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I got my Zen tea order this morning and told myself I wasn’t going to open any teas until I sipped something down… even a sample bag. Well, that didn’t work very well. I let myself open this one just to smell it.. and I was sunk.

I bought this one due to it’s glowing reviews and some positive comments about it during the discussion about their sale. I figured it would be easy to swap if it didn’t meet my expectations.

Dry leafed this smells rich and sweet. Steeped, and with my normal touch of raw sugar, I found the vanilla & creaminess everyone speaks of with this one, and quite the bergamotty flavor. I can taste the base, but the bergamot, vanilla, and cream almost take over the cup. The added sugar almost makes this decadent. The second steep is almost the same as the first, I didn’t dare try another, but might next time.

I think if I had the option, I would tone down the bergamot a touch so that the vanilla and cream could dance a little more in this blend. Still very good though.

I got this when from Janelle’s tea stash sampler sale shortly after I joined Steepster in November last year. I’m not sure why I haven’t tried it up to this point. I think I was afraid the berry would be too much for me. Initially I didn’t drink a lot of fruity teas, especially citrus, because I had had a previously bad flavor experience w/them. I have since learned that fruit and tea can go together, even some citrus, even though I am still a bit wary of raspberry and melon teas. I’ll probably eventually come around to those too.

I’m not really sure how old this tea is seeing as how it is no longer on the website and the most recent tasting note is from 10 months ago.

I haven’t had too many white teas as of yet. I tend to almost always drink black teas in the morning and sometimes in the afternoon (maybe a flavored green here), and usually some kind of rooibos (or 1 herbal) blend in the evening. Take the fact that I’m mostly drinking my old family recipe home made iced tea in the afternoons right now, and the white and green teas are not always finding much time w/me right now.

This one has a faint sweet strawberry smell when dry. Steeped, I get mostly white tea with a faint natural strawberry flavor that then fades into fake strawberry. Now that I’m done w/the cup, I find myself wondering what the aftertaste is from. I don’t know if the flavor has anything to do w/it’s age, so I will refrain from rating this one. I think it would be more enjoyable a cup if it was a little more strawberry and no aftertaste.

Nom, Nom… Yum. I got this as one of the free samples recently from Nina’s. It’s always so nice when tea companies are willing to send out samples to potential customers. It often makes me think they may be good at customer service which is always a bonus to us customers :)

This one being a mix of green and black teas I went with a lower temperature for the green tea on this one. It steeps up almost like a black tea, a nice light amber color w/a sweet strawberry fruity fragrance. The flavor is much like the fragrance, sweet strawberry yumminess with a touch of vanilla to pull it all together. The strawberry is very present, but not over done, just wonderful. I enjoy the mix of black and green teas with this blend… It makes so that neither the black nor green take center stage but let the other flavors play on the forefront.

I have some strawberry cream on it’s way from Zen, anxious to compare the two, although this will be hard to beat.

I had some of this one on Sunday and thought I posted a note, but don’t find it. I got this from Tea Sipper’s stash sale… Thanks :)

I put some of this into a tea bag to take w/me to church thinking I would use their hot water and make myself a nice cup there. I put my bag in my cup and let the water pour into the cup only to find that the water was not very hot.. Ugh. I went up to the coffee bar and my brother-in-law happened to be there and he asked how hot the water was… I told him not near hot enough but that my poor little tea bag was already submerged. He got me a nice hot cup of water and I transferred my tea bag.

Having had it poorly steeped, I will avoid rating this one yet. I could taste a few spices and the apple was a bit artificial like a Jolly Rancher, but milder.

I made a cup for my Hubby the other night and he said he liked it. Steeped, it smelled much like my first impression of tasting my poorly steeped cup.

I enjoy Della Terra’s roasted apple and it tastes like real apple to me, I shall see when I try it again.

I got this one from Tea Sipper’s Stash sale and had this one yesterday morning. I didn’t have high expectations for it after reading the reviews. I do sometimes like a plain black tea w/o much going on so I figured if the vanilla wasn’t there for me I could still enjoy it.

I can faintly smell the vanilla when it is dry leaf. Steeped, I do get some vanilla, although it isn’t real strong and if I didn’t know it was supposed to be vanilla I don’t know if I could pick it out. I do find it a drinkable cup, so think I can make it through these few cups.

So… we’re finally getting enough sunshine to warm things up a bit around here.. YEah! But we are also starting to see mosquitos and bees. Saturday night we spent some time outside at a friends house and my son got a bunch of mosquito bites… they welt up on him and drive him crazy, poor kid. Then last night when he went to brush his teeth in the bathroom upstairs, a jellow jacket had somehow gotten trapped in the bathroom and stung his finger when he tried to brush it away from his neck. Good thing today is a day off from school or we would have one sleepy kid today! He is feeling better this morning… kept him dosed with Benadryl & Ibuprofen last night. I hope we are done with the bugs for awhile.. I’ve had enough already!

I decided that this was the next SBT I was going to try the last time I looked at making one. I’m still experimenting with steeping these to get the maximum flavor and quantity out of each bag. I’m still not sure about the best method, but felt better about this one, although I wish the flavoring was more intense.

Since I already had a big home made batch of spearmint iced tea in the fridge, I decided to make a half a batch of this. I evened out the amount of tea in the baggie it came in, cut it in half, and put half of it in a tea bag for loose leaf tea. I decided on cold steeping to start with and did so with a 1 quart Mason jar in the fridge all day. I then removed it and hot steeped the bag w/about 1 cup of hot water. The cold steeped batch looked much more like I would expect iced tea to look.. much darker and almost thicker looking. I decided to pour the two together to get the best of both.

