Hella Tea
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Another advent duplicate has me reaching in my cupboard again. I think I’ve had this tea for a year now and I haven’t gotten the hang of it. It steeped up really dark and bitter. So much so that I had to put creamer in it to diffuse it. Now I have a generic tasting cup with cream. I think I can pick out a little bit of the depth that chocolate brings, but it’s not actually chocolate flavor and it’s not very exciting. I’m not into it. I tried.
Preparation
2024 Sipdown Challenge | February | A tea that energizes you
Upping my rating on this one because I’ve consistently loved it every time I’ve had it, and I’m verrry sad to see it go! I’m a sucker for toffee and caramel, and I also love chestnut-flavored teas, sooo… yeah.
I had difficulty choosing between this prompt and the “extra cozy” prompt—somehow this tea does both for me!
2024 sipdown count: 10
Snagged from the TTB, and it’s verrry tasty! It’s got a lot of “warm brown” flavors: chestnut, toffee, sweet roasty pecan pie… just very yummy.
I got a fancy Breville milk frother from my local Buy Nothing group and thought this tea would make an excellent latte, so I brewed it up strong and tried to froth some oat milk. Alas, it did not froth… at all. Still, my milky tea was quite decadent and delicious!
I think maybe non-dairy milks require a higher temp and/or more frothing time, so I’ll have to try again.
Flavors: Brown Sugar, Chestnut, Nutty, Pecan, Toffee
Ordered this a few months ago with some other hella teas and have liked most of them so far. Humptea Hump would be my favorite as it is delightfully banana bready.
Preparation: Western
Tasting note: So there is some smokiness which is to be expected from a lapsang, also some sweetness. I havent had straight bourbon in a while so i am not sure if it is that complex but it definitely gives me some savory sweet honey bourbon bbq sauce notes. Not in the way of drinking bbq sauce but just some of the flavors are reminiscent. It is good!
Note: I may have oversteeped/made a strong cuppa, thought it instructed a 5 min steep but was actually a 3 min.
Preparation: Western
Tasting notes:
Smells strongly sweet toffee and caramel fresh out of the bag. Probably means the ingredients are still pretty fresh which is nice. :)
The tea base has a maltiness to it like the Irish Stout I had the other day. The Toffee was a burnt caramel taste and there was some sweetness to the tea.
I ended up adding full fat oatly to the tea and it is really great now. (Hopeful next time I can have a lighter version to get a better tasting note without additions.) The bittersweetness of this tea is able to withstand the oat milk and the dark caramel notes really shine. It reminds me of a latte (coffee) with caramel sauce.
Flavors: Bittersweet, Caramel, Coffee, Malt, Nutty
Preparation
Started bringing my husband into the evening steeps. Today I got the Hella tea happy mail. So that means I have to try one of the teas today.
Tea preparation: Western
Dry smell: Definitely Banana Nut Bread. Yum!
Tasting notes: When at really hot temps mostly tastes like rooibos. When it cools down a bit the flavors blend better the banana is more forward and the cinnamon and cocoa nibs are warming. Overall, really delicious lightly flavored unsweetened tea.
Flavors: Cinnamon, Cocoa, Rooibos
Preparation
Drank a mug of this yesterday afternoon and it was just so cozy, delicious and heart warming. Very strong but smooth notes of baked bananas that really evoked the banana bread kind of profile, especially because they were coupled with nutty undertones from the rooibos and a bit of warming cinnamon. Most distinctly I got a lot of delicious maple syrupy notes in the finish that were so scrumptious with that smooth, well rounded feeling banana.
When I did my big tea stash reorganization a few days ago I came across my bag of this tea and I’d just been craving it non-stop since then so I finally made a late night cuppa. Definitely strong banana bread vibes that were exactly what I was craving. Cozy and warming with that baked banana flavour and a gentle, sweet nuttiness. However, it also tasted fairly significantly of brown sugar which is not a flavour I remembered this tea having. However, it added this amazing ooey gooey richness to the banana. So good!
Geek Steep S2E17 – Hamilton
Our first musical! This is the fandom we covered last week, and I’m so happy to have opened the door to exploring more Broadway productions…
I chose this tea to drink while watching/listening to this Geek for the first time. Picking a tea for this wasn’t easy. I had the immediate idea that I wanted to drink a tea from a BIPOC owned tea company because I think one of the most beautiful things about this play is how it celebrates America’s history through this incredibly talented mosaic of racially diverse actors. As Lin Manuel Miranda himself said, it’s a story of America then told by America now…
But WHAT tea!? I thought of Hella Tea’s 18Tea7 Proof, which is a whisky flavoured black tea, but I’m not doing Lapsang this season so that ruled out this tea. I settled on this one, which is a delicious warm baked banana and sweet maple/chestnut flavoured blend. I made it in a large teapot and it was just nice having that format of tea to sip over this multi hour music. The spirit of the music was there… but the taste wasn’t.
It was just kind of too fun!? And I don’t mean to imply it’s not a fun musical because there’s a lot of fun and hilarious moments and it just feels so hopeful and uplifting but, well, it’s also heavy. Like, I didn’t feel like my pairing was serious enough in tone for those moments of the musical. It’s an excellent tea, but only a half fit…
This is supposed to be a toffee chestnut tea, but all I can think of is pecans. Freshly dropped from the tree pecans. There is a burnt toffee flavor in the background that gives it a pecan pie flavor to it and it’s nice. I bet adding a little sugar to it would make that impression even more solid. It has a nice depth to the flavors that gets a little bitter when it cools, but it’s not bad. So far I’m pretty impressed with this brand based on the two teas I’ve tried.
