Blood-Orange Smoothie

First Review. I’m a bit under the weather today. Being careful of what I eat and drink with a nausea migraine, I thought this caffeine free Blood-Orange Smoothie might be a refreshing departure from my usual puerh’s and malty black tea choices. Thank’s again to a gift of tea from my son Aaron.

Even dry this smells good. All my life, until moving to Colorado, I’ve been around oranges, lemons, tangerines and all sorts of citrus growing in neighborhood yards. I love the bright and sunny orange in this tea which is so fragrant and scrumptious!

I let the steep go 6 minutes. The flavor is like those orange-slice jell candies with a vanilla smoothness that reminds you of orangesicle ice cream. Intense! I can’t imagine drinking this without sweetening and cream. It would not do justice to the intention of the blend which makes a splendid smoothie. I don’t like to sound like everyone else chattering “It tastes like orangesicle ice cream” but if it does it does..OK!

As far as the other ingredients: There is an aftertaste of uh…apple slice. Look for that. Odd but true. My take on the rose and hibiscus is that while you can’t taste them on their own, they are the hidden slight sourness in the blood orange…the ‘tang’. Clever addition.

This would be a nice tea to pair with a cheese danish…um…or bagel and cream cheese.

I have a love hate relationship with this tea. Love because it does taste like what it is called. There are definitive blood orange notes in with a smooth rooibos tea flavour. But I wanted more. I wanted more smoothie and less rooibos. The rooibos is definitely strong here and if you aren’t a fan of it, you aren’t going to like this tea at all. I’m curious what it would taste like if I mixed it with some of my other orange flavoured teas. I may have to try next time since I can’t add milk or cream to this one.

This really does taste like an orange creamsicle. It’s uncanny. The rooibos isn’t too strong, because I hate that, but it is quite strong so it’s borderline. But the orange and cream is very strong and quite lovely. I added a big splash of milk and 1.3 tsp of sugar to my 14 oz mug. Then I added more tea after I drank it because I shared the pot and the pot fills my cup twice exactly but my neighbour who I shared it with has a much smaller mug so I had some left over.

Anyway, this is pretty good. Not something I’d buy though, because of the strong-ish rooibos, but I like it enough to drink the rest of it. Thanks to Pia M for this sample.

It always seems that when I come back, that a layer of dust has covered my Steepster account…. and man, it’s been a minute since I’ve posted on here…. Lots of stuff has been going on lately, lots of crazy, hectic stuff… I still drink tea during my hectic schedule, but I don’t get much time to do so. Most of it is at work, with unfiltered water and using tea bags…. Quite sad actually… I still find time to drink the good stuff at home, but it doesn’t happen as often as I’d like…. But I’m off of work today for a change, trying to relax…. and as I sit here writing this, drinking this Blood-Orange Smoothie Tea, I can’t stop this sense of jitters that I have… No, it isn’t from this tea that I’m drinking, it’s caffeine free… These are more of a nervous type of jitters…. I just made the final few design contestants in Adagio’s tea shirt contest. I’m both excited and nervous about it at the same time. I’m not going to lie, one of the reasons I wanted to post about this tea I’m having is to ask you, my fellow Steepsterites, for help in this contest… If you could possible head over to the facebook album page for the contest and vote for my design, I would greatly appreciate it (it’s ok if you don’t like it and choose to go with another design I guess, thanks for taking the time to vote at least). If you do give me a vote, I greatly appreciate it… Maybe even ask friends and fellow tea lovers to do the same? ;) …

My design on there is #2. I went for a Wabi Sabi thought process and aesthetic with the design I chose. There is a rough feeling with the brush strokes of the cup design to mimic that of an uneven surface. It is simple, yet so in depth. The simplicity touches on the notion of Less is More. With Wabi Sabi, you learn to find the most simple object to be interesting, fascinating, and beautiful. It can change your perception of the world to the extent that the individual, uneven brush strokes makes it a more interesting object and gives it greater meditative value.

