The NecessiTeas

…Damn, I think I ‘overcooked’ this tea. I though, based on how it looked in the container Lena sent me, that it was a black tea so I set the water temperature accordingly. Only when I bother to look at the tea’s Steepster entry did I realize that it was actually a white tea. Ooops.

It definitely has that bitter tang you get from oversteeping unfortunately. I’m still getting some tantalizing notes of strawberries and cake (yes, cake!) which makes me all the more annoyed that I pretty much wrecked this cup. Oh well, at least I have more so I can make it again properly.

My iced attempt was, unfortunately, not successful, but it wasn’t this blend’s fault. I only had enough for three cups instead of four, so my concentrate wasn’t strong enough. There was a root beer smell, and a weak rooibos taste but not much else. And it wasn’t a great day for iced tea on top of all that — cloudy, cold, dreary. Oh well, I hope someone else is able to get it to work nicely.

One of the reasons I started drinking tea a couple of months ago was because I thought I was drinking way more Diet Coke than any one person ought to, and I was looking for a tasty no-cal alternative. Never would I have guessed at the time that the worlds of fizzy, flavored water and tea would overlap.

It occurred to me to ask myself whether this is in fact a good thing. But on balance it seemed snobby to even ask that question, and so I answered that I am much too much of a tea neophyte to start displaying snobbery (at least openly) at this point and I should just shrug and say why the heck not.

Yeah, it is unmistakably root beer when you give this sample a sniff upon opening the packet. And since I now know what rooibos smells and tastes like by itself, I can smell that as well.

Brewed up, it does smell like hot root beer, minus the head, though I don’t get a creamy smell as I’d expect from the float part of the name. There is obviously no fizz, and drinking a hot/warm root beer flavored beverage is a little weird, but then I am a pro at drinking room temperature Diet Cokes so again, why not. The flavor is sweet like root beer, but not overly sugary, and the rooibos complements it nicely. As others have said, though, there’s no perceptible “float” aspect.

In all, I think this is well done. It’s something I might drink every once in a while. I don’t drink root beer that often, so I’d probably drink it about as much as I drink root beer, which is to say maybe once or twice a year at the most. It’s not that I don’t like root beer, it’s that I don’t think to seek it out to buy. It doesn’t have caffeine, which is something I normally want in a soda. And when I’m eating out it’s not typically on the menu, at least not in diet form.

It would be interesting to try this iced and taste next to an actual root beer.

If you like Cinnamon you will likely love this. I do not believe I have ever encountered such a concentrated cinnamon taste. It’s quite overwhelming. I’m not a subtle person at all, but I would prefer that this be a bit toned down.

As far as cinnamon teas go, this is certainly the tuba, the percussion, and the whole orchestra added in. I cannot detect the orange and the clove but I will try this again with less steeping time, perhaps or add some milk and sugar.

Note: added small amounts of sugar and milk. I think that the milk cuts through the cinnamon a bit. The sugar makes it almost unbearably sweet and I added only a couple of small crystals.

I would highly recommend this to anyone who is looking for a great cinnamon hit. If you love this spice, you will love this tea. I prefer a more moderate cinnamon, but this is certainly a tea that delivers on all of its promises.

Second Steep: Although the directions call for a 5 minute steep, I made my second steep for 3 minutes. As a second steep, I used a mug that is about 16 ounces (i.e. almost twice as big as my first cup). I also added water from the start. This is good now and still extremely rich and flavorful.

If you love cinnamon, I’d recommend buying this tea and working your way UP instead of, as I often do, working a way down. It’s really concentrated. Try less than a tsp at first and try a 2-3 minute steep. Some experimentation will get you the most cinnamon-y tea out there!

The leaves are dark green and fairly straight with little yellow flowers mixed in. There’s a characteristically toasty smell about the dry leaves, though it is somewhat less pronounced than in the other oolongs I’ve sampled. The aroma of the tea is also toasty, and quite buttery, with a subtle floral note. It brews to a yellow, champagne-like color.

I used 2.5g of tea in about 7 oz of water, about what I’ve done for other oolongs I’ve tried, and with 4 minutes for the initial steep I expected a deeper flavor. I’m not getting a “deep, rich” flavor. It’s not that it doesn’t taste good, it’s just a bit on the weak side. The osthmanthus does give it a sweet, nectar-like note, which is nice, and which has something in common with honey. I can pick up on a hint of apricot if I concentrate, but although I can smell something slightly chocolatey, I am not tasting chocolate.

I added a minute for the second steep. The flavors are similar, but have become more buttery and floral-tasting, though not deeper. Six minutes for the third steep and seven for the fourth. I was looking for further development in these, but they were fairly similar to each other, and each a bit weaker in taste than the last.

