Candied Orange Green Tea

Adventageddon Day 1 – Tea 4/4

Cold Brew!

One of the somewhat more personally challenging parts of advents for me is that I usually have a daily 24 oz cold brew. Just with the nature of opening the teas up in the morning and many of them being sizes too small to make that large of a quantity of cold brew I never know if I’ll have a good cold brew during the day.

Thankfully the Plum Deluxe advent has two servings in each day that equal the perfect amount of tea for a cold brew when combined. I think that may mean many of the teas they include this year are gonna get cold brewed first thing each morning for me to drink during the afternoon. At least if the flavours make sense each day, like this one.

I enjoyed this a lot though! More than I expected to given that it’s a majority green tea blend with just a straight up orange flavour to it. It was very smooth though, and I thought the orange was really nice and fresh and bright tasting. Despite being called Candied orange I didn’t personally think it was a terribly sweet tea and definitely, at least to me, not a very artificial or candy-type of orange flavour. It was a bit more marmalade like, as I see Cameron said in a review from a previous year. But also sort of a fresher and more zesty orange note that kind of mirrored the smell of essential oils that mist the air when you break the skin of a ripe orange while peeling it.

Sipdown (207)

C is for…Candied Orange

I don’t like this. While it’s definitely orange, it’s pithy and bitter and not for me.

Plum Deluxe Advent Calendar – Day 7

Ooh, this one sounds tasty. I really enjoy citrus in teas and the candied aspect makes it a little more festive-sounding. The dry leaf smells like marmalade.

Well, it’s not great, but it’s pleasant enough. The orange is somewhere between marmalade, orange juice, and vitamin C tablets. I don’t think I taste the base tea at all, perhaps a hint of dry grass? But it does add some body. The flavoring is definitely a bit too strong here.

It’s not something I would feel the need to order, but I’m enjoying it in my teapot this evening on the couch. :)

https://www.instagram.com/p/CIhQL2GAN6I/

(today’s advent teas: https://www.instagram.com/p/CIgMNjsgAZc/)

Plum Deluxe Advent Day 7
Very excited to try this one! I love candied orange notes in teas. Added a bit of honey. Smells strongly of orange. Tastes like orange. This isn’t bad, it’s just not candied. It’s more of a sweet orange. A bit of drying bitterness in the aftertaste.

I normally cold brew fruity greens, but lacking the time I just warm brewed it, the full sampler packet to 500ml 175F water for a 2 minute steep to take back to work with me from my lunch break. As I wait for the tea to cool a bit, I’m getting a strong, pithy orange peel aroma wafting from the cup.

I’m not sure what about this is “candied”, as this is just a very strong orange-flavored green tea, very pleasantly citrusy tart. I find myself having trouble finding orange flavors in particular in teas overly artificial, and there is a little of that here, likely from how strongly its coming off, but otherwise it’s actually pretty nice in comparison to other artificial orange flavorings I can recall (which often taste waxy, metallic, alcoholic, or “candy fake”). The bitey nature of this reminds me of tangerine/clemintine, which I love. The flavoring is packing enough of a wallop that I really can’t taste the green base at all. It’s simple, but I’m enjoying it.

Dumped the rest of my sample into a mason jar and left it on my counter for an unknown amount of time. Now that I’m in the middle of descaling my kettle and can’t make another cup of anything, I’m searching for what is prepared in various jars.

Sipping on this plain gave a weird grapefruit tang to it that I didn’t like. Added a bunch of flaxmilk and it tastes better, but not amazing. It has a little bit of the orange cream flavor, but it just doesn’t pop. Added some half and half to up the cream factor. No. Added some sugar. Eh. Maybe I’m not familiar with candied orange and keep expecting regular orange? Not quite sure what’s up, but I’d pass on buying this.