Southern Boy Teas

Fruit loops. Kinda reminds me of fruit loops! Honeybush is so much better then rooibos. Very light on flavor nut still good.

Backlog:

This tea was odd for me because I found that I liked it better “room temperature” than served cold out of the fridge. I found that the flavor delivery was stronger when I let the tea sit on the counter for about an hour to lose the chill before I started drinking it. When it was cold, I found it difficult to discern the peach and creamy vanilla notes. I tasted the sweet, buttery flavor of the green tea just fine, but the flavors didn’t really shine through the way I had hoped they would.

Until it lost the chill, that is. Then when it became more ‘room temperature’ I found the peach and cream flavors popped.

Backlog:

I really enjoyed this as an iced tea. Usually I drink the spiced teas hot, but, as an iced tea this really is refreshing. It’s a little sweet and a little spicy. The citrus notes are bright.

I also mentioned this before, I think, but I really do like the black tea base that Frank has chosen to use for his iced tea blends. It’s a nice, smooth, flavorful black tea. I don’t get a lot of astringency from it and it’s strong enough to hold it’s own with the strong flavors.

Tasty and refreshing.

Another one down, and this time no waste! This is my favourite SBT to date, albeit out of only three, and the only one I have managed to finish fully before it started to taste of fridge. As with the others I’ve tried, I brewed the teabag for 3 minutes in boiling water then topped it off with cold water and left it in the fridge. I added four teaspoons of brown sugar, but I don’t think that did much, as the resulting tea was not very sweet. I think if I had added more sugar the syrupy pop taste might have came out more.

As it was, the black tea base was more prominent than the cola and lime. From the strength of the scent from the teabag, I thought it would be stronger, and I personally would have preferred some stronger flavouring, so I think I will cold brew next time I make an SBT, but I know that Frank wanted the focus to mainly be in the tea, with the flavours enhancing it in the background rather than taking over, and so for that I think he’s done a good job. It does make sense really – if you want to taste lime cola and no tea, you buy lime cola. If you want iced tea with a hint of lime cola, this is the one to go for.

The black base is a touch astringent, but nowhere near as bad as it was when I oversteeped the last time, and it has a nice malty note which is interesting with the cola. Both the lime and cola come through together at the end of the sip, and it’s quite an authentic lime cola flavour. The scent is more ‘cola bottles’ but the taste is not as artificial. I managed to finish off the quart of tea in two days, which is saying a lot for someone who rarely drinks iced tea. I wanted to make another quart but the teabag, although kept in an airtight container, went mouldy overnight ):

Sipdown 24/304

Backlog:

I was really excited about this blend. A cookie dough flavored iced tea? YUM! I was just a wee bit unsure of how well those flavors would translate to iced tea though, but I had faith in Frank’s ability to make it work.

Really tasty! Really, really tasty! It takes a few sips for the flavors to adjust my palate to the idea of tasting cookie dough in an iced tea. But once those flavors developed, I couldn’t stop sipping. This pitcher of iced tea disappeared in record time.

Sweet, notes of buttery cookie dough. Hints of brown sugar and chocolate. And I really like the black tea base Frank has been using with his iced teas.

This is quite sweet on its own so if you’re one who sweetens the pitcher … you might want to taste this one first. It’s good unsweetened!

Please check out Frank’s Indiegogo campaign: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/southern-boy-teas-organic-flavored-iced-teas/x/4481332

Sipdown (129)!

I’ve tried dozens of 52Teas blend, but this is actually my first tea from the Southern Boy line. I’ve never purchased a SBT blend for a couple reasons; I’d never want two quarts of the same tea around especially if I’m the only one drinking it, overall I like hot tea better, and I just prefer cold brewing over making iced tea.

But, I recieved this one from, presumably, VariaTEA and since she was nice enough to send it I’ll certainly give it a fair chance. I waited to make it until my trip though; between me, my two siblings, and my Mom that’s definitely enough people to drink it – and my brother HATES hot tea but likes iced or cold brewed tea. Frank; he’s totally your target audience; doesn’t drink hot tea, has lots of disposable income since he’s 16 and working, and the conveniance of using a teabag totally appeals to him. We actually made this one together; it was fun getting him involved in the process.

I don’t know how I feel about this one; the jug of tea itself looks pretty unappetizing; it’s like a really, really murky/cloudy dark, dark brown or black colour and it’s leaving a black rim of scummy stuff around the top of the pitcher. Very unattractive looking.

But it doesn’t taste too bad; it’s got a thick mouthfeel and a very candy-like pear flavour to it. A little artificial, but not so bad. I taste a lot of the black tea; but I’m not so into it; I don’t like the black tea 52Teas uses very much; it has a really distinct taste to me that I’ve talked about in the past. It’s really quite starchy tasting today; and with so much of it? Nah; there’s no way I could go through a whole pitcher of this. The two smalls cups I had? Yeah, that was passible, but anymore and I think I’d be headed for Nope Mountain.

I hope the pretty overwhelming complaints about the SBT/52Teas black tea base is something that LiberTEAS will take seriously. It’s stopped me from enjoying several 52Teas blends that I’m sure I’d like otherwise.

But getting back to this one; I just overall feel a little torn. I like pear, a lot, and other than a subtle artificialness the pear in this is spot on. Candy like, but good. The rest? Well, let’s just see I don’t pity my Mom having to clean out the pitcher once they finish this one off. I just feel very “meh” towards this sweet starchy pear sludge.

Maybe if I were gonna try another SBT I’d pick one of the newer ones with a honeybush base. I don’t mind Frank’s honeybush that much, other than the occaisonal pepper flavour that pops up.

My weekend hasn’t quite gone as planned, so it looks like this will be my only sipdown. Hey, incremental progress is still progress.

