The NecessiTeas

Finishing off the last of the sample I had of this.

This is really good. It really does taste like pineapple upside down cake.

YUMMY!

I bought this sample months ago, but am just getting around to trying it tonight.

It’s very pleasant tasting. A sweet pineapple flavor that reminds me of the caramelized pineapple that I would taste on a pineapple upside down cake. I can also taste the rum flavor which is a nice complement to the other flavors. The green tea has a buttery taste which also lends itself well to the pineapple upside down cake idea.

A very tasty tea.

Liquid Comfort Food. YUM!

Take a look at my other tasting notes for more info.

Can you tell I am tea sorting today!? LOL – LOTS more to come…I’m a moving and a shaking! Literally…from all the tea! :)

As for this one…just finishing up the last little bit in my stash! Increasing rating!

Another Surprise from my SosoriTEA Sister LiberTEAs!!! Thanks!
:)

This smells neat prior and during the infusion. It reminds me of a Chocolate/Vanilla Wafer…remember those!?

This infuses to a Light to Light Medium Brown. Post infusion the scents blend together and aren’t as identifiable.

Taste-wise I can taste the Coconut upfront followed by floral and vanilla. The black tea taste is subtle. Any less would leave me wanting – any more by be unnecessary.

Whereas this is a different taste – I do like it. This is a nice change

Steep Information:
Amount: 4 tsp
Water: 750ml filtered water, 185°F
Tool: Breville One-Touch Tea Maker BTM800XL
Steep Time: 3 minutes
Served: Hot

Tasting Notes:
Dry Leaf Smell: just like a freshly made strawberry shortcake
Steeped Tea Smell: sweet, strawberry
Flavor: I would have believed it a black tea with hints of strawberry
Body: Medium
Aftertaste: strawberry
Liquor: translucent orange brown

The smell was divine, the tea was surprisingly full for a white tea. This was a swap from LENA who had the teas each labeled and i adorable tiny Tupperware, she included amazing notes for each tea!

I failed to read the Steepster notes first and am surprised everyone else tasted cake and not berry.

If it tasted as amazing as it smelled I’d get it again, but alas the taste is pretty standard.

Images: http://amazonv.blogspot.com/2010/08/thenecessiteas-loose-leaf-white-tea.html

I received this sample from NecessiTeas what seems like ages ago, but I am just now getting around to trying it. The aroma of the dry leaf is nice, I can smell the lavender and the vanilla and the coconut. It is a lovely, delicious fragrance. The brewed liquor offers hints of the vanilla, chamomile, coconut and lavender all at once, it smells interesting and different… very pleasant and unusual and soothing aroma.

This is a very tasty tea. There is a really nice balance between the vanilla, coconut and lavender. The chamomile is not a strong flavor but I can detect its apple-like note, which plays in nicely with the other flavors here. The black tea is a smooth, unassuming base flavor that is not particularly strong, but it’s there. There is also a interesting note of chocolate, not a sweet chocolate, but more of like a savory note that is somewhat deep and chocolate-y.

I really like this. Very nice.

Wow, this tea is intense… very strong cinnamon flavor and very sweet. No sugar/sweetener needs to be added. If you’ve ever had the cinnamon bear candies then you know how this tastes. My only complaint would be the residue that gets left in the pot after brewing this stuff — it’s rather gritty.

While I’m on a flavored oolong bender, I thought I’d give this a try. It’s my last sample from The NecessiTeas. With this I’ll have tried everything they currently offer in a sample size, and I suspect I will have ordered everything of theirs I am interested in tasting again with the exception of Coco La Ven. They are still out of that. Sigh.

So, as you can see, I’m coming into this with a prejudice against this tea. I just haven’t had great luck with The NecessiTeas with the exception of some of their rooibos and black blends.

In the sample packet, this tea smells pungently fruity, but I wouldn’t describe what I smell as pomegranate so much as a cherry/strawberry fragrance. The tea’s aroma is buttery and in general green oolongy with a sweet fruit note. I would not recognize it as pomegranate in a blindfolded sniff test. But then, I’m not sure I’d recognize even the most pomegranatey pomegranate so that isn’t saying much.

