Lisbet Send Message

Orzo tea? Huh? This jumped out at me, as I drink a lot of cool barley tea in the summer. And the richness of the barley goes really, really well with the tart strawberry. I don’t taste any chocolate notes no matter how hard I try, but oh well. They recommend this as a tea that goes well with milk, is great for kids, and has no caffeine. I’d agree on all of these counts (although obviously the caffeine thing isn’t an opinion ;) ). Because of the fruitiness I can really see this making a good iced tea as well.

I’m definitely going to keep some of these orzo teas around as another caffeine-free alternative to rooibos, honeybush, and herbal blends. It’s worth trying! I can’t remember the last time I liked a strawberry tea.

This is unlike any kind of ginger tea I’ve ever tried before, and is part of why Lupicia is fast becoming one of my obsessions (although they’re a Japanese company, they have an English language website and many very distinctly Japanese blends among the options- including many options that are rare in the US).
Anyway, the roasted hojicha works so well with the ginger that I can’t help but continue to drink this obsessively. It’s rather calming, and despite ginger being somewhat of an odd choice for summer (too warming!) I’m finding that I’m glad I bought this one nonetheless.
I can’t find it on the American website though- on the Japanese website it’s listed in English as “Japanese ginger tea”, but what the Japanese actually says is Washouga Houjicha, or simply “Japanese-style Ginger Houjicha”. So I dunno :) But I definitely recommend it, and the link to the Japanese page is here: http://www.lupicia.com/html/ja/item/001/016/item15599.html

I love this tea company and their many shops in the Tokyo area. Yes, that’s right, I’m in the land of good tea and I haven’t been updating Steepster. This is because I have been drinking a ton of tea, but not so much in my house where I can check labels or really retain the memory of particular notes. I’m working on getting the description for this tea, because it’s no longer on either Lupicia’s English or Japanese websites.

So, this is a very mild fruit blend that tastes mostly of a kind of strawberries and cream. It’s definitely summery and would be superb iced. Anyway, it came in a tin of silk tea bags, somewhat like the tins that Republic of Tea come in, in the US, with higher quality bags.
Really, really good with a snack of dried toasts baked with blueberry jam.

I super need this today because I just could NOT sleep last night. Stupid insomnia. I think it was around 5 in the morning when I finally fell asleep, if I ever did, so I tried to stay in bed until 10. Sigh. Now I’m trying to be functional and I think this might be my new friend.
Anyway, most mate tastes sorta roasty like coffee to me. I can see why people like it in lattes. (Mate lattes seem to be the newest trend among folks I know. Maybe I’ll try it sometime.) Anyway, this brings back memories of last summer when I drank a lot of mate to try to stay awake without jangling my nerves to death during a summer language program. This has the same vanilla, cocoa, and coffee undertones to it as the last mate I had, with the overall result being very “mocha”. It’s fine, I like it a fair bit but doubt I’ll buy my own stash (Thanks to Ottawa Tea for sampling this to me!)

Ottawa Teas gifted me this one! Yay! :D I really love this blend. It’s spicy and sweet, with just a hint of fruitiness. It’s like chai meats a gingerbread cookie. I imagine this would be good sweetened, but I tend not to do that. This will be great encouragement to stick with my end-of semester work and not give up even though it’s Friday afternoon and I want to relax. Less than 10 pages more to read! Am loving this as an after dinner dessert tea. I think I could drink many mugfulls of this during the winter.

Like others, I had no particular interest in buying a chamomile tea, but this also came to me in the inventory oops sale :) And it’s not as though I can’t use some soothing- I’ve been suffering from adrenal fatigue lately because of the stress in my life (grad school). To me, this tastes mostly just like chamomile, which brings back memories of the teas I used to drink before discovering good tea. I had a lot of Celestial Seasonings chamomile in my house.

Anyway, I am going to try to drink this for the good of my relaxation, but I’m bummed that I don’t get any citrus or spice out of it.

I’ve taken a while to review this one, because I was kind of abusing it before now. I put it in my tea-filter travel mug and just let it steep until I was done drinking the cup. This resulted in a cuppa very very oversteeped tea. Some teas can hold up to the tea travel mug, but not this one. Alas.

Anyway, sitting down to a cup of this while working on a long paper. Sniffing this brewed, I can definitely smell the apricot. But it’s a gentle, non-dominant taste that actually goes really well with this combination of different teas. I’d say this is a good one for those who are on the fence about drinking anything other than plain teas, as it’s got a very mild fruitiness to it. I like it- don’t love it, but it’s pleasant enough and seems to be good at soothing sore tummies.

This blend is genius. Seriously. My husband saw me with a bag of tea with actual marshmallows in it and said “So have you officially given up on drinking real tea?” I had to explain that the marshmallows scared me at first too- but that this was genmaicha, and that the toastiness of the genmaicha (it has toasted rice in it) works remarkably well with the marshmallow. As I explained, he considered the notion and agreed that he could see how it might, just maybe work.

I love this one. It’s an utterly surprising blend- the sweet and the nutty/toasty genmaicha go really well together. The sweetness of the melted marshmallows really is very mild- I don’t sweeten my teas and it’s acceptable for me :) This is truly, truly creative. Bravo!

I initially agreed with Ottawa Tea that this one was too much hibiscus, not enough sage. But my second cup is really heavy on the sage, and less so on the fruit and flowers- I got two cups worth out of the packet. I like the second cup better, although I do think this one could use a little more blueberry and less hibiscus. I’m not even sure the hibiscus needs to be in here.

The odd thing here is that the merlot name actually does seem sorta fitting. This really does taste a bit like wine to me. I had a cup of this kinda late at night the other night, and I really felt like I was drinking warm wine (which isn’t gross when you think about mulled wine). I really don’t know what to make of this one since the two cups I had were so different.

I really want to try this one. Don’t have the nerve to buy a whole tin though!