Tea Forte

After a long day at work, some studying, and receiving some good news. I felt it was about time to wind down. I am still trying to decide if I should keep this one in stock after my Tea Forte Single Steeps are gone. There are just so many options out there! How does one choose which teas get to call their cupboard home? I’m also beginning to realize that I may need more than one tea ball. This one barely fits the Single Steeps in it!

In my quest for a loose leaf chamomile I have found Chamomile Citron from Tea Forte. As I sit at my table studying, I have decided that I personally like this better than Tranquil Dream from Teavana, which was one of my first loose leaf purchases. I have passed that onto a close friend that I am getting into tea :). Until I find a better one, I will continue to drink this on nights I know I am going to have trouble sleeping.

Needed a little pick me up to get through studying tonight. I turned to this one, it’s steeping right now. My hopes is that I enjoy it as much as I did the other night so I can order more. I am currently working through a sampler of single steeps from Tea Forte.

I’m a little confused with the prep on this tea. It is green but the instructions say to brew it at boiling for three minutes. I ended up doing 175 in fear of burning this tea. I do get an almond cherry which is nice, but it does seem to lack some depth. I get the rooibos dry mouth at the end. It is not bad. It is missing something to make it an awesome tea, but I couldn’t tell you what it is.

I am so so so behind on tasting notes! I haven’t logged one forever! I hate to waste the energy on this one! It’s just meh… I can’t remember if I have done one on this tea yet or not but tonight I am not impressed with it. I have been super busy tonight trying to get an assignment done that had to be turned by midnight and then work kept calling, I decided once I finally got it finished to sit down and relax with a cup of something I hadn’t had in a while. Now I remember why lol I think I’m going to dump this as get something else…. It’s not horrible but it’s definitely not the best I have ever had. I have been drinking a ton of Butiki teas and I think now my taste buds are spoiled!

Backlog:

Not a bad Lapsang Souchong. The flavor is robust and smoky, but I didn’t feel overwhelmed by the smoky notes. A really nice nutty tone to this, with a delicious caramel-y low note.

Sweet, toasty and nice. This would be a good choice for those who find themselves a bit intimidated by the smoke level of most Lapsang Souchong teas … this one seems a little less aggressive.

I cold steeped this, and it tastes like bitter, hibiscusy soap. :(

Probably would have been better if I had 1) waited till my smell/taste is back to normal, 2) hot steeped it like you’re supposed to.

Oh well.

Great Canadian Travelling Tea Box

1.5 tsp + sweetener

Given the less than favorable reviews, I was expecting this to be kind of gross, but I quite like it. Not to keep the bag or to run out and purchase a tin of my own, but it’s pleasant. The coconut has a really nice mouthfeel though I could do without the lychee part. I’m tempted to try some of the Tea Forte Coconut teas now. Pretty reasonably priced too!

I had this with dinner at a restaurant the other day and really loved it. The citrus is bright, the mint is strong, and it’s just super tasty all around. It actually went quite nicely with a savory meal. Definitely something I would drink again.

1.5 tbsp for 375 ml of water

As an herbal infusion, this is very plain-tasting to me. The licorice certainly does add a nice element of interest. I am not a fan of lemon-grass as a feature ingredient as I don’t like the aftertaste. I like the ginger in this one- adds a good level of spice that I can actually feel. The resulting brew has a bit of a brothy thickness to it. I can hardly taste any mint. A stronger mint flavour would definitely be invited- I think it would compliment the profile quite nicely.

Another from the GCTTB

I’m really liking this one. Nice fruity, vanilla rooibos. The rooibos is not in your face, it’s sitting well in the background. This isn’t fake like the other Tea Forte I was drinking earlier. Nice juicy fruity – well done. Happy to be drinking this tonight.

Probably my favorite green ever. So smooth with a slight nuttiness. Excellent with a tiny bit of sugar.

I took some of this from the GCTTB
It’s fruity and a little coconut. Is it really lychee – I’m not sure, sort of – shrug. It’s ok – not bad, I’m happy with it. THEN I left it for a bit – and when I came back it had cooled quite a bit. EEEEwwwwwww now its fake, chemical, a bit bitter, with a touch of coconut.
Best advice I can give – DRINK IT HOT!!!!

Tea #2 from Another Traveling Tea Box?!?!?!

This was the first time I had a chance to checkout one of this company’s pyramid-shaped tea bags, with the wire leaf at the top. It’s adorable, and did a nice job twining around the lip of my cup for easy removal later. The tea itself was brisk and tasty – my brain wasn’t quite up to par on Friday morning, so the intense jolt of caffeine was exactly what I needed!

