Mountain Rose Herbs

I tried plucking the petals out, and brewing them alone, and that definitely changed the flavor, but not how I would have expected. The grassy notes completely overwhelmed the pleasant floral taste from the other day, and the tea was extremely bitter. I’m assuming this is in fact because I plucked out the petals, and not because I brewed it a shorter length of time (the other day it ended up steeping for a couple of hours while I took a nap). I do not recommend separating the flowers when brewing this.

This was a pleasant, mild, and floral tea, with a faint hint of grassiness. It’s not entirely dissimilar to Chamomile tea. I’ve only had Chrysanthemum tea once before and it was several years ago, so I can’t really compare the flavors, but I enjoyed this. I’m wondering if the grassiness is part of the flavor of the flowers or if it’s because they are whole flowers, including part of the stem. I might experiment with that.

I bought this because I’ve heard it’s the lemon flavored herb with the strongest taste of lemon. I hoped this meant that it wouldn’t be as grassy tasting as lemongrass, but no such luck. It’s grassy and somewhat minty, with a slight lemon flavor. I felt like the flavors clashed, and didn’t enjoy it much, but give it a whirl if you like lemongrass

I ordered this because the Honeybush tea was out of stock. It’s not terrible, but it has more of the smokey, medicinal taste of Rooibos than I prefer. I probably won’t order it again.

I ordered this because I am currently pregnant, and its THE herb that is recommended to pregnant women. It has a mild, grassy taste somewhat like a milder green tea. It tastes like it would work well in blends, but I’ve yet to try that. I like getting herbs from Rose Mountain since they are cheap, good quality, and organic.

I always keep Peppermint Tea in my cupboard, and drink a cup almost everyday. It’s a standard everyday tea for me. I’m not usually very picky about where I get it from, but I will probably buy primarily from Mountain Rose Herbs in the future. Their peppermint is both very cost effective (4 ounces is quite a lot of tea), and unlike most peppermint I’ve had, it doesn’t seem to become bitter if I leave it sitting in the cup after steeping.

We know chrysanthemum tea, and have been drinking both white as well as less common varieties for 26 years. This tea may well be organic, which is nice, but the flavor is off, not just off, it’s terrible, medicinal, weird. I don’t know what’s wrong with it. We’ve used different water temperatures, more and fewer flowers— nothing helps. And this is new tea, packed in May of 2014 so it should be last fall’s crop. We ordered a giant bag, excited to find an organic chrysanthemum, and gave up— we just threw it away.

I had hid the Mountain Rose samples ashmanra sent me from Tazo (something catnippy in the packets made him extremely curious)…so well that I basically hid them from myself. Stumbled across this one this evening and after a screamer of a workday and a stress binge of too much junk, I could use a gentle wind-down.

This is a finely balanced combo: little mint, little floral, little sweetness from the stevia, nothing too bitter in the herbs. We’ll see how it does on the snooze factor, but regardless, I’m not sharing with Tazo. He gets to sleep 12 hours a day as it is.

This is a delicious, fruity tea. I like it with milk and sugar or honey.

Mild, mellow, loamy, with a touch of nutty-ness like acorns. It makes me think of lazy late summer afternoons spent near hidden forest streams.

I am fairly picky about my teas. I want to be able to enjoy them without all the additives of sugar, honey or cream so the bare flavor has to stand on its own. And this one does. I usually like orange pekoe tea by twinings but needed something I could enjoy in bulk without the paper bag flavor and cost. Not to mention, these are ORGANIC! Mountain Rose Herbs sell their tea by the pound. I ordered the 8 oz size first and went back and ordered the pound. If you are a person that likes that roasted tannin flavor without a lot of other added flavors, you will like this.

Smell: smells like old wood growth bark.
Taste: time or sun roasted flavor leaves that have been hiding in the forest undergrowth for quite a while. Slightly fermented flavor as well but not overwhelming. More like a slightly fermented leaf flavor that has been hiding under layers of leaves in the forest.
Color: Amber
Time I prefer to steep: 8 minutes (directions say 4 minutes)
Water: I use water from my well and it is 165 degree.
Brewing system: I use a For Life brew and a ceramic teapot.
Additive: I sometime add raw honey.

After drinking a lovely energizing Yunnan black tea to get me going in the morning, I decided for something a little lighter in caffeine and flavor, yet something comforting, warming, and tasty for a cool fall day. This kukicha was just the thing! Sweet, smooth, roasty, and delicious. It has been a while since I’ve had it, but I welcome its return to my cupboard. I have a feeling I will be drinking a lot of it this winter!

