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I was really hoping to get this in my grab bag, but it was a newer flavor so I didn’t really expect it. Imagine my excitement when I opened my package and found it in there! I decided to cold brew this, since I honestly can’t imagine watermelon tea hot. I mean… it’s watermelon, the official fruit of summer! It HAS to be cold.

And oh man, this is heaven in a cup. The watermelon and blackberry balance perfectly, and the honeybush is very unassuming. It adds some woodsy notes, but the fruit flavors are definitely front and center. This reminds me a bit of Cotton Candy for some reason, and I almost like it as much… which is really saying a lot! I think this is the first honeybush blend I’ve fallen in love with.

I went to the DAVIDs on Bleeker today in the hopes of using that coupon… only to find that the prices in store are 2-3$ higher than online. I find them a bit on the higher end given the quality anyway, so I ended up not getting anything. I was just going to buy online and get the 50g of Paradise Found but 2 of the teas I want are sold out, yet they were in stock hours earlier. Guuuuuh.

Anyway, I DID get an iced tea in store. I mean, I’m not going to leave with nothing and they seem reasonably priced compared to other tea stores. I find it kind of funny that there’s no way I’ll spend $9 on 2oz of loose-leaf but $2.50 for an iced tea is fine… the brain is a funny thing. I’ve heard so many rave reviews about Tropicalia that I had to get it, even though it’s a wet and rainy day. Now I kind of wish I hadn’t because it is SO GOOD. I could drink this every day. But it’s a heavy blend which means it’s pricey to keep in my cupboard all the time. However, I don’t know if I can live without it, it’s perfectly fruity and has a surprising amount of depth.

I love love love yuzu, and it’s pretty easy to find in NYC. I use it in cooking a lot, so it was kind of a surprise when I found out how uncommon it is in the rest of the US. It’s often equated to lemon, but yuzu is a citrus unto itself with no real flavor to equate it to. I suppose lemon + mandarin orange would be more accurate, but it still doesn’t capture the amazing aspects of yuzu. I’ve been looking for a yuzu tea, and I’ve been contemplating Mellow Monk’s but it’s quite expensive. Since this was on sale for like $4 for 4oz I decided it couldn’t hurt!

Like the Cherry Sakura, I treated this tea with kid gloves: a small amount of leaf cold-brewed for a pretty short amount of time. And holy wow did it work! There’s zero berry flavor here which I am quite pleased with, since I just wanted yuzu. This seriously tastes like iced sencha with yuzu juice squeezed in! I’m so happy that I’ve found a way to save the green teas from Caraway, and this one I would actually restock unless, of course, I find a better yuzu tea. I hear Den’s has a seasonal one…

I cold-brewed this two nights ago and really meant to write it up, but I had the Batman marathon to attend! Quite possibly the most amazing movie experience of my life! But that doesn’t really have much to do with tea (aside from the fact that I brought this with me into the theater—thankfully the one I went to lets you bring in food/drinks for midnight screenings or long showings!). As a side note, now that I’ve been making my own iced tea I find grocery store brands way too sweet.

Anyway, Caraway’s teas don’t have the best rep here, I think a lot of people were disappointed with their purchases even with the crazy discounts. Some of them smell horrifyingly artificial, this one included. It’s like BAM cherry cough syrup right in your face. Eurgh. But I was determined to make it work, so I cold-brewed this with a small amount of leaf for less time than usual, hoping to tone down the cherry-ness. And, thankfully, it worked! This really just tastes like a nice mild sencha until the end of the sip, where you get a bright burst of cherry that really doesn’t taste artificial. It kind of reminds me of DAVIDs Cherry Blossom without the floral notes. However, neither are actually sakura tea, since there are no cherry blossoms. What is up with “sakura” tea being cherry-flavored? Sakura trees aren’t actually fruit-bearing so it makes no sense to me. I’ve had 3 other sakura teas that are really sakura, and it’s a very different taste than cherry. Anyway, if I treat this as a mild cherry iced tea I think it’s actually pretty nice—I don’t think I’d buy it again (I prefer Den’s Sakura sencha and Tay’s Kyoto), but I will definitely finish off the bag.

It seems like most people are displeased with their Caraway, so I am pretty nervous about digging into mine. Especially this one, since it was over $20 before discounts. A tea that pricey should be delicious, right? In the bag this smells like Element’s Pink Sonoma, which I loved, so I was cautiously optimistic. I decided to cold brew it since that seems to lessen the artificial-ness of some teas, which seems to be the main complaint with Caraway’s product.

I’ll admit that I totally forgot this was in the fridge and steeped it for about 20 hours instead of 12. Oops! Fortunately it didn’t seem to do much damage, just a bit of bitterness because there was too much leaf. I’m gonna chalk that one up to my spazziness and not the tea. The raspberry here is very subtle, not as bright or fruity as I was expecting based on the smell. The champagne comes in at the end of the sip and tastes like, well, champagne! It’s sweet and almost sparkling, which I didn’t expect. The white base is bright and a bit fruity, with some soft floral notes. Overall this is a nice tea and much better than I was expecting based on some of their other teas. I do prefer Pink Sonoma, but that tea isn’t even available anymore so I suppose this is a fair substitute!

