7 Tasting Notes
If there is one thing I really don’t like about living in this particular dorm I currently find myself residing in, it’s the water. For a girl who loves tea, water is naturally a vital aspect of the tea making process.
Now, I know in older plumbing, you should avoid using hot water to cook with/make tea, because more often than not, all the gunk in your pipes end up in your water, making it all murky. However, this isn’t supposed to happen with cold water.
Unfortunately, for the past month, this has not been the case. When I go to make a nice cup of tea, the faucet gives me murky white water with which to work with. Which, besides making the tea taste off (like, really off), I can’t help but worry about the health benefits (or lack there of) that come from drinking murky tap water.
As a result, I haven’t been making tea lately, despite the fact that I now have entire drawer filled with new teas I’ve been waiting to try. Which is why I was very excited when I decided to test the tap water today, I ended up with clear water, not murky icky water.
Huzzuh for me.
This particular tea I found in the campus dining halls – I guess Aspretto is part of the company that provides the lovely carb-filled diet that I get to eat every day. The title, Orange Spice, intrigued me, so I grabbed a few packets, deciding I would try it out when I had a chance.
The first thing I noted upon tearing the tea bag out of its package was the smell. It was a sorta spicy smell, although certainly not as strong as some of the teas I drink. It made my room quickly change from the smell of bacon in dirty socks (my room mate had been cooking bacon in the microwave) to the nice spell of cloves and cinnamon. (I’ve decided now, I rather like the smell of cloves, especially when mixed with the smell of oranges).
Upon tasting this tea, (once I waited for the temperature to stop being at a “I Shall Burn Thy Tongue!” temperature) I could definitely taste the cloves, although I really couldn’t taste the orange in the tea very much. Maybe it’s because it’s a white tea, I’m not sure. Still, overall, it’s a mellow, but fairly pleasant tea to begin my celebration of clear water once again coming out of the faucet.
Although I might start buying bottled water to boil anyways, just in case in a few days it goes back to being murky and sketchy again.
EDIT:
Oh, wait, there is the orange-y flavor. I guess I just had to wait for it to cool down a little bit more (when I wrote this it was pretty hot). In light of the newly discovered citrus flavor, I’m raising my rating a bit.
Preparation
This has been my week for trying Rooibos Adagio teas. I recently bought the Rooibos sampler from Amazon (gift card), and I’ve been making a point this week of trying one each day. I have yet to review the vanilla, which I tried yesterday, but I feel more compelled to write a review on this.
Now I love mangos. I love mango ice cream, mango smoothies, this Indian mango chicken curry that I used to have all the time at this restaurant in Cambridge when I spent the majority of my summer there – but I have to say, I was not thrilled with this tea. Which was a bit of a disappointment.
There really wasn’t much of a mango flavor to the tea, and honestly I wasn’t to thrilled with the overall flavor, and I normally like rooibos. (I tend to be a chai, black, and rooibos type of girl). Most the time I spent drinking it felt more of an obligation to finish the pot of tea I brewed, and I found myself thinking fondly of one of the teas I had earlier this week, which I will probably brew up shortly now that I finished this pot. I don’t think I’m gonna even go for a second seep of the mix I used.
Who knows, maybe if I have someone over for tea, they’ll like it better. But for now, this is not a tea for me.
I normally prepare this with the Samuari Chai Mate (to be honest, I have yet to have it by itself – I tried the blend originally as a sampler at a local Teavana store and instantly became addicted), resulting in that yummy blend of spices (think almost a cinnamon gum, only in tea form) that helps keep me up when I’m working past midnight. This has about the same amount of caffeine as coffee, so if you need a pick-me-up in the morning, and you’re not as much of a darker brew type of person, this is definitely a pleasant alternative! I find I don’t even need any milk or sweeteners to bring about the various flavors of this tea. This is the tea that I can not be without in my tea cupboard, and often find myself depressed when I get to the bottom of the tin. All of my friends who have tried a sip of this tea keeping begging for me to lend them more!
Making some more this afternoon, might try it with some german rock cane sugar just to see what it tastes like, since I think that’s how they prepare it at Teavana, but I could be wrong.
Preparation
This tea is an amazing ice tea. We had this as an ice tea for a desert after cooking a delicious new year’s eve dinner (sushi, for all you steepsters who actually want to know). Since it was an ice tea for several people, we seeped 6 packets in hot water, which we mixed with a few table spoons of german rock cane sugar (Teavana), which gave it a nice sweet taste. We drank it fresh mixed with ice and steamed milk that night, stored the leftovers in the fridge, then drank the rest of the tea the next day with regular skim milk (too lazy to steam the milk). It was almost better the second time!
I definitely recommend this tea.
I liked this tea. You could really taste the raspberry flavors in the tea and it made an excellent thing to come home to after wandering around outside doing errands on a particularly cold day. If you want an inexpensive tea that tastes pretty good, I would definitely suggest checking out Raspberry Zinger.
This is one of my favorite teas from Teavana that I tried for the first time this summer. Unfortunately my water heater in my dorm room can’t quite handle getting a constant 208 degree temperature when heating the water, so sometimes it ends up scalded a bit. For those making this tea, I highly suggest you keep your eye on the temperature.
