Peach Cardamom

Today’s work cold brew. It’s not often that I try a tea for the first time cold, but I’ve made an exception for this one because it seems like a flavour combination that would work well cold, and because the weather is so warm I’m drinking a lot more cold tea than hot anyway. This is probably the second oldest 52 Teas blend in my cupboard, so it’s high time it had an outing. I used 2 tbsp of leaf, added it to 1.8 litres of cold water, and left it in the fridge for around 10 hours overnight. The resulting brew is a fairly bright yellow – very summer appropriate!

To taste, this is absolutely magnificent! The peach flavouring is strong and natural-tasting. No artificial peach here. It tastes like very ripe, juicy peach – the kind you might put in a cobbler because they’re almost too soft for eating. The cardamom really makes this, though, adding a deep earthy flavour, and a mild edge of spice. It also takes down the sweetness a notch or two, and makes this a much more fragrant blend than it otherwise would be. It’s a slightly unusual paring, but I like it a lot better than some of the more typical combinations, like ginger or cinnamon.

Based on my recent experiences, I think I’ve concluded that I prefer 52 Teas green blends to any of their blacks. As a lifelong black tea fan and a green sceptic, that comes as a huge surprise to me. The green base here adds a grassy undertone that works really well with the peach/cardamom, and there’s not a hint of bitterness or astringency. I don’t say this often, but this really is a masterful blend, capturing the best elements of each flavour while making sure they’re well balanced and complementary. I’ll be sad when this one disappears from my stash. It’s a real peach!

Tea #8 from Pass the Stash box

Finally! After tasting teas that didn’t really do anything for me (they were fine, but didn’t really make me sit up and take notice)… this tea is making me sit up and take notice!

I’m shocked that it is a sencha…I thought I didn’t like sencha. I find the combination of the peach and cardamom to work very well together. I’ve always liked cardamom in chai, and it works with the peach, which needs a strong contrast. The peach tastes very good…peachy, without being overpowering. Very nicely done!

Pass the Stash

I was hoping for a super juicy peachy flavor..but that is not what this tea is. The green tea base is the strongest flavor in the cup for me and the peach is very subtle. I do rather enjoy the creaminess that sneaks in near the end of the sip. I tend to like stronger fruity flavors but if you enjoy lighter fruity flavors, this tea would be absolutely awesome for you:]

This blend smells sweet and fruity, rather a lot like peach/apricot but in a perfumed way (ie sweeter than natural).

Flavour wise this tastes like peach with sharp citrus behind it, like cardamom but also similar to a strong lemongrass. It has some sweetness but for the most part it’s sour. Reminds me of orange rind in a strange way. Very fragrant though and a nice combination, not sure this one is for me though.

I cold brewed this one because it just sounded like a tea that wanted to be cold brewed. I have to say, when I first opened up the bag, I was hit with this strong smell of maybe cardamom? I’ve only ever had a subtle cardamom flavored ice cream, so I don’t really know what to expect from it. Anyway, after cold brewing, that strong cardamom smell toned down just a tad but was still very overwhelming. I couldn’t even really taste anything other than that. It was also a perfume-y tea in taste, which put me off. So, in conclusion, this tea was really not the tea for me, but I will leave it unrated due to my limited knowledge of cardamom. Thanks to Pyroxy for sending me some to try out!

At 1st sip, I didn’t care for this one. I mean I thought “Well not a terrible cup, but not terribly inclined to make it again.”

But I kept sipping, I did like it better then the Watermelon from last night, so that’s something right? Nearing to the end of the cup, I found that I did like it, maybe not as much as the Madagascar Coconut White from last night, but enough that I wouldn’t mind having a bag of this hanging around, particularly for summer iced tea.

Peach balances equally with green tea so it’s worth trying hot. Lower quality teas that are heavily fragranced I would use for iced tea but this is not so. However I imagine this would be refreshing cold and mixed with soda water. I want to do this cold steeped to see if I pick up more characteristics from the tea itself.