Southern Boy Teas

For some reason this SBT was just calling my name. I guess I just thought it was so elaborate that I was excited to see how it would taste. Sipping on it now, I am getting pumpkin spice first and base second. Every now and then I think I catch a bit of the vanilla or chocolate but it is fleeting and might just be me tasting it because I think it should be there. I mean, this is good, but it does fall short in a few areas so I don’t think it will be one I get again. However, it is fun to try and I am happy I have the rest of the pitcher to enjoy for the next little while.

I’m pretty strict about the amount of caffeine my kids consume after school. They are both natural night owls, so giving them caffeine after noon is just asking for trouble. Since they are almost done with school (they still have a half day on Monday) and the first day of summer is tomorrow I decided to break out the SBT bag and let them choose a flavor. This eventually won out.

This tea does taste a lot like rainbow sherbet! It has a kind of mixed fruity sweetness and a creamy note that gives it a sherbet vibe. Both of my kids loved it immediately, and I have to say their mom downed her glass pretty quickly, too. Looks like this will be a reorder.

I made this tea according to the directions on the package and it was fabulous for work. It was so convenient. It did not need to be sweetened at all, but wasn’t sickly sweet. I got a lot of orange flavour in mine.

Another kickstarter iced tea down! It was OK. It had a lemon/lime taste but not strong enough to me to really like it much. There was something going on in the background that didn’t taste too good either, just thought I’d like it more I guess.

So… we’re finally getting enough sunshine to warm things up a bit around here.. YEah! But we are also starting to see mosquitos and bees. Saturday night we spent some time outside at a friends house and my son got a bunch of mosquito bites… they welt up on him and drive him crazy, poor kid. Then last night when he went to brush his teeth in the bathroom upstairs, a jellow jacket had somehow gotten trapped in the bathroom and stung his finger when he tried to brush it away from his neck. Good thing today is a day off from school or we would have one sleepy kid today! He is feeling better this morning… kept him dosed with Benadryl & Ibuprofen last night. I hope we are done with the bugs for awhile.. I’ve had enough already!

I decided that this was the next SBT I was going to try the last time I looked at making one. I’m still experimenting with steeping these to get the maximum flavor and quantity out of each bag. I’m still not sure about the best method, but felt better about this one, although I wish the flavoring was more intense.

Since I already had a big home made batch of spearmint iced tea in the fridge, I decided to make a half a batch of this. I evened out the amount of tea in the baggie it came in, cut it in half, and put half of it in a tea bag for loose leaf tea. I decided on cold steeping to start with and did so with a 1 quart Mason jar in the fridge all day. I then removed it and hot steeped the bag w/about 1 cup of hot water. The cold steeped batch looked much more like I would expect iced tea to look.. much darker and almost thicker looking. I decided to pour the two together to get the best of both.

I left it unsweetened and added some splenda to my cup and made one for my son. He laughed at the name every time I said it. I have to say that we both enjoyed the flavor of the tea, the banana was there but not overly so… I typically hate! artificial banana! This was drinkable for me. I actually would have preferred more of the flavor because it was only present on the initial sip or two and if I kept drinking I didn’t notice it much anymore until I took a break and came back to it. Next time I use the rest of this I will keep the hot and cold steeps separate to see if one is better than the other.

My son really liked this tea, but I think couldn’t get past the name of it. He drank some of it, but wouldn’t finish his cup. I think next time I’ll just tell him it’s tea and see how it goes. I’ll let him guess the flavor.. such a picky guy he is. He likes bananas but will rarely eat them, and likes banana candy. I told him he must be afraid he will fart bananas if he drinks all that was in his cup… he thinks I’m silly sometimes… Maybe he’s right. :)

I do have to say I was pleasantly surprised that I could tolerate this banana flavoring. I think maybe it worked for me because it wasn’t as intense as banana candies are, but I do still think it would be nice to be a bit stronger. I could taste the flavoring over the tea base, but not by a lot. Thanks so much MissB for sharing this one.. I never would have bought it to try for myself… and again, I am pleasantly surprised. I might have grabbed it to let my son try it at some point just due to the name. Now I know if it’s good enough to grab if we want something different or have some friends coming over that it might be fun to share with them.

