teapro

The TTB 2022 is here and I pulled this one out of the herbal ziplock to try for a nightime tisane. Boy the lemon here is underwhelming. I added lemongrass to the second steep and that made it slightly better? Not sure I want to give this a rating as it would be dismal.

Pulled from TTB 2022, shared by Martin Bednář.

I agree with Martin here – the lemon flavor is missing for me. I do taste some lemon as it cools, lemongrass I think, but the primary flavor is the rooibos. It is a tasty rooibos, but for something with lemon in the title it’s just not as pronounced as it should be.

This is one of the loose leaf samples I got from Izzy, so thank you (and can’t wait to dig in to others!).

I chose a rooibos as a caffeine-free alternative for evening (and still feel way more awake than I would like to, from afternoon cuppa of Yerba Maté)

Unfortunately, this cup is dismal in flavour as well. It’s nice and tasty, but I have been expecting more lemony flavour for sure. It’s quite obvious in taste it’s rooibos, and a good grade of it; with some nuttiness even, but where is the lemon tangy flavour? Where is actually any citrus notes? I tried my best getting some lemon pieces in my tea spoons, but nope; it’s not much present in taste. That’s a dismal. But maybe better than some artificial flavours.

Finished the last of this tea! It’s smooth and sweet with those peppermint and gunpowder green tea notes.

The spices were more distinct when this tea was fresh (Jan 2020) but now they’re more of a generic medley. But still nice.

Peppermint adds a freshness to this chai, but not too much menthol. I never got around to cold brewing this tea, as teapro recommend, but I reckon the menthol would have been stronger when iced. I don’t regret drinking it all hot, though.

Tasty. I’m considering buying more of this one.

https://www.immortalwordsmith.co.uk/teapro-subscription-box-review-chaiwala/

Arrived in my teapro box this week and I’ve kind of fallen in love with it.

Dry, the aroma is super fresh. Reminds me of freshly cut flowers and foliage, very green but not at all grassy.

It brews into a really pale, welcoming yellow colour. Now the aroma is just so unggh. Sweet, sweet stewed pears in liqueur with jasmine and lilies creating this floral perfume over the top. There’s a slight hint of minerals too but not enough to put me off (I’m not a fan of that mineral flavour).

Tastes just like it smells; sweet and subtle with jasmine floral notes and pears.

Really impressed with this oolong. It’s fast becoming an all-time favourite.

Full review of the whole tea box: https://www.immortalwordsmith.co.uk/teapro-subscription-box-review-oolong/

This one was nice too, but I’m not so mad about strawberries. The creamy flavour is more of an aroma and an aftertaste, but it’s still there. It doesn’t taste fake.

The strawberries are good, they taste natural and there’s the right balance between tart and sweet. The other ingredients aren’t strong enough to be individually detectable, but you can tell they’re adding something to the cup because overall it has a rounded and more complex flavour than simply strawberries and cream.

Comparing it to the Raspberry Breeze blend (which only has raspberries + 2 ingredients) it has far more depth.

High rating because it was good by tisane standards… just not my favourite, personally.

https://www.immortalwordsmith.co.uk/teapro-subscription-box-review-fruit-tisane/

Raspberry Breeze is yum. I love that it’s so real. You open the bag and you’re pulling out whole freeze-dried raspberries, whole linden flower petals and whole hibiscus flower petals. There’s something about seeing the ingredients whole that makes the resulting tea more wondrous. Maybe that’s just me.

The raspberries are super tart and just the right amount of sweet. Exactly like eating real raspberries, this tea is so fresh and juicy.

I’m not sure the linden flower brings anything to the blend, however. You could argue that this is a really simple tea. But I think that’s the charm of it.

Also, getting 1 teaspoon of this tea in your mug is a bit of a challenge considering one teaspoon can just be a single raspberry, so you have to really dig through the bag to cherry pick one piece of each ingredient. In about a week’s time I’m just going to be left with a bag full of hibiscus and linden flower when all the raspberries are gone.

https://www.immortalwordsmith.co.uk/teapro-subscription-box-review-fruit-tisane/

A good berry tea from the subscription box. I liked this one a lot, I just need to remember to brew it lightly or the coconut quickly becomes too cloying. It was the most complex from the box.

It has a really nice berry flavour that’s predominantly blackberry but also a bit of raspberry too. I’m not sure what chokeberry tastes like, but that’s in there as well.

