Blueberry Fruit Tea

Second Review of this fruit tea.

I didn’t review as much tea as usual yesterday or today because I needed to accomplish a few tasks that I’ve put off for too long.

Yesterday I was learning to ride the bus to Old Town which will cost $20 A YEAR for a pass. The bus stop is half block from my front door. It took 20 minutes to get to town. Not too bad. I rewarded my effort with Curry at Rasta Pasta under the watchful eye of Bob Marley and drank cold lemongrass tea.(Check that off the list)
Today, I cleaned out my huge walk-in closet! (My closet is the same size as my kitchen!) ICK! I lost 55 pounds so lots of clothes need to go to Goodwill! By the time I finished at 4:30 I was spent! Needed tea! (Check another task off the list)

Instead of reaching for caffeine, I remembered this sweet little darling of a blueberry fruit tea, just the ahhhh blend perfect as a reward. (I’d like chocolate, money and a massage too…oh well)

This tea is full to overflowing with plump syrupy fruit! You can’t look at your cup and see through the dense liquor…oh no. This is thick tea. If you hate hibiscus have no fear. The roselle (which is in the hibiscus family) is tame and not too tart or overwhelming. You taste juicy berry which is the point of wanting this blurple tea in the first place.
I can think of all sorts of creative culinary things to do with this blissful blueberry liquor. Infuse honey in the tea or steep some in vinegar for a great beginning to a salad dressing. Iced would be perfect.
I soak apples in acid loaded fruit tea to prevent them from browning, then chill and drain before adding to a fruit salad. The flavor and texture is fantastic.

There is no skimping on fruit or flavor. This is a quality Fruit Blend!

Cold brewed the rest of my sample pack. It was probably about 9-10 teaspoons per my large Takeya 2L pitcher. I added one small packet of stevia just because I felt curious about how it would change the flavour. Wow, this is delicious. So true blueberry/grape flavour. Yummy

Wow! OK… I wasn’t really prepared to like this quite as much as I do. I thought… roselle = fancy name for hibiscus. But… even though roselle is a species of hibiscus, it doesn’t brew up tasting quite the same as the hibiscus I have known and disliked. This … actually tastes pretty darned good. Better than that, even.

Yes, roselle has a tartness to it that is very similar to hibiscus. In fact, someone “blind tasting” this tisane would likely note that tartness as a hibiscus flavor. But… it doesn’t have that same syrupy thickness that hibiscus usually has. And with that syrupy thickness, the tartness sort of clings to your palate and that’s what I don’t like. But with the roselle, it is much lighter and cleaner feeling. Very refreshing.

The blueberries are delicious in this… but what I really like is the black currant, which gives this kind of a wine-like taste … and makes me think that this would be AMAZING brewed with some mulling spices for a mulled wine-less.

Yes… it’s late. I’m creating weird names for brewed tisanes. I need to go to bed now.

First – let me start of by saying – Roselle (for those of you who don’t know) is a species of Hibiscus (MORE INFO: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roselle_%28plant%29) and is popular in Australia.

The plant is considered to have antihypertensive properties. Primarily, the plant is cultivated for the production for bast fibre from the stem of the plant. The fibre may be used as a substitute for jute in making burlap.1 Hibiscus, specifically Roselle, has been used in folk medicine as a diuretic, mild laxative, and treatment for cardiac and nerve diseases and cancer.2

The red calyces of the plant are increasingly exported to America and Europe, where they are used as food colourings. Germany is the main importer. It can also be found in markets (as flowers or syrup) in some places such as France, where there are Senegalese immigrant communities. The green leaves are used like a spicy version of spinach. They give flavour to the Senegalese fish and rice dish thiéboudieune. Proper records are not kept, but the Senegalese government estimates national production and consumption at 700 t (770 short tons) per year. Also in Myanmar their green leaves are the main ingredient in making chin baung kyaw curry.

In East Africa, the calyx infusion, called “Sudan tea”, is taken to relieve coughs. Roselle juice, with salt, pepper, asafetida and molasses, is taken as a remedy for biliousness.

The heated leaves are applied to cracks in the feet and on boils and ulcers to speed maturation. A lotion made from leaves is used on sores and wounds. The seeds are said to be diuretic and tonic in action and the brownish-yellow seed oil is claimed to heal sores on camels. In India, a decoction of the seeds is given to relieve dysuria, strangury and mild cases of dyspepsia. Brazilians attribute stomachic, emollient and resolutive properties to the bitter roots.3

Above are the uses

Here is what they say about the TEA infusions…
In Africa, especially the Sahel, roselle is commonly used to make a sugary herbal tea that is commonly sold on the street. The dried flowers can be found in every market. Roselle tea is also quite common in Italy where it spread during the first decades of the 20th century as a typical product of the Italian colonies. The Carib Brewery Trinidad Limited, a Trinidad and Tobago brewery, produces a Shandy Sorrel in which the tea is combined with beer.

In Thailand, Roselle is drunk as a tea, believed to also reduce cholesterol. It can also be made into a wine – Hibiscus flowers are commonly found in commercial herbal teas, especially teas advertised as berry-flavoured, as they give a bright red colouring to the drink.

NOW…For my thoughts on THIS specific TEA from TEVIVRE***

It smells like a combo of Blueberries, Raisins, Cherries, Currants, and/or other berries! There are tarty, sweet, juicy, and bitter fruit aromas morphing while infusing! It has a slight roasted aroma to it too!

The post infusion color is different than I expected! I was assuming since Roselle was in the Hibiscus family it would be intense purple or pink or red in color but it’s a bit of medium brown, purple, red, blue-ish.

