Douglas Fir Spring Tips

April Sipdown Challenge Prompt – an herbal tea for Herbalist Day!

I received a package from beerandbeancurd today! Many thanks!

It was already past our caffeine hours so I started with this one. The smell of the teabags in their pouch was astonishing. High citrus notes but wow, is this ever the scent of the most freshly Christmas tree and greenery ever. Sharp, exquisite pine-y aroma. It is immediately grounding.

The steeped beverage tastes the way it smells, but soft and gentle. When we poured it into our tiny white cups, it looked like a slightly cloudy soft green, and then – even though the leaves were in a fine filter bag – a cloud of soft sage green dust swirls and settles like clouds in the bottom of the cup.

Impressed with this one. I am drying the bags and saving them to stash here and there to enjoy their aroma for a little while longer.

Thank you, beerandbeancurd!

Ordered this because of so many lovely Steepster reviews. I don’t have much to add to what’s already mentioned in said reviews, except a nice long “me too” sigh. I love this, and I don’t really know that I need any other non-caffeinated tisane in my life, ever. The taste, to me, is total fir/evergreen/pine and all their beautiful nuance. I don’t love mint/menthol/camphor flavors, and I don’t get any of that here. Lovely for a rainy day, before bedtime, outside around the fire. Reminds me of camping and Michigan and the PNW — some of my favorite spaces and memories.

There are cups of certain herbs that are especially relaxing for me and this is one of them. My muscles felt much softer and cup full of Vitamin C as I have read somewhere — that’s douglas fir tips tea.

Definitely relaxing, definitely tasty… just something I needed this evening.
Thank you derk for a whole box. That will last for a while.

A new box of tea lavishness from derk arrived today, happy times! It’s too late to indulge in caffeinated tea, but I had to try this tisanne and it doesn’t disappoint.

Before steeping, I dropped the bag into a preheated glass teapot, and the aromas sent me directly to a fir tree forest. Nostalgic, a little sad for the lack of forest around here in Southern Ontario, but also full of beautiful memories.

Once infused, the tea has mostly a citric acidity as one would expect, but it’s got a good sweetness and woodiness supporting it. The balance is pretty good and it drinks well. The aftertaste has some nice vegetal notes and has an interesting throat drying quailty. As far as bagged teas and tisanes go, this is awesome.

Upon arriving at my coworker’s apartment, one of the first things I noticed was a collection of beautiful English-style tea cups on a shelf in the kitchen. Her roommate is a tea head! I was shown the stash in the closet and the selection screamed ‘Steepster Member!’ at me. So much loose leaf. She said I could drink anything I wanted, but I remained modest in my selection and only had one of her teas over the weekend. I picked this Douglas Fir Spring Tips because I’ve never seen it around.

We have Doug Fir here in California, but in most of the forests I’ve been in Northern California, Doug Fir is mixed with other tree species. This tea had a damp, dewey quality that reminded me of a moist Cascadian pure Doug Fir forest. It had a sweet fir aroma and tastes of fir, light earth and citrus and nectar sweetness. Wow, what a comforting and refreshing treat for a cold morning on the coast. I have to find this tea.

This tea is a rather old sample, so a fresh one might taste different. I’m mostly getting a sour citrusy flavor here. I don’t taste any pine at all, which is a big disappointment. I don’t know that I’m interested in a fresher sample since I’m not sure I want a citrusy pine tea.

Belated Merry Christmas Steepster! I finally regained my sense of taste and smell on Christmas day which was awesome, but I am still fighting a hacking horrible cough as of today gahh. I ordered myself a tin of this and the white sage tea with my bfs present, and after reading about pine needle tea being helpful for colds, I thought I’d try it tonight at the lake :) very fitting setting.

The smell is so much pine trees I thought I was in the forest! Wow! Sap and bark and trees..all the smells of camping. I steeped the tea bag (wish it was loose lol) for about 3 mins. The taste is nice and fresh, pure piney goodness, a hint of sweetness and citrus. Hopefully it helps this silly cough to go away! Overall, so far pleased about the flavor and hoping it helps!

Thank you to Nichole for sending me a few bags of this to try! It had been on my wishlist for some time so I’m pretty excited to be able to try it now.

This smells incredible, very fresh but also woodsy. I’m definitely picking up on some citrus and pine. I was expecting long, green needles but it looks like everything has been ground to a powder inside the bags. I steeped this for a full 10 minutes and when I pulled the bag from the water I was left with a golden liquid, almost honey-colored, but also a pretty thick film on the surface. My husband tried this and said it tasted like pickles (???) but I think it’s pretty nice. I can still smell the citrus and pine and the taste is very light, almost a little watered. While it isn’t as amazing as I thought it might be, I am still enjoying it. I’m sure would be a hit ice-cold so I think I’ll try that next.

I got both of Juniper Ridge’s teas for Christmas from my roommates. I love the idea of wildcrafted tea. I chose this tea shortly after unwrapping it. Hey, it was Christmas! Although they are in teabags, I don’t mind much. Loose would have been cooler, but I digress.
I was nervous about this tea. It smelled exactly like the little douglas fir that was our Christmas tree. I kind of like the smell of sweet pine, perhaps the tea would be better?
Well, I did not get too much piney flavor as I thought. Which is good. The stronger tastes that I noted were honey and lemongrass. The pine was sweet and not at all like those tree-shaped air fresheners. I could sense the sun and the wind whipping through the fir trees. It was a light and airy and not heavy and overtly pungent. Hey, I may keep drinking this one!

Tasting this tea immediately reminded me of the scent from the juniper trees my parents would always buy as part of the Christmas tradition of decorating a ‘Christmas tree.’ While the taste of the tea is fairly mild and the aroma is unique, it does have one unpleasurable side effect: headaches. Never once have I prepared this tea and come away without a mild headache coupled with moderate unease – the kind you get when you’re sensitive to anti-histamines. If you can sample this tea without any ill effects, I’d say more power to you. For me, I can’t handle this particular brew.