Bigelow

Cramps. Lazy. This.

Okay, the rating is going way down. Seriously, because I can TASTE THE PAPER.

When did this happen? That’s it. I’m going to have to start pawning off all my bagged stuff to Jon. Let’s hope he doesn’t notice that I’m trying to get rid of the stuff!

Backlogging from this morning. I’ve been feeling completely like garbage. I probably have some of the worst end-of-the-sentence related problems out of anyone I know (although I’m sure people have it far worse). So I was huddled up today, barely able to move after throwing up and being sick and such, so I cuddled up with some easy-to-make chamomile. I’m not even sure what this tasted like, but chamomile is supposed to soothe cramps, and it did.

I’m just sitting here, sipping this after I’ve felt fairly awful all day, and playing some Snowball 2007 (http://armorgames.com/play/314/armor-games-snowball-2007/ ). It’s addictive, fun, and awesome for the upcoming winter season. My personal high school was an even 3500. My tea is nice and soothing. I think I might be loosing a taste for chamomile, though. If anyone added sugar to this, I’d look at them as if they were crazy.

It’s that time of the month, and I’ve read that chamomile is fairly successful in soothing cramps. This chamomile is pretty much basic in a bag. It looks, smells, and tastes like chamomile. I can’t imagine adding any sugar to this one (it’s already ridiculously sweet out of the bag). The flavor is fairly strong, but not overwhelming. I don’t know if the chamomile really did the trick, but the hot liquid made me feel a bit better as November cools down!

I steep this extra long for a fuller flavor. Tastes good with milk and sugar. Usually a mid morning pick me up.

Really hard to drink this today after getting used to my travel tin of Honey Ginseng Green by Republic of Tea!

For a basic green tea this does the job nicely for me. I lower the time I heat the water and keep steeping at about 2 minutes. Comes out smooth with no bitter aftertaste. Another easy one to make since I don’t feel the need to add any sugar or cream. Haven’t really “branched out” in the green tea world, with the exception of Candy Cane Lane decaf green and don’t really feel the need to. Although I am curious about the Celestial Seasonings that are blended with white. Sounds appealing. Now I’m talking myself into branching out. Must be this website’s influence :)

Steeped this for shorter than normal. It makes it taste weaker, not better. I’m just attempting to blow through the rest of the bags in the box so I don’t feel like I wasted money on awful tea. :(

This was not a good Earl Grey. I’m starting to wonder if there is a good EG out there for me! Maybe it exists in loose leaf form, or maybe I’m just simply not the Earl Grey drinker. Bigelow’s bag is smells overwhelmingly of bergamot. Like, knock your halfway across the room. It’s a fairly pleasant scent, but I’m not gonna lie – it takes some time to get used to. It brews up fairly dark, darker than the Twinings blend I tried a few days back. And it still smells of bergamot.

This one tastes much more citrus-y than the Twinings blend. It’s not bitter, like the Tazo blend. The bergamot is pretty damn strong, with highlights of both a bracing citrus and floral notes. What I really didn’t like about this tea was its oiliness. If that’s how I can describe it. It coats your mouth, and leaves your lips feeling greasy. It’s not a very pleasant sensation at all. The black tea doesn’t taste like anything special; I think the low grade fannings are completely overwhelmed by the bergamot.

I’m not looking forward to finishing the other two bags that I have. It’s drinkable, but it’s not something that I’d anticipate a cup of on any given day.

Steep time 3:30 max add sugar and milk- yummy! Like to use this in place of my plain morning black to shake things up a bit in the am. I’m such a rebel :)

Had a cup this afternoon after lunch. Used to be one of my favorites but now it’s just not that great. Still drinkable, although by the last bit I was like “uggh”! Perhaps I’ll make this iced and see how it goes. Good way to use up tea bags, that’s for sure!

I like this tea! It’s good with sugar and milk and I have it in the afternoon. I don’t get an overwhelming taste/smell of cloves as others have mentioned. I wonder if they are steeping too long? I get just a nice orange spice note that is nice to smell and good to taste when you want a little flavor.