As oolongs go in my limited experience, it’s reasonably tasty. And it’s not that I don’t appreciate subtlety. But this one lacks a certain depth that I’ve experienced in others, and that I’m finding I prefer.

About the same as the last time, even with a significantly longer steep. I didn’t have a lot of the sample left though. Scale showed it was slightly under 1 cup’s worth.

I will say, though, that I just went to take a sip to find my cup empty. The cup smelled so divine, I wanted to lick it!

For tonight’s dessert, I dug into my sample of this.

The dry leaves smell delicious, like those of all The NecessiTeas flavored teas I’ve tried. There’s strawberry, and something cookie-like about the smell. After steeping, the smell opens up to something more sponge-cake and cream scented. It really does smell just like a strawberry shortcake. Enough to make your mouth start watering if you have a sweet tooth as I do.

The liquor is a clear, golden yellow. The taste is lovely. Subtle, as others have said, but it definitely tastes just like it smells and I’m giving it high marks for that. There’s a sweetness to the strawberry, like the juice of a ripe, fresh berry. The cream and cake tastes are in the background, just like they would be in an actual cake. Even the tea is there, though it’s taking the role of the canvas on which the rest of the flavors are painted. There isn’t even a hint of the bitterness that troubled those of their flavored green teas I’ve sampled the past few nights.

I’m going to steep even longer next time and see what happens. The main improvements I’ll be looking for in steeping longer are for the tea to come more to the forefront and for the flavors to deepen a bit. If I can get those to happen, I’ll put this on my shopping list with all due haste.

This has a wonderfully fruity lemon/strawberry fragrance in the packet. After steeping, it gives off a dilute version of the same, which is even further diluted in the tasting. As with the Tropical Green, it’s pretty thin.

Which brings me to an observation that applies to all of the flavored green teas from The NecessiTeas that I’ve tried thus far, with the exception of Caramel Dipped Apple and Pineapple Upside Down Cake (which had other things going on with them that caused me not to like them very much). This even applies to Raspberry Jasmine, which I’ve liked the best so far. The flavors are quite subtle. It seems to me this is intentional, because after all, these aren’t herbal blends like Teavana’s Strawberry Lemonade. The tea is supposed to be the main event, and the flavors have to stand aside somewhat to permit the tea to take the spotlight. And yet, my experience of these is that the tea isn’t stepping up. In fact, it’s barely discernible, if at all. I’m starting to think that all of these could be improved simply by basing them on a more flavorful green tea than what’s been used here. But this is to some extent the speculation of a novice, and should be taken for what it’s worth.

More flavorful and less subtle with more leaves. I used my new scale (the one from Upton with a cup measurement) and actually went to about 1.2 cups worth of leaves, and tried steeping a bit longer as well. Significant improvement. Bumping the rating a couple of points

Dessert tonight was this pretty little tea; the fifth in my series of flavored green tea samples from The NecessiTeas. In the packet, it smells quite nice. The prevailing aroma is of jasmine, though there’s a berry tang as well. The berry smell becomes more obvious upon steeping, becoming clearly raspberry. Depending upon how the spoon fills up, the raspberry aroma can prevail over the jasmine after brewing, or it can be fairly evenly balanced. The raspberry part of the fragrance is sweet, not at all pungent or artificial smelling.

The tea itself is nice as well. When the dried raspberries reconstitute, they plump up considerably. I ended up with something close to a whole berry floating in my cup. The flavor is delicate, and the raspberry and jasmine are each distinguishable, and nicely blended and balanced. The tea itself is barely noticeable, and not bitter. I’d prefer a bit stronger presence of the tea, but also prefer barely noticeable to bitter (by a lot).

I would not pass this up if I were offered it again, though I think I’d prefer to drink it after a workout and a shower, where something clean and subtle would hit the spot. I’m much more in the chocolate lava cake camp when it comes to dessert than I am the raspberry sorbet.

My dessert this evening: the fourth in a series of flavored green tea samples from The NecessiTeas.

In the package, it has a blended tropical fruit aroma that is somewhat reminiscent of the smell/taste of 5 Lush gum (which I happen to like a lot). There’s pineapple, but also something that could be mango and something else that could be tangerine. It’s sweet, but not very strong.

When steeped, the aroma becomes diffuse and ephemeral, and that repeats in the flavor. The tropical flavors are there as well as the tea flavor, which by the way isn’t bitter at all even when steeped for 90 seconds (though my water temperature was a little lower this time), but both the tea and the tropical flavors are a bit too thin for my taste. It’s not a bad tea, it’s just not robust enough for me.

I enjoyed this very much. I got the strawberry aroma and the taste, although I was not feeling the cake, which is fine with me. I was pleased and I will remember this tea if I feel a need to buy strawberry tea—you never know. I generally think that The NecessiTeas does a very good job with flavored teas.

