SBT: Grape

On the Tenth Day of Christmas, SBT sent me this tea!

Of all the newly introduced teas from SBT, this may just be the one I was least interested in trying. What can I say? Grape is just one of those flavors that … just doesn’t do it for me. I don’t like grape candy, I don’t like grape ice pops, I don’t like grape soda. But I must say that I do like most of the grape flavored teas that I’ve tried. (I can’t think of one that I didn’t like.)

This isn’t bad. Opening the package, it smells strongly of grape, in a candy-ish sort of way. Sort of like the powdered grape sugar that is in pixie stix. It tastes sweet, sort of like sweet grape, but the black tea helps to even out the flavor so that I’m not tasting the aforementioned grape soda or grape ice pops or grape candy.

Overall, not a bad iced tea: http://sororiteasisters.com/2014/01/03/tenth-day-christmas-southern-boy-teas-edition/

Thank you for the sale a while back, CHAroma! There is plenty grape here, if you’re thinking the artificial candy grape. Do grapes even really taste like this? I steeped a teaspoon of this hot, rather than iced, so I’m not really judging it fairly. But there is actually a lot of the grape flavor. Almost too much! It might be tolerable to me if it didn’t remind me of those older jelly dark purple fishing lures. I say “jelly” and “purple” and those fishing lures probably remind me of grape flavoring. I don’t really like the idea of drinking fishing lures though! It really infused my infuser too… the next couple of steeps were grapey. Not having this one again…
Steep #1 // few minutes after boiling // less than a minute steep

Today’s iced tea of choice. I haven’t tried this one before, but the flavour appealed to me when I tipped out my selection of SBTs to sort through. Dry, it smells strongly of grape candy; sweet and slightly artificial. Since that’s actually what I was hoping for, I’m really rather pleased! I gave this one the usual SBT treatment — three minutes in 1/4 litre of boiling water, topped up to 2 litres with cold water and into the fridge overnight.

Brewed, this one retains the grape candy flavour, although it’s not quite as sweet as I was expecting. That’s a good thing, on balance, because I think it might have been too cloying if it were as sweet as it smelled — the grape flavour is quite strong and lingering enough without being uber sweet to boot. The black tea base seems a lot lighter in this one than it has been in the SBTs I tried last year. I’m not sure whether it’s been altered, or whether it’s just the flavouring here, but I can’t really taste it at all. The flavour actually reminds me of a grape lipgloss I had as a teenager — nice in an odd sort of way! It’s funny the memories tea recalls sometimes.

I’m enjoying this one a lot. It’s got a good, strong flavour, it’s not too sweet, and it’s pretty unique. I’ll come back to this one next year if it’s still available.

I’m still trying to figure out my favorite way to make these teas. This time I cold steeped first, and forgot to notice the time when I put it in the fridge so not sure how long it was in there before I removed the bag for a hot steep.. Oops!

Dry it smells of grape soda or candy… sweet grape candy.

Steeped, the same grape flavor comes through, but not too strongly. The cold steep was better than the hot steeped version in strength of flavor and mouth feel. It was much more thick and rich than the hot steeped afterwards. The hot steep almost has a bitterness to it although I steeped a bit under normal black tea temperature and kept to the 3 mins or less. I have considered doing both steeps and then blending them to see what the results of that are.

Hubby fully expected that this tea would be primarily for our son, but he took it to work this morning not knowing what flavor he was getting. He was surprised when he liked it and asked what it was. I think he expected it to be more like grape Kool-aid mixed with tea when he had seen the package. You can certainly imagine that with this blend if you try. I have yet to get my son to try it.. Maybe tomorrow ;) I’m anxious to see what he thinks of this and Monkey Fart. Thanks MissB for sending this my way !