Tea Forte

Smells decent, looks okay. Steeped… ermahgerd… this is dessert in a cup. I get the hazelnut and the caramel, mostly the caramel. Tea is an aftertaste here, but that’s okay for what this is supposed to be. Little bit of orange but not a lot. The caramel is a fresh, buttery caramel taste, too. Add just a little splash of cream and wow does it feel like a dessert! I would not serve this with any food course at a tea party unless it was just a plain shortbread cookie. And then you’d leave the table feeling utterly decadent. As flavored teas go, this is off the charts.

And since I consider this a fundamentally unserious tea, I pulled out the frou-frou. :)
http://tinyurl.com/o3dmhk2

Part of a sample pack a friend gave me…

And I was actually pretty surprised! I liked it. Really fruity, with an amaretto flavour just like the liqueur. Om nom nom. I didn’t add anything to it last night, but I’m going to try it again with milk. I think it could be really tasty.

Im not a tea nerd, but I do like black tea, every day. My husband got me this tea loose leaf for my birthday, and ive been choking it down with a fake smile on my face ever since. It tastes like chemicals, or rancid oil, or something else unpalatable. The bag inside the tin is covered in orange coloured grease. Ive experimented with steeping times, tried fishing out the cornflowers, water temps. Its no good and not worth buying. In my opinion. Maybe you like horridly bitter flavours, or maybe this batch went bad. Im open to that, but im never going to purchace this overly expensive tea again.

Hmm. I’m not sure about this tea. I chose it this evening because it’s kiwi lime GINGER on the packaging. But I’m not smelling much ginger. Just an intense lime-fruitiness.

Oh, that is interesting. I wouldn’t say it’s the best rooibos, but it’s not terrible. It is definitely lime, but an unexpected lime. It’s not candy so much as it’s peels without much pith. There is some ginger, but instead of being spicy ginger, it lends a warmth to the lime.

It’s also fruity without being identifiable (by me) as kiwi.

So not bad, but not that spectacular either. I’m glad I had a chance to try this.

A friend of mine got me the herbal tea sampler as a bribe for something she didn’t need to bribe me for.

So of course I have to try them all!

This one smells pretty good. A little cherry-amaretto, along with the hibiscus.

Unfortunately the flavour is almost all hibiscus. I think this might do better as a cold brew.

Actually, it’s even doing better as it cools.

Not bad, but not something I’d seek out.

I like this blend more than most of Tea Forte’s Noir line. The fruit flavors are nice and subtle, but there’s a strange aftertaste I can’t quite place.

This is one of my favorite teas. For many the strong cinnamon taste is off putting, but it seems I like cinnamon in my tea. I wouldn’t drink this tea at dinner as the taste would overpower the food, but I like it at breakfast.

A mild Earl Grey (although I might have underbrewed a bit), not as bitter as some. The bergemot flavor is subtle at first but becomes more apparent after the tea cools slightly. The “single steeps” packet had whole cornflowers mixed in which I’ve never seen before. Usually they’re just bits of petals. The serving size was also quite generous and I only needed half for my mug.

Is this a great tea? I don’t really know – Earl Greys depend so much on brewing time, mood, etc that I can’t really rank them without a direct comparison, which I’ve never actually done. But I’ll certainly be bringing a packets of this to the office for morning tea emergencies.

(60 = not bad but not special.)

Decent breakfast blend, nice flavor combination, but doesn’t really stand out from any of the other dozens of “decent” black teas out there.

Came as part of a “single steeps” variety set. I only needed half the pouch, though. Short brew so it was mild and not bitter.

This happens to be a green tea that I love! I’ve tried this before, and prefer the loose leaf variety. This is a nicely flavored green tea that tastes like cherries (I’ve never actually had the dessert) and almonds. It’s a nice pick me up dessert like tea that you can have any time of day. I like to drink my teas throughout the day, especially after meals.

The flavor is not overpowering but perfect. I only use agave nectar in my teas to sweeten.

Guesstimating that steeping time. I’m not feeling particularly nitpicky this time.

This is probably one of the first teas I had ever tried by Tea Forte, a tea bag a couple of years ago that I was given as a gift. I enjoyed it muchly, and bought more tea. _

This version is the loose leaf one, that I’ve had from time to time. I’m not really smelling anything right now, but there is a layer of… something on top of the tea – probably loose tea dust that got out of the ball and floated to the top. Doesn’t bother me, really, but that might bother others? Don’t know.

