Four O'Clock Organic

I am not a huge chai fan but for a free sample I can’t complain. I actually liked this tea. It wasn’t anything special, mostly just easy drinking, not too overpowering, but nothing too memorable either. Wouldn’t buy it for sure, would I drink it again if offered – probably. I’ve had worse chai teas :P

Steep it for a while in very hot water, then add a bit of coffee mate! Yummy replacement to a chai latte!

Sad to say, the first tasting of this tea is “meh” – very weak, perhaps because of a lack of a black or rooibus base tea. Not strong or spicy. Will try again with some black or rooibus tea, and also with two tea bags. Added some vanilla coconut milk and agave nectar, but didn’t “decadent” it up much. Disappointed thus far…

I really love this one when I’m craving a sweet treat. I find it best with vanilla stevia and milk. I don’t usually sweeten tea but I find this one needs it to make it decadent enough to satisfy.

Earl Grey is hit or miss for me. I used to love it as a wee tea drinker, and at some point I simply stopped liking it (I’ve never heard anyone else call it a “gateway tea”, but…). The bergamot in this is very subtle, though, more flavouring the chocolate than the tea itself – analogous to dark chocolate with traces of candied orange peel. There’s a sweet raspberry note, and the chocolate is a pleasant “dry” cocoa in the style of Italian biscuits (rooibos, cocoa shells, carob). All in all it’s a very well-balanced blend.

This is from Four O’Clock’s organic line – it’s one of those little silky pyramid bags rather than a paper tea bag.

I am not allowed dairy products until tomorrow, but it was too late in the evening for caffeine. I was limited to my small collection of caffeine-free tisanes, but I didn’t want anything fruity. I wanted something heavier, like tea. But the chai rooibos just wasn’t that heavy. So I decided to experiment. I made it with hazelnut-flavoured coffee whitener (not mine, but my mother’s), with honey and vanilla extract mixed in. I don’t know, I felt like something heavy, spicy but sweet. …I want spice cake. Hrm.

Coffee whitener is quite odd, but I liked the hazelnut taste, so overall it turned out all right. Warm. Plus, it rids my mouth of the, uh, copper taste. Stupid wisdom teeth.

Firstly, thanks, Jillian!
Secondly, I should know better than to do light, delicate little tisanes with break room tap water.
Thirdly, this is nice and pleasant and summery, but I’m not getting any cucumber—just the lemongrass. A very hot, humid weekends looms; I think this will be great iced.

Addendum: VERY tasty iced.

I’m logging this again to follow up on my note to self: try it with some black tea, and see what happens. Well, the only black tea on hand here at work is Bigelow’s English Breakfast, which I usually avoid if at all possible. The combination of the two, however, was fantastic! See my note, here: http://steepster.com/teas/bigelow-tea/4311-english-breakfast?post=43843

Surprisingly sweet. Wish there was actual tea in this, though! I may combine it with some black tea and see how that works. It didn’t go well with milk, but maybe soy or rice milk would work better.

I tried this at the recommended steeping temp and it isn’t terrible it’s just kinda…blah. It has a weak green tea taste with lemongrass dominating the flavour. For a tea that has so many ingredients in it I was expecting more complexity. This could easily br mistaken for a lemongrass tisane of some sort – which is fine if you like that sort of thing, but I’m not a big fan personally.

The stuff in the mesh pyramid teabag looks interesting; I can see bits of citrus peel in addition to the lemongrass, what looks like some calendula petals, and other bits and pieces – in addtion to the green tea. It smells primarily of green tea and lemongrass and I’m not picking up anything I might identify as cucumber, but what does dried cucumber smell like anyway?

The steeping parameters raised my eyebrows – 4-5 min at 95 ºC – for a tea with (supposedly) sencha in it. So I backed off the temperature a good 10 degrees which might have been a mistake since the resulting tea was disappointingly weak. It mostly tastes like a lemongrass infusion with a few other vague herbally things mixed in. I’ll lay off rating this tea until I give it another go follwing the steeping instructions more closely.