Unfortunately, my prejudices appear to have been well-founded in this case. The underlying tea seems decent enough, though perhaps a little on the thin and weak side in terms of flavor, but the “pomegranate” flavoring is a decidedly fictitious fruit taste. It has a sort of cherry candy/cough drop note to it.

Second steep. 3 min. Pretty much the same.

Third steep.

Nah.

I placed an order with The Necessiteas for the Bread Pudding, Coco La Ven (they were out of that one) and Strawberry Kiwi, and there were two samples I had yet to try, this one and a flavored oolong, so I had them toss them in. I’d actually tried to order this one before and they were out of it.

I’m reminded of Doulton’s post about what she described as her dysfunctional relationship with The Necessiteas. I have to say, it’s not her, it’s them. I have fallen into the same dysfunctional pattern. Place an order, don’t hear for a few weeks. Write a note, hear back in a few days that the package has shipped. Usually, by that time, at least one thing I’d ordered is no longer in stock and I get a refund to my paypal account. Seriously, I’m not sure it’s worth it. There are only a few things of theirs I like well enough to reorder in any case and if I didn’t have a compulsive streak I’d probably let it drop. As it is once I decide I like something enough to reorder it, I follow the web site for a restocking notice so that I can check that off the list.

This one is not going to be on that list. It’s not bad, really. The smell out of the sample packet is strongly of coffee beans. After steeping, the smell opens up some and I can get barley and chicory notes. The taste is pretty much a weak coffee flavor with a tea aftertaste. With milk, it’s more strongly of coffee than tea, so unless you’re just out of coffee and looking for a fill-in, it’s probably better to drink it unadulterated.

For my own taste, I’d just as soon drink a really nice cup of coffee instead. Or a really nice cup of tea. The weak hybrid thing is mildly interesting but now that my curiosity is satisfied I don’t see the need to do the dysfunctional dance to get more of this.

Sipdown no. 111 of 2018 (no. 467 total).

I was never really sure what possessed me to make this one of two tins in my Necessiteas order way back when after basically striking out with most of their teas. I don’t even like bread pudding.

But order it I did, and now it is gone. It made a decent, if a bit weird, cold tea — which is how I sipped down the last bit.

I can’t believe I even ordered this, since the thought of bread pudding makes me make a yucky face. I don’t like puddings in general on consistency grounds, but the idea of bread pudding is just gross to me. Of all the things one would make a pudding out of, why bread? When I was in college I lived in a co-op and one night a week I was the main dinner cook for something like 140 people. Bread pudding was pretty regularly something the menu planner had decided I should make and during the whole process of preparing the bread I kept asking myself why?

So it was only for the sake of completeness that I ordered a sample of this. And I say for the second time today, it works surprisingly well. Who would have thunk it? Probably the main reason it works, for me anyway, is it doesn’t really taste like bread pudding. It tastes like the ingredient profile that goes into bread pudding, but without the main objectionable ingredient: bread.

In the packet, the blend smells mostly of raisins and rum. Steeping makes the custard come out to join the other two flavors in the aroma and I’m glad that I can also smell a sort of full bodied sweetness that is the black tea. Liquor color is black tea against my white cup; looks a lot like the Coco La Ven sample’s liquor.

It’s nice. It’s not as interesting as the Coco La Ven, but it is well blended and flavorful. There are no sore thumbs sticking out here, none of the bitter rum flavor that plagued some of the Necessiteas greens that contained rum flavoring. It’s a raisin, cream and rum flavor with a solid base that supports it well.

As I close in on the last of my Necessiteas samples, I’m drawing the following conclusion: they’re best at rooibos, followed by black tea, followed by white tea, followed by oolong, followed by green tea. There are clunkers in each of the categories except rooibos, but for the most part, their black tea blends are worth trying.

