I love this seasonal tea! I enjoy drinking a decaf tea often, especially at night when I really don’t need or want caffeine. I’ve drank this many times and have gone through two boxes of my stash of 10 from Amazon (a brilliant Amazon Prime purchase, if I do say so myself.) This is the closest to perfection in flavor and ability to be manhandled while brewing. It loses it’s lovely richness in iced tea, so it’s not perfect for all applications.
The flavors:
*I find the “natural flavoring” for the sugar cookie flavor isn’t unnatural or extra oily and is quite pleasant. It reminds me a lot of a shortbread/sugar cookie hybrid without the oily butter flavor that can start to taste slightly rancid in storage.
*There’s a tiny hint of almond and sweetness.
*I like that it’s not very sweet as brewed so I can keep it richer as-is or add my own sugar content to taste. I tend to add my own creamer and a small amount of sugar; So Delicious Coconut Creamer + agave, Coffeemate Original powder, cashew milk/cream + honey. I don’t consume milk products and don’t enjoy adding most milks because I prefer denser, richer flavors. This tea steeped longer could withstand milks vs creams, though.
*Mixes exceptionally well with peppermint tea.
Water temperature:
*This tea works well with boiling or just under boiling water. I don’t find any enhanced bitterness with any particular brewing method, which is lovely. For a grocery store bagged tea, that’s pretty amazing.
*I don’t enjoy it nearly as much iced. The cookie flavoring gets lost in iced tea. This decreases the rating slightly for me, but not nearly as much since this isn’t the type of tea one would normally make iced tea out of. It’s still pleasant iced, but the flavor isn’t as lovely.
Steeping times:
*3 minutes minimum, the tea is more malty and the cookie flavor hasn’t fully bloomed
*After 3.5 minutes the sugar cookie is more pronounced but not as rich as possible
*I brew it for a minimum of 4 minutes to enhance the sugar cookie flavor.
*Longer times don’t increase the bitterness much, if at all, as long as it doesn’t cool too much.
Flavors: Almond, Cookie, Vanilla