Anyway, this is another one of my happy white teas. (Granted, I will probably enjoy any tea where I can taste coconut.) Albeit, not quite as happy as my Teavana Ayurvedic Chai, but still pretty happy. I get a very smoothly blended coconut vanilla flavor that’s sweet, but not overly so.

Also, as white tea usually, I love how my fatigue-fogged brain usually turns on, like a flipped light switch, when I drink it. Yes, I know this isn’t exactly uncommon (why hello, caffeine!), but I felt like commenting on it, since white tea seems to give me the perfect caffeine boost in early evening times.

Used the tea bag version of this from the sampler I was given.

I’m smelling black tea and bergamot. :)

The taste is pretty much black tea, without much spice from the bergamot. This isn’t bad, but it’s nothing special. I don’t know if it’s the brand, or the tea bag vs. loose tea (I do tend to like the teabags themselves), but I much prefer the Star Trek Earl Grey from ThinkGeek (maybe it’s the fact that it has lavender in it, though I’ve been told that makes it a Lady Grey. Or the fact that I can see the lavender and bergamot flowers in it).

I tasted the pyramid version.
I had only ever had loose leaf lemongrass ginger tea before I tasted Tea Forte’s pyramid version.
Both lemongrass and ginger in Tea Forte’s version tasted flat. It tasted like it had been sitting in the cupboard for some time.
Disappointing.

I like this one for the summer. Very refreshing.

I drink this tea whenever I crave a black currant juice drink, just to avoid all that unhealthy sugar.
Very nice alternative. I like.

To all the nice people in the Steepster community:
Please, find some real sencha by a Japanese tea house or even just an Asian tea house, and taste that.
The so called ‘sencha’ from Tea Forte was not sencha.
Once you taste the real thing, you will never go back to Tea Forte for their sencha.
Trust me.

For bagged Earl Grey, I think it tasted pretty good, although it is a rather expensive teabag.
I like my Earl Grey tea bold, so I don’t mind Assam in the blend. I like a pungent bergamot taste in my Earl Grey too. So this is totally my cup of tea. Pun intended ;P

This tea left me feeling apathetic. The scent was off putting due to the whiff of cough syrup I got upon brewing. But I digress,the tea just tastes like black tea with a scant trace of cherry, vanilla and licorice. If I had done a blind taste test, the only way I could detect the flavors would be through the scent, not the flavor.

I don’t know if it’s the assortment set that I got, but I don’t feel like Tea Forte is usually this bad when it’s served at a restaurant.

I took a sip of the brewed tea straight first and it was awful. I thought it tasted like sweet dirt. I then added milk per the instructions and it was tolerable, but not enjoyable. Definitely will not be buying this assortment set again!

Steepster rating is after adding sugar and milk. Note that Tea Forte recommends this tea with milk.

I picked up a Tea Forte black roasted teas assortment box awhile ago and now I’m just trying to finish it off. The Chocolate Rose is not so great without milk and sugar (I wouldn’t rate it above a 33).

After 5 minutes of steeping (maximum recommended by tea forte), the flavor of chocolate isn’t really detectable nor is the rose.. it’s just a strange synthetic flavor.

I added sugar and milk to see if this would help and it did help a great deal. The tea became mild, and I was able to taste more of the chocolate, and something that tasted floral (although I wouldn’t go as far as to say I could identify it as rose).

Apparently this tea is orange flavoured – I’ll take their word for it as I can’t taste anything beyond the overpowering taste of cinnamon. It reminds me of that Harney & Sons Hot Cinnamon Spice, which I can’t say I’m really a fan of either. Luckily this tea came in an assorted sampler, so this is only like two sachets out of the entire box.

I got a bag of this tea from a recent hotel stay. Brought it home and brewed it up, so I could use my own water and kettle and give it a fair shot.

I’d say this tea is a standard black tea that you can buy in boxes of 50 bags at your local grocer. Nothing stands out about it. I’ll give it a score right down the middle, because it will do in a pinch, but there’s no way I would pay money for it.

Again this was a score from my $8 set from Chapter’s.

So far this is my second out of the box & I find they all have this similar off taste as they cool.
The initial taste is slightly rum like with a hint of raisin. There isn’t any biscotti taste, but it’s a decent tea. Not overly strong in flavour, ideally I would use twice the amount of leaves in these bags, but have been making smaller mugs to accommodate.
I wish that as these cooled that unpleasant taste wouldn’t be there, I’m not sure what’s causing it. I can’t finish the mugs because of it.