This tea hits the spot on on cold winter days. Warm and wonderfully roasty-toasty, this relaxing, “feel good” tea is perfect for when one wants to hit hibernation mode and curl up like a cocoon in a blanket to doze the afternoon away. (Of course, few people actually have the luxury of doing this, but in theory, if it was possible to spend an uninterrupted afternoon snoozing, this is what one would drink!) Although, as we all know, black teas are also absolutely perfect for cold winter days, I think of those as more of a pick-me-up, energizing, get-the-blood-flowing kind of beverage. This kukicha, on the other hand, has the nice mellow roasted flavor like some oolongs and even some blacks, but without the boldness and kick that many of those will give you. I believe I have heard it is a little lower in caffeine too. Thus this tea will lead you gently into a satisfying state of snug, cozy, contentedness. Aaaaahhhh…so nice.

Still a little left in the experimental packet ashmanra sent a while back. Hoping for an antidote to fatigue brought on by a week of unrelenting heat and work stress. Maybe I’ll just go to sleep and wake up and it’ll be 55 degrees and crispy outside…

I’m liking the flavor a little better than I did the first time around. Definitely catching the lavender. Nice to try a nighttime tea that isn’t lemony or minty.

Looks a little like salad dry in the pouch…definitely a woodsy flavor to it (drnking it with a chocolate chip cookie remedied any valerian mulchiness). So far I haven’t met a tisane that will put me out completely on its own—will have to report later on any possible zzzzz effect.

ashmanra, I put Tazo outside so I didn’t have any help steeping it :)

This came with two other Mountain Rose tea samples from ashmanra with a beautiful springy, yellow card. I set the card and packets out on the kitchen table to enjoy and I nearly had to to wrestle the tea packets away from Tazo. He was on the table (which he never is) sniffing and pawing away at them! Not sure which of the three teas made him so excitable, but I wasn’t about to experiment further, or I would have none for myself!

Never had a tisane with oak bark in it. Not one I’d pick to drink for pleasure, necessarily, but the spices and licorice made it passable.

Medicinal value on this one—jury’s still out. It takes a hammer over the head to knock me out. I don’t think “hammer” was in the ingredient list, so I wasn’t deeply unconscious all night. That’s OK—I have two more blends to try!

Although this Orange Spice tea is great by itself, I can’t help but fantasize about how it would taste with cocao nibs (mmm chocolate + orange + cinnamon-spice flavors =delicious!). I have also considered how well it would taste with vanilla or almond. I finally got my chance to try blending this with some Gong Fu Tea’s Absolute Almond black tea in my cupboard, and boy, it was an absolute hit! I mixed 1 teaspoon of the Orange Spice with 1 heaping teaspoon of Absolute Almond in a 2-cup pot, and voila…magic! The resulting tea was pretty darn perfect: the almond flavor melded well, coming through beautifully but still allowing some spice to mingle and tingle on the tongue. No one flavor dominated too much over the others. The taste was pleasant, warm, bright, nutty, rich, and filling. (I had resolved beforehand to only drink one cup and save the other for Hubby, but that resolve melted away completely and I HAD to finish the second cup too.) Oh. So. Good. This is such a deliciously flavorful and smooth black blend that I can just imagine how wonderful it would be as a morning eye-opener or with breakfast; perfect in the afternoon for a pick-me-up after being out in the cold; perfect in the evening with a sweet dessert…and so on. No matter what the time of day, mixed with the Almond, the Orange Spice is a good and satisfying all-around winter treat! Yum! I only wish I could have tried mixing those two teas earlier so I could have been enjoying this all winter long—bummer! Now I don’t have too much of the Orange Spice left and I will not be ordering more until fall. I guess I will just have to treasure what I have now, and then keep this in mind for a definite re-order next autumn.

A yummy flavorful blend of tea and spice. It is not too strongly spicy—just enough for for some added warmth and fragrance. One of my comforting winter favorites.

I have been meaning to write a note on this for a while. My hubby and I love this peppermint—it makes an absolutely WONDERFUL cup of strong, sweet, fresh, invigorating, and delicious “tea.” I also enjoy mixing it with my real teas (see tasting note on White Peony).

I have a lot I could say about this peppermint, but I would be repeating everything that Dylan Oxford wrote in his very thorough and very excellent tasting note. He pretty much nails it with his detailed description of the powerful scent of the dry leaves, the fresh aroma of the leaves as they are steeping, and finally, the lovely, full minty taste of the brew itself.

Whether you have this by itself or as a mix-in with other herbs or teas, it is definitely a must-have for mint-lovers. I have tried other peppermint teas (mainly the teabag varieties like Stash, Celestial Seasonings, etc.) but this refreshing leaf is the finest, strongest, and freshest tasting tisane I have ever had.

I had this tea again this morning and found it to be much more smooth and mellow than the last time I tried it. It seems as though the vanilla flavor has been able to meld better with the Assam. I brewed it the same way I did the last time, so maybe the difference is that it takes a while for the vanilla essence to totally seep into the tea? Regardless, it was good. Not perfect, but still enjoyable. The sweet vanilla seemed to tame the boldness of the Assam, making it a good balance of flavors, yet it was not too dessert-like.