ETA: I am at the end after all. I do have a weird mystery tea sample in my possession, but I can’t identify it. It came without a label, and it appears to be black tea. It isn’t Cafe Latte, because I ordered that and they refunded my money because they said they didn’t have any. All of my other ordered samples have been accounted for. At first I thought it might be Cinnamon Bear, but it can’t be — the cinnamon isn’t nearly as strong as the tasting notes here describe. So it will remain a mystery. Which is too bad. It isn’t as good as the Coco La Ven or this, but it was ok.

A strange little tea, full of surprises.

When I read the ingredients, I thought it sounded like a terrible mistake. Yet it actually works pretty well.

The dry mix in the sample packet smells mostly like vanilla/coconut and chamomile. The addition of water brings out the lavender. (The mixture in the infuser after brewing smells mostly like lavender and chamomile. Its nice. The association I had was with the smell of something that belongs in a sachet in my sock drawer.)

My glass tasting cups are all in the dishwasher so I’m having to view the liquor against a white background. It’s dark, definitely getting its color from the black tea. The aroma is mostly chamomile, followed by lavender, followed by coconut, followed by vanilla. I’m not detecting much in the way of tea.

The taste is extremely interesting. It has an almost minty taste and feel to it, a volatile coolness. I think this is the lavender. I can taste the chamomile, and it’s in the foreground, but surprisingly it’s not that mouthful of flowering hay taste chamomile sometimes reminds me of. The lavender and coconut (or maybe the tea) take the edge off, so it’s all of what I like about chamomile with none of what I don’t like about it. There’s coconut/vanilla at the end.

The main thing I’m not tasting is the tea. It’s strange, though. I’m not really tasting it, but I’m aware of its presence.

I didn’t try this with sugar and milk, as suggested. I will give that a try next time.

I am pretty impressed that this turned out as well as it did. Who would have thunk it?

I got in a beautiful package of teas from Lena today. She even typed me notes on her thoughts of each tea it was a really nice surprise (Thanks Lena you ROCK). In the samples was this one and I’ve been dying to try it and she mentioned she was curious of what my thoughts would be on this one.

First off I have to say I am majorly over steeping it as per all of yall’s reviews I decided to follow suit. The first taste that hits me is angel food while I don’t really taste any strawberry at all! Hmmm I wonder what’s up with that? I like it and it leaves me with a sweet cakey taste I miss the strawberries though I want my strawberries with my angel food cake you know what I mean?? It still tastes good though! Thanks again Lena!! :)

Had the end of the sample tonight and it wasn’t nearly as good as the first time around. I think mainly because there was a lot of dusty stuff the closer to the end of the packet I got and I’m guessing the orange flavoring sifted down to the bottom of the sample some. It was a lot stronger and not as pleasant this time. A fair amount of the dust escaped the Breville. I went through two infusions but had no desire to do more.

I’m torn because on the one hand, I remember being so pleasantly surprised the first time around that this didn’t come near sucking. But this time it was pretty disappointing. I wasn’t planning to order more anyway, but I’m glad I found out about its darker side.

Knocking it down a few points, but I don’t feel it’s fair to rap it too hard since it was obviously a problem mostly caused by the dregs of the leaf.

A slightly oolongated (sorry!) detour from the Golden Moon project while the water was at the oolong temp setting.

This tea is crowded. There are a lot of little oval cream colored flower buds in the sample, perhaps even more flowers than tea leaves. There’s a grainy looking greenish powder which I’m guessing is the lemon myrtle, but it looks as though it has been put through a pepper mill. The packet has a strong tart orange peel scent. I’m speculating that The Necessiteas ended up with a lot more orange ingredients than anticipated as their offerings are seeming heavy on the orange flavor lately.

The oolong must be pretty green as it delivers a fresh butter colored liquor that has a buttery aroma. There is also a suggestion of flowers, and a citrus note that seems out of place here. The citrus note worries me.

But I shouldn’t have worried, at least not too much. It is present in the taste of the tea, and it isn’t destructive or distracting as I had feared. Mostly, it’s effect is to steer the flavor of the tea away from the dominant buttery floral I would have expected from a green oolong and inject a more piquant flavor. Surprisingly, it’s pretty good.

