Celestial Seasonings

I love the vanilla flavor. I drink this to eat less cake.

I probably wouldn’t care about this if I hadn’t been drinking it since I was a child, but I have, and so I do. The box makes me feel cosy, and the smell reminds me of happier times.

There are far better chamomile blends out there, but Sleepytime is an old classic. I can’t help but turn to it when nothing else works, and if nothing else, the scent lulls me to sleep.

Sweet and bitter at the same time. Good for a k-cup.

I dunno what has gotten into me tonight but I have no energy. The ultimate couch potato. So I needed this cuppa comfort tonight, I really did.
I’ll write more tomorrow, and get back to anyone who emailed me- sorry for the delay

I don’t know WHAT got into me but something compulsed (did I just make up a word?) me to have this tea. I bargained with myself, I proposed other, better teas… I looked at the ingredients and saw cinnamon and vanilla “flavouring” and even still, nothing could persuade my fool craving away from indulging an unworthy tea!
This was my last bagged tea purchase(and love) before I went all looseleaf so it holds a special place in my cupboard but I’m not sure if that’s one of disdain or fond memories!
And ya know what? it has got to be my sentimentality kicking in but this is pretty darn good for a bagged tea. Smooth and chocolatey… caffeine free… maybe I won’t throw it out after all. The only part that really niggles at me is the “flavour” part in the ingredients. Ya just know that means it’s fake! *sighs

Now this one’s a teabag courtesy of one of my roommates (who is away for the summer).

Brewed aroma here is definitely more fakey-cherry. Cherry cough syrup-y?

Flavourwise, I’m again getting a similar sort of sweetness. It comes up a bit sooner though, and doesn’t linger as long, so it’s much more bearable. The hibiscus is also done reasonably well in this blend, with the tartness not overwhelming everything, even though this steep is just as epically long as the other. I’d have to say that the Tea Forte version, comparing them side by side, has a more tart berry sort of flavour, whereas this one is more of a sweet berry flavour. Both blends have the tartness of hibiscus of course, but the berry flavour itself is different.

I have to say, both definitely have their merits – I’m more familiar with Celestial Seasonings, so their ‘zinger’ blends typically taste “right” to me, but the Tea Forte version was interesting and different. The sweet aftertaste would therefore probably be the only reason I’d pick one (CS) over the other (TF), in general.

Fun experiment – I’m definitely almost asleep now.

This was my first tea. As a kid whose motto would have been “NEVER SLEEP!”, Mum was ever trying to find something to knock me out. I’ll have to revisit this one.

A lucky find in the kitchen cabinet – mom bought some ages ago, and I ran across it in my wanderings. I don’t normally put milk and sugar in my tea, but this one just seemed to call for it, and I’m glad I did. I know there are more quality teas/chai out there, but this is tasty enough, and it was handy. It’s nice and spicy, and the milk makes it smooth and creamy. It only needed a LITTLE sugar to make it properly sweet. A nice accompaniment to an episode of Burn Notice and a sewing project :-)

I always like to drink country peach when I’m stressed out, it really helps me focus. It makes me feel like I’m in a different place entirely, definitely my go to tea!

Peachy! Wonder whether CC has reformulated this? It smells peachy and it tastes peachy and it looks peachy — even though hibiscus is listed, it didn’t turn this ruby red and the flavor I’m getting is peach, not tang.

I cold-brewed this. Would be delicious brewed strong and over ice, or mixed with a lighter black tea or maybe a green tea.

I’m about 3/4 of the way into my cup, and definitely feeling a lot more relaxed – not quite ready to doze off, but it’s definitely doing its job. The taste… eh. I’m not a fan of chamomile, but there are enough other ingredients with it to make it tolerable.

I used to love this tea, many years ago. Then I couldn’t find it any more, and knowing some of the ingredients were similar to Chai, that got me to try Chai, and it led me down the path of trying loose leaf teas. So this tea has a little tiny corner of fondness in my heart for pointing me to good teas.

So I was in a store one day, and had a gift certificate to use, and pretty much nothing in the store I wanted. So I picked up a box of this for old times sake.

I tried to brew some for drinking, and it was just completely awful. I dumped it down the sink.

I did find something useful to do with the rest of the box though. It’s simmering on the stove right now to scent the house. Smells nice. You won’t find me drinking it though.

Today I reversed my opinion of another tea after trying a different steeping temperature and steeping time, so I thought I would give this yummy-sounding tea another try. I cold-steeped it and left the bags in, giving it periodic sips.

After 5 minutes — nada. No soap, not much of any flavor at all. Smelled lovely, though.

After 10 minutes — still nothing.

After 15 minutes — this tea is just a failure with me. Really disappointing.

Well, this time I made sure the mug was rinsed multiple times and I removed the bags after about 5 minutes.

So no soap, but no particular flavor of anything else, either. Aside from an unidentifiable aftertaste I’m getting. Orange and mango ought to taste JUICY. Again, the aroma was pleasant, but not worth the trouble. Maybe I got a bad or stale box — others have seemed to enjoy this.

I’m going to withhold rating this until I give it another chance or two. No scent at all when I opened the box, but after steeping it smelled very promising. Lots of orange in the steam. I left the bag in the mug and let it cool a bit.

It tasted like soap.

I had just washed my mug so it’s POSSIBLE that I didn’t rinse it well enough, but I was still so discouraged that even after washing again I wasn’t ready to give it another try yet.

On the plus side, no hibiscus.

Cosy sweet tea. Great for evenings.

Love Love this tea it makes me think of fall

so good

verry good i love the smell and taste

This tea is basically a decaffeinated herbal version of a chai tea.

My low rating of this tea is because I do not like pepper in my tea and found the pepper in this to be overpowering. It does have a nice blend of sweet and spicy.