Strawberry Lemonade Bai Mu Dan

So I had to meet the cable guy in the new house this morning at 8am. My husband dropped me off and I figured I’d make my first cup of tea in the new house one of Frank’s! This smelled amazing when I tore open the pouch. My first thought was I had to have this iced. I’m sure it is awesome hot too. But the smell of the strawberries screamed our over ice! (So it was really my first cup of iced tea, but at least it was tea!) I got no tart at all with this one, all sweet which I really like in an iced tea. Thankfully I have enough for another cup this afternoon!

I’ve been on a cold brew kick lately – this is the first of three.

This has been chillin’ in the fridge for well over 24 hours (oops!) and it’s very tasty (whew!). There’s no tart lemon here; it’s very soft. And the strawberry gives it such a nice roundness. It’s good without sweetener, but I think being a “lemonade” I like a touch of sweetness. A little simple syrup makes it sweet, but not overtly so. Not tasting a lot of the white tea, but that’s alright by me for the cold brew.

Will try this hot brewed next…

I received this from Azzrian as a thankful for the iced tea swap.

I can’t place what the dry notes smell like, although it smells good, a unique smell I think.
As it steeps it smells of lemon. I had this iced, since it is a lemonade flavour. I added a wee blip of honey to it.
Once Iced it tastes just as the dry notes smell. I can’t for the life of my think of what it may taste like. It’s different, but a good different. It’s really too bad that this is gone. It would make the perfect all summer long iced tea.

Another tea from the 12 Days of X-mas sampler that I haven’t got around to reviewing until now. I’ve got to say that Frank got the right idea – this tea is truely delicious iced. It’s wonderfully fruity and thirst-quencing and you can really taste both the strawberries and ‘lemon-aid’ in the tea. The white tea is a good choice of base for this because its light, delicate notes balance the fruit flavours nicely without drowning them out like a black tea might.

I’ve also tried this tea hot (and apparently forgot to log it) and it was pretty good like that too although I couldn’t taste the strawberry very well. It reminded me a bit of watered-down hot lemon-aid or may Neo Citron – so while it wasn’t bad at all, I still prefer it cold.

The third tea from the twelve teas of Christmas! I am opening each tea on the correct day, but I decided that for this particular tea, it was better to wait and try it iced before I gave my final verdict on this tea. The time has come… : )

When I opened this tea, fruitiness exploded from the packet. I did guess the strawberry part, but completely missed the lemon. I also smelled white tea (yay for me!) The leaves where pretty to look at, with small bright red strawberry pieces decorating the delicate Bai Mu Dan. The scent kept reminding me of something I could’t quite place, until it hit me… Fruity Pebbles! It smelled exactly like Fruity Pebbles!

I first had it hot. It was enjoyable. Once brewed I got mostly lemon and no strawberry with an aftertaste of Fruity Pebbles and an afterthought of tart tingling on the back of my tongue. I enjoyed the cup, but felt that it was meant to be iced.

I used up the rest of the leaves to make some iced. Yum! Liquid Fruity Pebbles! I even hyper sweetened it to make it more similar! I loved it! To me there was little none of Strawberry Lemonade, but the idea of a Fruity Pebbles flavored tea was brilliant to me! : )

Another great experience with 52teas! Counting down to Christmas taking care of a new puppy has never been more delicious.

God, I am so behind. So, so behind. I’ve added who-knows-how-many teas to my cupboard in the last few months, and reviewed none of them, including all the ones that came in the mail! Shucks!

But my exams are over and done with, and it will be a few days before my workplace gives me more hours (they used to do the next week’s schedule on a Thursday, and now they seem to be doing the schedule a week and a half in advance, which is actually really annoying for a last-minute changes person like me), so I have some time in which to relax, drink and review some tea!

This one is awesome. My favourite of Frank’s teas so far after Pancake Breakfast. Too bad it’s not a permanent one, so I’ll have to look for other teas out there that are similar.

Dry, this smells… Hell, I’m not sure what it smells like. Tea, obviously, but there’s something to it that makes me think “powered candy,” which is an odd thought. There’s also something to the smell which just seems to be distinctive to Frank, like I can smell it in all of his blends. But I don’t know what it is.

I brewed this one up hot, and put it in the fridge for several hours to cool. I have posted before that I’m not the biggest fan of iced tea at all – I vastly prefer most teas hot. Even teas which every reviewer says is, “better cold,” I generally still prefer piping hot.

This one, however, I chose to order because I was anticipating the hot, hot weather which is coming. It’s not here yet, of course – we are still experiencing lovely wet April snowstorms every few days. But it will be. And this one I heard is good iced. So I took a leap of faith.

And is it ever amazing! I realize that I’m not entirely sure I’ve ever actually had strawberry lemonade. But this is light and crisp on top, with strawberry underneath, and the tea taste sits well in the background…which is exactly how I’d want it for a cold tea. It’s incredibly refreshing and chuggable, which is my high watermark for cold drinks – I must be able to chug them to really enjoy them. Feel free to find that strange, but it it is my preference!

Thanks to Ninavampi for a chance to try this one! I’ve only had one 52teas experience before and it was… not good. So I’m excited to have some more chances!

