Hella Tea

Cold Brew!

I love the combination of lemon and lavender so I was intrigued by the tea, but I wasn’t sure exactly what the flavour balance of the two flavours would be. More lemon? More lavender? Sweet? Or herbaceous and floral!? But either way, I was on board with finding out.

I’d say that this definitely comes out lemon on top and actually pretty sweet. It’s a touch apple-y but those sweet lemon notes come out more like a lemonade than the more “citronella-esque” taste of the lemongrass which is also abundant in the blend composition. It’s not a cloying/sugary sweetness though, and I think that is in large part because of the soft lavender floral notes and grassier undertones that round out the flavour and balance out the sweetness. It’s super refreshing, and I like how playful the relationship between the flavours is. Not soapy lavender, either! Big kudos to this one, I think it’s one of the nicest and most unique lavender lemon blend I’ve tried yet.

Cold Brew!

I picked this for my daily cold brew because I saw passionfruit on the bag and that resonated with me. I forgot there’s actually quite a bit of cinnamon in it though, so I did end up spending most of my cold brew just mildly miffed about the fact I was getting more of a spiced hibiscus and lemongrass profile instead of the tropical blend I’d been craving. No qualms with the tea itself – it just wasn’t what I was in the mood for.

Late, late night cuppa sipped on while rewatching the first season of The Witcher to refresh myself before I dive into the second season! I feel like I didn’t get much in the way of passionfruit but the dense sweet and tart hibiscus combined with the lemongrass and hint of cinnamon was actually surprisingly relaxing for such a hibiscus heavy tea that I had steeped hot. It almost gave me that sort of “Winter Punch” or mulled cider type of vibe I kind of get from DT’s Sleigh Ride but with a better fruit/spice balance.

This was the first cup of tea I made after getting my tooth fixed last week and this was also the proper first cup of tea I had steeped in probably around four days. I will absolutely have to make it again because I don’t remember a lot of the flavour – I was very tired following that appointment and also overcome with emotion from the combination of no longer being in pain and also getting to drink hot tea for the first time in a while. Like, “tearing up as I sipped the tea” level of emotion. It tasted so, soooo good but I don’t know if that’s because it actually was that good or if it’s because I had gone so long without a nice cuppa…

Samurai TTB #45

Apparently I have finished all the black teas and oolongs from the TTB that I wanted to try, so today is going to be white tea day. Really enjoying this one! Very sweet, jammy blueberry flavor and the base tea adds a bit of complexity without detracting from the main flavor.

STTB Tea

I drank this a few days ago but didn’t post a review. Tasty as a latte. The blueberry is quite tasty (and juicy). Overall, I enjoyed my cup, however I wasn’t really big into the base. I found it a bit too vegetal when I was looking for…I don’t even know. It was a good cup but lacked a certain something (I’m not sure what that was, though). This is why you write a review right after you drink it instead of days later.

#mugtober cold brew!

I’m very close to finishing off this blend which makes me sad, but I have had it for a while so I guess it’s about time. Anyway, this was my selection for the beautifully open ended “fruity” prompt for a few days ago.

I could have picked a ton of different teas, but I liked that I had a matching mug to go with this one. It was great, too! A little top note tartness that was equal parts sour watermelon and hibiscus before mellowing out into a lightly sweet and very refreshing “true watermelon” type of flavour with the subtlest apple undertones. Reminded me why I fell in love with this particular watermelon flavour – it’s not too candy like or intense. Really captures the balance of cool, juicy sweetness that the real fruit has.

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDtlDmsE08k

Cold Brew!

Definitely think I had room with this one to bump up the amount of tea leaf a little since it was a bit thin, but man was that mellow and not-overly sweet watermelon note refreshing. This is probably gonna sound dumb but it made me think of what a watermelon coconut water might be like – minus the coconut part. Silly, I know. But there was just something about the gentle taste and mouthfeel of the steeped tea that just made me think of that as I was drinking it.

I had an unfortunate accident with my tin of this tea while steeping it this afternoon. I unfortunately nudged it just enough off the edge of the counter to tip it over, spilling about a third of the tea all over onto the floor…

So, I’m definitely a little upset about that since this is such a delicious tea and Hella Tea has stopped shipping to Canada so I’m not exactly sure when I’m next going to have access to it. This mug was delicious though! The perfect mellow sweet watermelon notes with a hint of hibiscus. There’s something to the sweeter lingering notes that reminds me of cotton candy, and I have to say that I’m really into the idea of a watermelon cotton candy!