I’m not sure what the lemon myrtle contributes, exactly. Maybe it’s what keeps the orange flavor under control. The jasmine flowers don’t seem to be contributing much either. There’s no identifiable jasmine note among the generic floral.

Second steep: 3 mins. More orange in the aroma and a powdery, perfumy quality as well that is vaguely lemony. Must be the myrtle. These two qualities dominate the flavor as well along with the generic floral and a sweetness on the back end with just a tiny bit of butter.

Third steep: 4 mins. Not terribly different from the last, except that the mouthfeel is less soft and feels more like water.

I’m actually quite surprised that this tastes as good as it does. If I wanted to have a green oolong, though, I’d be more likely to go for one that didn’t work so hard at muting the qualities in green oolongs that I really like (butteriness, creaminess, flowers) in favor of some other flavor(s). Still, if you’re not an oolong purist and/or are addicted to variety, this comes in a sample size so you can give it a try without a huge investment.

Sipdown no. 27 of 2017 (no. 308 total).

Another hoarded blend from one of my very first orders — yikes! Still tasty after all these years.

I kept threatening to come out of lockdown on non-tea blends — fruits, herbals, etc. — and don’t look now but it could happen in our lifetime.

A hit with both peanuts! No. 2 more than no. 1, but both said they’d drink it again. No. 2 is the strawberry fan in the house, and as the strawberry is very much the main event here, I’m not surprised.

Delighted to see that this is still for sale at The NecessiTeas site in case we find ourselves needing more!

I wasn’t able to get the kiwi to do a solo using the rest of the sample, but I have the feeling that even though my view of it is somewhat obscured, it’s in the back of the room raising its hand. There’s definitely something going on other than strawberry and apple, and it isn’t rose hips or hibiscus. It’s a nice drink.

I’m noticing that unless they’re too tart (unless you like tart, in which case substitute the word “sweet”), fruit blends can basically be described as “nice drinks.” The heat of them is calming in the evening which makes them more comforting to drink than juice, and without the calories. They’re also generally less in-your-face-fruit than juices are. It’s hard to say one is terrifically better than another apart from which side of the sweet/tart dichotomy you happen to fall on, and which fruit flavors you generally prefer. I suppose one could give extra points for a particularly satisfying blend, too. But that’s about all I can see to distinguish one from another. Anything I’m missing?

Stressed and tired, so not up for a magnum opus tonight. Tomorrow maybe. It’s work at home Wednesday and I think my big project may finally be done, so my stress level should go down and I may actually get to enjoy some tea instead of gulping it down while distracted. But after my earlier yucky face experience, I wanted to end the evening on a higher note.

This is a surprisingly nice fruit blend. It has chunky pieces in a nicely harmonized color combo/continuum of very dark purple to light brown. Its variations would be nice in one of those eye shadow palette compacts. It smells like tart strawberry in the sample packet. I brewed it double strength in about 16 oz of water, and it made a pretty, hibiscus-influenced magenta-like liquor.

In taste, it is not at all tart or bitter. In fact, it is sweet, undoubtedly from the strawberry. Apple notes poke through every now and then, and neither the rose hips nor the hibiscus seem to have much influence on the taste. The kiwi is tricky, but I do notice a sort of cooling flavor that comes after the strawberry and doesn’t seem to be the strawberry simply morphing into another variant. I think this is the kiwi. I’ll focus on it more when I next try the rest of the sample and see if I can tease it out a bit more.

I haven’t had that many straight mixed fruit blends, but I like this one better than the Teavana Lemon Youkou because it doesn’t require sweetening.

Better the second time with more water and less tea, and also a bit less steeping time, but not a significant enough improvement to merit much of an uptick. Still mainly a bitter orange peel flavor, just a little more watered down this way. Adding a couple of points.

The red and purple of the rose petals and hibiscus, the grey-green of the tea, the light yellow-green of the lemongrass and the tiny blocks of orange peel make this a colorful tea to look at. In the sample packet, the dry leaves smell strongly and almost exclusively of orange peel.

