Spiced Apple Pie

Meta: Added this tea just now and accidentally hit the “enter” key which saved the tea in the database before I had a chance to add all the info. Since I joined here less than a month ago, I can’t edit this to include all the right info. Grrrr.

Anyways, I reallly wanted this tea to be a nice bedtime tea for me (it’s rooibos, so caffeine free), and it just didn’t deliver. Maybe I’ve been spoiled by all the amazing loose leaf teas I have right now, but this just tastes really bland. It smells a lot better than it tastes. The smell is sweet and cinnamon-y and like apple pie. The taste is faintly of apples but it just leaves a lot to be desired.

I have other teas from Octavia (that I have yet to review) which I enjoy a lot, so I expected this to be good and it was a disappointment. I (thankfully) had only gotten one of the sample pouches, and not a full tin.

As an aside, one beef I have with Octavia is they don’t include very specific brewing instructions with their teas. If anyone has temperature/steep time recommendations for rooibos (red tea), please post. I never drink it and without guidance from Octavia I was just guessing. I used the generic 3.5 minutes at boiling water that they recommend, and had put 2 tsp in my cup.

- Smells INTENSELY of cardamom/cinnamon
- Way more spice notes than apple; the apple is a fainter undertone
- Has a “plumpness”/sweetness to it though!
- All the cardamom and ginger leave an intense tingle along my tongue
- I do get an apple pie vibe, so that was totally acheived
- Don’t really understand the place that lemongrass has in this blend, honestly

Overall my consensus is…

I need to try this one again to form more of an opinion.