assi brand

You definitely have to boil this tea on the stove for five minutes to get the full flavor. We like to serve this during a meal. Love this simplicity and tastiness of this tea. We would get this tea (or roasted barley) at Korean restaurants and I always loved it! Glad I found it at the store.

I actually bought some of this dehydrated “tea” crystals to go with my tea book club that has just read “The Martian.” I wanted some dehydrated tea (per the suggestion of a user on here) to emulate the kind of things that an astronaut would have to consume. I settled on this because I love ginger and honey, not necessarily because I thought it was going to be good.

I have to say though that it is one of the more intense ginger flavors I have ever come across. Super spicy with a hint of sweetness. I actually will drink the left over packets after tonight. I rarely can find a ginger spicy enough to give me that burn I’m looking for. This does it. It’s not fancy by any means but, again, if you like a spicy ginger this could be for you.

Picked this up at the local Asian supermarket. I am having tea buying withdrawal symptoms since it’s taking since April for my Yunnan Sourcing order to come! lol

I love buckwheat tea so I thought why not give barley tea a try? It came in this HUGE 2 lb bag for $3.99. If I didn’t like it I wasn’t out a lot of money.

On the bag it said to add 2 tbsps. to 2 litres of water and boil for 20 min. I checked out some other reviews and other people had used more tea and about the same amount of water. I just put what looked like 2 litres in a pot, not really measuring. Then added 3 tbsps. and boiled for 20 min.

Mmmm, it was nice and comforting toasty . It doesn’t taste like buckwheat. Definitely has it’s own flavor but it’s toasty with that grain flavor. Hot, this makes a soothing, warming herbal drink in the colder days. I still enjoyed it now and took the rest to put in the fridge to have as iced. It’s supposed to be pretty good cold too.

Mmmm toasty corn goodness! If you are thinking of trying this, know that the corn itself, both before and after steeping, smells terrible. The tisane smells a little better….if you can have patience with those factors, the tea itself will surely delight!

Ok, at least it does me.

This tea is a perfect cozy winding down end of day cuppa. Too bad it comes only in 5 lb packages…i guess i do have many days requiring down-winding, so it’ll do. Can’t wait to try this iced once the 100 degree summer weather kicks in!

If, like me, you’re frustrated by ginger teas that aren’t strong enough, and you think the burning feeling is a positive thing, then you’ll love this. It does have a lot of sugar, as it’s basically flavored sugar crystals. Feels good on a sore throat. I’ve found that the Traditional Medicinals Ginger and Ginger Aid teas both have comparable strength without the sugar.

Yay! High roller last night. Must have needed the boost after my two 11 hour shifts. This tea was quite a curiousity. I’ve never had dates or date tea. Also it looked quite different from other instant teas i’ve tried. It isn’t a powdered instant tea it’s a crystalized instant tea. After brewing it smelled of honey and fruit and a little bit of black tea. I took just a few sips of this brewed as it is sooo sugary I just couldn’t drink it. I passed along to my husband who ha it gone in a few sips. If he weren’t diabetic I’d find where we could get more. He liked it so much it would be great to get it for him as he hardly enjoys my teas. I’m not sure how to rate this one yet.

Thanks Rabs for the chance to roll the dice and play the game.

This tea is very comforting and did help me unwind quite a bit after a long day. I’m gradually learning that I really LOVE barley tea!

First of all, the tea bags are HUGE! I didn’t realize they were this large, until after opening the package. I was expecting a bag for 8-12oz, but they are created for 2 liters! I’m glad there is only a small difference there between the sizes (a tad bit of sarcasm here;). It actually worked out, because the size of the bag gave plenty of room for a proper steeping.

You will find no bitterness with this tea, just a very nice roasted flavor. The liquid is smooth and thick -almost creamy. The aftertaste left a lingering sharpness, almost tart. Kinda hard to describe.

After infusion, I inspected the contents inside the bag and found a very dark roasted grain. Somewhere around 85% of the grains were whole, leaving only a small amount of pieces.

My next experiment will be following the directions on cold brewing this delicious tea. I’m sure that it will be very good. The hot brew was nice, but I could see this one being even better cold.

I have an Acupuncture clinic and we serve teas to the patients and one of them is the Assi instant plum tea and a lot of the patients like it and we are having a hard time to finding it to buy online, any ideas?

Great flavor

This is another tea that I picked up at the Hong Kong Marketplace. I thought my husband would like it (we are still looking for a substitute for the discontinued Plum Harvest by Teavana) and luckily he does. I don’t find this overly sweet, but then again, it doesn’t really taste like tea either (to be expected considering tea is not an ingredient). This does get high marks though because it is a nice change of pace and a good caffeine-free addition to our cupboard.