Preparation
Having a fresh pecan sounds interesting!
That sounds pretty good! Don’t think I’ve ever had fresh pecans :)
They are the best! I used to think I hated pecans until I lived in a house with one in the yard and finally got to try them right out of the shell. They are delicious and sweet. I guess I had only had pecans that had gone rancid and bitter before.
Went to a local store today where they usually have an empty shelf in their tea section with tags saying the prices on a variety of Hella Teas and found it was finally stocked! I really wish the HumpTea wasn’t a rooibos because I love the idea of a Digital Underground tea. I grabbed a bag of this and Don’t Gimme No Bammer, which sounded the most interesting out of the selection. Super excited to try these and be supporting a local black woman owned business!
I walked away while steeping this and oversteeped, but it doesn’t seem to have ruined the cup. It’s been making me think of bananas and I think that is because of a similar flavor profile to one of August Uncommon’s teas that has banana. This has a light smoke and cognac flavor to it. I’m getting some bitterness when it cools, but it’s well balanced while it’s hot. I think I’m really going to like this one once we get better acquainted.
Preparation
Smooth, sweet notes of whisky that feel like I hug in a mug while still having a heavier body. I always taste that sort of sweet, candied/red apple note in this blend but I do like it quite a bit so it’s not a negative. This time around, however, I realized that the apple + whisky combo almost channels this loose comparison to Crown Royal’s apple whisky and now I reallllyyyyy want to make a proper cocktail combining the two.
Cold Brew!
I was trying to decide what to make as my next cold brew and I somehow got it into my head that, since whiskey is generally consumed cold, that this would be a sleeper hit when brewed this way. That was, perhaps, ambitiously generous of me to say. It’s definitely not bad by any means, but it is really weird. I get more of the red apple notes than I typically would, but with a really smoky boozy finish. I love smoked teas probably more than most but, like, when they’re hot. Cold smoke is a little more meh.
Steeped this for an extra long time in order to get the most out of the CBD. I’ve had some really rough nights the last couple of days with my insomnia and I thought this might be a good tea to revisit a little bit before bed. It was pretty smooth with a nice tropical mango flavour alongside that very distinct and sort of “herby” taste from the kush. I still struggled to get to sleep, but about twenty minutes after finishing my mug the CBD did kick in a little and I did feel pretty notably less stressed than I’d been feeling most of the day. So, still a quasi-win.
Brewed this one up last week. As I think I explained in a previous tasting note, while my mom was in town I alternated between sleeping at her Airbnb and sleeping at my place in the evenings – all kind of dependent on what we were doing the next day.
This was from one of the evenings where I was at my place, and I just felt sooo tired and sore so I knew that a cup of strongly brewed CBD tea would help take the edge off. I didn’t get much in the way or either mango or lemonade from this, but it was soothing and herbal tasting nonetheless and whether it was placebo or otherwise I did feel like it helped me properly unwind that evening.
Steeped this one up on Saturday while I was doing some household chores and things; I was half way through sweeping my apartment when I realized I’d been letting this green tea steep for over a half hour. I was so ready to be drinking a mug of bitter foulness, but it wasn’t actually so bad – definitely strongly had that skunky marijuana/CBD taste though but I imagine that would have been the case regardless. The mango could be stronger, but I don’t want to use this first oversteeped mug as a way of judging what is normal/regular for this blend. In the end the long steep was probably a good thing though – I had a preeetttyyyy relaxed latter afternoon from my extra strongly steeped CBD tea…
A little more sweet and apple-y than I remembered, though I def wouldn’t call apple the strongest flavour – that’s probably still the zesty, bright lemongrass. I found, as I sipped this, that I wanted more lavender to compete with the fruitier elements. What I did get, which was mostly isolated to the undertones and finish, just wasn’t as balanced with the rest of the profile as I needed it to be in this particular moment.
Cold Brew!
Like a lavender lemonade but without any added sugar and assuming the lemonade also had a hearty amount of lemongrass. It’s nice and i love the balance of floral in the blend; not soapy/perfume-y at all! The lemongrass also adds dimension; a pleasant zesty quality to the really natural taste.
Cuppa slurped in that perfect temperature state when it’s hot and soothing but not scalding. Made very, very late at night because one of the advantages of being on vacation is getting to stay up super late and sleep in without an alarm clock in the mornings. More lemon than lavender, but a sweet and full bodied lemon with just enough tartness and the depth of the added lemongrass. A little spicy in the finish. Tasted like it was good for my soul, and helped me feel much more relaxed before bedtime.
Cold Brew!
I love the combination of lemon and lavender so I was intrigued by the tea, but I wasn’t sure exactly what the flavour balance of the two flavours would be. More lemon? More lavender? Sweet? Or herbaceous and floral!? But either way, I was on board with finding out.
I’d say that this definitely comes out lemon on top and actually pretty sweet. It’s a touch apple-y but those sweet lemon notes come out more like a lemonade than the more “citronella-esque” taste of the lemongrass which is also abundant in the blend composition. It’s not a cloying/sugary sweetness though, and I think that is in large part because of the soft lavender floral notes and grassier undertones that round out the flavour and balance out the sweetness. It’s super refreshing, and I like how playful the relationship between the flavours is. Not soapy lavender, either! Big kudos to this one, I think it’s one of the nicest and most unique lavender lemon blend I’ve tried yet.
