737 Tasting Notes
I steeped some of this tea in a glass jar with a bag of Celestial Seasoning’s Peppermint. It’s the only plain green tea I have, and I didn’t think peppermint would mix well with plain black tea.
I knew going into this endeavor that it was probably not going to work out too well, and I was mostly right- the Huang Shan Mao Feng is too light of a green tea, and I’ve had it for a long time, so it’s not fresh. Plus, the peppermint is a very dominating flavor. So mostly what I taste is the peppermint. Don’t get me wrong- it tastes good- Celestial Seasoning’s is my favorite peppermint blend. But this combo isn’t that great for what I originally wanted, which was a stronger green tea flavor.
Drank a mug of this with lunch. It’s my third cup of it, and I still love it. I feel better after I drink it at any rate, so even if it’s just a placebo effect, it still makes me happy.
I am unused to thinking of dandelions as things to be ingested. I think of them more as evil weeds that choke out lawns and gardens and proliferate at an alarming rate. However, they are yummy in this tisane! They’re present without being obnoxious, and they give it a sweet, lightly floral flavor, which balances the spice out nicely. Most importantly, it doesn’t feel like I’m drinking a ground-up pest species (which in fact, I am).
Good to know that dandelions have a more productive purpose, instead of just annoying the crap out of rural and suburban homeowners.
The price of this tea was the most attractive thing about it to me. It was only $0.98 at Walmart! So I figured: One, it’s pretty much impossible to screw up plain chamomile; and two, it cost less than a dollar, so even if it turned out to be nasty, I wouldn’t have invested too much into it anyway, and I could always brew it with something else to cover up the ickyness.
However, this is a pretty okay tea by itself. Not particularly outstanding, but not particularly offensive either. It’s a good, cheap chamomile to have on hand whenever you or someone you live with has a stomachache or trouble calming down, or trouble going to sleep. Or if you just want some frill-free chamomile.
The box says proudly, “Microwaveable.” So clearly this company’s demographic is not people with picky tastes. However, as a broke college student, I appreciate their down-to-earth, budget-friendly attitude anyway. Also, they imitate Celestial Seasonings’ packaging style, with the stringless pouchless bags in a plastic bag inside the box, so they’re eco-friendly, too.
All in all, a pretty good find for 98 cents.
I agree with everyone else- this tea tastes nothing like caramel. It smells and tastes a lot like apple pie to me. Is that weird? I think it’s the nutmeg, cinnamon, cardamom, ginger, and cloves that do it. It is very tasty, but don’t expect caramel. Normally I am not a fan of rooibos, because I think it’s bland and yucky, but this blend has enough other stuff in it that lack of flavor is not a problem at all.
That being said, the list of ingredients in this tea is downright short compared to some of Yogi’s other blends. So that didn’t bug me too much. What made me hesitate was the fact that I had no idea what L-Theanine Suntheanine was, until a quick Google search revealed that it’s an amino acid. (I also discovered shortly thereafter that the box itself tells you that it’s “a naturally occurring amino acid found in green tea” and that it “promotes relaxation by calming the mind.”)
So it TASTED good, but did it serve its intended purpose of making me sleepy and relaxed before bed? Yes! I’ve had plenty of Yogi’s Bedtime blend, which contains Valerian, and I gotta say, this blend worked better for me. This is nice stuff. I woke up a little groggy, but I think that’s because I slept more deeply than usual after drinking this tea.
Highly recommend this tea! Especially for fans of pie.
Mmmmmm! I was a little hesitant to buy this one, because generally we don’t think of detox as a pleasant experience at all, but I’m glad I did it anyway. (Plus, I had a coupon, so I figured it was easy come, easy go if it ended up sucking.) I’m usually not disappointed with Yogi.
When I first opened the teabag packet, I got a waft of cinnamon. Once it was steeped, I could taste the cinnamon, ginger, dandelion, licorice, cardamom, and cloves the most. The list of ingredients in this blend is quite extensive, but this is my second cup of this stuff, and I’m enjoying it immensely with no weird side effects. And if it’s helping keep my bloodstream free of toxins, than I will certainly keep drinking it in good faith.
I made a cup of this hot last night, and then realized that I had just applied my lipstick and didn’t want to mess it up.
I looked at my sad little teapot, which was 1/3 full of cold-steeped Twinings Ceylon Orange Pekoe. I had not enjoyed that tea cold-steeped, and I didn’t want to waste it, but I didn’t particularly want to drink it, either.
My solution to all three of these issues? Upending the mug of freshly steeped lemon tea into the teapot with the cold orange pekoe. Now my lipstick was saved for a few more hours, and I had transformed my lackluster cold brew into something delicious for tomorrow morning.
And, as I was fifteen minutes late to class this morning, I didn’t exactly have time to wait for water to boil, anyway. I dumped some of the mixture into my travel mug and booked it to class.
So how did this long, adventuresome tale from teaqueen’s random crazy life resolve itself? With a delicious, cold, lemon-flavored iced tea, of course. I’m gonna brew my lemon iced teas from now on. The store-bought stuff in the bottle is a joke compared to this! I got hints of an almost minty-note, and there was not a trace of sweeteners, which allowed the tartness of the lemon to mingle and balance with the unique flavor of black tea the way God intended it to.
I swear, the best ideas in life are the ones that come to you as a result of your mistakes.
Ahhh! Why am I drinking this stuff? I dislike both fruity teas and rooibos teas. Yet, here I am… drinking a fruity rooibos.
Before I begin my discourse about its merits, let me just say this: I really, REALLY like these pyramid teabags. It’s as close to loose-leaf infusing as bagged tea is going to get. Easy to use, easy to dispose of. LOVE it!
Somehow, this blend works for me, despite the odds stacked against it. Maybe it’s the strawberry. (I do like berry-flavored teas). I think the strawberry gives the rooibos more flavor. Normally, I think rooibos is bland and weirdly flavored, but this one seems to be pretty all right. It could also be the little bit of black tea that Lipton apparently couldn’t resist adding.
Also, I don’t really taste passionfruit, which makes me like it more. I feel like it would be sicky-sweet if the passionfruit were strong.
It’s a good snacktime tea, a good take-it-or-leave it tea. Not many surprises in this cup. Plus, it only has 10 mg of caffeine, which to tiny, twitchy individuals like myself, is always a plus.
I’ve gotten into a strange sleeping pattern (which is to say, I’ve been sleeping like crap lately), so I needed a little something stronger than my usual green or black morning cuppa to get me going this morning.
This yerba mate has been my go-to drink for extra energy ever since I quit coffee. It gives me just the right amount of caffeine to wake me up and get me focused, without making me jittery. I used hot water from my housemate’s Keurig because boiling water makes it bitter, and I let it steep for half of my 8 am class, which translates to about 45 or 50 minutes.
Sounds like a disaster, right? But it wasn’t. It peaked in strength after the first ten minutes, and then the bag just kinda sat there in the water, not doing much. It was perfect. The flavor was smoky and earthy, and it helped me feel more full after my on-the-go breakfast (a Nutri-Grain bar).
Definitely going to keep a box of these teabags around for lousy Monday mornings like this one. It helped bring me back to life without being too demanding to prepare, and it tasted good, too.
