bit of this in a water bottle and take it on the go since it works well this way.

I’m continuing to focus on my older teas, especially coconut teas; this one, at least, doesn’t have dried coconut in it, just some sort of coconut flavoring/extract, so despite the age it doesn’t taste soured/rancid. I got it from Snake River Tea, but I don’t know where they are sourcing it from… I had it warm before work one morning and found it very buttery with a nice toasted coconut flavor, but I’m really enjoying making it as a cold brew and filling my water bottle with it as iced tea. It tastes of butter, roasted nuts, toasted coconut, slightly vegetal, and I’m finding it very refreshing.

I figured this would be another pouch of tea I’d promptly be clearing out of my cupboard straight into the garbage bin; the ingredients did not list dried coconut on the website (only coconut oolong, and I know the coconut oolong that Snake River Tea sources uses coconut oil/flavoring and doesn’t have dried coconut pieces in it), but when I took the pouch out since it’s one of my oldest teas, it had dried coconut pieces in it. DOH. (Tea shops, properly list your ingredients, please!) But I pulled a few slivers out, and… shocking, despite have an older purchase date that a few of my other recent trashed blends, it was okay! I can only assume that this is because it is a house blend and was probably fresher at purchase than the “big box” companies that keep teas on shelf/in warehouses for a while before they ship them out, making them a lot older than the rough “purchase date” I go by on my stats. This also happens to be one of Snake River Teas few house blends, as most of their teas are wholesaled by other suppliers (it does use teas they have on hand from those suppliers: their coconut oolong, houjicha, etc., but they’ve mixed them together to create their own house coconut tea).

I’m usually not a big fan of mixed leaf teas because they can be fussy to brew, but since the black tea, oolong, and houjicha can all be brewed/steeped at a higher temperature this one works well. It comes out as a rather nutty/toasty flavor, with a sweeter coconut aftertaste on the tongue. It has a light roasted element, and there is a slight vegetal touch, but it doesn’t detract much from the coconut flavor. The teas do come together well for a roasty, nutty coconut flavor, and it’s a very energizing morning tea.

I’ll be drinking this one down quickly though, since I definitely don’t have much faith in those added dried coconut pieces. If you have a coconut tea that still works, why risk it? May as well enjoy it while you can!

This is apparently a house blend from Snake River Tea. I was worried it would be way too spicy and actually questioned why I decided to buy some of this; I put some in Todd’s tea advent calendar last December and his review claimed it wasn’t very spicy at all. I was still hesitant, since most of my friends are far less “spice sensitive” than myself, and often they’ll say something is a “3” and then I’ll taste it and find it more like a “30.” I’ve been using my stash to make ginger rice whenever my migraine nausea has been particularly intolerable, and it’s been really awesome for that; basically I’ll just drop a teabag in my rice water as the water is coming to a boil, then my rice soaks up the tea and has a nice gingery flavor which gives the white rice a little more flavor; both rice and ginger are rather easy on the GI tract so it’s been a go-to when my gut is having none of it. I’ll even pick up a bit of the citrus notes in the rice, too. But I figured before I use up all the tea making rice, I should probably try a proper cuppa, too!

The tea smells spicy, gingery, and citrusy. Surprisingly, it isn’t overwhelmingly spicy, as turm/ginger blends so often are, so I’m happy about that! Todd was right, this is a Sara-spice-wuss-safe tea! There is a mild earthy/pepperiness from the turmeric and a stronger ginger flavor that I find rather soothing on the back of my throat and settling on my nauseous stomach. It’s warming, but doesn’t leave an obnoxious afterburn like many ginger teas tend to do. There is a strong lemon citrus presense in the tea as well; I can taste the herbaceousness of the lemongrass, but it is blending well with the citrus of the lemon and orange peel which seems to be rounding it out into a fuller, nicer lemon flavor so it doesn’t come off as really grassy/hay-like, which overly lemongrass or strongly lemongrass teas can tend towards. Overall, I am finding this a rather nice blend. I think this makes a good throat/stomach soother.

Holiday Tea-son! This is one of my older mint teas, so I’m going to put some priority on trying to finish it off in the coming weeks. I got it from Snake River Tea in Boise on one of my Anime Oasis trips, and while they wholesale their wares, I think they blended this one themselves (though I’m pretty sure the two teas they blended together are from International Tea Importers, as they use them to source a lot of their teas). This is a blend of Moroccan Mint green tea (their Moroccan Mint is gunpowder green with spearmint) mixed with yerba mate.