I ordered this one a while ago, with three other SBT iced teas, but I’ve only just gotten around to pulling them out and trying one. I steeped it for the recommended amount of time, but beyond that, the instructions were very vague… So I’m not sure if it’s because I steeped it in too much water, or because I added too much water after the fact, or what. It was a bit weak. The flavor of vanilla cola was certainly present, and quite tasty, but I think the instructions need to be a bit more explicit? I don’t make iced tea that often, and so I’m not really used to the dynamics. My hubby’s usually the one who does it. I’ll go ahead and rate this one according to the flavoring, which was indeed quite good. :)

I am picky about Cola to begin with, as in very picky. If I ask for Coca Cola and am offered Pepsi, I drink water instead so I was not all that excited about this blend. However, my brother wanted it so it was added to the order. Sipping on it now, it is not as bad as I thought it might be. It definitely is reminiscent of cola but as to be expected it is flat and watered down, two things you never really want in a soda. As for the lime, it provides a bit of freshness to the cup that helps distract the flatness of the cup.

I’ll admit it: I suck at icing tea. It never tastes the way it should. Ever. Too much water, too much sugar, the wrong tea, something always goes wrong. When I saw this, I thought “perfect, that’s for me!”

I really didn’t read the description well because I thought it would be loose, but it is in fact a teabag. Since I don’t want to make full pitchers when I drink iced tea, I ripped the teabag appart and took out what I needed for 1 glass of iced tea and put it in my steeper.

The finished product is quite tasty! It does taste like cotton candy without tasting too artificial and the tea has that little bite at the end that I always love in iced tea. This is very good.

This is a good banana tea, not sure if I like bananas enough that I’d buy a lot of this but it goes on my ‘maybe I should throw one of these in my next order’ list. So much banana, clearly that I searched banana fart instead of monkey it was on my mind. I would like a fresh banana, so I could add it to my peanut butter jelly lunch tomorrow. None at home though, and I’m not leaving to get bananas at this hour.

Cold brewed this and it’s powerful. The taste and smell is totally spot on for me. So much so that I may have overdosed on it because it tasted so good :)

Yay! Tastes good. Oh my goodness, this is such a busy week. This is a good tasting tea because I could tell what it was even when I’d forgotten what it was, till I got home to check. I love my hydroflask, still cold iced tea even at the end of the day in the car in Hawaii. I went to help with the food/supply distribution for peoples still trying to get by after the ‘tropical storm’ after work today. Cannot believe how lucky we are to have power and water when so many still do not.

This is really good. I wouldn’t mind getting more next time I order tea. It really does taste like vanilla cola… Flat, but yeah really nice.

Huh, this one just didn’t work for me. Whether smell or taste, was not something I got along with… which kind of sucked since it was the only drink I had so I kept drinking it at work today haha. So it was horrible but just didn’t appeal to me. Bummer.

MirandaGou sent me this one. Thanks!

This is my first SBT. I made it according to directions. Well, I boiled 2 qts of water than allowed the tea bag to steep in said water for 3 minutes. It’s been sitting in the fridge the majority of the day and I just poured myself a mug with ice cubes.

I’m not generally enamoured with 52Teas, but Ive heard good things about the SBTs and I’m happy to say I’m enjoying this. The flavours aren’t in-your-face, but they complement each other well. The ginger is subtle and the honey a bit stronger but both are there, albeit subtle with the black tea base.

Now I have a pitcher of this in my fridge, but that’s one less envelope of tea in my swap-in box!

Edit: I just checked the tracking and my wellies are now sheduled for EARLY delivery!

Backlog:

I enjoyed the Very Big Hill Dew Honeybush so I was interested to see how this would compare. This makes a very tasty iced tea. I think that this does work better with a honeybush base than it does with a black tea base. The lemon-lime notes shine through in the iced tea version, but, I am getting less of the bubbly, effervescent taste that Frank captures so well in his “soda” inspired teas, and I felt like that flavor came through better with the honeybush version.

But this is still a very refreshing, tasty iced tea.

Been drinking this for 2 days as I recover from wisdom teeth extraction yesterday. No hot tea allowed, but I’ve been sucking down the gallon I made of this, and boy, is it good! I don’t like juice, and I just can’t manage to drink a lot of water, but this stuff has really been great to stay hydrated with!

I don’t know the last time I had iced tea, but I guarantee you it was from a mix and not real tea.

I’m getting my wisdom teeth out on Wednesday, and stocking up on really soft foods. I read that neither hot stuff (like hot tea) nor soda isn’t going to go over well, so I decided to make a pitcher of one of the iced teas to have on hand for when I want something to drink! I decided to make a pitcher of the Razzleberry.

I steeped the large teabag twice, and added enough water/ice to make a gallon of iced tea. I thought this was pretty good tea, and will definitely be refreshing as I recuperate. I have another pouch (I got pouches of iced tea as part of the Kickstarter campaign) of Razzleberry, but I’ll be wanting to try one of the other ones first! I’d buy this again.

