Chanakara Collection: Chakra #6 Guanabana

Is it tea? Or is it just hot coloured water? Because I ain’t tasting much. The flavour is pretty much non existant. It smells nice and has a pretty colour to it…

This tea is underwhelming. It mostly tastes like lemongrass with a vague additional fruitiness. It’s not bad, just kind of boring and I’m not a big fan of lemongrass anyway so not really my cup of tea.

Thank you Roswell Strange for sharing but this is a pretty lackluster cuppa. At first I tasted chocolate which confused me but then I realized I was still tasting the bit of chocolate bar I had just eaten. Once that subsided though, I was left with a cup that lacked flavor. If I concentrate, I pick up on a drying fruit flavor that is vaguely reminiscent of guanabana but at the end of the day, I’m just not impressed.

Oh, also, I feel no different for those wondering if this alters moods like it claims to. Still, it’s fun to try so thank you Roswell Strange!

Thanks Cameron B. for sending me several bags of this to enjoy. I am a Stash girl, admittedly – when I want bagged tea, this is the brand I go far. Unabashedly. That said, this one didn’t really impress me.

Honestly, the coolest thing about it was purely aesthetic; when I first poured the boiling water over the bag for about three seconds the water was like this deeper purple/blue – and then gone as it shifted to a more reddish/brown/purple colour (it reminds me now of the colour of Butiki’s Kamba Berry). But for those few seconds – it was SO PRETTY.

http://www.djavupixel.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/deep_blue_purple_ipad.jpg

That colour. Damn.

But taste wise; this leaves a little to be desired. If I hadn’t just experienced the super, super tartness of a hot cup of Yes We Cran from DT, I’d call this ta rt. In comparison to that one though, it’s much more of a mellow tartness. I very loosely get “orange” from it, but in a really weak/watery sense. Vanilla? That’s definitely a stretch. When it steeped, I felt like I could smell the licorice weakly – but I can’t taste it now.

Come Stash, give me more!

I have to say – I do look forward to the last bag of it (I have two left; but I’m gonna send one to VariaTEA since I’m sure this’ll be new to her – and I haven’t had as much of an opportunity lately to pass along new stuff to my fabulous tea twin who has kept me supplied with samples) though, but only to see if I can recreate that blueish colour again.

Another tea from the Chanakara variety boxes I found while looking through old things at my mom’s. I have no idea what a guanabana is, so I looked it up. Apparently it’s the same thing as a soursop, which is a fruit that visually reminds me of a giant green burr. I kind of chose this randomly as my caffeine-free tea to have tonight while in bed. Brewed one bag in boiling water for 5 minutes.

Bleck… This basically tastes like weak, tart rosehip and hibiscus water. I don’t get a “vanilla-scented” anything, or even citrus. Just tart water.

Boo hiss. That is all I have to say, Stash.