I’ve always found the taste of plain yerba mate reminds me a lot of gunpowder green tea, so this choice makes a lot of sense to me. I honestly can’t tell the difference in the flavor of this from any other Moroccan Mint tea using gunpowder/spearmint, since the mate is such a close flavor match for me. I get notes of tobacco smoke, grass, dry hay, and then a strong minty spearmint flavor that washes over the end of the sip. Really the main thing that sets this apart is the extra caffeine from the mate.

The spearmint definitely makes this a bit more enjoyable for me that either gunpowder or mate are for me plain, but I’m finding the smoky notes are still a bit more prominent than I typically care for. Once I sip this down, it’s unlikely to be something I’ll replace. I really can only handle gunpowder green or yerba mate if that tobacco flavor is very well hidden by the other flavors in the tea.

Sara’s custom Advent tea calendar, 19th day!

The leaf smelled strongly of ginger and turmeric.

The turmeric and ginger are pretty balanced in the beginning of the sip, while I taste licorice root at the end of the sip. The taste lingers a bit after the sip, mostly the licorice root, but it doesn’t burn. This is milder than I thought it would be, with all the delicious spices. But it is strong enough that I’ll bet it would work great as a latte too.

The 17th, a good number for Sara, who gave me this custom tea advent calendar.

The smell is very subtle. It smells good, but nothing I can pick out.

Without using other tasting notes as a cheat sheet, I notice a honey note. It’s a really tasty tea! After reading the other tasty notes, I can pick out a bit of roasted and vegetal notes, but they’re very subtle. I imagine this would be great to drink while sitting under a tree, reading a favorite book.

Summer Vacation! Going to try some oolong tonight, and a little earlier in the evening, hopefully I won’t get too much of an energy spike. This is a Chinese oolong that I picked up at Snake River Tea in Boise during my Anime Oasis trip last May, and since I don’t know their wholesale source for it, I’m just logging it under them. I recently picked up a Se Chung from Upton from the generous Meowster, and I’m curious to compare if their flavors are pretty much the same, or if they have any notable differences.

This tea was very bubbly right after dispensing it from my infuser, with a deep yellow color and roasty, nutty aroma, with a touch of subtle honeysuckle to the scent as well. The flavor has a mild roastiness, with a strong roasted nut flavor, and a background vegetal note. A slight floral and somewhat honeyed sweetness comes out towards the end of the sip. I’m a fan of both dark roasted flavor profiles like houjicha and also light, vegetal/floral green oolongs, and at first this seemed a bit of an odd juxtaposition of flavors, striking this strange place between the two flavor profiles, but the more I sip on the cup, the more I find that it is growing on me. It’s like, at first my tongue wants more of the roasted/nutty qualities to come out or be stronger, but then it just sort of settles into that softer/delicate vegetal/floral finish and is fine with it. I’m actually finding this quite warm and soothing as I watch the latest episode of Penn and Teller’s Fool Us.

Will have to try my other Se Chung from Upton soonish while this one is still fresh in my memory for comparison.

Since it has been nearly a month now, I figured I should finally get around to copying over the reviews I hastily scribbled in a portable notepad I carried in my purse when I was on vacation Memorial Day Weekend.

This is a pot of tea I shared with Todd at Snake River Tea during my Anime Oasis convention weekend in Boise. I have no idea where they sourced this tea from, but they do claim it is from an organic source. I remember that I shared this pot after a full morning of shopping the Boise Farmer’s Market, and really needed an energy reboost!

I was hoping this would be one of those really buttery senchas, and I really wish there was a way to know going in, as I was really in the mood for one of those that morning, but instead this one was more like a kasebucha or a gyokuro… it had that deep, umami/vegetal taste, which tasted of spinach to me, though Todd said it tasted of artichoke (I’ve never had artichoke before, so I imagine that has a lot ot do with the difference in what vegetal note we each noticed in the tea). It also had that seaweed note that I get from kasebucha/gyokuro teas, as well as that salty aroma and subtle salt/brine ocean note. There was quite a bit of a vegetal astringency right at the end of the sip, too. It was a rather strong green tea, and packed quite a bit of energy. It wasn’t bad, but wasn’t exactly what I was in the mood for at the moment (other than wanting the energy boost). Definitely need to find a way to detect those smooth buttery senchas over the strongly vegetal/seaweedy types…