My kickstarter iced teas finally came in! It feels like so long, I was going to cave and just order some from the website since it seems that’d be faster but here they have arrived! I picked this one out of all of them because – c’mon just look at the name… It sounds awesome, I would order it for dessert absolutely. Unfortunately maybe it just was not possible to live up that. It does taste really good but I’m not getting a whole lot that reminds me of a pumpkin pie crepe with vanilla bean ice cream. I think I’m getting mostly chocolate taste. There’s a little bit that could be the pumpkin and vanilla but if I didn’t know what it was meant to be I don’t know that I would have it figured out. Regardless it’s a tasty tea and I’m glad I got 2 bags of it and can resteep it one more time.

So, I’ve been really bad at reviewing tea lately because I’ve been crazy addicted to Dark Souls. And Fiance is horribly seductive with his offers of playing it co-op with me sometimes. (Bless him for helping me through the Anor Londo archers.)

It’s also almost felt like spring for us lately, so I’ve spent way more time outside. And then tomorrow and Friday are supposed to be a rain/snow mixture. Sigh.

I made an unsweetened pitcher of this, because I honestly think it’s sweet enough on it’s own. It’s a definite solid candy-like watermelon flavor. It’s also not so overwhelming that you feel like you’re chewing Bubble Yum (which I actually like, but know it’s not for everyone). This reminds me of a dialed back version of the Watermelon Mint from Republic of Tea.

Definitely another tasty tea!

Backlog:

I don’t drink a lot of alcohol, but, I have had a few JD and pepsi drinks in my past. When I was young and thought that drinking alcohol was the cool thing to do, JD and pepsi was my drink of choice. So, I was excited to try this Whiskey and Cola from SBT, if for no other reason than it was a drink that I felt I could adequately rate because I do have some history with it, even if the history is a bit distant.

The cola notes are definitely distinct in the fragrance of the dry leaf, with softer whisky notes. The same is true of the brewed tea … and the taste of the iced tea. I could certainly pick up on the cola notes right away, but the whisky was a little less obvious. After a few sips, I began to pick up on the whisky.

The black tea melds nicely with these other flavors. This is not my favorite SBT tea, but, I did enjoy it, and it would be one that I’d be willing to have now and again.

I’m really enjoying this SBT. The flavors aren’t as ‘in-your-face’ as some of the other SBT blends I’ve enjoyed, but they’re very good.

The ginger is quite subtle, so if you’re expecting something peppery or strong this isn’t the one for you, but the honey is a little bit stronger and adds almost a sweet thickness to the mouthfeel. I can almost imagine a little bit of syrupyness from it. Both flavors work together very well, and I’ll enjoy my pitcher of this.

Backlog:

I really like this blend from SBT. Of the teas that I’ve tried thus far that were created as flavor incentives during the kickstarter campaign … this one is definitely one of my favorites. I like the way the ginger comes through … it isn’t super peppery or strong, and the honey isn’t overwhelming either.

I like the way the two flavors come together in this blend, and that the black tea seems to be the primary focus. This is one I’d reorder.

We finished off the first steeping, mostly mixed with milk. It was pretty darn good that way! Right now I’ve got the whole pitcher (6cups worth) sitting here with me and I plan on drinking most of it throughout the evening lol. After the “green bean tea” fiasco I just want something cold and sweet and this certainly fits the bill.

I ordered a few of the SBT to try since the fiance (soon to be husband!!! OMG I’M GETTING MARRIED IN ONE DAY!!) and I both really like iced tea. There was a bit of an ordeal getting these. Our mail carrier didn’t deliver these because “no one was home” in order to receive the package. um, wait, we were home all day! We didn’t get the slip stating that the package wasn’t delivered though. I only found out because I checked the tracking knowing that it was supposed to arrive. ugh.

On to the tea though! I was really nervous to brew this up due to some of the “brewing mishap” reviews I’ve read regarding this tea series. I measured out the two quarts into my pitcher, and then transferred about 2 1/2 cups of that to a pot on the stove. Covering the pot I brought the water just to a boil, shut off the burner, added the bag of tea, and started my timer. Two minutes and 50 seconds later I fished out the bag, and poured the tea from the pot to my pitcher. Set in the fridge and wait until cold!

The dry tea had hints of a creaminess to it, but I wasn’t really getting anything else. Brewed up there is definitely a creamy vanilla scent going on. Taste-wise it’s an enjoyable base, smooth. I am just not getting coconut cream pie. I really really really wanted coconut cream pie. Added some home-made simple syrup to make it a sweet iced tea. Again really lovely, just not what I was expecting/hoping for.

ETA: Totally delish sweetened and with half and half! Still not getting a lot of coconut though. bummer!