The dry leaf smells fun – very strawberry-like, though with a hint of Jello strawberry-ness. I don’t get any of the lemonade until post-pouring when I smelled the leaves in the pot. Then it is pretty much full-on lemon. It’s faintly Pledge-like but with a woodsier/deeper note to it. I like. The liquor has a more balanced smell with a hint of tart lemon and a sweet dash of (Jello) strawberry.

The taste isn’t bad. We’re kind of fighting an uphill battle though since I don’t really have much of an appreciation for Bai Mu Dan. And I can taste the vegetal, thick, lima bean notes of the BMD which, even though I’m not a fan, actually tasting a tea underneath flavoring is a nice thing. I can also pick up lemon(ade?) which is a nice, natural feeling flavor. I think the lemon(ade) with the BMD alone might be something I heartily approve of since the fresh/tart/sweet of the lemon lightens the heave BMD.

The strawberry, though, is a little eh for me. Half the time it’s very nice – sweet and dessert like with a bit of creamy bit to it. Super yum. But other times, I get warm Jello and that throws me a bit and I just have to wrinkle my nose at it.

Honestly, I’m not wild about this one (a combo of the BMD and the Jello bit) but it’s totally drinkable and a lot better than I feared when I saw that it was a flavored white. Nothing I’ll buy but then, I don’t really buy many whites (or flavored non-blacks) anyway.

Big thank you to Jenn for sending me this sample!! I have so many from you, it’s taking me awhile to get through them all :)

Now the tea. When I first opened the package, I was hit with an aroma that set off my internal “allergy” alarm. In a lemonade?! Hmmm. but it wasn’t too pungent so I continued.
I brewed up the tea hot, and steeped it for 90 seconds. My thermometer said 85 degrees but that was only a few seconds after I poured it from boiling. I think it needs to be entirely immersed in the water, which is impossible using my tea pot for one. I could stick it into the kettle I suppose but then that means peerind into the cavernous metal tin spewing hot steam at me, or filling it all the way to the top and wasting all that extra water or reboiling it! Hmph.
Anyhow, sorry I got off track!!
The tea itself was ok. I was able to get through two steeps with no trouble!! however that “vanilla” taste or whatever it was that made me hesistate (I’m afraid I have no idea what vannilla’s supposed to taste like in tea, seeing as all I get is flowery sweet flavour) seems to have conditioned me to have a negative association. Needless to say, I didn’t get any of the strawberry. Well, maybe a tad in the background somewhere but not enough say that’s it, right there! if you know what I mean.
For my third steep, I’ve decided to try it cold. It’s in the fridge now. Hopefully that will spruce it up for me! :)

EDIT: So iced, it’s more or less the same. I wish I could appreciate it the same way I see others doing! oh well.

I am batting 1000 with this sampler set – so far all three teas have been ones I have not tried yet. I remember that I desperately wanted this one over the summer, so I’m prepping the whole sample and will have half iced and half hot to see which method I like better. If it ends up being iced – well, I may have to buy some for summer before it runs out. I’m a sucker for iced fruity teas.

About 3 tsp. (a little over that I think) to 750 ml. in the Breville at the below parameters. First, a word about the leaf – when I opened the pouch and sniffed I immediately was able to guess what blend it was – the strawberry and lemon scent is heavenly. The leaves were small and kind of broken up but that happens when you’re trying to stuff lots of packets into a box, I expect! The liquor, once steeped, is a lightish yellow, typical for a white tea. I was wondering if strawberry in the blend would lead to a reddish tinge but I can now unequivocally say that it does not.

When I poured the tea into the cup I got a whiff of the lemon – it wasn’t a tart lemonade-ish lemon – it actually reminded more of a lemon I would drink when I was sick, which is not the most pleasant smell memory. After it sat for a minute or two the scent of strawberry (very light) began to creep in. Still that lemon predominates. The taste on this is much like the smell – lemon with a touch of strawberry, with the strawberry coming out more as it cooled. I tried sweetening the tea while hot and mostly just got a lemon sweet drink – so I decided to refrigerate it and wait a bit to see what happened then.

When iced there is a much better balance between strawberry and lemon – it’s much more palatable this way! But, with that said, I don’t quite know that I love it….I wish there was more of a tartness to the lemon to make it seem more like the lemonade part of the name. Still, it’s good, and I’m glad I got to try it, in any case!

This was today’s tea of the morning. I am, I’m embarrassed to say, still in possession of almost all of tea from last years 12 Teas of Christmas. I’m working my way through the box, having rediscovered it (I have a David’s Tea order on the way, and for some odd reason, it felt really important to drink these teas before the DT order arrives).

Dry, this smells like sweet, sweet lemon. I get a bit of berry, but mostly sweet lemon. I think the Bai Mu Dan naturally has a bit of a sweet smell (I haven’t had a lot of Bai Mu Dan teas, so I could be wrong). The smell definitely made me think of summer, and I bet this would have been wonderful iced.

Brewed, the liquor was a lovely golden yellow and smelled more like strawberry lemonade. The tea was smooth, I could pick up hints of lemon along with the Bai Mu Dan. I do find it rather sad, the Bai Mu Dan from Teavivre was delicious, and it just seems wrong to doctor that with flavoring. So I suppose it is a good thing I’m not much of a taster.

Prepared with 500 ml of water at the white tea temp setting on my Breville, for three minutes.