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I like cranberry, orange, scones and butter, but for some reason I’ve been eying this sample from LiberTEAS with trepidation. Probably because of the honeybush, which I’m not sure if I like yet. I know I definitely do NOT like rooibos (it makes me nauseous, unfortunately), but honeybush is missing a lot of that medicinal quality. Still, I don’t have enough experience with it to say “I like this” or “I don’t like this.”

Well, I decided to be brave last night and give it a go! The first steep I did for 6 minutes, since it says 6-10 but I was nervous about leaving it in for so long. It smells like toast with marmalade, so this tea and I were off to a good start! The flavor, however, was a little lacking. Just a hint of orange, no “scone” or cranberry whatsoever. There was a lot of buttery goodness that had kind of a heavy mouthfeel, but in a pleasant way. The honeybush was innocuous, and this tasted like a generic orange herbal with some butter thrown in. The second steep I did for 10, and the flavors came out much stronger: the orange was bright, and the honeybush more prominent which lead to a kind of scone-y texture. Still no cranberry though—there were 2 dried ones, but apparently none of the flavor leeched out. The butter is definitely my favorite part of this tea, and while it was an enjoyable cup I am still on the fence about honeybush (though I am leaning towards “it’s okay, but not something I would reach for often”). I do, however, want to immediately pick up the Pancake Breakfast… seriously, the butter part of this was sooo good!

I am feeling indulgent tonight, so I had a big mug of this while eating cherry cheesecake bread pudding. Take that, heat wave! This is from my swap with Will Work For Tea and the reason we swapped in the first place: she had a bunch to unload, and I love peppery chais so it was a match made in heaven!

I’ve had a few coconut chais before, but this one is quite different. First off, it doesn’t have any other “Asian” flavor components (lemongrass, galangal, etc) but a more classic Indian spice base. The spices are strong, as you can tell just by looking at the tea: whole cloves, big chunks of pepper and other spices. Yum! It brews up quite bold and peppery, with lots of different spice “layers.” There’s warmth from the cinnamon and ginger, heat from the pepper, a spicy quality from the nutmeg, and that distinctive tongue-tingling flavor that comes from cloves and cardamom. The coconut here is mostly flavoring (no actual coconut pieces) and it’s an odd result: it kind of tastes like it was steeped in coconut water! It’s not overpoweringly coconutty or tropical, more homey and comforting like coconut cream pie. A nice departure from my usual chais, but bold enough that this could be a regular in my cupboard!

I’ve been drinking this almost every day, and while it’s no less delicious I wanted to try something new. Almost everything I have in my fridge that could potentially be added to tea is fruity, and somehow I don’t think peach genmaicha would be good (though who knows, I’ll probably try it out now!). That’s how I ended up with half of a cucumber (peeled & sliced) in my pitcher of genmaicha: it stayed in there for the whole cold brew, roughly 14 hours. I was honestly a bit suspicious when I sniffed the end result (no cucumber) but oh dear lord is this delicious. It’s even MORE refreshing than usual, with that soft hint of cucumber lifting it to new heights. It tastes like a day at the spa!

Cold brew of the day!

This was a sample from Kittenna that I was excited to try, since I’ve had lychee candy and fruit but never tea, and I heard that it was quite floral. I love floral teas. Looove them, even if they taste kind of like perfume. I guess I’m just weird like that! This steeped longer than usual because I put it in the fridge too early last night and woke up later than expected, so it got about 16 hours. Well, it still turned out well!

It’s so sweet and fruity, kind of like drinking fruit juice. Refreshing for sure! The floral element is nice and strong, similar to rose but more subtle. It’s balanced well with the fruit, so it’s not too fruity or too floral (and now I feel like Goldilocks). I’ve been cold brewing so many greens and whites that I kind of forgot what iced blacks taste like: it’s a more traditional iced tea for sure, reminiscent of the sun tea my mom used to make as a kit. And cold it’s fantastic, probably better than it would be hot. I have enough left for another big cup, so I might try hot-brewing it… but it’s so good this way I just want to make more iced!

I picked this up in the Element closing sale mainly because of the ingredient list: they were just so weird! Mistletoe, birch leaves, bean stalk? Also it was about a dollar for 2 ounces, so I figured it was worth experimenting.

This is probably the weirdest/most unique herbal blend I’ve ever had. I am not familiar enough with the individual ingredients to pick them out, but this tea tastes like walking through a forest after a spring rain. Wet green leaves, crunchy twigs and damp grass seem to live in this cup, followed by a soft citrus from the lemongrass. It’s very strange and evocative of the outdoors. I’m not sure how particularly tasty it is… I mean it’s good, but it’s hard to taste something this unusual and say “oh, that was delicious!” It’s definitely an experience, and I must admit that I found it a bit soothing so I guess it is a “stress blocker.” I’m not going to rate this because I honestly have no idea how to, but overall I did enjoy it.