Had some of a sample of this for dessert tonight, and am pleased to report a continuation of the upward trend in the flavored greens by The NecessiTeas. This one ticks up far enough to merit being out of orange-face land, though at this point an order for more is not in the offing.

The dry leaves have a definite orange smell from the orange peel, though sourer than that of a Creamsicle, and with something of a synthetic aspect as well which must be the “natural flavors.” I’m guessing there was a boost to the orange in those flavors. Interestingly, the brewed tea’s aroma is very Creamsicle-like, so perhaps the flavor also contained some vanilla. In any case, it’s creamy and pleasant. It reminds me of the way baby aspirin smells and tastes, but then, so do Creamsicles. So in that respect, it’s pretty true to its name.

There is only the very slightest bitterness to the taste, an improvement over both of my previous tastings (Caramel Dipped Apple and Pineapple Upside Down Cake). Possibly this is because, through sheer Pavlovian response, I went straight to the 1 minute steep and didn’t bother trying to go longer. I don’t know what sort of green tea was used for the backdrop for these, but it appears to my untrained eye to be the same in all of them and I’m nothing if not good at avoiding mistakes I’ve made several times. Eventually, I learn.

The orange is not very intense, but it has… what’s this? Sweetness! (Eureka! This is what I’m looking for in a dessert tea if I can’t have the real thing.) The sweetness gets sweeter in the minutes after sipping until the finish disappears. And there’s some creaminess as well, though it’s not very intense either.

So it does live up to its name, and though I realize hitting the drinker over the head with a sledgehammer is not a desireable quality in most teas, I would have liked this one to have at least poked me a bit harder.

And it gets another little point bump tonight, for showing consistency with the improvement of last night. There’s still a bit of bitterness around the edges, but apart from that it has grown on me some. There’s also the possibility that it just varies from cup to cup depending on the concentration of flavors that makes its way into the spoon with any given scoop. For example, tonight, I’m getting more custard and less pineapple. Last night I got more pineapple, and it was sweeter (likely owing to the pineapple as well).

It does make me want to try other pineapple flavored teas, and it piques my curiosity about The NecessiTeas’ flavored blacks.

It’s tasting better tonight and I really didn’t do anything differently that I can identify. I wonder whether it’s that I’m drinking it back to back with Tropical Green, and by comparison the pineapple flavor in this one is stronger? The bitterness is less too, even with a bit longer steeping time. Possibly it’s because I picked up a bit more pineapple in the spoon than the last go around. In any case, bumping it up a few points.

Trying this sample tonight for dessert.

All ingredients present and accounted for in the aroma of the dry leaves. The brewed tea has a definite pineapple/custard aroma to it.

Unfortunately, the tea suffers from the same tendency toward bitter that spoiled the Caramel Dipped Apple. Shortened steeping time seems to avoid most of the bitterness, and the brown sugar helps on the first steep. 45 seconds is about all it can take without the tannins starting to take over, and that’s about 20 seconds too short for the flavors to fully emerge. But at least it isn’t necessary to absorb or mask the bitterness with mint.

Despite the bitter tendency, I thought this was generally much better tasting than the apple. The pineapple and rum flavors are definitely there, with the rum taking a back seat as it should. There is nothing funky about any of these ingredients (there really was something about the caramel that didn’t sit well with my stomach).

I won’t buy this based on the experience of the sample, but I won’t shrink from finishing it and trying to think of ways to improve it along the way.

My very first swapped tea! Huzzah for Doulton.

I’m getting some strawberry and definitely banana here (although more in the scent than in the taste), but not really any chocolate, and it’s a lot lighter than I expected. It’s just barely sweet, not cloying at all. All in all, a nice frilly dessert tea. I might try it with milk next time.

(Thank you, Doulton!)

My last note on this as I sent the last of the sample to its eternal rest tonight, but just wanted to mention that a tiny bit of spearmint works to cut the bitterness as well (perhaps even slightly better than peppermint does as it seems to boost the other flavors a bit without contributing its own at all), and 45 seconds with spearmint is even better than a minute steeping time as it seems to cut out some of the funkiness to the caramel flavor that I was experiencing before.

This was the last thing I drank last night and I was trying to get the taste out of my mouth with a minty flavored chewing gum right before I went to bed. Surprisingly, as I lay awake (too much caffeine I suppose) in bed, I could still taste the caramel THROUGH the mint flavor. And it was much sweeter. This gave me an idea.

This morning I am starting off with a cup of this before I ramp up to black temperature, with 1 tsp of tea and 1/16 tsp of peppermint leaves in the filter steeped at 45 seconds.

