Southern Boy Teas

Sipdown! Sad about this one. I love the flavor of the especially tiny honeybush that had a deeper flavor (that I always brewed a teaspoon hot). The tiny honeybush seems unique to the SBT and I love the deep red mug. So much cotton candy flavor. Raising the rating from a 76. I finished two other teas today: Verdant Summer Laoshan green and Teavivre’s Imperial Keemun. All DELICIOUS. I’m a true tea addict.

This one is from the 52Teas takeover sale a while back. I took a teaspoon out of the iced tea pouch to steep it hot (luckily this pouch was resealable). The honeybush is amazingly tiny since it’s for iced tea! I don’t think the flavor of the honeybush is better this tiny though… but again, it may be because I’m not cold steeping it. The tiny honeybush almost has a mild black tea flavor, like Ceylon. But there is a lot of sweetness from the cotton candy anyway! Probably better iced. But the rating goes to the accurate cotton candy flavor!
Sipdowns from the last two days: A Quarter to Tea – Banana Walnut, River Tea – Boatsman

Backlog & sipdown!

Actually made up the full pitcher of this the other day, but I find that it’s far too weak if I used the recommended amount of water, so it got about half instead. It wasn’t bad, but mostly just tasted like an unsweetened Nestea (lemon black). Can’t really say what would make it “pink” in the first place, so I’m not sure what I was expecting, haha.

Decent, overall, but the iced tea sachets are generally not convenient for me.

I got this from Lala a long time ago – so sorry it’s taken me so long to get to it , and I actually finished it off yesterday, but I was too exhausted (think i’m catching a cold) to write a note on it, and went to bed really early.

So I remember really liking it quite a lot, and wished I read tasting notes about trying to re-steep this one, since I sweetened the first batch a little too much. It was still really good, but a little candy-like, but again, probably because of too much sweetener.

I really noticed the blackberry, which I really appreciated since I love blackberries a lot. Same with raspberries for that matter. The raspberry I found in the aftertaste. I would drink this again, if the opportunity arises.

Thanks for sending me this, Lala!

I cold steeped this, as I do most all of my blacks, but it isn’t my favorite. It is flavorful, but I get a fairly prominent “soap” note that I usually only find with bergamot in earl grey. Others will like this for sure.

This was pretty good, considering I dislike artificial banana flavored things. But the flavor could be too mild for some.

Everyone seems to be giving this iced tea rave reviews which makes me a bit puzzled as I didn’t really care for it. Maybe it was the way I steeped it?

I put the pouch in one of those iced tea pitchers from Davids Teas and filled it half full with boiling water. The steep time was only about 2.5 minutes so I don’t think I oversteeped it – but you never know. After that I filled the jug the rest of the way with ice cubes and cold water – nothing too esoteric. I found that i just couldn’t taste much lemonade flavour in the tea – I maybe got a little bit of it when I added some sweetener but that might be because the simple syrup I used was lemon-flavoured.

So what do you guys think? Are my tastebuds just out of wack?

I’ve realized that like my love of peach, watermelon (melon flavors in general) are some of the great loves of my tea life. It is odd, I don’t love them in candy form, and while I very much enjoy the real fruit, I prefer berries. But in tea…something about melon of all kinds just sings to my heart. Maybe because berry flavors are good but truly underwhelming compared to the real thing, whereas sometimes the flavor of the tea is preferable to me to an actual watermelon if it is not at its best?

Whatever, I don’t care. All I know is that I cold steeped this to let the watermelon really shine without too much black tea taste overwhelming it, and I am happy.

I brewed a gallon of this and I’ve been drinking it all day. It’s really refreshing. The plum notes are more distinctive when the tea is at room temperature rather than ice cold. I really like how the plum and the white tea taste together. I like this a lot better than I anticipated, I expected I’d like it but that it’d taste rather ordinary to me – but the plum is really quite tasty.

I polished off a half gallon of this tea yesterday. The mandarin orange is strong and tastes authentic. The black tea sits off in the background, maybe a little hidden because of the stronger mandarin orange flavor, but I still taste the black tea. The mandarin is definitely the star of this show though. Sweet, juicy, vibrant.