So, I went to a birthday party for one of my friends and ended up walking outside a lot in the freezing cold. If you are not aware, it’s been snowing and sleeting and raining in New York City, and everything is pretty frigid.

So I got in the door, shivering and shaking, and immediately wanted a cup of tea. So I pretty much grabbed the first bag I laid my hands on that was decaf, that just so happened to be Bigelow’s English Teatime.

Honestly, this is one of those cases where you can barely pick out anything about the flavor or texture or experience of the tea. I really just wanted a hot, fast beverage, one that would warm me up on this very cold night, and English Teatime Decaf delivered in that way. It’s not the best blend by far, but it has a tea taste (and a fairly decent one at that, for a bag, and when I mean decent, I mean better than Liptons [which I guess is low-balling it a bit]), and that’s all that I wanted from this tea. So for the moment, it succeeded.

Memorable? No. Functional? Yes.

After two debacles so close in a row (see my comments on CS’ Gingerbread Spice and Bigelow’s Constant Comment decaf), and my patience frayed, I brewed up a cup of this for my tea of the afternoon. And you know what? It tastes normal. Average. And that’s a blessing right now. I wanted to kiss this cup for its averageness instead of its awfulness. The tea doesn’t have a particularly distinct flavor. I might steep this a bit longer next time to draw out more flavor.

This tea is like one of your acquaintances that has a generic face. That person that always gets, “Hey, do I know you from somewhere?” I don’t think I’d be able to pick this tea out from the sea of mediocre teas, but right now, that’s fine.

Oh. My. What a nightmare! Ugh! After the disappointment of Celestial Seasonings’ Gingerbread Spice this afternoon, I decided to brew up a cup of something different and decaf. What a disappointment.

This one smells overwhelmingly of cloves. I can’t smell much of anything else. Like liquid clove. The color is gorgeous, though. But the taste? It doesn’t really taste like much of anything! There’s really no black tea taste, and I couldn’t even taste the orange peel in there. It was just cloves, cloves, cloves. I’m not the hugest fan of that particular spice, so it was very off-putting. Almost all of this cup went down the drain. Blech. My face looked exactly like the first one on steepster’s slider. Except not as red.

I will not be drinking this again.

Okay, you know what? No. Just… no.

I was in the middle of watching The Sing-Off, and wanted a quick cup of decaf to go with my TV watching. So I dunked this one in and… BLECH.

There’s no way in hell this remotely tastes like green tea. In fact, it pretty much tastes like nothing. There’s almost a stale flavor to it, a “bagged” flavor, if you will. This one just reminds me of what I disliked about tea when I hated it just a few months ago. Dirty dishwater.

At points I do taste somewhat of a sweetness, but really, this just tastes like a weak black. I’m not really getting “green” in the flavor at all. So yeah, I won’t be having more of this in the near future. Sorry Bigelow, but I’ve moved on to way bigger and better things than this one-note debacle.

I tried to prepare this as one would traditionally prepare a loose leaf green, and I ended up with something that tastes like the definition of average. Definitely easy to drink, but lacking in a lot of flavor. It doesn’t taste particularly “green” to me. Then again, I’m not the biggest expert on green teas at all (I’m barely a novice in that regard).

Next time I think I’ll steep this a bit longer, but I really didn’t want it to get bitter, and I didn’t want to “cook” the tea in super-hot water. I guess it doesn’t matter with a cheaper, bagged variety like this.

A bit harsh but not bad for a black tea in the morning.

Somehow in all the tea logging yesterday, I forgot to include this one. And after so much of the Harney & Sons holiday tea, it seems an awful lot like that. Though, with less flavor. That could have something to do with the fact I’m drinking decaf. To give it a fair fight, I’ll need to have the regular version, but the whole point of this tea (for me) is to have an interesting decaf option in the cupboard.

I need to clean out my tea cupboard at home. After spending so much time checking out reviews, etc, on this site, I decided I should probably be drinking tea instead of reading about it. I wanted to drink some tea so badly that I went with the first decaf I laid my hands on. This was it.

Oversteeped, but decaf, so it doesn’t bother me as much as it would if it were a really good regular tea.