Caribbean Splash

I finished up all of my fruit infusions for cold steeping (except for my pound bag of Watermelon Cooler), and thought I would give Simpson & Vail’s offerings a try. None of them are rated particularly well here, but they’re inexpensive so I figured why not?

I find it weird that this is called “Caribbean” when it’s mostly a citrus blend, and not tropical. It does have mango flavoring, but I’m tasting the lemon and orange primarily, along with hibiscus of course. I think they may have overused the dried citrus peel, because it has a definite pithy bitterness to it that, while drinkable, isn’t all that pleasant. Maybe I’m getting a touch of the mango at the very beginning of the sip?

Definitely not one that I would reorder. I’ll have to play around with the steeping parameters to see how I can minimize those bitter notes.

Mastress Alita’s sipdown challenge – June Tea #1: – An orange tea

This tea, bleh, glad it’s gone now.
2022 sipdowns: 70
I’m back from visiting family. It was… rough. The most bizarre thing happened. My aunt is around my grandmother all the time so she would know… my aunt thinks something happened to my grandmother and it seems she had overnight Alzheimer’s and the sad part is, it seems to be focused on her direct family members. Like she has no map of her family tree at this point. She asked who my aunt was the day before we went for the visit, her main caregiver, then she didn’t recognize three others of her closest family, including me. The last time I saw her I distinctly remember her saying to me “I’ll never forget this lady.” She thinks we are all hired caregivers or long lost children she didn’t know she had. It’s terrible and hard to process. Not sure if it was consistent the entire time we were there for three weeks. She might have been embarrassed to say she didn’t know who we were, so she could have been pretending to know most of the time. I just kept pointing to the quick dial numbers on her phone. It was all of us on the top row. :( She did just recently survive covid so we are all hoping it is a temporary covid fog. I have heard covid ages everyone 20 years, so there you go. But to survive covid and then a month or two later this happens? uh. So sad. Watching someone go through memory loss has always been one of my greatest dreaded fears.

C is for… Caribbean Splash.

This steeped up a deep, dark red wine color and I knew my husband would love it and I would not. It was very tart, even with the added honey, and had the flavor of bitter orange peel. With the name, I might have expected pineapple or something similarly juicy. It would have worked a little better for me if the flavor had been more orange juice and less orange zest/pith.

I wish the hibiscus weren’t included in this. I like hibiscus, but it really takes over in this blend and doesn’t allow the other flavors any room to shine. I’m drinking this cold with lots of sugar, and it tastes okay, but I’d just say it’s a hibiscus fruit blend. Not a hint of anything Caribbean, sadly. And it’s not even a great hibiscus blend.