Monkey Fart

I made 2L of this before I went camping for the weekend. Smells very much like banana candy or liquor or any banana flavoured thing you can think of, both before and after steeping. Sadly, a lot of the flavour is lost. I know that smell contributes a great amount to our sense of taste but my tongue really didn’t get an awful lot of banana. I gave some to my partner to try without telling her what it is and she could not identify that it was a banana tea. So there.

Brewed as per instructions, bag in 2 cups of boiling water, added cold water to complete a 2 quart (translation: 2 litre) pitcher.

If I could rate on smell alone, Booyah, it is out of the park banana. Flavour disappointing, sorry. I now have the bag cold steeping, we’ll find out tomorrow if it is more flavourful.

6 days later

I resteeped the bag with cold water in the fridge for over 24 hours. Sweetened with agave. It has more flavour this way but still quite subtle. The banana is more in the aftertaste.

This was pretty good, considering I dislike artificial banana flavored things. But the flavor could be too mild for some.

Sipdown! Yum; I did enjoy this one. Definitely candy banana flavour, with a nice solid base. Not a tea I would want again, but I’d certainly recommend it for anyone looking for a good banana flavoured iced tea.

So… we’re finally getting enough sunshine to warm things up a bit around here.. YEah! But we are also starting to see mosquitos and bees. Saturday night we spent some time outside at a friends house and my son got a bunch of mosquito bites… they welt up on him and drive him crazy, poor kid. Then last night when he went to brush his teeth in the bathroom upstairs, a jellow jacket had somehow gotten trapped in the bathroom and stung his finger when he tried to brush it away from his neck. Good thing today is a day off from school or we would have one sleepy kid today! He is feeling better this morning… kept him dosed with Benadryl & Ibuprofen last night. I hope we are done with the bugs for awhile.. I’ve had enough already!

I decided that this was the next SBT I was going to try the last time I looked at making one. I’m still experimenting with steeping these to get the maximum flavor and quantity out of each bag. I’m still not sure about the best method, but felt better about this one, although I wish the flavoring was more intense.

Since I already had a big home made batch of spearmint iced tea in the fridge, I decided to make a half a batch of this. I evened out the amount of tea in the baggie it came in, cut it in half, and put half of it in a tea bag for loose leaf tea. I decided on cold steeping to start with and did so with a 1 quart Mason jar in the fridge all day. I then removed it and hot steeped the bag w/about 1 cup of hot water. The cold steeped batch looked much more like I would expect iced tea to look.. much darker and almost thicker looking. I decided to pour the two together to get the best of both.

I left it unsweetened and added some splenda to my cup and made one for my son. He laughed at the name every time I said it. I have to say that we both enjoyed the flavor of the tea, the banana was there but not overly so… I typically hate! artificial banana! This was drinkable for me. I actually would have preferred more of the flavor because it was only present on the initial sip or two and if I kept drinking I didn’t notice it much anymore until I took a break and came back to it. Next time I use the rest of this I will keep the hot and cold steeps separate to see if one is better than the other.

My son really liked this tea, but I think couldn’t get past the name of it. He drank some of it, but wouldn’t finish his cup. I think next time I’ll just tell him it’s tea and see how it goes. I’ll let him guess the flavor.. such a picky guy he is. He likes bananas but will rarely eat them, and likes banana candy. I told him he must be afraid he will fart bananas if he drinks all that was in his cup… he thinks I’m silly sometimes… Maybe he’s right. :)

I do have to say I was pleasantly surprised that I could tolerate this banana flavoring. I think maybe it worked for me because it wasn’t as intense as banana candies are, but I do still think it would be nice to be a bit stronger. I could taste the flavoring over the tea base, but not by a lot. Thanks so much MissB for sharing this one.. I never would have bought it to try for myself… and again, I am pleasantly surprised. I might have grabbed it to let my son try it at some point just due to the name. Now I know if it’s good enough to grab if we want something different or have some friends coming over that it might be fun to share with them.

This is a good banana tea, not sure if I like bananas enough that I’d buy a lot of this but it goes on my ‘maybe I should throw one of these in my next order’ list. So much banana, clearly that I searched banana fart instead of monkey it was on my mind. I would like a fresh banana, so I could add it to my peanut butter jelly lunch tomorrow. None at home though, and I’m not leaving to get bananas at this hour.

So, I’m going to be at my parent’s house for eight days starting Friday to house and dogsit while they’re in Puerta Viarta (mildly jealous, but eh). The saddest part is that I’m far more concerned about how much tea I should bring and such than any other aspect of this. Because I know I drink more tea while I’m there because there’s not much else to do, but I don’t want to, like, pack a suitcase of tea.

Oh well. I’m sure I’ll figure it out.

The name of this tea has made everyone I’ve told it too giggle uncontrollably. I appreciate that in a tea.

I also like the banana candy-type flavor paired with the slightly malty black base. The banana kind of sneaks up on you towards the latter part of the sip and then explodes with a sweet banana flourish.

This isn’t my favorite of the SBTs I’ve tried so far (I think that might go to Rainbow Sherbet), but I like it and would definitely consider having it on hand again.