My brother came over for his birthday dinner tonight and he requested a mint tea to go with the grilled fish we were having. He’s not usually a fan of mint, but we had some really phenomenal mint iced tea at a local restaurant the other day and he was wanting to see if we could replicate it at home. I also just bought a new pitcher from Samovar and have been wanting to use it so this seemed like a perfect idea. In the end, we weren’t able to use the new pitcher since it wasn’t nearly large enough for this tea, but we found a larger replacement and were still able to make it work.

The dry tea in this rather large teabag smells of chocolate and mint. I steeped it for three minutes as the package suggested and then mixed it together with sugar and water just as I normally would for iced tea. It’s very refreshing and tastes lightly of chocolate and mint. The chocolate is the more prominent flavor here, both in the scent and in the taste. It’s not a very strong tea, but I’m sure that’s because it is still warm. It will be much better once it’s had a chance to chill in the fridge.

This is one that I’m really enjoying so I would say that I would definitely consider purchasing this flavor in the future. Thank you, thank you to Nichole for sending me a couple of bags of this! I’ve been wanting to try one of the 52Teas blends for a while and this was a great first impression.

I took this from the GCTTB3 last year when it came around, and I finally felt lik making iced tea out of this today! However, I don’t think I let it steep enough in the hot water, since after I diluted it to its appropriate strength, it tasted somewhat thin and not very lemony. Kind of a grapefruit hint, but that was about it.

Hey, at least it’s a sipdown.

This one is actually pretty tasty, with lots of passion fruit flavour and subtle dessert vibes. The second steep had less passion fruit and more generic cake flavour, but it’s still good.

I cold steeped it in the fridge for +8hrs, instead of using the boiling water and ice cube method- for some reason the taste of ice cube water in tea bugs me. Second cold steep went through a similar process.

I’m pleasantly surprised with how much tea I got out of the tea bag, but I wish I didn’t have to pay $4 for one session with a re-steep (14g of fannings). Iced tea goes so quickly!

Both the boyfriend-creature and I really liked this one it has a great mix of juicy, ripe raspberry and blackberry flavours that stand out well with about two tablespoons of sweetener per 2L pitcher. I’ve switched to using simple syrup in my iced teas as I’ve found that agave alters the flavours too much and honey is too difficult to dissolve. Still I know I’m using much less than the commercial iced tea preparations use and I find the end result is much tastier and thirst-quenching.

Yum! Love me a banana flavored tea. This one sadly didn’t have a lot of banana flavoring but the taste was still good. I really like the black tea base SBT uses and it works with the flavors here really well. I was able to get a couple sweepings out of this.

Here is the rest of my review:

http://sororiteasisters.com/2015/05/09/blueberry-and-banana-iced-black-tea-from-southern-boy-teas/

Yum, Yum Yum!

I am really enjoying this. I think I’ve steeped it 3 times. Really happy with it. It doesn’t really even taste like tea. The more I steep it tho, I am picking up more of the sweet creamy flavor that the honeybush is providing. This will be perfect for this summer. The strawberry lemonade tastes fresh and doesn’t taste artificial at all.

Another sample from a tea friend that I have been remiss about writing a tasting note. For those who have sent me samples, I will get to them…I promise :) This one comes from Lala.

Part of the reason why I took so long to get to the SBT’s that were sent, was because I’m used to doing cold brews, so I was afraid of screwing up the samples, by hot steeping and then cooling. I decided to ‘get over it’ and finally brew this up, as recommended by the steeping instructions. So I had to figure out two things…a quart vs a litre, and do I have something large enough to brew this in that was glass. Google helped me figure out a quart. I found a glass teapot that was a little smaller than what I required, but not by much, so I went with that.

Brewed and cooled with a little sweetener added. Yes, it is tasty. Sweet, fluffy cotton candy. YUM :)

Thanks for the sample, Lala!

I cold steeped this for about 12 hours in a litre of water. I figured I’d need to dilute it and I was worried that it had over steeped, but it’s actually pretty perfect just the way it is.

The lime and cola flavours are distinct but not over powering. The black base is there in a supportive role. There’s the slightest hint of bitterness and astringency but not in a bad way at all. This is super refreshing and easy to drink.

It tastes like it would be good with a bit of sugar, but I’m drinking it straight and I’m really happy with the way it tastes. I will probably even try resteeping the bag (though I’d be surprised and impressed if I got another good steep out of it.)

I could see drinking this one a lot.

Fruit loops. Kinda reminds me of fruit loops! Honeybush is so much better then rooibos. Very light on flavor nut still good.