The Republic of Tea

I’m super intrigued by these “high caffeine” teas – stuff like this or what Zest Tea carries. I’ve seen tea/coffee hybrids before and those don’t appeal to me. I just DO NOT want coffee. So, when a company says they can achieve that caffeine level without coffee at all? Well, that speaks to me…

I will say that I didn’t feel super caffeinated after finishing this one. However, I also didn’t feel tired/sluggish or anything like that either. Just, like, level and alert. So I guess that could be taken as an indicator that it worked but I don’t know that it’s definitive feeling enough for me.

Flavour wise, I enjoyed this a lot though – it tastes exactly like toast with a cinnamon sugar spread on top, just with a hint/undertone of apple as well. Still – very accurate to the namesake and that’s something that I always feel like needs to be praised when I company achieves that so well. That has always been something that has been important to me – if you’re going to name the tea after a specific flavour/food then it damn well better taste like it.

Here’s another sampler from the San Francisco Tea Festival.

It’s very subtle. I can taste the spearmint and something that reminds me of citrus. Oh, and a light apple note. This is very thirst quenching and would be good cold (the last bit was a little cold by the time I finished it.) I don’t understand the “detox” thing, maybe just marketing.

Note: The tea bag has no string. I fished it out of my cup with a spoon.

Lone teabag from their catalog.
5 min 200F
Artificial sugar apple. Apple more like a granny smith – kinda tart. Caramel, thick at the end of sip. The caramel is more in the aroma. Not bad, but not great.

I feel like this one is REALLY pushing the limit of what counts as tea (herbal or not), but it is sold by Republic of Tea and I believe they’re classing it as an “instant herbal tonic” so I guess maybe it’s worth putting up here on Steepster?

Anyway; what I really want to say it that it’s fucking delicious whatever it is. Like, I’m not personally the kind of person who would or does drink apple cider vinegar as a wellness thing in the first place, but fuck – I’d drink this daily. It was actually SO GOOD. Tangy, acidic, bright, sweet – and also maybe a little creamy? I guess ‘cause there’s vanilla in it.

Seriously – apple cider vinegar has never tasted so good.

Swap Sample Sipdown! (66)

I had bags of this from both Kawaii433 and tea-sipper.

I admit, I didn’t realize until going to write this note that this is a rooibos-based blend. It’s in paper teabags, so you can’t really see the contents, and it brews up quite dark so I had assumed a black base. It also doesn’t taste overly rooibos-y.

But now that I know, I can taste the rooibos and therefore feel like a moron, ha ha!

Other than that, it has a mixture of banana Runts and more natural banana flavors. It’s a little bit creamy, but I don’t get much in the way of chocolate from it.

Not bad though, especially for a caffeine-free blend.

Sipdown of the only teabag I had. This was attached to one of their catalogs. I drank it while entering most of the rest of my teas into my Steepster cupboard. Now it’s more right 266 teas total – 251 in steepster cupboard.

I’m not a fan of emphasizing weight loss by drinking tea. I drink because it tastes good.
This did not taste good. Sugar, medicine, ick. I absentmindedly drank the rest….I think? I didn’t get up to pour it out so I must have? I don’t remember.

I bought this tea thinking it would be delicious but I hate it. Now I have an entire can of it smells like cheap chocolate that you get at Easter and a stale banana moon pie. The rooibos didn’t help the combination.

Tastes like the regular Get Clean All Day, but with extra mint. Not too much extra flavor to ruin the tea taste. Good plain or with cinnamon. Overall: rooibos tea with a bit of minty freshness.

Added a splash of milk – tastes like thin coffee drink. Tastes nice with breakfast. Added milk and cinnamon on another occasion – negligible effect r/t taste. Need to remember that it’s not a coffee drink – it’s disappointing if expecting a thick and creamy drink.

January 2019 Catalog Sample. Smells orange-y and fruity. Tastes thin with little flavor – the smell is much stronger than the taste. Tastes good with honey, but mostly tasting hot honey water. Tasted 01.2019

Tastes like citrus, and then some. CItrus-Plus. Has a nice fruity smell, pleasant. Tasted 9.2018

Ashmanra’s sipdown challenge – March 2023 Tea #8 – March 25 – The end of American Chocolate week

The no-caff chocolate option for the day!  A favorite!  I would love to restock this when it’s finally sipdowned.  (Though now it seems the blackberry leaves might be taking over the flavor.)

Mastress Alita’s sipdown challenge – August Tea #3 -A banana tea

I’m trying to rush through the prompts for this month as I’m going back up to Maine to help my grandma for a bit in a week.   So I won’t be posting many notes again, which I’m there.  I’ll still be drinking teas from my gallon zipbag variety that I bring with me though!  I will also try to READ tasting notes more than I did last time… just won’t be posting them.  I’m 40+ pages behind in reading notes.  Yikes.   
This beloved tea is NOT a sipdown… and I’m not rushing to finish it.  But it’s one of my favorite banana teas (that isn’t from 52Teas).  Even the blackberry leaf in it is tolerable.  Plus, I will never get over how adorable the tin for it is.

