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This has been my evening herbal as of late.

The flavor is that of a hibiscus-based “mulled wine” sort of tea… a flavor profile I personally really love, but even amongst spiced-hibi blends, this one doesn’t really stand out. There are lots of different dried fruits in this, but I honestly don’t taste any particular fruit flavor from them. The spices, as well, are far softer than I’d expect from a tea calling itself a “chai” — mostly just a sweet ginger note at the end of the sip from the combination of cinnamon and ginger. There is a sort of “pine” note to the tea that I really do enjoy, though I’m not sure where it is coming from… the cardamom, most likely. That one pine-fresh sort of note on the warm fruity hibiscus does give it a “cozy against the winter” feel. I’ll happily finish off my bag, but nothing about it makes it stand out over other hibiscus cider options I’ve had, like T2s “Mulled Wine Magic” (which still remains my favorite).

I’m confused as to why this tea was so wildly popular that it consistently sold out, won tea elections, and finally made it to the permanent collection due to the popular demand, because it is one of the most unexciting Bird & Blend teas I’ve tried.

The dry leaf smells amazing in the package, but the butterscotch just doesn’t hold up in the brewed tea for me at all. Brewed hot and plain, it just tastes like a standard strong, astringent, malty breakfast tea, with maybe a hint of generic caramel-like sweetness in the background. I tried it as a tea soda as well, hoping the carbonation would create a sort of “butterscotch soda” flavor, but it continued to just… not taste butterscotch-y.

The tea does do a lot better with added sweetener. Prepared as a latte with sweetened vanilla almond milk, it did have more of a caramel-like flavor, but it still didn’t stand out as exemplorary compared to other caramel-esque teas I’ve had. A coldbrew with some added cane sugar syrup finally elevated it to the “butterscotch soda” I was looking for, and is probably my favorite way of drinking it of all the methods I tried, and how I will finish off the 50g bag.

Would not order more of this, though.

I prepared this sample coldbrew, and of the Bird & Blend coldbrews I’ve had recently, I think this one has been my favorite after “Peach Soda.”

The oolong base appears to be more present in this tea than I experienced in “Pink Prosecco.” It has a nice silky texture with a sweet and smooth floral note. I’m not getting any of the vegetal undertones from the Tie Guan Yin; likely the florality is really popping due to the elderflower. This is actually my first tea with elderflower in it, so I admittedly am not quite sure how it tastes, but I really do love the florality of this blend so I guess I’m a fan? The peach in this is present but not super strong; it has just enough of a citrusy tang to not taste like candy peach flavor, but it is still sweet and delicate rather than punchy. I actually wouldn’t mind if it were a little stronger, but it melds with the florality really well.

Nice and relaxing… more suited as a spring tea, but maybe that’s just me projecting being over this frigid winter.

Drank this sample coldbrewed… it probably needed more leaf than I used per batch but I wanted to stretch it to a few liter pitchers.

I enjoy wine teas as it is a beverage I can’t have due to my chronic migraine diagnosis, though this one misses the mark for me, because it lacks that sort of “effervescent” mouthfeel of an “alcoholic” tea. But despite that disappointment, there is a gentle fruitiness to the flavor and a silkiness to the liquour, with a subtle sweet floral undertone… oddly enough, the flavor most reminds me of strawberries and cream. It looks like the actual red fruit in this blend is raspberry, but it lacks any tangy/tart elements that would make me read the note as raspberry over strawberry… the hibiscus doesn’t seem to do much in terms of flavor and only in color. Perhaps if I had made a stronger infusion and treated this more as a fruit tea in terms of the amount of leaf I use instead of as an oolong it would’ve been a bit punchier, but I’m not upset with the soft strawberry and floral notes I am tasting.

Definitely could’ve been improved by that effervescent “wine” note, though.

I had a lovely Festivus yesterday consisting of naps with the cat, reading manga, a bubblebath with cheerful Celtic music playing in the background, and ordering in pizza. Happy holidays to all, whether you are a traditionalist or more off the beaten path like me. :-)

I was initially confused that this tea was renamed to “Lemon Sherbet” because I had a tea by that same name, also from Bird & Blend, this year, and it was a lemon-flavored green tea while this is entirely fruit/herbal. Huh. The ingredients on my package (which has the old name of “Lemonade” on it) do match the “Lemon Sherbet” currently on their website, but why would they rename it the same name as one of their former green teas? Weird…

I’ve been mostly drinking this cold brewed, though did try one warm cuppa with some leftover leaf. I found the warm cup very meeeh… it was lemony, but prepared hot the lemongrass really popped, leaving it with more of that herbaceous note. But the cold brew has more of a really pithy and bright lemon flavor. Probably too tart for most to enjoy, but I like tart/tangy flavors and quite enjoyed it. There is no hibiscus in this blend (just a bit of rose hip) so it doesn’t lean into a “fruity” lemonade like the several Strawberry Lemonade blends I’ve tried; it’s heavy on the citrus peel and is a brisk and somewhat biting lemony citrus note. I’m drinking the coldbrew without sweetener and am fine, but I imagine adding some sugar might make it lean into proper lemonade territory.

