Buddha Teas

November 2023 Sipdown Challenge – a tea that disappointed

Herbaceous, thistly and a little plant latex milky. It suits the craving for milk thistle but not quite like Republic of Tea’s Organic Milk Thistle SuperHerb. This one has leaf and seed with no flavorings; RoT’s has seed only – which makes it milkier – plus grapefruit flavor and orange peel. Worth the drive to the market across town for RoT’s milk thistle.

2 bags to 16oz boiling

Ashmanra’s sipdown challenge – August 2023 Tea #2 – Tea from a family member

I have been meaning to write a note about these wonderful teabags, so I thought I would write it for this prompt!  I received a box of these from my aunt, as part of my birthday gift a while ago! She is a massive fan of lavender, and knew I was a massive fan of tea, so here we are.  I wasn’t expecting much, but this is actually a really authentic lavender while not actually containing much in a teabag.  It’s like it is freshly plucked lavender. Plenty of flavor while not being overdone.  The description also mentions a ton of nutrition benefits.  If you like lavender tea, I would definitely recommend these.   A pleasant surprise!
Steep #1 // 20 minutes after boiling // 2 minute steep
Steep #2 // just boiled // 7 minute steep

Wonderful aroma and a solidly good flavor when steeped. Yes, you definitely can smell and taste the saffron! This tea is not too expensive so I was pleasantly surprised. Better than another much more expensive saffron-green that hypes that it is from a small business and helps people in Afghanistan. This tea is just solidly what it says it is.

I wanted to unwind today evening and this tea seems perfect for that. I received it from Postcrossing somehow, but not sure how. It’s not important anyway.

There are no ingredients on outer wrapping of tea bag (at least something new to my collection) and I have re-checked it with the website. For simple reason — I can’t drink St. John’s wort and sometimes it appears even in the blends. I never heard about skullcap before and some species are present in my country as well.

Anyway, I smelled the dry tea bag and camomile was strongest. It is even in aroma of the brew, but not when sipped. When sipping, it is 50-50 with lavender, with sticky licorice root aftertaste.

Overall it is quite nice tea; I would prefer more lavender than chamomile, but that’s me.

There is a quote on the tag. “Real men drink tea.” — well I wonder if the author meant tisanes as well!

This is a decent ginger tea, though earthier than some. It’s not too spicy, but it’s clear and pleasant. Ginger is the only ingredient, but this tastes much more muted than other straight ginger teas I’ve had somehow. This wasn’t bad regardless!

I wasn’t sure what to expect here, but this isn’t bad. At times, I get a bit of a dirt flavor, but other times, it’s pretty decent. It tastes very herbal, almost lightly fruity. I wouldn’t seek this out, but it was good enough warm or cold.

This is just oregano, so when it was brewing, it really smelled like pizza time in the kitchen. I grabbed this bag from a TTB because I like trying new herbal teas, but this is not one I’d want again. Oregano is just too savory. I poured it out sadly!

I love marshmallow leaf in teas, but I’d never tried it alone before I grabbed this tea bag from a TTB. The flavor is soft and pleasant. There is a hint of marshmallow, so I get why it’s such a good marshmallow substitute! It’s soft and fluffy and a bit earthy, but nice.

Whoops, I definitely oversweetened this, but there’s something about it that I like. It reminds me of chicory, but also like something in the buckwheat family. It’s simple and a little savory, but pretty good. From a TTB.

This sort of tastes like barley tea. It’s somewhat savory and subtle. With sweetener, it was decent, though I’d probably just choose barley or buckwheat in the future. I’ve never heard of eyebright before, so it was an interesting sample from the TTB.

Huh, this tastes like absolutely nothing. I guess I’ll drink it when I’m working out today since it’s basically water. It’s possible I should have gone with a longer steep, but I’m not at all familiar with corn silk, so I played it safe. I only grabbed one bag from the TTB, so I won’t have the opportunity to try it again yet.

I went into my local market hoping to find Hella Tea in stock only to find some hella empty shelves so I bought a box of this as a consolation. I thought this was a tea with oak bark in it, but it’s only oak bark in the ingredients. It smells very puer like with that rich wet and watery earth fragrance. It kinda tastes like it too! The first few sips were like a watery alkaline puer, but the alkaline part mellows some sips in. It’s not as heavy as tea is. It’s flavorful, but lighter at the same time. I’m not a huge pure puer fan. I can drink and enjoy a plain puer, but I prefer flavored puers where they add a depth to the overall profile, like in Lupicia’s Chocolate Strawberry Puer. That said, I’d love to see what else they could do with white oak bark to make a cup that is more complex and exciting. We’ll see if this makes it’s way into my normal evening rotation.

