513 Tasting Notes
Looking at the ingredients, I am not surprised to find rose hips and hibiscus in this. Is it ever tart! I cold brewed some and I like a tart iced tea, but even I am trying to work out if this is a good tart or a bad tart. I want to say that the dominant flavour is cranberries, but there does not appear to be any actual cranberry in the leaf, so I take it I am tasting the tartness from the hibiscus and attributing it to cranberry. The apple is present, under the berry, but really, it is the tart hibiscus/berry you are tasting. Overall, the flavours don’t clash, but the whole blend tart, bordering on downright sour.
I am glad I brewed some of this up, and I think it is a well blended tea, but I am not sure if it is the berry blend I am looking for.
My Butiki teas came, which is always cause for immense excitement in my house! Unfortunately they arrived in the day I had a ninety minute meeting after work which left with only a little over an hour to sort teas, eat supper, and get to my girls night. So only time to try one quick cup of this. Brewed as a white, with no sweetener, this was amazing! So light and lemon, but with a definite cookie base to the flavour. It was reminiscent of a liquid cookie. I am super impressed with the strength of the lemon note and how beautifully all the flavour melded. This is such a light, refreshing tea that I could see myself drinking it hot even through the summer.
After only one cup, I am beginning to suspect this will be a tea I need to keep permanently in my cupboard!!
Preparation
A friend and I shared a couple of cups of this over a game of Dominion last night. (Not tea related, but if anyone likes board games do I ever recommend Dominion. I come from a long history of playing Catan but this is an awesome change. Also, it can be played with just two players so the boy and I can play anytime we are bored.)
Anyways, much like I noted the first time I brewed this up, it is heavy on the grapefruit, light on the strawberry, but still very much a fresh green tea. I like the tartness, though I wouldn’t have minded if there had been a bit of berry to round out the bottom notes in the flavour. Overall, though, a very pleasant tea!
haha catan is a great entry game in to euro games imo but i hate it. too much luck involved! dominion is good for replayability and the 2 player factor :) sounds like a good time!
My partner would totally agree with you. We also play Ticket to Ride and Carcassone, but I find Dominion much more versatile in terms of replay ability.
Catan is a guilty pleasure of mine, but the luck factor kills the boy. He likes something he can strategise and control more variables in.
Puerto Rico; brass; urban sprawl; Cuba; all creatures big and small (2player); pandemic are just a few that I enjoy….
We also have Pandemic and Puerto Rico (Jace loves that one). I really want to try Brass. Is is a good game? I have heard long and complicated, but is it worth it?
I sipped on this slowly while waking up with my magazine this morning. I know this tea is prohibitively expensive, but it is such an amazing tea. I love sweet the mulberry flavour combined with the underlying warmth of the coconut. Also, this tea is wonderfully appealing to look at. The big coconut swirls against the golden berries never fails to brighten my morning.
Always a great way to start a weekend!
This tea has a ton going on! I could not believe how long the ingredient list was, and that was only the ingredients available to choose! I cold steeped a pitcher of this today. It brewed super fast and the hibiscus was very apparent in the dark pink hue the finished tea took on.
In terms of flavour, it has all the tartness from the hibiscus with notes from the lemon grass and the peach bits. I think it is a peachy tea, but a very tart peach. I am finding it refreshing, but I tend to like a bit of hibiscus in my teas to add that touch of tartness to them.
I can’t see this doing as well as a hot tea, but I have to admit it is pretty amazing cold steeped! This will be showing up more in my pitcher as the weather warms up!
I have quite a few banana heavy teas, but this one is probably my favourite. I don’t get a ton of chocolate, but this is just chock full of banana and nut sweetness. It gets sweeter and sweeter as it steeps longer. The banana flavour is also nice and natural. It tastes like a ripe banana not the banana pudding kind of banana. It is an easy tea to drink and one everyone seems to enjoy!
I steeped a pitcher of this up again but I am still just getting apple and mixed fruits. I am really not able to draw out the strawberry or the goji very well. It is not a bad tea and I am sure I can get through my pitcher easily enough, but I am not sure this is one I will be reaching for again very quickly.
Having let this sit on my shelf for months, I finally gave it another shot. This time I sweetened it and went for a minute and a half steep. I think sometimes I just can’t win with teas, the flavour was a lot less rooibos-y, but this time I managed to oversweeten. It is a good tea, don’t get me wrong, but I can’t seem to brew out the orange and clove I am smelling without doing something else to ruin the cup. Maybe this one needs to sit on the shelf again for a while until I get some stroke of brilliance.
I have to admit, I am just not a fan of this one. I love coconut, but this is not the coconut I love. Possibly it is the lemongrass kicking around, because I will admit that is not my favourite flavour in a lot of teas. Also, I can`t really see lemongrass and coconut blending together all that well. Whatever the issue is, it is not a huge deal because this one belongs to the boy and he loves it, so all’s well that end’s well I guess. For me, it is too muddled in terms of flavour, and I am already so crazy about Coconut Grove that I am not looking to sell myself on another coconut tea that I did not already love.