I always break open the SB teabag and divide the leaf so I can make multiple cups over time instead of one big pitcher, trying the tea both hot and cold.

The dry leaf smells precisely like you would expect it to – chocolate and malty. Hot, the front of the sip is sweet chocolate. It quickly transitions into a nutty maltiness that reminds me of a lager. Not bad.

Cold, the nutty maltiness is even more prominent. The chocolate flavor seems to have almost evaporated. As with the marshmallow treat genmaicha, I find this one more pleasing hot than cold.

I got the silly idea to try this one carbonated. I would not recommend doing that. It ends up tasting way too malty, like chocolatey root beer, and not in a good way.

Backlog:

I like the cotton candy flavoring with the honeybush base. I’m not getting a strong ‘nutty’ or earthy flavor from the honeybush, just that lightly sweet, honeyed flavor and that melds nicely with the candy floss flavor. It tastes like fluffy, sweet cotton candy. A pitcher full of yum.

Backlog:

A tasty iced tea. I like that it’s sweet without being cloying.

While I would sip casually, this isn’t an obvious apple flavored tea. When I focus on the sip, I pick up on the apple notes, but as I sip casually, the apple doesn’t reach out and grab me.

That said, it’s really good and kept me sipping, not because I was looking for the apple but because I was really enjoying what I was tasting. The black tea seems to taste a bit smoother with the apple. It’s sweet but not too sweet and it has an invigorating quality without being bitter, astringent or too aggressive in flavor.

It’s a really nice iced tea.

Backlog:

Very tasty. The notes of lemonade are the strongest flavors, with strawberry accenting the lemonade and adding some nice sweetness to the tart lemon notes. The honeybush is sort of off in the background, adding a soft, nutty flavor but not a strong one.

Very refreshing.

Backlog:

A really tasty iced tea. I also enjoyed the 52teas version. I like the way the honeybush works with the flavors because that soft honey note really adds a pleasant dimension to the flavors of pineapple, coconut and that hint of rum. There’s just the slightest note of nutty flavor and the delightful honey note that really works with the flavors.

Very refreshing.

Backlog:

I must confess that I wasn’t too sure about this tea when it was added to the SBT lineup. You know how much I love chocolate and chocolate teas, but I’m always just a wee bit … leery of a chocolate iced tea.

But this is yum. It tastes like the name suggests: I taste chocolate and cherry and I taste black tea.

The chocolate is a little on the light side, but for an iced tea it works. I think that if the chocolate notes were stronger, it wouldn’t be as refreshing, it would be more like something I’d want to drink hot.

The cherry is a sweet flavor but it doesn’t taste cough syrup-y to me. It’s pleasant.

A tasty iced tea.

Backlog:

A really tasty iced tea. The flavor is very distinct. I like that as I drink this, I know that it is Apple Cider green tea – there’s no mistaking it. I am not trying to search out flavors. I taste the apple and the gently warm spice. It’s yummy.

And even though I taste the apple and spice clearly, the green tea isn’t obscured. It’s sweet and a little buttery. A very yummy tea.

I’ve had this as both a hot-brewed tea (I like that with the green tea pouches – and the white tea pouches – these can be resteeped with no real loss in flavor) and a cold brewed tea. I like it best cold-brewed, so I would cold-brew the new pouch, and then save it to resteep (hot brewed) when you finish off the first half-gallon.

This is another one that just shocked me with its accuracy in flavor. I cold steeped, as I prefer my black iced teas that way, and for a few minutes I was able to forget the blistering cold and pretend like I was 10 years old at a pool party in July.

I love Cotton Candy.

That says it all.

Backlog:

Yeah, I still get a little weirded out by the idea of peanut flavored (and peanut butter flavored) teas. But this is good. I really like the way the nutty flavors of the peanut work with the honeybush. And the caramel adds a really lovely sweetness to the whole thing.

I really liked this one. It’s one of my favorites of the honeybush teas that SBT has created thus far.

By the way, Frank is looking to go really big with SBT. He’s got a new Kickstarter campaign: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2045829949/southern-boy-teas-going-for-broke

Backlog:

Really? I’m the first to review this tea?

OK.

It’s a tasty iced tea. I tasted a little more honeybush than I did caramel or apple flavors, but I didn’t mind that. I liked the way the nutty, honey-sweet flavors melded with the notes of caramel and apple. It made a pleasant iced tea. It isn’t my favorite from SBT but I liked it.

It is downright creepy how accurate the cotton candy flavor is. The tea is strong, and it isn’t overwhelmed by the cotton candy, but the cotton candy is equally present. I cold steeped this and enjoyed it very much.

Backlog:

I’ve noticed that over the past year or so, my iced tea consumption has increased significantly. I used to only drink iced tea during the hottest months of the year, and when it wasn’t the hottest months of the year, the iced tea pitcher got stashed back into the cupboard. But now, I keep a pitcher of iced tea in the fridge at all times. I like having something cold to drink in the fridge and since I don’t drink soda, that’s out. I drink water but I sometimes want something other than water and when that happens, I pull out the iced tea pitcher and enjoy a glass of iced tea.

And usually, it’s a SBT tea that I’m drinking because I love the convenience of the large tea sachet. It makes it easy to brew and especially to cold brew. I usually prefer loose leaf but when it comes to iced tea, I find myself wanting more convenience.

All that said … this isn’t my favorite green tea offering from SBT. But it IS tasty. With my first glass, I had trouble identifying flavors until I reached the end of the glass. Then I poured myself a second glass and I could really taste the strawberry and kiwi. The strawberry is more prominent than the kiwi and the green tea is soft and buttery.

Tasty and refreshing.