Tazo

Either they gave me really old tea or this one really tastes spoiled!

Pie. Good pie.

(I could stand for it to be a tetch less sweet, but then it wouldn’t be pie, either.)

A good, thick choice for a cold day. Like some of the other reviews I’m seeing, you have to let it set quite a while to get pronounced caramel and apple (and then it has to go back in the microwave to warm up since our building is like an igloo).

You need to like rooibos to like this one. But if you do, it’s a nice, mellow treat. Really does have the caramel apple thing going (more caramel than apple; more in the fragrance than flavor). Let some go cold at my desk and iced it down—wasn’t bad, either.

I love this. Probably my favourite English Breakfast.

I really dislike this version of Earl Grey. I don’t know what it is, if it’s the variety of Bergamot oil used, or other flavors that are put in with it, but there’s something sharper about the flavor that doesn’t equate to what I’m expecting when I think of Earl Grey.

All in all, I haven’t been too happy with Tazo.

So. I have a little beef with Tazo. They have their new “whole leaf” thing, this bag of tea is gigantic, its enough for a whole pot of tea. Why waste soo much tea. plus it messes with how long i used to steep a single bag. The cup I’m drinking now is pretty bitter and I was looking forward to a good cuppa for my poor sore throat :(

So I picked up a cup of zen from starbucks before class this morning, aside from being annoyed as to how much it cost now that it’s “whole leaf.” It is the only tea that I enjoy from Tazo. I really love the lemongrass that it is infuzed with.

Drank this again this morning.
Still good :-)

I tried this tea today and really enjoyed it.
Great for a bagged tea. Sweet in taste so it doesn’t need anything added to it.

Steep Information:
Amount: 2 c
Additives: 2 c lactose free milk
Served: Hot

Bring to boil, a little too much it formed a skin I had to skim off.

Tasting Notes:
Steeped Tea Smell: woody, vanilla, sweet
Flavor: delicious woody rooibos, sweet, vanilla
Body: Medium
Aftertaste: woody vanilla
Liquor: opaque cloudy brown

Delicious, I love this tea! To me vanilla and rooibos go very well together, and I’m always a sucker for a tea latte.

MilitiaJim and Bobbie only are getting vanilla sweet milk.

Post-Steep Additives: none

images: http://amazonv.blogspot.com/2010/03/tazo-tea-concentrate-rooibos-tea-liquid.html

I’m never very impressed with Tazo teas, but I have a gift box that I need to go through,lol
Normally when I order this from Starbucks it is too bitter for me to drink.
Today I steeped it at home for only about a minute and it’s actually pretty drinkable:-)
Not my favorite black tea, but it will do.

This tea really wasn’t that great, though it was decent, as far as bagged green teas go. I wish they told what kind of green tea it actually was in the bag. My guess was sencha.

I steeped this for about two minutes and it became very bitter fast.
I don’t really taste the berry but I’m going to try it again later with a shorter steep time.
Maybe then it will taste better.

Friend gave my teenager a bag of this and he asked me to steep it for him; since I’m still trying to win him over to the tea side, I did so with great care to time, temp, and taste. Zen is consistently light and nice, but I wondered if it would be a good first experience with green tea for a newbie.

He drank it all to humor me and the tea-giver, but commented, “It pretty much just tastes like water with an asterisk.”

Oh, well, I’ll keep trying.

This has been a week of major personal stress. As I was heating water in the microwave at work (not my preferred method, but any port in a storm), I put the bag up to my nose and inhaled all the minty, lemongrassy goodness and meditated, not on Zen, but on my favorite paraphrased Bible verse: Lord, you are my portion and my [cuppa]. (Psalm 16:3, spelling adapted to suit myself.)

The flavor, steeped, isn’t quite as strong as the bag scent. I may have sniffed all the smell out! It’s more minty than green, for sure, but still very calming and would be good on a sore dry throat. Nice aftertaste on your tongue.

Sipdown no. 96 of the year 2014.

I way overbought, not knowing what I was getting into.

Now it is gone.

As See-Threepio would say, “Thank the Maker.”

This isn’t a full sipdown, though I’ve reached the end of my home supply as of tonight. I have something on the order of 14 bags of this still at the office.

I remain somewhat conflicted about this. When it’s good it’s not terrific,but when it’s bad it’s horrid. I’ve been making a big cup of it to take to bed while I watch the Olympics (2 bags a shot) and there are times when I don’t notice the syrupy, licorice/sarsaparilla flavor and feel it fade to the background and the cinnamon take over into a lighter spiced tisane. There are times when it seems more buoyant. But that’s the exception, not the rule.

Bumping it down even further. If you like licorice and sarsaparilla, this is your match made in heaven, but if you’re so-so toward them at best, as I am, it’s an uphill battle to get past the sensation that there’s a large lump of rubber sitting in your belly after drinking this.

It’s not undrinkable, just not all that pleasurable most of the time.

I dug through my cabinets and I found a lot of this. I am not sure whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing.

Sometimes I think this is really vile, other times it’s rather nice. The fact that I have such wild changes of heart about it probably means, on balance, that having a lot of it is a bad thing.

I have discovered that I do not at all like this once it cools. It becomes almost sickly sweet, like drinking the syrup they make root beer out of. On the other hand, if I drink it at a temperature that is as hot as I can reasonably stand, the sweetness isn’t nearly as overpowering and the other flavors come through.

No. 2 is a big root beer fan and because this is slightly reminiscent of root beer to me, I think there’s a shot he might like it. It’s cooling in his mug at the moment, so stay tuned.

ETA: The peanut gallery roundly dislikes this one. I’m lowering the rating a bit.

Was out of town and tealess for a few days. Back now.

Actually, I wasn’t completely tealess. I did have a Peet’s darjeeling from the gift shop at Asilomar state park. The other times I tried to have tea at the event I went to I was foiled in my attempts by a lack of hot water. There were plenty of Bigelow’s and Lipton’s bags, just never any water in the urn by the time I got my cup over to it.

Anyhoo. This is a strange little tisane. The cinnamon, as I’m finding is usual when it’s an ingredient, is very obvious, but there’s also another equally strong, and somewhat rounder taste which I’m going to say is licorice owing to the licorice root and star anise ingredients, with perhaps some rootbeer thrown in from the sarsaparilla. I don’t notice the orange peel at all. The combination of the two main flavors results in a cinnamon that is sweet rather than spicy, and a licorice/rootbeer that is spicy rather than sweet.

I don’t usually think of pairing cinnamon with licorice. Licorice is such a strong flavor, I don’t really think of pairing it with anything. And I have a sort of a like/hate relationship with it. If I’m in the mood for it I enjoy it, but I never find myself thinking “wow, some licorice would be really great right now, it would really hit the spot.” Sometimes it can affect me badly, and give me a bit of a tummy ache. I’ve been giving this one a try on and off for a month or so now. Though it would never be something I would drink daily or even regularly, I can see it being something I’d dip into occasionally, probably more in the cooler months than in the spring-like weather I’m enjoying today.

Not my favorite, but I think that’s because I’m not fond of the rice-y touch to it.

Basically just trying to use this up! Not much else to say about it, to be honest.

Drank this for the caffeine content, not the taste (as usual). It serves it purpose, but I wish it tasted better in the meantime.