This is a new one from Mountain Rose Herbs! I was pretty excited because I love the idea of vanilla and black tea. (That, and because I am a total chocoholic, black teas + chocolate is also a marriage made in heaven in my opinion!) That said, however, I really don’t like super “dessert-y” teas with lots of added flavorings. I’m kind of a purist and generally appreciate when I get notes of those flavors naturally from the tea itself. I know there are many, many variations of vanilla or chocolate or caramel dessert teas that are made by various companies, but I just don’t want all of the flavorings they usually add. But on the off chance I do feel in the mood for an added bit of flavor to complement the tea, I like the minimum amount necessary and the more natural, the better! As in, for example, the use of real fruit bits instead of fruit flavor, or real vanilla bean instead of flavoring. (Speaking of flavorings, I know this is a bit of a tangent but does anyone know what those mysterious “natural flavors” are that many manufacturers add? How do they make them? I’m not saying they are all bad, but I just tend to find them too artificial-tasting. Any good articles out there I could read on the topic? I’d really like to know the chemistry of it all…how these flavor profiles are created, etc.)

Anyway, sorry it’s taking me so long to get to the point. This is supposed to be a tasting note and instead I’m turning it into a long story about flavored teas. Sorry!

So this Vanilla Black is pretty good, a little sharp-tasting sometimes and overall very bold. The vanilla taste is there, but it almost has a slight bitterness to it, and the flavor is not as full and rich as I would have expected given that this tea has vanilla beans as well as vanilla flavoring. I like it, but something feels sort of wanting or out of balance—it’s nothing drastic and obvious, but something just under the surface that is hard to pinpoint. I think it might be lacking more of a smoothness and richness from the vanilla? Or maybe the Assam is just too bold to be blended with vanilla and therefore a different choice of a black tea base would be preferable, like a Yunnan black that is more mellow? Not sure.

I do like this but it’s not my favorite. I’m not sure I would order it again. It is a good accompaniment to dessert though—I had it with a slice of pound cake and that was pretty satisfying! Maybe adding cream and sugar would round it out more, but I’m just not a fan of doing that to my tea!

Oh and a quick extra blurb here: I once tried making my own using a Madagascar vanilla bean and adding bits to a black tea I had (can’t remember which kind) but it didn’t really work. The vanilla failed to blend well with the tea and I could barely taste it, even though I had scraped a good amount of vanilla specks into the tea and added the pieces of pod as well to steep along with the tea. Disappointing. Maybe I wasn’t doing it right. Has anyone else tried making their own vanilla tea this way? Or tried adding their own natural flavors? What did you do that worked?

I don’t typically feel the need to write more than one tasting note per tea unless something different strikes me or (as in this case) I just feel like it. Contrary to what my absence of commentary on Steepster might suggest, I have actually been quite busy drinking and enjoying my teas of late. With spring coming just around the corner, I have been working on using up my “winter teas” in order to make room for the influx of new spring delights that await me. (I make that sound like a chore, but believe me, “using up tea” is no tedious obligation that I feel I must do…it’s a pleasure!) So, one of the teas in my winter collection is this English Breakfast, and I will be sorry when it is gone because I absolutely love it. It’s just one of those perfectly solid reliable black teas that you never get tired of, you know? Like that favorite sweater you wear (probably too often) in winter, but it doesn’t matter because it fits perfectly, feels comfortable, looks nice, is just the right color, and is suitable no matter what the occasion. That is this tea. Mmmmm, delicious! But, like my favorite sweaters, once summer comes this will be out of sight for a while until next year when I reorder for winter again.

Now, some of you may say, why can’t you just enjoy it in summer too? Well, I have weird ideas about what teas I like to drink and when. Not that it’s a hard and fast rule of course, but generally speaking I like certain teas at certain seasons. Black tea I generally drink heavily in the fall and winter, whereas greens, oolongs, and white teas all are what I consider “warmer weather teas.” I love black tea a lot though, so obviously I would never stop drinking it altogether just because it’s summer—I simply have different black teas I like to enjoy then. (For instance, I tend to choose Indian and African black varieties for summer, China blacks in winter, for no other reason than a good Nilgiri or Kenyan black seem “summerish” to me. Somehow they just fit with the hot weather, maybe because their countries of origin are typically super hot? Seems silly, I know, but that’s how I roll.) Anyway, here’s to sipping down some of my lovely fall/winter black teas: Lapsang Souchong, English Breakfast, Emporer’s Gold, Orange Spice, etc.!

This is my standard English Breakfast tea. I drink it almost every morning (I typically start my day with either this or the MRH Assam). It is a delicious classic I can rely on and enjoy frequently. I love its smooth, well-rounded rich flavor with just the right amount of subtle briskness and a nice, slightly sweet aftertaste. A very tasty tea indeed.