Rooibos Vanilla

My glass jar of this is running down to its last bits. I think I have enough left for one more steeping. I’ve had this herbal for so long… this was in my newbie days when I decided buying a pound of this seemed like a great idea. While this is a nice, comforting, caffeine-free beverage, I didn’t need to go overboard. Anyhow, those were the good ol days!

Today I needed something comforting. My husband went abroad to visit his family for 2 weeks. I wish I could go, but I can’t fly now that I am becoming super pregnant. Sad. I know that the scent and flavor has probably died down throughout the years, but this still tastes good. There is the lingering sweetness mixed with the woody taste that rooibos brings as well as nuts and the light warmth of vanilla. This feels like a warm blanket has been placed over me… I feel all cuddly! Perfect beverage for a lonely night like this.

Had a cup of this today, just to get it a bit closer to sipdown. Really not a favourite, though.

Another sample from the quiet life!

I was a bit worried after smelling this tea because it smells primarily of the typical woody, almost sour, rooibos…..with a hint of vanilla. Wow, this brewed up extremely dark – not the typical red rooibos color but a red-brown much like a black tea….Turns out, I really shouldn’t have been that worried. Yeah, it tastes a lot like rooibos which I typically don’t care for, but it isn’t the sour wood version just the plain wood version. I’m not really tasting the vanilla.

The vanilla is a lot more noticeable after adding just a touch of sugar, which makes the tea taste a lot better. I will be able to finish my sample, but I wouldn’t buy this particular rooibos for myself. I still think I prefer the rooibos blends where the rooibos is very much hidden.

The first time I tried this, I followed the suggestions of 2 tsp & it was kind of meehhhh…

Tonight I was looking for something, anything to drink that didn’t have caffeine, but maybe a little flavor would be nice, right? I tried this again, using 1 T, steeped the full 10 minutes, added stevia & coconut milk creamer, & it was definitely an improvement, & somewhat satisfying.

i’m getting down to the point where i have almost no more sample or swap teas to try. and all the ones i do have left are herbal.
that is pretty amazing.
but all it means is that i can spend lots of time planning and day dreaming about what tea i’m gonna buy when i have the space!
i got this rooibos to use in a personalized sherlock inspired tea i made for myself.
it’s not offensive. it’s not really anything. i gulped it down and it was gone. sluurp.

Initially, I was a little scared off by the flavor. The ad copy says that it uses natural vanilla flavouring, but to me this smelled kind of artificial (but I think I’m over-sensitive to this kind of thing). I don’t doubt that it’s natural, I just don’t care for the mix, scent-wise.
Brewed up, the liquor is gorgeous. I love the deep red-gold burnt umber of rooibos. Just seeing that is an instant comfort that I associate with being tugged under to sleep.
The scent brewed is much better – the two scents meld and become toasty bringing the best of each out.
The flavour is oddly fruity with an apple undertone (note to self: try blending up an apple rooibos. Rooibos always seems kind of like apples to me – anyone else have this association?).
I’m getting vanilla here only at the finish, at which point it lingers. Super tea snob that I think I’ve become, I have to say that I don’t care for it. It still tastes unnatural to me, more like a vanilla syrup than anything else. I think that I really for the most part don’t care too much for adagio’s teas.
As a decent tea to sip before bed (yes, at 2:30 AM), it’s perfect as something to put me to sleep. (I still like the flavors of rooibos by itself best).

Thanks to oOTeaOo for this!
Rooibos Vanilla is really a classic (it seems to be a favorite in Germany), and I love it. I’ve never tried it loose before, until this.

Unfortunately, though my experience thus far has just been German brands of bagged rooibos vanilla, this isn’t any better. Perhaps they use high quality tea, or a good balance of vanilla and rooibos, so that the tea bags are actually good quality; and it’s not that this tea is bad, but the vanilla could be MUCH stronger. I wouldn’t want it so strong as to mask the rooibos entirely (I do like rooibos), but this pretty much tastes like an unflavored rooibos (you can smell the vanilla in the dry leaf, but that was about all I could detect).

I’ve played around with steeping times, too, and that hasn’t seemed to add to the presence of vanilla. I will be continuing to look for a source of loose, delicious vanilla (rooibos/honeybush) and unflavored green (rooibos/honeybush).

So at first sniff, the dry tea smells like vanilla coffee. My daughter thinks it smells chocolaty. I was very ambivalent. I brewed it using the directions: 1tsp of tea/cup, boiling water, five minutes of steeping time.

The first smell was gorgeously vanilla and something else that my husband said smelled like a cookie. The first taste was kind of like licking a piece of wood that smelled like vanilla. My husband also agrees. Once I added a teaspoon of honey, the tea became drinkable, but the smell of the vanilla went away. There was this vaguely coffee taste with a woody finish. I never imagined that anything could taste woody, but this definitely has a woody taste (and not oak or pine my friends).

With honey, it isn’t bad, and I will probably finish it unless I decide to see if anyone wants to swap me anything else, but unless I find a better way of using it, like putting it in a cookie, this will be last rooiboss vanilla I drink.

Maybe I just need to try a different rooiboss, any suggestions?

I am sipping on a cup of this tonight… I think I’ve had more than enough caffeine today. This is very soothing and relaxing. The vanilla flavor is very soft, and needed some encouragement so I added about a half a teaspoon of turbinado sugar. This seemed to accomplish the task, as the cup was so very vanilla-y after that.

decent cup see previous notes…not overly strong in any way, however.