162 Tasting Notes
Day 18 of my do-it-yourself scavenger hunt advent calendar!
Well…I’m glad I only have to suffer through 2 cups worth of this one. Sorry, DO NOT like it at all. I used a heaping scoop to make my cup, and still got barely any flavour. Tasted almost like sugar, bread, and cloves. Don’t ask me how I managed to get that combination, but…yuck. I didn’t taste any fig, but maybe that was the “bread” flavour. Whatever was giving it that flavour, it wasn’t pleasant. As the cup cools it doesn’t get any better.
It’s a shame that this one is so heavy. The sample I got in my calendar was probably quite a bit of money compared to all of the others for the equivalent of the same number of cups of tea. And for it to be gross? Too bad.
Verdict: won’t buy if you hold a gun to my head.
Day 17 of my do-it-yourself scavenger hunt advent calendar!
Smelling this one out of the package I fell in love instantly. I figured if it tasted anything like it smells this will be one of my new favourites. And I wasn’t disappointed. This tea was VERY sweet, but I kind of liked that. Normally I’m not a sweet tea kind of person but because this is pink lemonade I can deal with it. It reminds me a lot of the Kool Aid blue lemonade (which is actually berry lemonade, so just a blue version of pink lemonade) which is by far my favourite kind of Kool Aid. I definitely have to try this one iced. Might be my new favourite cold beverage!
Verdict: Will definitely buy. If they discontinue this one I’ll be sad panda.
Day 13 of my do-it-yourself scavenger hunt advent calendar
So, I should preface my review of this tea by saying first that I DO NOT like ginger. That being said, I love gingerbread. Use that information as you wish.
When I first smelled this tea I was happy. Smells like a gingerbread cookie with a hint of…something else. Might have been the honeybush I was smelling, maybe the pineapple pieces. But “something”. Something that doesn’t belong in gingerbread. I also had some missing smells. No nutmeg, no allspice, no cloves, I didn’t even really get a good whiff of cinnamon. Not nearly as “spicy” as I would expect from an actual gingerbread.
The flavour is…not my cup of tea (pun intended). There is DEFINITELY a ginger taste to it, and since I don’t like ginger that was the first tip-off for me. The second was the honeybush. I know they were going for a molasses-type sweetener, but this one failed big-time for me. It’s weird that I really don’t like the honeybush here; I love the DT Honey Bee mate (which prominently features honeybush). I didn’t get any currant in the sample bag, and I’m not too sure what that would have added, anyway. I taste “spice-like flavour”, but I certainly don’t get cinnamon from it. Maybe I just got unlucky on that front, too, and my sample scoop didn’t have any cinnamon pieces in it.
Overall, I don’t HATE it. But since I am not a ginger fan and this is basically a ginger-rooibos tea, I don’t love it. I don’t even really like it. But if you like ginger, this tea just might be your thing. But it’s not mine.
Verdict: won’t be buying.
Day 12 of my do-it-yourself scavenger hunt advent calendar.
Well…the smell is divine. The taste…meh.
As Cavocorax pointed out, the “cake base” of this tea is exactly the same as red velvet cake which I wasn’t a huge fan of. In the 10 g sample bag I got, I only had 2 teeny pieces of pineapple so it’s not like I can vouch for a pineapple flavour. This scoop didn’t have any. And cherries? What cherries? Unless the cherry pieces are microscopic, I didn’t have any. I certainly didn’t get the flavour of cherry. It just tasted like fake-cake. Blech.
In reality it wasn’t THAT bad, but when all of the other teas in my calendar have been so GOOD, this one was a real disappointment. It just tasted like a basic black tea base with some artificial cake flavour.
Verdict: will not buy.
Day 10 of my do-it-yourself advent calendar!
I was VERY surprised with this tea. I love strawberry rhubarb pie, and so was afraid that there would be no way for this tea to live up to my love of pie. And carrots in it?! Give me a break. No one puts carrots in strawberry rhubarb pie! That’s just silly. And yucky. Silly and yucky.
