Lime Cola

For the July sipdown prompt, “a lime tea.” Prepared cold brew.

I had a 20g sample of this, but it appeared to me most of the “weight” was taken up by a lot of dried lime slices in the packet. After picking all those out to see what I had to work with, I decided I should just dump the whole sample into a liter mason jar for cold brew.

Perhaps it was overleafed a bit, or there was just way too much dried lime in my sampling, but this tea is sour. I mean, I’m the person on Steepster that loves sour/tart tea and can’t get enough of it and even I think this is abrasive (that said, I can still drink this without sweetener… not that I would recommend that). It doesn’t really taste like lime to me, rather I get really pithy orange peel. I really can’t taste anything other than orange peel and a generic sour “citrus” taste that lingers unpleasantly on my tongue. And there is absolutely nothing “cola” about this!

The name made me picture decadent Lime Coke… and I got sour orange water. Not a fan and glad this was just a sample and after (begrudgingly) getting through two water bottles of this, it will be gone. Good riddance.

Samurai TTB #52

This is the only tea I sampled from the TTB that I ended up dumping without finishing my cup. There was a little bit of lime in the flavor, but it was overwhelmed by the earthy, herbaceous flavor of the yerba mate and lingering aftertaste of the cola nut. Not a great experience!

Smells nice brewed up. Taste is tart lime forward followed by the musky-earthy-floral dried lime layer and hints of cola nut. Underneath that is the unmistakable leafy-earthy, lightly smokey-bitter taste of yerba mate. A lot like Numi’s Dry Desert Lime but tempered by linden and something else. It was fine on its own but it really excelled when had between bites of steaming Trader Joe’s Aloo Chaat Kati, essentially an Indian Hot Pocket.

Decided to try it again, as I sent sample to derk and… need to get rid of lots of small samples of teas, but usually I find out I am lazy to prepare it, because my ball strainer is affected by black tea strongly and I can’t wash it properly; and I ran out of empty tea bags (I used last one!) and… preparing grandpa is not always great idea.

Food pairing: Lemon pie flavoured yogurt. Actually pretty delicious, but bit starch I noticed. I hate starch in flavoured yogurts.

To the tea: 2 tea spoons, as I said, empty paper bag, boiling water, 4 minutes steep.
Brew is light yellow and clear; very aromatic of lime and again some medicinal notes.

And now taste? The most afraid part for me. And it is… actually, very tasty! Lime is quite decent and certainly in taste, it is even quite tart – but it is what I expect from lime tea. As well some earthy tea base, probably by linden and cola nuts. Although I can’t recall I have some in bag, but maybe it is just some pieces and it makes it certainly present in taste. I do not notice Yerba Mate at all, maybe again, just a part of that earthy taste.

I have to up the rating! From 58 to… 70?

NHL Match pairing: DET @ BOS. Go Bruins!

Home – 9:00 PM

I had to add this one to my Bird & Blend order, just because weird. My 20g packet had three giant dried lime slices, so I made sure to get one in my steeping basket.

Wow, this is quite tart! There’s definitely a bit hit of lime. I’m not sure I really get cola – to me, it tastes more like ginger when combined with the lime. The yerba maté base contributes a bit of earthy and herbal flavor that does pair well with the lime and ginger. The linden does help to lighten it up a bit with a mild floral note.

I’m not quite sure what to think of this one… I was not expecting it to be so tart! Maybe next time I won’t put a whole lime slice in the infuser. The tartness makes the cola flavor taste more like ginger, which does go well with the other flavors.