1771 Tasting Notes
Whoa there lime smell jumping out of the bag! Easy there! Down boy. Once steeped, the lime smell simmers down a bit and I can smell a gelatin scent coming through. I can taste the lime and the jello flavor, but I think this is going to need some sugar to not taste like super watered down jello. The aftertaste is the same that I’d expect with jello and it does taste better sweetened. It is a little unnerving that the gelatin taste is in there so perfectly, defying the laws of reality. I’m not a lime jello fan (pistachio pudding would have been more up my alley) and this isn’t one I’d feel compelled to buy again, but I’m quite impressed at how dead on the flavor of this tea is. It’s good, but it’s also just weird.
A few days after I had this tea I was at a party and tried lime jello salad for the first time and found it a pretty close match to the tea!
Attack of the sugary berry as soon as I open the bag! Once steeped the smell mellows out a bit. It’s a little bland before I add sugar, but the aftertaste is distinctly berry/candy like. I’m finding a lot of 52teas need sugar (sometimes more sugar than I normally use) to make make the flavor taste right. What is cotton candy without the sweet, right? The green tea is present in the aftertaste and mellow, but isn’t very detectable in each sip. I’d have to sum it up as an amusing light sweet treat.
The first time I brewed this, it seemed weak and kind of boring. The scent of the dry leaves wasn’t super strong like the other teas in the Christmas pack. The second time I brewed this I made it quite strong. Almost too strong, but I planned on adding a little cream which would dilute it and some sugar. This time it is pretty good. I taste chocolate mostly after each sip. Chocolate flavoring in tea always intrigues me, yet when I taste it, it confuses me because it is never as full of a flavor as I am used to with chocolate. This tea has a nice hearty well rounded base to it that so many teas lack and I appreciate that! It feels filling and satisfying. I’m not quite getting a decadent level of chocolate, but I taste more chocolate on the sip as it cools. I can see this tea partying it up with other flavors really well, but if you want chocolate all on it’s own, this tea is what you are looking for.
The little candy cane slices that are in the dry tea are amusing. Kinda cute, even to someone who doesn’t like Xmas. I can smell a little mint when the tea is brewed and I’m also getting something buttery like. When I sip it, I taste a little mint. It seems unbalanced and sharp at first, but mellows out a few sips in. I’m getting a butter like aftertaste similar to what DT’s Buttered Rum tastes like. I wonder if they have the same base. This tea doesn’t stand out to me in any way. I find myself trying to find something additional in every sip, like it will become more interesting if I keep drinking it and I come up with nothing. I dub it… boring.
I found this in bulk at the supermarket and decided to get a test run sample. I love cinnamon and cardamon and I’m looking for more decaffeinated options for the evenings, so it seemed promising. It appears to be largely cinnamon bark bits with cardamon in pod and seed form and a few peppercorns, anise seed pods and ginger root. I let it steep for six minutes, but I’m not getting much flavor. I can feel the cardamon on the sides of my tongue just after each sip in that cardamon tingle sort of way. I might be getting some ginger heat if I really think about it. Not much in the way of flavor tho. It’s not very well rounded and lacks a depth or heavier base flavor to it. Kind of just tastes like my spice rack threw up a little in my cup without much thought to it. It’s not bad, but there is no wow there at all.
First thing I noticed was a chocolate raspberry smell which was promising. While waiting for it to cool, the scent seemed more raspberry truffle like. Chocolate raspberry and raspberry truffle might sound the same to some, but it is not. Raspberry truffle is more like if two Vulcans, one drinking raspberry tea and one drinking chocolate tea did a Vulcan-tea-mind-meld where the flavors were shared with each other instead of being tasted on their own. They merged so to speak. But I digress… When it’s cool enough to sip, I taste that same flavor, not a mouthful, but the flavor is there and it’s good. Adding sugar hides the chocolate and makes the berry more pronounced on the sip, but the chocolate comes back as an aftertaste. I like it, but I’m not amazed although I would like to revisit it again sometime.
My first sniff of this tea brewed revealed buttery tones, but I swear the dry leaves smelled like chocolate. Strange. Each sip is quite bland, forgettable even, but once I forget I start noticing a buttery aftertaste. Adding more sugar than I normally use speeds up the arrival of the butter, but it’s still pretty mellow and I’d like to have a mouth full of flavor instead. I feel like the flavor is a little more pronounced as it cools, but still not as strong as I like. I see that there is coconut in it, but it seems the coconut has somehow been coaxed into tasting more like butter than it’s normal self. Power of name suggestion or some sort of coconut wizardry? You decide!
The tea wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t amazing either. Guess that leaves it in the gray area of moderately good.
This stuff smells fruity and delicious as soon as I opened the package. When I tried it I didn’t taste smoothie, I tasted… bubblegum?! What the…?! At the end of each sip I can pick out some fruitiness, maybe banana and pineapple, but mostly bubblegum. Not quite what I was expecting, but very nice. It seemed a little sweet on it’s own, but also good with a touch of sugar. The first two steeps were great. The third steep which I didn’t add sugar to was a bit on the weak side, had a slight licorice aftertaste and was still yummy. It is my first honeybush experience and it was pretty good. I’ll definitely be looking into more honeybush teas in the future.
This tea smells fantastic in the bag! I wanted to grab a spoon and chow down. I got a lot of almond and a little coconut when I sniffed it. I may have brewed it too long, or maybe it was a combination of what I had just eaten, but the first couple sips tasted bitter. A few more sips into it as I was deciding if I should dump it and try brewing again, it started to taste less bitter. I added a little sugar and a few sips later it is tasting pretty smooth. The almond and coconut go together so perfectly that it’s a little hard to pick them out individually in each sip. I find the aftertaste has a slight bitterness to it that is pleasant with coconut on the end. True to it’s name, it is much like an almond cookie and is delicious to the last sip. I may have found a new almond tea love!
When I opened day 17 of the advent calendar, it said this was a white tea. Although I do see some lighter leaves, it looks like it is largely black leaves. A little confusing, but on to the tea! It smelled coconutty when I opened it and tastes like toasted coconut aaaaand that is it. I really didn’t get much more than that out of it. Coconut and tea. Decent, but kinda boring. Reminds me of Zhi Tea’s Ambrosia, which I like better.