Had a sampler pouch of this, the majority of which was set in a liter mason jar to cold brew over night.

I had just enough leaf left to prepare a warm cup last night. It steeped a pretty pink color and I found it quite pleasant… a bit like other peach-leaning hibiscus fruit teas I’ve had before, though not quite as heavy on the hibiscus (enough to add a bit of body and tanginess to the peach notes) and lots of rose. The rose was quite peppery, but it is a flavor I’ve always enjoyed paired with peach (peach and rose water smoothies are a favorite of mine). Nothing about it really made me think of “soda,” but it was a solid peach/rose herbal.

Drinking the cold brew today, which I infused with carbonation to “bring out” more of a soda experience. It’s very good like that! The peach tastes really juicy with the sharpness of the carbonation and the rose has a lingering pleasant aftertaste.

I would not mind getting more of this at some point.

This is the final tea I have left from the last Here’s Hoping Teabox, which made it rounds shortly after I joined Steepster back in 2017. Can’t believe it took me this long to go through all the samples I’d stashed from that box, but here we are. Thank you to tea-sipper for organizing that box all those years ago, and to anyone that contributed tea to it. As a fledgling tea-drinker at the time, it was one of my first exposures to tea outside of grocery store teabags and a few bags of loose leaf I’d picked up on a vacation.

For the sipdown prompt, “an earthy tea.”

100ml (shiboridashi) | 4.4g | 205F | Rinse/10s/13s/16s/19s/22s/25s/28s/31s

The wet leaf smells of sour melon rind, rotting autumn leaves, and tobacco smoke. The tea steeped into a striking bright reddish-orange color, and smells like black licorice… a fennel/anise spiciness with an undertone of smoke. The first few sips even tasted a bit like licorice, but then a strong bitter note that tastes like dissolved Advil settles on the back of my tongue and after that I just taste marshy earth, wet leaves, and smoke… characteristics I’m not fond of, which is why I rarely opt for a pu’erh session. The second infusion wasn’t quite as abrasive, and actually wasn’t too bad if I focused in on the black licorice tones. Halfway into the session I was starting to taste some sweeter golden raisin notes as well as a dry grass vegetal note with far less bitterness in the aftertaste than early in the session, but my empty stomach was also starting to feel a bit woozy from the tea so I had to add some toast to the session. Late session brought out some white grapes and cucumber.

Overall, not a bad visit with Poochie Gamora.

I got this one on a whim some time ago because I had tried a few violet teas and loved them. Sadly, that was not the case with this tea. The black tea in the base just had a really bitter taste, which was made even worse by all the hibiscus. Now, I’m probably the biggest hibiscus fan on this website, finding it tart, tangy, and pleasant, and I can happily drink plain hibiscus steeped in water without sweetener, but the combination of it with this black tea was just awful! The whole thing was just overly bitter and drying, with a floral violet note that fails to add anything because that florality really needs some sweetness.

After one awful warm cup I switched to iced tea, thinking that might smooth things out since I find iced hibiscus teas extremely refreshing. It was… an improvement over the hot cup, but still too bitter to be “refreshing”. For the last few pitchers to use up the leaf I started adding liquid sugar syrup to the iced tea, which at least helped the violet notes and did smooth out some of the bitterness, but it still had a biting aftertaste.

Glad this one is sipped down. Not one I’d have any interest in revisiting again.

For the sipdown prompt, “a tea from a small company.”

The dry leaf has a very sweet “candy grape” sort of aroma. Steeped, the flavor is more of a sweet berry note, though I do still taste a little grape toward the end of the sip. The base black tea has a slight florality coming through for me, which is likely adding to the sweetness of the tea. The flavor pops a lot more as the tea cools, as well.

For the sipdown prompt, “a cranberry tea.”

The smell of the dry leaf is really lovely; it smells like creamsicle, with a slightly sharper edge to it that does read closer to tangerine than orange. That aroma also comes through in the steeped tea… sharp citrus and a pillowy, creamy vanilla.

I’m one of the few (it seems) that just can’t seem to taste/detect cranberry in teas (I have had this problem across the board with cranberry teas in general). I really just get a lovely creamsicle flavor, with a bit more of a tart edge to the citrus than you would get from the ice cream, though it still has that creamy vanilla/marshmallow tone to it. I got a bit more of a cranberry note as my cup cooled, but it was still pretty subtle. Though I did recall that I had better luck with “Crisp Cranberry Soda” when prepared cold, so I decided to start coldbrewing this tea, and it is a very satisfying cold, thirst-quenching tea. I still don’t really taste the cranberry, though… but that isn’t really a complaint. This is reminding me of an orange version of “Sun and Cloud Mist.” I really like the citrus/marshmallow combo Anne does in teas… lemon, lime, tangerine, they are all great! It just works so well with that creamy sweet vanilla-esque flavor.

Looking back at my notes, it looks like the cranberry popped the most in flavor for me when I actually added carbonation to “Crisp Cranberry Soda,” so I think I’ll try my next coldbrew batch as tea pop.