Tastes best cold. Doesn’t need any additional sweetener.

https://www.immortalwordsmith.co.uk/teapro-subscription-box-review-fruit-tisane/

So, I finally got round to reviewing this one properly. I had it 3 ways:

Hot – lovely orange zest aroma. Hibiscus dominated flavour but you could definitely taste the orange-ness in it. Not too sweet. It went well with the ginger acacia honey that came with the tea.
Cold – orange aroma again, but 99% hibiscus in flavour. Wasn’t too tart. I quite enjoyed it.
Frozen – 100% hibiscus, I liked it but it’s just not as described.

Also take a look at the pictures in my review. This tea is bright pink – the pics on the teapro website are of a completely clear liquid. It doesn’t directly say that this tea is clear, but it’s certainly implied. This just added to my expectations that this would be orange flavoured and not hibiscus dominated.

https://www.immortalwordsmith.co.uk/teapro-subscription-box-review-fruit-tisane/

Teapro subscription arrived this morning and I couldn’t resist trying one straight away. I picked the Orange Sunshine blend and actually froze it in the lolly mold that was in the box.

First, the smell is very citrusy and reminds me of candied orange (it’s on the ingredients list but there’s no Steepster ingredient for it, or the orange blossom or the rose peel).

The colour, however, is red. Like deep raspberry red. And the flavour is mostly hibiscus and berry-like. I can’t taste any orange at all.

I’ll leave scoring it for another day – maybe I just got too much hibiscus in the 2 teaspoons I used… or maybe it’s more orangey when brewed hot or cold rather than frozen. I will shake up the bag for next time and find out.

Another tea from the subscription box (I finally got the blog review written up!) that is fast becoming my favourite. I love love love jasmine green tea, but jasmine white tea is even better. The jasmine smells very very fresh and the white tea adds a slightly nutty sweetness that goes with the jasmine even better than the usual slightly grassy green tea flavour.

The pearls are much smaller than I expected however. Once they unfurled I noticed the leaves were not in great shape. Some were quite badly damaged and others were yellow, black or brown in places at the edges, like the leaves should have been discarded rather than made into pearls.

It didn’t impact flavour as far as I can tell.

3 pearls, 80c water, 3 mins. I could have left it for longer.

Review of the full subscription package (including the teaware) – https://www.immortalwordsmith.co.uk/teapro-subscription-box-review-white-tea/

Second tea from the subscription box. It was great, but not as nice as the Silver Needle. I’ve discovered I don’t really like orchids, which is a problem for this tea.

It has a nice stone fruit flavour, maybe peach or apricot. It’s sweet but not as refreshing as I’d hoped. Strong orchid aroma and slightly nutty with a hint of wet oak.

I had a horrific migraine after drinking this tea. I can’t rule out this tea as a trigger, so I’ll sip the next cup tentatively!

The first tea in my teapro subscription box. Yep, I’ve decided to do a tea subscription to see what it’s like. When it comes to “real” tea with beautiful complex flavours and many many steeps revealing new layers… I’m kind of lacking in knowledge. I read the awesome detailed reviews here on Steepster (particularly those from Derk and eastkyteaguy) and I feel inspired to kick the supermarket/grocery store tea habit and explore more. But I’m on a budget and I need a little help with detecting flavours sometimes.

So, this “exploring tea” subscription seemed perfect. A chance to get the basics down at least. With a fairly empty cupboard (apart from the box of tea bags) it’s not like I’m going to run out of space.

Anyway, the actual tea. It’s excellent although I don’t have anything to compare it to at this point. The buds are so fluffy! They smell pretty good too, very fresh and fragrant.

I steeped 1 generous teaspoon for 3 minutes, managing to get 3 steeps out of it in total. The aroma is very fresh melon – but not quite ripe melon. It’s not sweet enough to be ripe but it’s very strong in aroma.

Flavour-wise, melon again. But it’s gentle and a little bit creamy. Slightly floral too – honeysuckle perhaps. In my last steep which lasted 9+ minutes, I had this hit of white chocolate. The description card that came with this tea (very helpful with determining flavours) has it down as “floral, melon, honey, cucumber” so I got 3 out of the 4.

I had the first cup at about 7pm and the last around 10pm. I slept very very well, this tea made me feel very peaceful.

I’m going to try the other 3 teas and then write up a combined blog review for the subscription box. In the meantime, I’m definitely looking out for more silver needle teas to try.