I think I oversteeped this — I set the timer for 5 minutes but got preoccupied, and it may have been longer than 6 by the time I got back to the tea. It had steeped to a really lovely peach color and still smelled strongly of orange peel.

The taste, however, had a single, sour/bitter note: orange peel.

I will try one more time with the rest of the sample and move the slider if things improve.

Hello rooibos my old friend [?], I’ve come to talk with you again. Ugh. Now I have Simon and Garfunkel rattling around inside my head.

One thing I think I can say with certainty is that as much as I haven’t cared for the Necessiteas flavored greens and have even had a strike out with one of their flavored blacks, they do rooibos blends pretty well. I am hardly an expert on the point, but I suspect that rooibos is pretty forgiving when it comes to being a base for blends. Still, I’ve had ones that were too noisy, so it’s obviously not a foolproof base. Or perhaps some people just like noisy rooibos and find those blends successful and the ones I like the disasters instead.

Be that as it may, this one did remind me more than usual of the covering of the bottom of a hamster cage, but I think it is because of the huge honking hunks of orange peel in the mix that make the rooibos look so backgroundy. And the chocolate poking up from underneath. Which as it turns out, is an accurate visual representation of the taste.

The aroma, though, is somewhat orange-medicinal, like a kids’ liquid medicine.

The flavor is a strong orange flavor that isn’t sweet, rich, or candy like as the orange flavors I’ve particularly enjoyed are. This one is slightly tart and a tiny bit bitter, but not in an entirely bad way. It basically has the character of orange peel, which is to say it tastes like what it is. No surprise there. Behind the orange is the rooibos, an appley note that stands between the orange and the chocolate which isn’t really much more than a warm cocoa undercurrent. Sometimes the rooibos and the chocolate change places. It’s not consistent, though.

The aftertaste is pretty strong on the rooibos. Which is not the best way to end.

I preferred the Peppermint Pattie, but this isn’t bad if you like flavored rooibos.

I wasn’t intending to write about this one yet since I tried it for the first time this morning during a rush to get the kids ready for swimming lessons, but I had to change my mind because of the comments coming from the breakfast table after I poured the water over the mixture.

Picture the mixture (there’s a photo at the top of the page of the black tea leaves, white coconut strips, chocolate chips). In the packet it has a v. strong scent of “lime,” a really acrid smell that borders on chlorine, with some not sweet chocolate underneath and some sweetness that may be the coconut in the corner. It’s on the kitchen counter having just had water poured over it.

Now picture the scene. Two boys, ages 4 and almost 6, eating microwave French toast from Trader Joe’s and drinking orange juice, and the boyfriend about to sit down with them while I am puttering making my own breakfast.

Boyfriend: “What’s that smell?”

Me: “Tea.”

Boyfriend walks over to cup and sniffs. “Caramel?”

Me: “No. Lime, chocolate and coconut.”

Boyfriend: “Ahhhh. It’s the coconut.” He starts to sing: “Put the lime in the coconut and drink it all up, put the lime in the coconut and call me in the morning. Wasn’t that Harry Nilsson, the same guy who did The Point?” He sits down.

Boyfriend: “God, that smells awful.”

6 Year old: “I can smell it from here. I don’t like it.”

Me: “Really? I don’t think it’s so bad.”

4 Year old (Mama’s boy, bless him): “I don’t think it’s so bad either.”

Boyfriend: “Who thinks it smells bad, raise your hand.” Raises hand. 6 year old raises hand.

I take a sip. It’s identifiably lime, coconut, and chocolate, but mostly the acrid lime that tastes a lot like it smells and is throwing the mixture off kilter. I put some milk in it and try again. Slightly better, still way too heavy on the lime. I look at the packet. Chocolate Coconut Lime. I am wondering why it isn’t called Lime Chocolate Coconut?

Me: “It doesn’t taste that good.”

4 year old: “Can I taste it?”

Me: “No.”

4 year old: “Is it tea?”

Me: Pause. Is it tea? Answer. “Yes.”

Sort of.

Having this tonight and I made up a mug for the hubby too. His exact words: “Odd. Not something I would expect to be hot.” He’s still drinking it though XD