It has a vibrant fruit-tart flavor but it’s a different kind of a tart…it’s a good kind of a tart! It’s fruity and berry. I can taste the Currants, Blueberries, AND Grapes – individually but also together – blending nicely. I really LOVE the grape addition. It really contributes to the overall flavor! I think the Currants help tone down that stereotypical hibiscus flavor unless this Roselle is NOT as intense as your “default hibiscus used in most teas”…if that is the case…I prefer Roselle to Hibiscus and hope more companies start using THIS species of it in teas and tisanes they feel they need to add hibiscus to.

So…apparently…I want to ramble about this tisane.

I feel I need to point out different ingredients when they are used to give respect to not only the ingredient itself but the companies that use them, promote them, and bring them to the forefront. I love things I have to Google and Wiki…I LOVE learning about them!

At first I was thinking I would like this better iced…which still may be the case…but the more it cools at room temp and the more I sip on it…the more I am enjoying and appreciating this fruity tisane. I don’t over infuse my fruit tisanes so I only let this one go for about 2 to 3 minutes.

Because this different in many ways I am scoring it a bit higher than I would “average” fruit tisanes…I like this. I think it’s a neat offering. I am sure it could be tinkered with to your liking, but I like it just fine this way – my first attempt – and I appreciate the ingredients they way they are placed in there and how they work with eachother.

Neat!

Thanks Angel and Teavivre for this sample

This tisane is definitely on the tart side, not offensively so; more like the taste of fresh spring berries as they just turn ripe enough to start eating. The blueberry and currant are both evident in the sip, and are true to the natural fruit taste. I started drinking this as a hot tea, and as it cools the taste of currants increasingly comes to the forefront.

Part of me is curious of what this would taste like with a touch of sugar, but I can’t bring myself to try it, for fear of ruining a good thing. I’m usually quite picky with fruit teas because I’m not a fan of tartness, but this one was a pleasant surprise.

My order from Teavivre arrived (yaay) I decided to try this one first. I think it would be better iced. I tried this straight and didn’t like it much so I added some splenda. A little too much splenda but it taste better sweetened I just have to balance the splenda a bit better :D

Thanks to Angel at Teavivre for this WONDERFUL tea!!

I LOVE THIS TEA! I just wanted to put that out there.

Smell: It was a colorful mix, and I smelled lots of blueberry, a bit of grape, and a tart smell that hinted at that sneaky hibiscus. But it was a lovely berry blend! Steeping it reminded me of wine or even blueberry juice.

Taste: I was worried about the hibiscus, thinking this would be VERY tart. But IT WASN’T!! It was very, very yummy!! It had a nice, strong blueberry flavor, which had a sweet-tart mix provided by the grape, and then it had a smooth tart where the hibiscus was. I loved it hot, but after drinking a few hot sips, since I had to go to an outing, I poured the rest in a glass and let it sit in the fridge. Upon returning, I drank it cold and it was even more amazing!! I LOVE A TEA THAT CAN DO BOTH!! Truly, it was a perfect blueberry tea! :-)

Oh, I put in two spoonfuls of sugar, kindof medium in amount. It was a lovely tea, really!!

I bought a sample sized pouch of this and made a quart of iced tea with it last night. It was probably only enough for really half that, but I let it sit for a nice long time so I think it all worked out in the end.

I feel like this is what that “blueberry merlot” tea from TeaForte should be. This definitely reminds me of a red wine. I was worried I was going to need to add sugar, which I completely forgot and wanted to do while it was hot, but it’s perfect. It’s tart, but not mouthpuckering tart. It could probably use being a little sweeter, but I like it how it is. Definitely tastes like it’s been sweetened by blueberries.

I needed more fruit after having some peach Pinkberry for lunch (SO GOOD.) and now I think I’ve had enough for at least now. I’ll go have my fruit and added sugar to yogurt sugar high somewhere outside!

This may just be the best smelling tisane of my whole life. The beau and I steeped up a pot of this in the afternoon, enjoying another generous sample from Teavivre. The dry smell is fabulous – strongly blueberry, hint of tart and a hint of something raisin-y behind that. If I could smell only one fruity thing the rest of my life I would choose this. If this were jam, I would eat it by the spoonful. Oh man, it smells like jam!

I steeped 4 heaping tsp. in 12ish oz of boiling water for about 8 minutes, basically following the Teavivre directions. Lately I have found ymself pulling away from fruit based teas, but berry tisanes still hold a place in my heart, and this one smells like the queen of them all. Oh man, am I excited.

The brewed liquor has a tart smell from the roselle, but there is still distinctly jammy blueberry and raisin underneath that. The first sips are very tart, so we added a drop of honey and that made this lovely. The tartness is there, but it is muted a bit by the honey and the blueberry flavour becomes more rich. It still reminds me of jam and has a lovely aftertaste – this is a treat! I look forward to enjoying the rest of this sample, and likely will be ordering it at some point in the future.

EDIT: Made a second steep (10 minutes) and that was really good – the tartness was totally gone, and though the berry flavour was obviously light, it was naturally sweet and deicious, like over-ripe berries. Loving the lighter second steep to go with the bold first!

Wooooaaaaah. This is way too tart for me. I thought 3.5 minutes would be enough to tame the hibiscus, but apparently not! I can tell that there is a berry flavour in here too, but mostly, TART. I can see this being ok sweetened/as an iced tea, but this is not for me, sadly.

Thanks for sending some too me, CHAroma!