Another more mellow/light and non acidic/tart fruit blend from this week! I had this one as a hot cuppa though, and it was quite pleasant – just a really simple but delightful soft watermelon. Not as candy intense as other watermelon teas I own. That sweetness can definitely be delicious, but not always the thing I want when I reach for a melon tea, so I’m thankful to have this one.

Cold Brew!

I sucked back this cold brew like it was a cold beer on a sweltering hot summer day. It’s super refreshing; I packed lots of leaf into my mason jar and let this go for longer than I usually do, so it was extra juicy and flavourful but it still had a lightness and airy quality mixed in with those fresh, sweet watermelon juice notes. It’s kind of tea that has a lot of flavour, but is still light and fresh enough that you can drink it by the pitcherful and not feel bloated or sick of it afterwards.

Cold Brew!

This is the last of the blends I ordered from Hella Tea – I ended up tasting it last because I realized, in a roundabout way, that I’d already tasted it before. Unfortunately this is one of a couple teas in my order that had an incomplete ingredients list – but I’m pretty damn good at visually identifying ingredients and when I realized it looked super familiar I did a little bit of digging and was able to match it perfectly to Adagio’s Watermelon Cooler blend…

So there are two options there – either Hella Tea is buying from Adagio as a wholesaler or Adagio and Hella Tea are purchasing the exact same tea independently of one another from the same wholesaler. Ultimately it doesn’t matter – I enjoyed Watermelon Cooler and I enjoy this blend as well. It’s refreshing, smooth, and surprisingly creamy with a mellow watermelon type of note. As I said in my tasting note for Watermelon Cooler, I do usually gravitate towards a juicier watermelon profile but this is something that I think you can drink a larger amount of at a time because it’s not as sweet and intensely flavoured – it’s more refreshing.

Happy to have it in my cupboard again!

Cold Brew Sipdown (1950)!

I had a bit of an awkward amount of tea leaf left in my pouch and, in all honestly, I probably should have split this up into either two cold brews or a mix of cold and hot cups. However, I’ve been doing so well with sipdowns that I got excited by another and I just dumped the rest of the bag into my little cold brew bottle.

It was a mistake because, even for a cold brew (which are usually smoother and not bitter at all) this was too much tea. It was very strong and the tannins of the white tea outweighed the jammy blueberry notes I usually love from this blend. It was a bit of a bittersweet way to finish off the bag.

Kept my steep times nice and short today which let the delicate & soft honeysuckle notes from the white tea and the often missed floral undertones of blueberry really shine. It’s a straight forward blend, but it’s hard to heat a good blueberry tea when you find one!

Tea Photo: https://www.instagram.com/p/CewujtLuyuv/

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQiLGReUuP0

I had another blueberry white tea earlier in the week that’s quite similar to this one – but I think this is better. It’s just slightly more overtly blueberry flavoured with a nice jammy undertone and sticky lingering quality to the finish. Like, coating on the palate if you will. Still very simple and straight forward, but a great mono blueberry note.

I’ve been really loving going through all my*Hella Tea* blends lately, and this was one that I steeped up hot at work on one of the days I was working in office that just reallllyyyyy hit the spot. Medium bodied with that sweet honeysuckle freshness of the white tea, but still a jammy and sweet syrupy blueberry compote note. I love how direct the flavour is in the steeped cup – no fluff, just straight to the point blueberry balanced by a complimentary base choice.

Had this one today at the office – it was a very busy day for me so I didn’t get to drink as much tea as I wanted and between entering new teas into my personal spreadsheet tonight and catching up on tasting notes I didn’t do much in the evening either…

I’m still loving this tea though! It’s such a nice sweet, syrupy blueberry and I enjoy the white tea base a lot as well. It was nice to have confirmation that my first steep of it wasn’t a fluke.

Cold Brew!

Of the five teas I ordered from Hella Tea this was the one, that upon smelling the dry leaf, I was most worried about – the visual of the white tea looks pretty broken up/not the highest grade and there was something about the aroma that smelled a little dusty to me. However, once I took my first sip of the cold brew any reservations melted away. It was so refreshing and smooth, with a mild and crisp white tea flavour underneath a deeper and jammy blueberry. I think a lot of you know that I have a big soft spot for blueberry teas, so this jammy blueberry compote type of flavour really made my tastebuds sing! I drank it on the way in to work, and it has been such a heat wave this last week that having something cold and refreshing with this flavour profile was like finding an oasis in the middle of a dry, barren dessert.

