Orange Brulee

Tea #2 for the night.
So I’ve had this sitting around in my ‘to try’ bin since I ordered it my first Della Terra order once upon a time. /hangs head/ To be honest, I’m not sure why I bought it in the first place since I’m not particularly fond of oranges, though I do like them/juice/etc occasionally. I guess it was because I was still new to tea and didn’t really know that orange in tea was so, well, unpleasant for me. But I like to at least try a tea before putting it in the swap bin, because I’ve been surprised (not often) before, so I gave this a shot.
The dry leaf smells very strongly of candied oranges, those sugared gummy oranges you can get in the 2 for $5 bags on the checkout aisles of the grocery. The taste, unfortunately, is very like eating those same gummy oranges. Very artificial. No discernible caramel taste to this, but then, I wasn’t really expecting much. And I can’t really tell the base tea under all this fake orange. Tried this with a bit of Truvia and it didn’t do much more than make the orange taste more artificial.
I probly should’ve tried a second brew, but I didn’t even finish my first cup, so I certainly wasn’t going to give a second one a shot.

Sipdown! Thanks for the sample, JennyFur!

I’m getting mostly orange from this one. Not really detecting too much from the “brulee” aspect, other than maybe some extra sweetness and a little bit of a thicker mouthfeel. (Although that last part is probably from the oolong, more than anything.)

A nice, sweet, citrusy oolong, none the less.

The first sniff reminded me of an Orange Julius or an orangecicle, which is a WONDERFUL scent. However this is where my love for this blend stops. Upon steeping, the tea loses its citrus scent and the taste is just…bleh. There isn’t anything defining or memorable about the taste, which is disappointing.

Well, I can smell and taste again, so I’m back to trying out some tastey teas! Yay! Here’s hoping the rest of this nasty cold goes away now.

This tea smells amazing. Very orangey, with hints of cream and caramel. Very sweet smelling. Once brewed the caramel pops forward a bit more. The scent is heavenly.
Taste wise, I’m getting the orange first. It’s nice and fresh tasting. This is directly followed by and combined with a sweet caramal note. Yum! The flavors combine together perfectly in this cuppa. The mouthfeel is very smooth, probably due to the cream flavor, and delightfully refreshing with the citrus from the orange. Perfect desert tea! It actually reminds me a bit of Christmas for some reason…

Overall, I’d say this was a score! Glad I added it to my “Try Me” sampler.

Thanks to Della Terra Teas for sending me the sample! I won this in a contest over on their Facebook page, and was quite excited to try it. I adore creme brulee and love orange flavoring in deserts.

I oversteeped this as I was pulled into a quick meeting just as I put the tea on to brew. But that didn’t seem to affect it negatively – no bitterness.

I think I need to be more careful in scooping – got a number of orange rinds but no caramel. So it tasted less like creme brulee and more like orange tea. Not complaining, but I wanted the caramel flavor.

With a bit of sugar added, it’s a nice and light orange oolong. I may try cold steeping this as another person recommended.

The more I drink this tea, the more I like it. The leaves smell like a candy orange, and although I’m not sure that I get much caramel flavor, this is more creamy that a tea with only orange flavor. I think I will need to have a few more cups of this to determine my final feelings on this….

This tea has a bright orange taste. I don’t taste any caramel like taste, but it’s a nice orange tea so far.

Brewed a few cups of this tea this morning to drink a I ate my pancake made in a rice cooker :)

The orange is stronger than I would like. The second steeping was much better but a bit dry.

Good Monday morning all! Hope everybody is having a great start to their day! Not sure this was the best choice to start my day officially off with but oh well.

Smelling the dry leaves on this and then tasting them, you feel a little disappointed. The dry leaves have such a great smell to them. You can really smell the orange and it makes you think of a nice caramelized orange treat. Not the taste you get at all. Unfortunately I just got a more watered down orange flavor with just a very slight hint of creaminess (as it cools) more than anything else. I’m going to try again later because it could have been me, but I’m just not feeling this one. Hoping for an improvement next go around!

I finished my first pouch of this off at work today. I have another in my cupboard from Valentines Day, so it’s not a sipdown. I don’t mind that, though, because this is a niiiiice tea. It took me three tries to get my cup this afternoon, though. The first time I boiled the water and left it to cool in my cup, and then forgot about it. The second time I actually got as far as adding the leaves, and then I forgot about it again. It was third time lucky! Clearly work is distracting :) It was good tea, though. When I got it.