Another big thank you to AmazonV for the packet of this that she sent me! I’m not a big plum fan (yes, I do actually eat food, but I could live off of fresh bread and good cheese to give you an idea of my taste preferences). It’s been years since I’ve sampled a plum and went “patooie” so maybe it’s time I need to try again. Keep that in mind.

I love this tea just for the happy-bright packets — I’ve cut the top off carefully and have preserved the two that I’ve had so far. I sniffed the granules and my eyebrows immediately knitted together. Burnt metal? This does not bode well.

Blended (since it’s not really steeped per se), the smell is more fruity. With burnt metal. It reminds me of the smell emitted from large double boilers used for soup when the heated water would boil away and the two metal surfaces touched. This was something to be avoided for both health, safety, and smelly reasons, but it did happen occasionally. If you had had never smelled it before, then you’d wander around the store going “I smell something like an electrical fire.” Once you figured it out you would forever know exactly what that smell is and be able to correct it immediately.

You add that metallic taste plus some plum-fruitiness with lots of sweetness and you’ve got this tea. I couldn’t finish the cup (sorry AmazonV!). I am forever grateful to have gotten a chance to try this, but it’s something I’d never want to try again. GA

A HUGE thank you to AmazonV for sending me samples of these teas!!!!!

I had just arrived home from a few errands including donating mah blood (O neg woot!) when I checked my mailbox and found a package awaiting me. Squeee!!! I went inside and opened it up and almost fainted from a combination of both AmazonV’s generosity and the blood loss. ;) There was also a funny handwritten note on a beautiful butterfly postcard (I loves butterflies!).

With much contained excitement I opened this tea and gave it a wiff. Here’s where AmazonV may be able to attest to the fact that I have the oddest scent associations: I smelled graham crackers. Like, if you took a honey graham cracker and schmeared it with some generic fruit spread. Color me even more intrigued!

I boiled water and used my large 16 oz mug to mix up this very fragrant concoction. Wow — the smell is even more intensly sugary-sweet/graham crackery! Then the first sip: woah! That’s some sweet stuff! It’s been years since I’ve had full-out sugary Kool-Aid (is that even still available?), but that’s the closest thing that I can liken this tea to. I wonder if it’s possible to ice this sort of tea? It doesn’t taste graham-crackery, but that smell still lingers. I can’t say that I’ve had a straight-up date before, so I can’t say how datey this is.

Then a taste-assosciation occurs to me and it sticks in my mind for the rest of the cup: envelope paste. Like when envelope manufacturers changed from the bitter yuck to the sweeter taste in the paste. Only much much sweeter with a bit of fruit thrown in. I’m in this limbo land of “sweet yum” and “errrr…”

Ultimately I’m very grateful to have gotten a chance to try this tea before buying a large box of it. I would eventually drink it all, but it’d take me a long while. I’d have to be really really craving something uber-sweet. Oh — and it was great in helping me feel better post donation: all those vitamins and stuff giving me a recovery boost! :D NE

Steep Information:
Amount: 1 packet
Water: hot spigot water, 16 ounces
Served: Hot

Tasting Notes:
Dry Leaf Smell: forgot to check!
Steeped Tea Smell: spicy ginger!
Flavor: sweet honey then ginger burn!
Body: Full
Aftertaste: ginger burn
Liquor: cloudy yellow and slightly brown

I had to toss the cup, it was TOO spicy / burn. Now I have to see if MilitiaJim likes it.

Images: http://amazonv.blogspot.com/2010/05/assi-brand-instant-powder-instant.html

16oz hot spigot water
sweet, tart skin, and i am getting a hint of that metallic taste Rabs mentioned

Steep Information:
Amount: 1 packet
Water: hot spigot water, 16 ounces
Served: Hot

Tasting Notes:
Dry Leaf Smell: not much
Steeped Tea Smell: sweet honey, plum
Flavor: sweet honey and some plum, like a sweet kids fruit cocktail juice
Body: Full
Aftertaste: sweet, slightly plum skin tangy
Liquor: dark brown

I very much enjoy this tea, not quite as much as the date, but it is a nice at work tea with little fuss, lots of flavor, and VERY sweet.

Images: http://amazonv.blogspot.com/2010/05/assi-brand-instant-powder-instant-plum.html

Steep Information:
Amount: 1 packet
Water: hot spigot water, 16 ounces
Served: Hot

Tasting Notes:
Dry Leaf Smell: very sweet!
Steeped Tea Smell: sweet, fruity, black tea, honey
Flavor: very sweet black tea, fruity, honey, hint of fruit
Body: Medium
Aftertaste: sweet, honey
Liquor: translucent orange-brown

A co-worker let me have one of hers. It is delicious! I am not exactly sure what kind of tea it is trying to be but I suspect black. I need t find where to get more of this.

images: http://amazonv.blogspot.com/2010/05/assi-brand-instant-powder-instant-date.html