I left it unsweetened and added some splenda to my cup and made one for my son. He laughed at the name every time I said it. I have to say that we both enjoyed the flavor of the tea, the banana was there but not overly so… I typically hate! artificial banana! This was drinkable for me. I actually would have preferred more of the flavor because it was only present on the initial sip or two and if I kept drinking I didn’t notice it much anymore until I took a break and came back to it. Next time I use the rest of this I will keep the hot and cold steeps separate to see if one is better than the other.

My son really liked this tea, but I think couldn’t get past the name of it. He drank some of it, but wouldn’t finish his cup. I think next time I’ll just tell him it’s tea and see how it goes. I’ll let him guess the flavor.. such a picky guy he is. He likes bananas but will rarely eat them, and likes banana candy. I told him he must be afraid he will fart bananas if he drinks all that was in his cup… he thinks I’m silly sometimes… Maybe he’s right. :)

I do have to say I was pleasantly surprised that I could tolerate this banana flavoring. I think maybe it worked for me because it wasn’t as intense as banana candies are, but I do still think it would be nice to be a bit stronger. I could taste the flavoring over the tea base, but not by a lot. Thanks so much MissB for sharing this one.. I never would have bought it to try for myself… and again, I am pleasantly surprised. I might have grabbed it to let my son try it at some point just due to the name. Now I know if it’s good enough to grab if we want something different or have some friends coming over that it might be fun to share with them.

I bought this awhile back when I came across the site and found this blend 50% off. I love Della Terra’s version, so at 50% off I thought I would give this a try and see how they compare.

This one is very much like DTT blend, but is lacking a bit of the flavor somehow. I can’t quite put my finger on it but I feel like it’s missing something. I do notice that a resteep of this blend doesn’t yield as nice of a cup as the DTT version, which I was doing because I was hoarding my last bit of it.. now I can sip it down :) This is still a nice cup and I might venture to grab it again sometime if I find it at a great discount again.

With this I get a nice flavor that makes you think buttery cake. I don’t know if I would think pineapple so much w/o knowing the name of this one, although I can kind of imagine it. I gave some of this to my now 9 year old, he’s growing way too fast!, and told him it was “upside down cake” flavored tea and he really liked it. If I had said pineapple he would have declined…that’s his typical take on fruit, unless your talking about orange soda. :(

Ok… so I’m attempting some sip downs of some samples I got early on in my loose leaf tea discovery since Nov last year. I ordered a sample bag from Janelle and this has been sitting in my sample box since it arrived. I have to admit that I have picked it up a few times and smelled it, only to be reminded of a sorry ice cream treat I had one time many years ago… and toothpaste.

When I was a kid it was a real treat to go get ice cream anywhere. While I was on vacation with my family one time, I think I was 6 or 7, we went to Dairy Queen and we were allowed to pick a small sundae. Curiosity got me and I tried the Creme de Menthe … I don’t know what I thought it would be, but it looked like they squirted gel toothpaste all over my ice cream treat and tasted much like it to me too.

I have to say I was a bit surprised when I steeped this one up by the color. For some reason I had in mind that this was a green tea blend, but I hadn’t looked here for a description yet either.

I was pleasantly surprised that this didn’t carry the same flavor for me as the smell had evoked… it wasn’t toothpaste, but mint & spice. I did see the cinnamon pieces when I measured it out for my cup so was expecting that. Now that I’ve read the description, I do get a bit of licorice and maybe the vanilla if I try. But being that I thought this was a green and steeped it at 180, the flavors may react differently than if steeped correctly.. blush.

There is a bit of an oil slick on the top of my cup that I wasn’t expecting. I didn’t notice a a fishy odor or taste that many mentioned, but might be due to my lower temp steep. I do get a dryness in my mouth now that I’ve finished w/the cup.

I do like the idea of the blend. I enjoy most mint teas, but the smell of this one dry leaf just reminds me too much of toothpaste. Vanilla, licorice, cinnamon.. I do like those too and think if I could get past the smell of the dry leaf I would enjoy this one more than I do.

I think I have enough for one more cup to see what comes of this when steeped correctly. I’m wondering after having read some of the other reviews if I didn’t do myself a favor by making the mistake that it did :)

This one was calling my name this morning. It’s not something I would reach for everyday but I do really like it.

I had stashed it in the small basket Hubby keeps his favorites in and he will tell me to randomly put things in it for him to try. He doesn’t like rifling through the samples I have very often and would rather pick something out quickly. More often he asks me to make something for him and to “surprise” him. Anyway, he had better hurry if he wants to try some of this on his own because I believe there is enough for 1 cup left. I did put it back in his basket, so we’ll see if he drinks it before I go looking for it again.

Today I wanted something black, rich, & different w/o all the added flavors. I do reach for plain once and awhile, although I can’t say that for greens or whites yet (although I’m not sure I’ve tried a plain white). I remembered this being malty & rich with a bit of chocolate. Just as I recalled… still yum with my bit of sugar.

The first cup I added a touch of raw sugar and a splash of milk. The second steep was an oopsie…. major oversteep, but somehow it still came out good w/a touch of sugar. Dare I try for a third steep? I just might have to eek the goodness out of this one :) or poor Hubby will miss out unless I go for an order sometime. Thanks again CelebriTEA for sharing a sampler of this one!