Enjoyed this one a lot.

Hot with honey!

Earlier this week I wrote a tasting note for Tealyra’s Lemon Lollipop where I had mentioned feeling a little off and craving the comfort of a lemon tea. I didn’t really pick out the right lemon tea in that moment but, let me tell you, this was a good tea redemption! I steeped it up on Thursday morning while working from home and I added in a spoonful of carrot honey and it was just everything that I had been looking for. Very brisk, tannic and malty black tea with the simple lemon note that cut through it and the perfect addition of sweetness from the honey. Love love loved it.

One of the few hot cups of tea that I’ve managed to steep up since messing up the tooth that’s been bothering me since Friday. I thought this might be a safe option since it’s a very simple lemon black – and relies more on a soft lemon flavouring versus any kind of acidic lemon. However, I oversteeped it so the taste was brutally bitter – and then on top of that the heat itself seemed to be touchy/unpleasant. My tooth went from a dull pain to a sharp pain by the end of the cup, so I haven’t repeated steeping up something hot since.

Cold Brew!

This was the first thing I cold brewed after advent season – I just wanted something nice and classic tasting, without a lot of the rich holiday inspired flavours (cinnamon, orange, chocolate – among others) that I’d been drinking so much of lately. It fully delivered, and was a super brisk and refreshing with malty, full bodied black tea and crisp and refreshing lemon. Classic, simple but well executed!

Feeling a wave of emotions, some positive and some negative, about the recent news of Adagio taking over Steepster…

Initial thoughts:

1. I’m very thankful that Jason/Mike didn’t just spontaneously shut the site down, which it looks like is something that was considered.

2. I worry that Steepster will look like a carbon copy of the other Adagio owned websites or that the impartiality of the review platform will be compromised because of potential bias that Adagio may have given that this platform obviously hosts reviews for their competitors. I think it’s important for Steepster to maintain a separation from Adagio (perhaps not entirely, but there needs to be distinction) and have its own visible identity and maintain impartiality.

3. I believe I am the second highest contributor of tasting notes/reviews on the platform, right after Sil, and I have invested hundreds if not thousands of hours into writing often very thorough and detailed tasting notes spanning nearly seven years now – it terrifies me on a personal (and obviously biased) level that this living journal of tasting notes might be lost.

4. On a non-personal level, losing any of the tasting notes/discussion board conversations would be a devastating loss; the thing that even gives Steepster value at all (aside from its community) is the mass accumulation of information and reviews – which have been largely self moderated by the community – and quite strictly. I include myself in that; no one forces me to disclose so often/consistently my DAVIDsTEA affiliation but I make every effort to maintain that transparency and hold myself to a standard of being as impartial and open about it as possible for that sake of keeping an ethical balance to the content I generate for myself and others who may find it and I have always taken the comfort level of my other community members here into consideration in how I have approached writing tasting notes since becoming a DT employee three years ago…

That said, I’m cautiously optimistic about new life coming to the site, so I’m going to try to continue to write my tasting notes as if nothing had changed – because that’s just what I do , and damnit I’m going to hit that 10,000 mark!

REVIEW STARTS HERE:

This is my favourite from Hella Tea so far – I had it iced on Monday, and it was just so refreshing. It’s a very simple blend, basically just black tea, lemon flavouring, and some floral accents (hooray for it having an accurate ingredient list) but it’s just so well executed and balanced/refined. Brisk, bold and clean/smooth tasting lemon where you can still taste that malty and tannic black tea. It’s that classic, quintessential lemon black tea that can either by so good or so wrong. I think this is the former!

I picture this as an incredible base for a Southern Sweet Tea or even making killer kombucha. Is it unique? No – but not everything has to be unique. The classics are classics for a reason; and this would make a killer cupboard staple for anyone seeking that traditional lemon black tea type of profile!

Cold Brew!

Currently drinking this while working on tasting notes – it’s very yerba mate forward which means quite a bit of a more grassy and earthy taste, though light and refreshing. I think it works very well with the clean, crisp notes of lemon. Though I don’t get a whole lot of mint (perhaps it’s just faded from age), the small amount of that flavour is very nice too. Overall I would call this well balanced and fresh feeling!

In my head I remembered the lemon and mint notes of this tea being stronger while this cup was very yerba mate forward with a lot of those grassier, slightly smoky and mineral notes. However, the lemon and mint still delivered with a present brightness and a clean, cooling finish.