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150814106620495.751070.368656650494

Once again, thanks very much if you vote for my design. I really appreciate it. :)

And now, on to actually rating this tea and talking about it more in depth! Brittany recently went to San Francisco to check out a grad school, and she happened to come across The Spice & Tea Exchange and stopped in to pick up some stuff for me. She got me some of this Blood-Orange Smoothie Tea, some Coconut Oolong Tea, some Green Tropical Tea, and some Green Tea Mints (Lychee flavored!)… This tea instantly reminds me of a dreamsicle when I smell the dry leaf. One thing about this tea that I wish they changed though was to put steeping instructions on the bag. They give a general steeping instructions card, but I didn’t realize that I had this card until after I had steeped my tea. I just went with a general steep for rooibos with this tea to play it on the safe side. This tea tastes quite good. It is naturally sweet, naturally tart. It has a strong orange taste to it, but that smell of dreamsicle that I get from the dry leaf, doesn’t translate very to the taste very well. If anything, there is a slight dreamsicle taste to it, much less than I wished it to have. Don’t get me wrong though, it is still a very good tea. I want to try it served latte style like the bag recommends, that might give it more of the dreamsicle taste that I am wanting. It is a great night time tea since it is caffeine free. I enjoy this tea so far, I just need to experiment a little more with it. I can’t wait to try the other Spice & Tea Exchange teas…

It’s a beautiful collection of herbs and flowers, that turns the most striking color as it steeps. Once brewed, it tastes of oranges, roses, apples and some vanilla.. almost like candy. Absolutely phenomenal.

Cold Brew!

I don’t know that I got smoothie from this, but the pure play densely sweet yet bright orange note was spot on and oh so refreshing as a cold brew! I think this is probably my favourite tea from Spice & Tea Exchange. It’s simple, but it delivers.

I don’t really like this one. The flavor is a bit fake and weird. It’s not too tart, but its tartness also doesn’t hit in a very pleasant way. It doesn’t really have any notes that make me think smoothie, only sour orange. Milk made it taste a little better. I think I’d have it again that way, but it’s definitely not tasty enough to purchase.

Better cold brewed, still not my favorite.

When I first reviewed this tea on my blog, I really gushed about it. I really loved how it reminded me of creamsicle orange-vanilla ice cream, and it really seemed to have wide appeal when I made it for non-tea drinkers. But over time I’ve sort of lost my taste for it. This was one of the earliest teas I had in my collection, and I think that as my tea collection expanded, I just came to find other herbal blends that also went with a “creamsicle” flavor profile where I just felt it came out much creamier and stronger in the vanilla notes, leading to a better balance in the orange and vanilla. This tea is much bolder in the orange flavor, which I suppose makes sense, considering it is called blood orange smoothie, and while I normally absolutely love the tart bite of hibiscus, I just think that after sampling the sweeter, more “ice creamy” creamsicle teas that going back to this tea, with its more citrusy, tart flavor and very subtle hints of vanilla it just couldn’t hold up for me anymore. I could still drink it, but I no longer preferred it, and definitely no longer felt the need to rave about it like I once had.

I will say that I do still enjoy it latte-style, made with warm vanilla-almond milk. Since the vanilla flavor of the almond milk enhances the weakness of the vanilla flavor of the tea, this gives the tea more of that creamsicle flavor that I enjoy… and the milk gives it a really nice creaminess, too!

Full Review: https://teatimetuesdayreviews.wordpress.com/2017/06/20/tea25/

Thanks Mastress Alita for sending this along! I really enjoyed this one when I found it in a teabox and Mastress Alita wanted it gone, so I was happy to find a home for it. :D It seems like the ingredients shouldn’t work, definitely the hibiscus and rosehips shouldn’t work, but they don’t seem to impact the other wonderful ingredients too much. I love creamsicle teas and this is just another variation of those… so it’s nice to have a different one around. Yum. It’s definitely a hot weather nighttime option!