Thanks to Stacy for sending me a sample of this tea! I’ve been looking forward to trying it, but I am not often in a pineapple mood so it had to be the right day, and today was that day. I’ve pretty much been eating fruit salad all day long, I have about 7 different types in the fridge and really want to get through them all before they go bad. With fruit all day long I wanted a matching tea, and this was the perfect one.

This smells divine, like a ripe pineapple. The flavor is SO juicy and sweet, and without that mouth-puckering tartness that pineapple has. Definitely a bonus: it’s a good flavor in fresh fruit, but I don’t want my tea to have me making funny faces. The oolong is delightful, floral and pleasantly creamy. This is like a beach vacation in a cup!

I got this as a surprise sample in my swap with the awesome Will Work For Tea! It’s been on my shopping list for a long time, and I’m honestly not quite sure why I didn’t order it before now—I think I just don’t like to pay for shipping unless it’s a big order, and ATR is a bit pricey so I wanted to know I’d love their stuff before committing to a purchase.

The smell of the dry leaves is amazing, like a Parisian bakery. I went to Paris with my mom when I was 15, and I remember how absolutely amazing the pastries were. Soft, buttery, flakey, sweet… just thinking about it makes me hungry. This tea smells like an almond croissant, but it tastes even better. There’s soft, gentle cinnamon, plump raisins, slivers of roasted almonds, and buttery warm bread in every sip, even a hint of pastry cream at the end. How they got tea to taste like a fresh from the oven baked good is beyond me, but it’s heavenly. This is a tea I could drink every day and be happy with!

Thanks to Kittenna for this sample!

Another day, another cold brew. Doing a different tea a night is actually a pretty handy way to go through my huge sample box, and also a nice way to keep drinking tea when it’s so hot outside! I picked this one last night because I am on a cherry blossom kick after trying Den’s Sakura Sencha. Theirs is blended only with sakura blossoms it seems, and I have another blend with sakura, rose petals, and cherries. This one is different, because… well, there’s no sakura! Kind of weird since the name is Cherry Blossom, and there’s no cherry blossom in the ingredients list. There is a host of other stuff though, like coconut (?), dried cherries, rosebuds, and 4 or 5 different base teas blended together.

This tea is a little tart and a little sweet, with a nice cherry flavor. Not cherry blossom, but actual cherry. It’s not fresh cherry (which is a flavor I’ve never found properly replicated in tea) but it has a tart, juicy edge that’s pretty close to the real thing. I thought the rose would be more prominent, but I’m only getting a hint of it towards the end of the sip. The coconut is there too, in a mild way, adding some sweetness and another fruity dimension. If someone gave me this without me knowing what was in it I don’t think I’d ever guess “coconut” but there is definitely another fruit layer going on.

The disappointment comes with the base: you’d think with 4-5+ different kinds blended together, you’d get a ton of complexity. However, I’ve found that the more kinds of tea are in it, the less complex it is. Two is fine, especially if they are similar (white peony and a light Chinese green, for example), but add more than that and they are just competing for attention. There’s no fruity taste, no floral notes or grassiness, not even a hint of vegetal goodness. It’s just a basic “tea” taste, which is a shame because it seems like there are some interesting types in here: I think this would be better on a white peony or sencha base, to be honest. It’s not bad by any means and in fact I am really enjoying it, but you have to think of it as “cherry tea” rather than “complex floral cherry blossom tea.”

This tea is… disappointing. The bf asked for “something raspberry” tonight and this ended up being what we settled on: I remember it being so-so the first time I tried it, but tea is always worth a second cup! However, it didn’t really end up much better this time. It’s very fake raspberry. Not in a bad, icky, artificial way, it just tastes like raspberry hard candy rather than fresh fruit or a jammy quality (both of which I’d find acceptable). This isn’t a bad tea, it’s just not to my taste—I usually end up mixing it with other things like Adagio’s cream to cut some of that candy quality. The weird thing is their other raspberry tea I have (Ripe for Romance) isn’t fake raspberry at all and more jammy/ripe fruit-y. I wonder why a company would use two different raspberry flavors instead of just, you know, the good one?

One of my samples from Teavivre! It’s so hot out, there was pretty much no way I was going to be drinking this hot this afternoon, but I’ve kind of neglected my teas from them so I was determined to make this one. I cold steeped it for 15 hours or so, maybe for too long—it has an ever so slightly bitter taste that I haven’t encountered in cold brews before. It’s not really unpleasant, just there in the background. I also dumped a whole one of the cute little packets in, so maybe that had something to do with it?

This is a soft, light oolong, with mild floral and fruity notes. The floral taste reminds me a bit of gardenia, the fruit like a faint whiff of fresh peaches. There’s also a bit of palate-cleansing creaminess at the end of the sip, perfect for a hot day! I’m getting some light vegetal notes as well, maybe some grassiness though it’s honestly a bit harder to pick out such subtle things when your glass is ice-cold! I’m definitely enjoying this iced though, very refreshing and summery.