Grabbed this bag from a tea box. This is a little savory. There’s a bit of a dirt flavor, but not in a terrible way. I know this herb is mostly used for health reasons, so I was expecting it to be a lot grosser. It’s pretty generically herbal.

This flavor is really mild and nice. I taste the lemongrass and I don’t know anything about feverfew, so I can’t say if I taste that or not. The lemongrass is fresh and a bit fruity. I’m a lemongrass fan, so I would totally drink this again. Nice tea box find!

Single tea bag from the last tea box. I hadn’t heard of kava kava root before, and I’m hoping it’s not weird. Hmm this tastes like almost nothing except maybe some bitter raw potato/dirt taste. I guess people don’t drink this for its flavor. The small amount of flavor that it has isn’t tasty.

I’ll be real here. I hate how it smells and tastes, but it seems to legitimately help me not wake up so often during the night. It smells like feet and tastes like bug spray. I am drinking it strong and straight.

Sample from variaTEA. I was worried about this one given the less than stellar reviews from her and Roswell strange, but truth be to.d I didn’t mind this one. I don’t love it or need it in my cupboard again. But I could drink another cup and be ok with it.

Glad I skimmed this from my aunt’s tea drawer and didn’t buy it myself.

Hot it tastes vaguely of linden, somewhat earthy and I can definitely taste the paper teabag. Only when it’s been sitting over 12 hours and cold do the linden florals and sweetness come out. None of that syrupy body linden tisanes can develop.

Blargh.

I’m glad my aunt likes to buy teabags. Every time I come over she has something new in her drawer. I don’t have to think twice about spending $8 on individually sealed bags of herbs in a fancy box ;P Too lazy to figure out dollar per gram and compare it my favorite caffeinated true teas.

I used to hate thyme. And I think that’s because I wasn’t raised eating food prepared with fresh herbs or anything fresh and green at all. The supermarket spice aisle is the unforeseen disappointment to all little herbs and spices that grow up believing they’re destined for something a bit more — grand — like getting cozy inside a meat cave and giving all the oils they can muster to help flavor a birdbrain tied up and arranged on a metal grate to elicit such delighted response when the meat cave is pulled out of a heat cave — What a beautiful bird!

Alright, thyme, you have my attention.

My aunt brewed one bag in a huge coffee mug for me right before I passed out with a belly full of food at my now-normal 7pm. I woke up for today at, what, 2am and downed the cold mug. This little bag is powerful stuff! Absolutely the freshest dried thyme I’ve ever had. That potent thyme mintiness felt great in my chest and sinuses as I’m ridding the remnants of a cold. Savory.

Idk. For a teabag filled with herbs to induce my goofybrain as above, I’m inclined to buy a box. It is cheaper than what I’ve spent on my other favorite tisanes.

Thank you for sharing Roswell Strange but this is a nope for me. I dont love herbals blends to begin with and this is a herbal blend.m through and through.

“Sipdown” (607)!

Not a real sipdown – but I hated this so much the first time I drank it that I simply could not envision brewing another cup of it, so I actually used the rest of the box to have a tea bath. It’s still not my favourite tea by, like, a lot. However, the intense savory/herbaceous elements worked much better as aromatics for a tea bath and I found the experience much more relaxing and enjoyable than actually drinking it as tea.

Plus I got to use it all up in one shot, which was a win.

Definitely wanted to like this one, despite it being a teabag. The ingredients sounded really intriguing, if nothing else! However, steeped up it tasted like soup stock in just the absolute worst way and I couldn’t even come close to finishing off the mug…

Can’t remember where I got this tea bag – but at some point I wound up with a sample of it to try…

Weird wellness angle/strategy aside, why this company is choosing to market the cranberry and hibiscus notes in this tea as the featured flavours baffles me because sipping on it the notes that are coming to the forefront for me are very much the ginger and herbaceous ingredients like dandelion root and senna leaf. It’s a little bit minty and spearmint-style sweet as well. Sure, there is SOME tartness in terms of flavour from the cranberry but that is 100% not the note I would have picked out as the defining trait of this tea.

Bottom line, though, is that it’s a very gross profile – and I wont be drinking it again, so I’m not going to put any further thought into what the thought process might have been when this company was trying to decide how to describe their teas.