Wellness

So madly in love with this tea…

Drinking Wellness iced tonight – my favorite way to drink this tea. Loving it, as always.

This is an interesting tisane. I drank it hot – love the hot pink color! There are so many layers of this tea: first it starts out tangy and citrusy, then becomes floral and fruity, but ends like a sweet, candied apple.

I’ll have to try this iced, but hot it is delicious. I didn’t steep it for as long as recommended, only about five minutes. However I have a dislike of hibiscus; I don’t like tea that it too tart or too tangy.

At five minutes, this brews up perfectly pink and deliciously smooth.

This tea was great for a first infusion – possibly even a little too fruity and sweet for my taste, but very good (would have been fantastic iced). I did not feel that it was very good on a second infusion though.

*edit: Just realized that the second infusion generally wouldn’t matter for iced tea…

It is a sad day today, my nice shiny new camera took a bit of a tumble and now I have a serious problem. See, my room is rather dark, so I use flash and a diffuser for my photos, and now my flash is not working. Something broke in the fall and it will not register that the flash is a thing that exists, and there is an unnerving rattle. I am still within the warranty time, so tomorrow I will be finding out if it covers it…if not, well, I am not entirely sure what I am going to do. Adjusting the ISO and such does not get it to the level of crispness I like, so far the only thing that works at all is holding my phone’s flashlight above the camera, but that is not an optimal solution. Fingers crossed about the warranty!

Tis the season where I have to scare off the sniffles, whenever someone around me so much as sneezes, I pretty much jump to the other side of the room like a terrified cartoon cat, and I am only exaggerating a little bit. So seeing the ingredients in Wellness by Joy’s Teaspoon, I had to have some of it: apple pieces, carrot flakes, blackberry leaves, eucalyptus leaves, beetroot pieces, hibiscus flowers, lemongrass, flavoring, freeze-dried tangerine pieces, orange slices. I adore blends with eucalyptus, it makes my lungs happy, and it is so refreshing. And I know, usually I shy away from hibiscus teas, but lately I find I don’t mind it as long as it is a very light amount…you know, making the tea pink instead of livid crimson. The aroma of the tea is immensely citrus, strong notes of grapefruit, lemon, oranges, and tangerine. It is tangy and bright, with undertones of eucalyptus and a touch of sweet fruitiness from the apples. It smells like summer!

Into my steeping apparatus the tea goes, it is such a colorful blend, and immensely aromatic…and the aroma of citrus and eucalyptus is filling my entire tea area. I think that this could be a great steam treatment next time my asthma gets fussy. The aroma of the herbal and fruit bits once liberated from the liquid is pleasantly citrus, lots of orange and grapefruit with underlying honey sweet and a touch of apples. The liquid has a tartness to it, the hibiscus has shown itself at last, though it is only a touch, and it goes really well with the tangy, almost sour grapefruit, the sweet oranges, and the underlying crispness of the eucalyptus.

In full disclosure of things and stuff, I drank this sweetened with a Chambre de Sucre Diamond Sugar Stick, because I have learned that I only really like hibiscus teas if they are sweetened or chilled, though I did sip it before I sweetened it and you know, the hibiscus does not overwhelm at all, it adds just a hint of tart and slightly metallic (hibiscus always registers as metallic for me, not sure why) notes, so the sugar was not really necessary since the tea is already delicately fruity sweet. But you know, sometimes it is the difference between eating an apple and wanting baked apples, that extra sweetness is just soothing, so I still went with the sugar. The primary note in this tea is the citrus fruit salad, a triple threat of grapefruit, lemon, and tangerine, this blends wonderfully with the crisp cooling eucalyptus. I can see why this tea is named Wellness, I just felt refreshed and clean after drinking it, it is a cheerful blend, that come summertime I think I shall try cold brewed.

For blog and photos: http://ramblingbutterflythoughts.blogspot.com/2015/11/joys-teaspoon-wellness-tea-review.html