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I seem to be on a bit of a lemon/ginger kick right now. Anyways this is my last teabag – I don’t think I’ll buy a full canister of this; it has potential as a tea but it also has some glaring faults too. Maybe I’ll try the fully caffeinated version and see how it compares.

Backlogging – go see my older tasting notes.

This tea smells quite lemony right out of the package and not a whole lot else. There’s a herbal undertone but it’s mostly lemon.

The package directions were for steeping in boiling water for 4-6 minutes while the tag on the teabag recommended steeping in less-than-boiling water for 2-3 minutes. Thanks for clearing that up Numi. ⌐_⌐ I decided to go with the latter instructions because of the green tea in the blend, plus mate is reputed to get bitter when steeping in boiling water.

The end result is still mostly lemony though I can taste a bit of the nutty/herbal flavour of the maté midway through each sip. There’s maybe a little bit of a green tea taste if I concentrate but it’s not really adding anything significant to this blend that I can tell.

It’s nice enough but it tastes like every other lemongrass/lemon myrtal-flavoured concoction out there. It’s not maté with lemon, it’s LEMON with a hint of maté and frankly if I didn’t know there were other ingredients present I would just think that this is a herbal lemon tisane, abit a nice enough one if that’s your bend.

This is the end of the little sample tin TeaEqualsBliss gave me. Thanks for letting me try it hon. :)

It’s not something I’d go out and buy a full $10 tin of, but it’s a good try certainly. (And if TEB ever decideds to make changes to the blend I’ll be happy to test it out for her). ;)

Lisbet was nice enough to send me a few spoonfuls of this tea to try.

This tea has a nice smell that is reminiscent of caramel apple I suppose and there’s some nice little apple chunks visible that were mixed in with the rooibos. Sadly like so many flavoured teas it smells better than it tastes.

IMO plain rooibos has a slightly apple-like flavour anyway, so I think it’s masking much of the taste. The caramel is there – sort of – as a bit of sweetness to each sip. Nothing really stand out and screams ’Caramel Apple" unfortunately.

The fancy teabag/pyramid/thing had a wonderful fragrance when I took it out of its packaging. The vanilla was deliciously fragrant and smelled like actual vanilla bean rather than some random perfume or extract. I could smell the tea base underneath which had an oddly lightly spiced sort of scent. I had to concentrate for my nose to pick up the coconut, but I think I detected it up. There’s something about coconut that just seems to blend really well with vanilla.

Unfortunately it pretty much all vanished as soon as the water hit the teabag, and just smelled like steeping tea. The taste of the tea started off rather weak and somewhat flat and only slowly did the flavour creep in, first the tannic flavour of the tea (which was fairly gentle and mellow compared to many of the bases used in flavoured blends – a point in this tea’s favor) followed by a sweet, vanilla-ish flavour. It’s not really the bursting-with-vanilla-flavour taste I was expecting, and it was kind of a let down in this regard. Not really getting the coconut flavour either.

This tea might benefit from adding a bit of sweetener and possibly milk too, although I think it would have to be steeped longer, as right now I think it’s too mild to stand up to the milk. It’s not a bad tea – it doesn’t have me jumping for joy, but it’s a nice easy-drinking black tea.

This tea gets richer and sweeter with a longer steeping time. It still makes me think of coconut-flavoured Ovaltine though – more malty than chocolatey

I gave this an extra long steep but there seems to be a point where once it’s passed the tea doesn’t get any chocolatier. Chocolate Threshold? ;D

The only rose teas I’ve had have been rose congou black teas where the rose was more of an accompanim ent rather than the main even. Here, combined with the milder white tea the rose is noticeably more prominent, although it isn’t unpalatable. This tea has a light, delicate, almost girly quality that make me think of a Victorian-style tea party in the middle of a old-fashioned rose garden. Male tea drinkers need not apply. ;)

I could see this making a nice iced tea aswell, something smooth and refreshing to drink on a hot day.

Good morning Steepsterites!

For variety I had this tea with skim milk this morning which is generally the way I prefer to take black teas. In this case I don’t think it does much for the tea and it neither enhances nor really detracts from the taste. I don’t think the added milk was really necessary so I’ll probably leave it out in subsequent cups.