I am not a picky tea drinker. I know some people only drink pure, unsweetened, unflavored loose-leaf which I admire but could never do—sure, I enjoy a cup of pure oolongy goodness, but I also like putting crazy things in my tea like cookie butter or milk candy. I also like teabags when they’re high-quality: I mean, you really can’t beat the convenience! I haven’t tried a whole lot of the nicer ones though, mostly grocery store offerings. The good ones I’ve tried have come almost exclusively from my local asian grocery store. So when I saw a few teabags in my fire sale/stash clearout box from Emilie (which got to me 2 days after I ordered it—talk about fast shipping!), I was pretty enthusiastic about trying them out.

The name of this is so wonderfully evocative—Black Raven! Makes me think of creepy poetry (obviously, since it’s named for Poe), dark nights, fog, strange noises… and it also makes me want to try my hand at a Lovecraft blend. But what would I flavor it with, madness and ooze? Black Raven is flavored with the much more appealing blackcurrant, which has become a favorite flavor of mine since I found out it’s the berry goodness in Paris. Plus this is decaf, which means I can safely drink it before bed. I am not really that affected by black teas normally, or at least I usually seem to think that… my sleep schedule is so weird that I’m trying to switch to only decaf and herbals and see if that helps. So this tea has an evocative name, one of my favorite flavors, AND no caffeine—a winner right from the start!

The bag doesn’t really smell like anything, but then again bagged teas usually don’t. Brewed, though, it’s nicely fragrant. This is a smooth, brisk, clean black—not overly complex, but warm and comforting. The blackcurrant is bright and lively, with jammy berry notes and that rich fruit flavor it brings to tea. This is so very English I feel like I should be sitting in a cafe in London drinking it! One of the best bagged blends I’ve had for sure.

I’ve been drinking pretty much exclusively flavored teas iced (aside from my daily pitcher of Genmaicha!) so I decided to go a different way today and cold brewed a simple sencha. Greens are my favorite tea to drink “straight” iced, so refreshing and the flavors really shine. This is buttery, nutty, and grassy—in fact, there’s a roasted flavor so pronounced that I might have guessed this was a mild genmaicha. A womderful flavor combo, though I don’t know if it’s a particularly special sencha. Drinkable for sure, but nothing that really screams “buy me again!” So it’s an in-between tea: I’ll enjoy finishing off my bag, but probably won’t restock. I try to keep my “must have” teas pretty low so my cupboard isn’t always constantly overflowing… though really, I’m not that successful at it!

The last tea left to try from my Fire Sale box from iHeartTeas! I’ve actually never had a peanut tea before, mostly because the bf is allergic to them and I feel bad buying things he can’t try. However, it doesn’t count if it’s a surprise!

In the bag, this smells very smokey, almost like a full lapsang even though it says there’s only a bit blended in here. Smokey teas and I don’t always get along, so I wasn’t so sure, probably why it took so long to brew this even with my love of peanut butter. However, there are lots of whole peanut halves, so I had high hopes! Brewed, this loses a lot of that smokey edge and is almost fruity. In fact, it reminds me of a nice keemun! It’s smooth and sweet, nicely full-flavored with a touch of smoke and a hint of astringency. I think this would be a fantastic breakfast tea!

The peanut, though, isn’t that prominent. There are nutty tones but I don’t really get “peanut” except at the every end of the sip—the smokey notes linger along with the peanut, and that’s the only time I get the “peanut butter toast” aspect. I think the name is a bit misleading, since this is more of a nutty, brisk morning blend to me. Though it’s totally different from what I was expecting, it’s very tasty and I don’t think it’ll take long to finish this off!

I saved the leaves from the Element Tea chai last night, since it seems like such a waste to use them only once when they’re the only chance I’ll ever have to try this tea! However, I didn’t think there was enough oomph in them for a cup by themselves—it was a teeny sample and I brewed it for extra-long last night. I brought a few teas to my parents’ house to try but went through them all, which means blending time!

The only thing I had that I thought would work was the ETS Scottist Toffee Caramel Pu-erh, so into the little french press it went! As a side note, my parents have a freaking adorable little Bodum french press with enough room at the bottom to not squish the tea leaves when you’re pouring, perfect for saving them for re-steeps. They never use it since it’s a 1-cup thing, so now it’s all mine!

These two teas melded perfectly. Spicy and bold from the chai, rich earthy and sweet from the pu-erh. They went together so perfectly it was hard to tell what base notes were from which tea, definitely a happy marriage! I have a few other chais I might try mixing with dessert-y teas now since this worked so well.

It’s weird drinking a tea for the first and last time. I got this in my Element Tea order, just a cup’s worth in a little paper sachet. So I am trying to enjoy this but not love it: I mean I don’t want to make myself hate it, but I don’t want to love it so much I’m sad it is gone.

Well… sadly, I really like it! It’s a strong chai, my sample was a bit small so I brewed it two extra minutes and damn is it spicy! Lots of ginger and cardamom. In fact, there are more spices than actual tea (at least in the spoonful I have) which is a good sign… for me. It seems like a lot of people enjoy milder chais, but I like mine to be a kick in the face of spiced goodness which this definitely is. Alas, I shall never have it again! There are a LOT of chais out there though, so it’s not like this is some ridiculously unique blend, just a particularly tasty version of a classic.