Steeped: carrots? What carrots?! I still don’t get why putting carrots in tea doesn’t give it a carroty flavour; in fact, I don’t get what carrots add to flavour at all. But I guess that’s why I don’t make tea blends for a living. I just drink them :) The yogurt bits give the tea an awesome creaminess, and the actual flavour of strawberry and rhubarb is bang-on. And this one, unlike others where the main ingredient is apple, doesn’t give me an apple-y taste at all. I LOVE it. I don’t know if this has overtaken White Chocolate Frost as my new favourite of the calendar, but it’s awesome.
Verdict: will buy a boatload.
Day 7 of the scavenger hunt do-it-yourself tea advent calendar.
I’m not sure what everyone else is so poo-poo about, but I really like this. Maybe I just got a lucky scoop, but I get hardly any licorice taste. Sure, there’s a bit of the sweetness from it, but it’s not overwhelming or something I don’t like. I get a strong chocolate flavour when I’m sipping it, and the after-taste is definitely nutty. I’m not so sure I’d go as far as HAZELNUT nutty, but definitely nutty. I don’t get much of an oolong taste of the tea; I can definitely taste the black tea that is mixed in with it. Even looking at the steeped tea, there isn’t the characteristic rolled-up oolong leaf in the mix. Again, maybe I got a weird scoop from the big container.
Verdict: will definitely re-buy.
Day 6 of my do-it-yourself scavenger hunt advent calendar.
I’m not sure how I feel about this one. Yes, it’s good. But…I feel like it has changed since the last time I drank it. It’s fruity, a bit tart. Predominant taste I get is apple, and then “something else”. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but I’ve also never had goji berries on their own before so I don’t actually know what they taste like. It might actually be those. Who knows (well, someone probably does…).
Verdict: may buy again, may not.
Goji berries are lovely. This sounds an interesting mix if not quite a “tea”
People keep telling me that goji berries are good. I should try to find some sometime. There’s an asian food store that sells them near my house; opened a few months ago. I have yet to step foot inside it, despite looking at their flyer every week saying “OOOOOOOOOO!!!!”
Day 5 of my do-it-yourself scavenger hunt tea advent calendar!
Oh. My. God. If heaven offered tea, this would be the one they would have. Tastes minty, has the creaminess of white chocolate, and a nice zip at the end from the peppercorns. Yes, it’s oily on top. Cocoa butter, the only ingredient in good white chocolate, is oil. That’s why it’s called cocoa BUTTER. Come on, people. You complain about artificial flavours, and when they use chunks of white chocolate you complain about drinking cocoa butter. Poor muffins. I’d prefer an oil slick over a lab-created chocolate “flavour”. I definitely could do without the stevia, though. This tea is definitely sweet, but not so sweet I couldn’t drink it. It was a bit rough to have something so “desserty” in the morning. Would have been an awesome after-dinner bevvie. That will be my next cup! And I love that this is truly herbal; white chocolate contains no caffeine (the caffeine in chocolate is in the chocolate liquor, which is only added back in while making milk and dark chocolate). My mom would also love this.
Verdict: Will buy a kilogram. Ha.
Day 3 of my do-it-yourself scavenger hunt tea advent calendar!
I was pretty sure that I had tried this tea as a sample in-store sometime a long time ago, but turns out I likely didn’t…this doesn’t taste familiar at all. But that’s OK! Because it’s darn good. It’s creamy, it’s limey, but it’s…not tart. I think it’s probably the pineapple pieces in it, and perhaps the apple, that take away what would have been a very unpleasant tea if it had of just been lemongrass, green tea and lime yogurt thingies. I think it would be a really nice iced tea during the summer months, too. Since I only have enough left for one more cup and it’s -10 C out today, I think I’ll have it hot :)
Verdict: would definitely re-buy, and want to try it iced.
“Artificial lime yoghurt flavouring”
What exactly is that? And since when did lemongrass have anything to do with Italy.
I think lemongrass just gives it a lemony flavour without the bitterness that lemon peel (or lime peel) might give. I don’t notice an overwhelming lemongrass flavour.
Tea #2 of my scavenger hunt advent calendar!
Well, this tea has changed. Yes, it’s still darn good, but certainly not good as I once thought. Despite having big pieces of pear and cranberry, it just didn’t taste…fruity. It tasted artificial. And the black tea pieces were more like powdered black tea, not actual leaves. It was weird. And it looked like a whole lot of tea stems, not necessarily tea leaves. Also weird.
