Worst tea you've ever had?
For me it was Salada “Matcha Pure Green.” I can’t even explain how un-matcha / green tea tasting it was. I literally gave the whole bag to a coworker and never looked back. My tongue still cringes at the thought of the nasty taste.
Indian Chai from Louisville Tea Company. I immediately spit it out and threw the rest of the dry tea in the garbage. It tasted like table pepper (and only table pepper).
Hmmnn I’ve had a few:
David’s Tea Sleigh Ride was so horrible that even after 4 years of it in my cupboard stale I couldn’t take more than 2 sips before chucking it out.
David’s Tea Sakura Cherry(When brewed hot) tastes like unsweetened Cherry Cough Syrup.
Republic of Tea’s Caramel Apple tea wasn’t the worst but every time I drank it I felt sick to my stomach.
Loose leaf pu’erh from a company called Zenjala tea… Not sure if they’re still around or not, but their pu tasted like a bag of wet mulch covered in mold.
That’s said I recently gotten into pu-erh. I have a cup a couple times a week, if not every day….. It is almost to the level of oolongs for me. There’s a decent brand at the grocery chain H-Mart which comes in a 5oz brown paper bag for $3. The taste is good but only last for ~3 steeps.
Lipton teabags have to be up there, though I have had some rather horrid cheap shu puerh.
If you like strong teas give the Lipton Yellow label a try. You can usually find it at Indian or Middle Eastern groceries. Or https://www.amazon.com/Lipton-Yellow-Label-Orange-Pekoe-100s/dp/B003CJHN5Q/ref=sr_1_16_a_it?ie=UTF8&qid=1512312136&sr=8-16&keywords=lipton+orange+tea+bags
Ha. Well I do know that Lipton’s normal bags are nasty. (I wont even make “sweet tea” with it.) I was just sharing a Liptons tea that does taste good in my opinion.
Twinings decaf green (or normal green) are so grassy, astringent, and vegetal I feel like I’m drinking grass clippings. If brewed more than a moment or two they turn bitter too.
There are quite a few DT and Teavana herbals made using hibiscus and rose hips that I can not drink them…so sour I can’t even discern the other flavours.
During my very early days of tea drinking, I used boiling water for Twinings green tea. Almost turned me off of green tea.
Tried a Vietnamese shou from a factory in Vietnam while I was IN Vietnam. It took most of a day to get over to their office in Hanoi.
The shou tasted like potting soil smells and had bits of sand in it!
Also in Vietnam, I had tieguanyin doped with so much fragrance that you could’ve used it as pot pourri and it would’ve worked great! I tossed it out immediately after brewing. I didn’t dare take a sip of that stuff!
Now, that being said, there is also some really great tea in Vietnam! You just have to dig a little deeper for the good stuff!
It would have to be the puerh tea from Teavana. That stuff was terrible. It was really a blend of black and puerh tea but it was terrible when compared to even the average cheap ripe tea. And it wasn’t cheap.
Not with tea per se, but a DavidsTea tisane with coconut and mint (can’t remember what the name, but it seems it was discontinued) tasted and felt so oily I became nauseated. Took two sips, dumped the rest. Thankfully just a sample.
Probably Cocomint Cream.
I didn’t hate that one, but there was definitely something weird about it for sure. According to some coworkers who worked at DT the year it launched, it was actually QUITE OFTEN compared to tasting like dill pickle by customers…
I had a small holiday tin of that one. I didn’t hate it but it was quite strange. If I remember right it had apple in it which did not work at all.
That’s exactly it. The name makes me shudder…. I didn’t know about the dill pickle thing – sounds like that’s why it was so short-lived. Ha!
Teavana’s imperial gyokuro. It used to be great about five years ago, but when I bought the new version, it tasted like bitter spinach water however I steeped it. I also bought 50g of gyokuro from a local coffee shop for about $10, which was a mistake on too many levels to count. Fortunately, I’ve started making better choices about where I buy my Japanese green tea.
Oh man, if we’re not counting bagged teas there are a few that stick out to me! DAVIDsTEA’s Cherry Cola, Currant Affair, and Silken Pu’erh are all probably in my top ten worst of all time to some capacity…
I also loathed Teavana’s Pineapple Kona Pop – and when I look at my lowest rated teas on Steepster quite a few of them come from Teavana, although most of them I simply don’t remember trying so they’re more forgettable over just plain old bad. East Indie’s Tea Company sold a lavender and fig black tea that I had for a while too; that one was also REALLY awful.
(In the interest of discretion, I feel like I should point out that I work for DAVIDsTEA currently)
It’s a loose/not compressed Shou Pu’erh. It’s probably not the worst loose shou I’ve ever tried, but I feel like it just wasn’t given quite enough time to air out/sit before being sold in stores because it’s quite dank/fishy still. Hopefully it’s something that’ll get better with age, though. I just know when I first tried it in store it was a bit of a slap in the face/shock compared to the quality of shou I’ve come to expect from other vendors…
Currant Affair was definitely one I dumped after two sips. I never tried Cherry Cola though. I was never a fan of Teavana and was happy to hear that it was closing.
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