Ajiri Tea Company

I placed an online order with Ajiri a few years ago, and then saw this black tea with ginger version at H-E-B so I started with a box, and went back for another, and another. I also saw the loose leaf black tea version at Happy Lucky’s and bought some of it. I much prefer the added ginger, and I can let this brew without it getting bitter, so it makes an excellent travel tea. I could stand more ginger, but it is very well balanced as it is.

This is a nice rooibos! It’s light and honey-like. I enjoy it cold and a little sweetened. I’d been wanting to try this tea for a while, so I was happy to grab a box from a shop in NYC in the fall. Now I keep the tea bags in my suitcase for travel. It resteeps decently well too.

I was really surprised by how grainy the tea leaves were. They had an earthy and sweet scent. The tea itself was very enjoyable. It’s a basic black tea with a nice nutty and malty flavour that is really delightful.
I found that the tea is very strong by itself, so I added a dash of honey and oat milk. It mellowed out the flavours to my liking. I will be drinking this often!

Wow this looks like dust or fannings, but boy does it brew up nice. It says to steep for 3-5 minutes but the size of the leaf lead me to brew at 2 minutes. And it is strong! I am working on a course and adding notes to each slide I have created. Its tedious work and I might brew more of this nutty, delicious caffeinated elixir until I am finished. I might need this in my cupboard at all times for a sleepyness emergency!

I love drinking this tea with something sweet. It’s bold and a little astringent, but I like it.

It’s a nice strong black tea.
I’ve been sitting on this one for a little while and I’m not sure why.
It’s a little on the astringent side but not disgustingly so.
More in a “strong” tea way.
Drank it plain, no sugar or cream, and kept brew time to the minimum recommended (3 minutes)

Another from Sips By. I believe this is my first Kenyan black tea. From what I can smell over the lemon myrtle, it reminds me of a fresh Ceylon. Very nice.

I’m broke right now and have had to resort to using sugar in my tea instead of stevia. I hate it. It ruins the mouthfeel and leaves a gross, tangy aftertaste. But that doesn’t stop me from enjoying this.

The lemon myrtle is very powerful. It almost completely mutes the black tea base. I like a tea with a lot of herbs, though, so I don’t mind too much. The lemon flavor I’m getting is definitely not actual citrus. It’s more like lemongrass. Sweet, clean, and uplifting. Soothing in a way. Kind of reminds me of Lemonheads candy. Or the lemon balm my grandmother bought by accident when she meant to get catnip.

So, if you’re looking for a southern sweet tea with lemon experience, this ain’t it. But if you like lemongrass, you’ve found a winner.

You can’t miss the interesting packaging of this tea, hand made with some raw material like dried bark from banana trees.

The tea itself is great! The taste usually get too strong or bitter when you steam a black tea for too long. But not in this case! You can leave the tea bag in your cup as long as you want it still tastes good. It does taste fruity, and it’s natural flavored, so only delight of sweetness adds to the base. The down side is that, since it’s natural flavor, it’s hard to identify the mango flavor. I like this tea so much, So I bought Rooibos after finishing this box. I think you will enjoy it if you like English breakfast and wants to try something different for morning.

This was a sample I received a while back. This was one heck of a pick me up cup. I don’t usually react to caffeine overdose, but man oh man were my hands shaking this morning after this bad boy. It was an astringent, strong cup. Being that I like these strong brews I found this very enjoyable for my morning cup. This cup reminded me of Big Red Sun. ( Sipdown )

I like this one a lot, especially iced—it reminds me a little of that ubiquitous Passion tea from the ‘90s. The mango is nice and natural; it’s not so strong as to overwhelm the delightfully malty base.

This is a WEIRD tea. Got it as a sample from a tea friend, who picked it up from the show in Philadelphia.

Flavor wise, this tea isn’t much. There is some astringency and a lot of malt. There’s a bit of dark brown bread flavor, but it’s very subtle.

What gets me is the texture of this tea. It’s THICK. It feels like heavy cream in the mouth and lingers afterward like fat from real whipped cream.

For a bagged tea, this is pretty decent. I’d drink this again.

Only one cup to go after this one I’m enjoying right now. Another one down! Go me! Go tea! I’m so crampy and mad for chocolate right now and it goes really well with this tea, too. Bless.

Still enjoying this brew at half a teaspoon per cup. It’s so strong!

I’ve been super one-track with this bad boy lately. I’m still working toward sipdowns, particularly now that I’m planning to go to the Sydney Tea Festival in August…

Now I’ve found out how to drink this I can’t stop

Oh bless, I came back to this tea today after scaring myself right off it when I first got it by trying it FAR too strong. It is a very strong brew (something I like about the plain Ajiri tea, TBH) but with the ginger it can get overwhelming. Today I tried just one scoop for my 500ml mug, with a tsp of sugar and some milk. It was a cockle-warming sort of thing for a rainy day and it worked beautifully.

This is easily one of my favorite straight rooibos teas. It’s woody, sweet, and soothing. I also really like the company’s mission/process. The tea itself is produced on a cooperative farm. The women who pick it are paid a fair wage, and they also hand-make the labels and beads. 100% of the net profits from the business are used to pay school fees and buy books and uniforms for orphans. Bonus: the boxes are very lovely and I always keep them for their aesthetic value. Sadly, this is a sipdown, but I expect to restock soon(ish).

This was my favorite of the Ajiri teas that I tried at the Coffee & Tea Festival. The mango doesn’t taste at all artificial. The slight sweetness of the mango flavor works to highlight the maltiness of the base tea. I’m not even supposed to drink black teas but I want to drink this one. Lots.

I tried several Ajiri teas at the NYC Coffee & Tea Festival this year. This was one of them. I initially expected that I would end up choosing this blend, but it turned out to be my least favorite. The ginger flavor clearly comes from real ginger in the blend. It’s strong, but not overwhelming. The malty base tea holds its own. However, the flavors of the ginger and base tea just didn’t quite mesh for me. Ginger good. Base tea good. But they just didn’t play together at all. It’s like the flavor of each was hanging out in its own corner and refusing to interact. Possibly a shorter or longer steep time would fix this. Maybe I’ll get a box next year to play around with!

This year’s NYC Coffee & Tea Festival was a bit disappointing, though I still managed to spend more than I did last year. The old venue was nicer – more centrally located and with fewer temperature control issues. They were giving out free (empty) totes this year but ran out before I even got there. In general, there were a lot fewer freebies than in previous years. When they’re charging $25 per ticket just to get in without a gift bag, one hopes for some perks. I used a discount code, but that was still $15 for the privilege of spending more money. I did sample a whole bunch of teas in the process. Some were better than others. I took notes. Now I’m going to share them with you :-) Prepare to have your dashboards flooded, folks!

Ajiri Tea does truly admirable work. They employ locals in the area where their teas are produced to make the labels for their boxes and donate profits to pay school fees for orphans. I like supporting socially useful companies, so I always make a point of buying something from Ajiri when I see them exhibiting. This year I tried several of their teas before settling on the mango-flavored black.

I sampled the lemon-flavored tea first. Apparently it’s award-winning. I liked it. The lemon flavor was very natural tasting, neither too sweet nor too tart, but more lemongrass than lemon. This was a very smooth blend. However, the lemoniness kind of drowned out the usually hearty base tea. Tasty, but not my top choice out of their offerings.

DAMNIT THERE’S STILL LEMON MYRTLE IN THE CUPBOARD HOW DID THAT HAPPEN?

Ah well.

Rainy sick day today so I decided to brew this up traditionally. Similar to a marsala chai without the spices! A real treat.