Bitterness solved! And that amount of peppermint doesn’t deliver much minty taste, certainly not as much as the gum did.

But there’s still something about the caramel that isn’t sitting well. Or maybe it’s the caramel/apple combo. The apple is very green and when I think of caramel apples I think of red apples. Bumping it down a bit for not improving significantly with the removal of the bitterness. I might continue to experiment with it. Might use spearmint instead of peppermint, that sort of thing. There’s not much sample left (fortunately) but with what’s left, I might as well look at it as a sort of science project…

I got a sample of this when I ordered the Carrot Cake. My first attempt with this one was much like Cofftea’s experience. Bitter and disappointing.

On a second try, I’ve been able to get rid of most of the bitter in the tea by using less tea (1 tsp and not very rounded at that) and by steeping for no more than a minute. In fact, I think 45 seconds might be even better and will try that next time. It’s still not great, but it’s not quite the red yucky face this way.

However, there’s a secondary problem which is that the caramel seems to be coming across as bitter also. A weird mix of bitter and sweet, which is not very pleasant going down. (The apple seems to be fine, a green-apple type flavor.) That said, it improves with age on the palate; it sweetens up a bit in the aftertaste. But it’s still not working for me, unfortunately.

Steep Information:
Amount: 5 tsp – the entire sample bag
Additives: none
Water: 1 cast iron teapot full of filtered boiling water
Tool: Cast Iron Teapot with Mesh basket strainer
Steep Time: a little over 8 minutes (did 5, it was too weak)
Served: Hot

Tasting Notes:
Dry Leaf Smell: strawberry, kiwi
Steeped Tea Smell: strawberry rhubarb pie
Flavor: Strawberry, sweet berry
Body: Medium
Aftertaste: slightly tangy (hibiscus)
Liquor: store bought cherry pie colored

Purchased this sample to help find a tea to fill my nightly no caffeine niche.

Where are you hiding my kiwi? I can’t find it. And I am not sure why there are rosehips in there, and not sure I could find them, but I wonder if there would be less weird ‘other’ in this tea without them.

I was happy to drink the whole pot, but it was straightforward strawberry so not interesting enough for me to purchase more of.

Post-Steep Additives: none

images: http://amazonv.blogspot.com/2010/03/thenecessiteas-loose-leaf-herbal-tea.html

Sipdown no. 25 of 2017 (no. 306 total).

The end of an era.

This is the last bit of one of the very first tea orders I placed. Any sane person would have sipped this down long ago. But I liked it a lot, and I hoarded it.

Now it’s time to let it go. But boy, did it age well. Tastes just like it did when I first wrote about it. Bumping the rating.

I haven’t tasted this in a long time, and I’m a little surprised that I still think pretty much exactly what I thought about it the first time I had it. I’m sometimes bemused by that sort of accuracy because I wonder whether it means my palate hasn’t developed over the past few months?

To sum up, it’s better than any of the other Necessiteas rooibos blends I’ve tried (including the Rootbeer Float, which has a lot of fans) as well as some others, but not as good as the Teavana Rooibos Tropica or the SpecialTeas Rooibos Lemon Chiffon. The rooibos is mostly concealed, but not quite enough for my taste to be up there with the other two. Still, it smells unbelievably just like the real thing, and the taste is more than halfway to the real thing which seems something of a feat to me in and of itself.

It’s something I only see myself making an occasional cup of, but there are times when I need a caffeine free alternative that I can see it hitting the spot.

I’m certain there’s more in this one than what’s listed in the ingredients. For one thing: coconut. I think. I’m pretty sure. I can see dry, sort of curly white strips in the dry mix that had the texture of coconut when I bit one, but it was too small to emit any significant flavor on its own. I can see the little orange pieces of carrot, the chopped nuts, and brown spiky bits of sweetened cinnamon. The dry aroma is delicious. Really. It is exactly like carrot cake. Amazingly, given the spiciness of it, down to the scent of the carrots.

It’s a pretty reddish orange color. The red must be from the rooibos. It smells very cinnamony and rooibosy. The multifaceted smell of the dry mixture isn’t obvious in the brewed version, but it can be detected.

The flavor is enjoyable; spicy, not too sweet, and yes, there’s even a little bit of carrot in there, mostly in the aftertaste. It’s definitely the cake minus the icing, though. Carrot cakes tend to have that creamy, lemony icing, and only the very tiniest hint of that is present, and only a number of minutes after the last drop of tea has been consumed.

This one may be better a little on the strong side, so I plan to steep a bit longer next time and maybe increase the quantity some.

I wish this tasted exactly like it smells. If it did, I would have given it a 100. As it is, I think there’s a lot yet to be discovered and appreciated about this one and I’m looking forward to giving it many more chances to impress me.