Additional notes: I’m already craving this many times since I acquired it from Ost, so I guess I need to raise the rating (from a 76). Craving it so much that I had to look to see if it was available from Republic of Tea. uh oh. I’ll wait for a sale or something. I just love the dusky chocolate and ripe banana.

Also sipdowned one of my separate amounts of Lupicia’s Melon oolong. Does it count as a sipdown if I have more than one amount of it? Or does it only count if ALL of that tea is gone from both packages? (2019 Sipdowns: 7?)

Happy New Year, Steepster! I received this from Ost’s sale. Thank you! Mainly, I loved the adorable tin but luckily the tea is tasty too. I tried this once with one teabag and it was tasty enough, two teabags might impart a little TOO much flavor on that first steep… but I’m fine with it. There is a nice dusty chocolate flavor with hints of banana. And blackberry leaves. WHY? So many blackberry leaves in teas lately. Just stop with the blackberry leaves already. There is also a watery quality I get at the top of the sip, which you might be saying “yeah, it’s tea” but it’s just a watery quality that I haven’t noticed in other teas….like plain water is floating at the top of the cup, and you have to get past that to the flavor? It’s odd. The rooibos is completely unnoticeable to me, which is fine with me either way. I’ve never been a hater of rooibos. Happy to have this cute tin on the shelf.
Steep #1 // 2 teabags for a full mug// 10 minutes after boiling // 2 1/2 minute steep
Steep #2 // just boiled // 7 minute steep

Arby Advent Day 9
I actually said “yay” when I saw this as my tea for the day. It’s one of my favorite liglty flavored rooibos blends. The rooibos is so full and tasty, and the vanilla is a lovely addition. I love this tea!

My only sample from the tea box for today! Now this is rooibos done right! One bag brewed a flavorful cup of tea. The rooibos flavor is pleasant and not at all woody or weird. There’s also a bit of vanilla. I like this one a lot! It’s very sweet and refreshing with some sugar.

It’s back to being cold. Well, I guess it never stopped. But the weather called for the type of tea that warms you up. So I went looking for a chai. Found this one. It was good. It’s a decent tea, but it lacks a ‘wow’ factor. It was a Christmas gift, so I better drink it up. As I said, nothing wrong with it.

We have another stupid blizzard tonight. I wanted a warming tea, something caffeine free, with ginger for my unhappy tummy. I decided on this one. It was okay. My tummy has been slightly unhappy for several days now. I don’t know what the deal is. I’m not actually sick,. just gassy and lethargic. I suppose I can blame winter. This winter is really nothing unusual. But the last four or five years have been abnormally mild so I having a regular winter seems awful. I am tired of winter :(

You know, I’ve been hoarding two excellent teas for a few weeks now. I’m afraid once I open them, they will be gone. But that is stupid. I should open them and enjoy them. I don’t think anything else will really satisfy me. Like this tea. It’s not a bad tea. It’s a perfectly good tea for a cold winter evening. But it ain’t Golden Orchid, now is it?

This is the second of the teas I received for Christmas and I quite like it. One of my favorite bagged grocery store teas is Good Earth’s sweet and Spicy. That one tastes like liquid red hots. This one is a bit more subtle.

The weather here in North Dakota seems to have a split personality. We had a two day blizzard (just plain nasty). The temp dropped to -6 with a high today of 6 above zero. Tomorrow is going to be up to 28, with another 3-4 inches of snow, followed by high winds on Monday, creating a ground blizzard. The temps will fall to -20F, and on Tuesday the high will be -8. Yes, the high will be -8F. Then it will get warm, like above freezing.

All that was to tell you that I’ve spent a lot of could hours digging out my car this week. And when I come in I want something warm and soothing to drink. This tea has been my go to for the past few days. I’ve developed quite an affection for it.

Actually a very nice “regular” black tea. It says it has ginger, but I’ve never really noticed that specifically.

It’s cold up here in North Dakota now, so I decided to have hot tea after my coffee. I decided on this one because it seemed like a Christmas tea would go well with my Christmas music and the sound of snow plows beeping and scraping over the parking lot. The first snow fall of the season makes me want tea!

I seem to remember liking this one, if not loving it. This morning it was just bitter. The can of bags is a little old, about 3 years old, actually. Maybe that has faded the cinnamon and other flavors, because I get nothing from this. Too bad.

Well, lots more tea drinking weather ahead now. I need to re-organize my tea drawer and re-discover some favorites.