Perhaps white tea is best brewed from big billowy leaves covered with white fuzz? Somehow filter bag whites, including this flavored blend from Tea Forte, always start tasting indistinguishable from grocery store greens. This is okay, but the ginger is quite light and polite. My preference is for a bolder ginger bite.

Another fruity blend from Tea Forte, this one has a white tea base. To be honest, in fruity blends, I find white tea to be pretty much the culinary analogue to tofu. I rarely ever taste the white tea under the fruit essences, and White Ginger Pear is no exception to the rule.

I have a box of the filter bags. The brew is golden-peach colored, and the flavor is fruity in a sort of vague way. I definitely would not have identified pear in a blind test. There is an accent of light ginger here as well, but it is very light. A pleasant cup.

I am really surprised by the low rating of this tea because I find it delicious and I’m going to steal the other two bags left in the Great Canadian Travelling Tea Box! It is basically a coconut tea with hints of chai spices, and I really mean hints, you almost have to look for them to notice them at all, and I kind of like that. I can’t attest to there being any sort of creaminess because I added a ton of cream to this.
I love chai flavour; I love tazo and Oregon chai lattes and chai flavoured baked goods. I had these chai flavoured mints one time that were the best thing ever and I swear I bought every tin this café had over a 6 month period of time and then they were out of my life forever. BUT, I don’t like chai tea, crazy, I know! So it’s a good thing to me that the chai is so light in this one. Other people speak of a bitterness, which I am not getting at all, maybe I drowned it out with all the cream and agave I put in this.

I was really worried about whether or not I would like this because it had such a low score on here and some of the reviews were not very favorable, but I decided to try it because it had my beloved coconut in it. This is a lot different than the other coconut teas I have tried so far, more floral and not as coconutty but still very unique. I like it but I don’t love it, only bc I like to be hit in the face with coconut and this is more subtle. It is a good tea though, and while I will enjoy what I have of it, I don’t know that I would re-order.

Caveat: this tasting note refers to the filterbag.

I usually don’t add adulterants to green tea. In fact, I never do! But I’m always willing to try a new blend, so here I am drinking Tea Forte Green Mango Peach, a box of which I threw into my shopping cart amidst other items during my first and only visit to this company’s website.

I am pleasantly surprised. The liquor is colored pure gold with a hazy shimmer. The taste is quite complex, and looking at the ingredients list, that makes sense:

green tea, peppermint leaves, honeybush, peach flavor, ginger root, and mango flavor

Apparently these are all natural and mostly organic ingredients, so that’s already reassuring. I was nearly sure that I was tasting and smelling coconut in this blend, but it is nowhere listed, so it must be an illusion caused by the mingling of the mango and the honeybush? Not sure.

What matters, in the end, is that this smells and tastes pretty good. Smooth with no bitterness, somewhat fruity, not very minty, quite likeable, and probably perfect for people who are not hard-core au naturel green tea drinkers.

I love this tea. This is probably the first tea my sister had me drink when she started to becoming obsessed (see jump62359, she’s here!). Anyway, this tea is years old and it probably isn’t as strong as it should be but I still love it. I just finished the last of my sample and I am pretty upset about it. Does Tea Forte still make this? If they do, I gotta stock up! LOVE IT.

Ohmygosh, how have I not had this tea before? My amazing sister Kyra (she has a steepster too, idk how to link people here) gave me a little tea sampler and this was part of it. Holycrap this is the best tea ever! It’s sweet and delightfully delicious. It almost has a hint of mint but I can’t tell. it’s so good. I can’t even get over it. I’m making myself another cup.

A surprising sipdown! And a happy one at that :)
Nice pepperminty flavour with hints of lemon loveliness :) Sad to see it go, but happy it’s one less tea in my cupboard. Not to mention one more tin to store a sample in!

//end tasting note

Pointless life update:
DONE WITH FINANCE. I’M SO HAPPY.
Starting my Anthro paper right now. I’ve already mapped the coordinates, and organized our data. Now I just have to do the written portion of it! Pretty much she got animal remains (not necessarily human, but like bits of horse, dog and pig) and scattered them throughout the quad. We had to map it with a compass and our map has to be good enough to like recreate the scene. Dang.
But my forensic anthropology professor is WAY COOL. She said that this is a chance for creativity. Some people say the person got attacked by ninjas or zombies and whatnot. Just as long as we can explain how that person’s remains got scattered, we’re good!
I’ve decided that it’s going to be Doomsday round 2 with Daleks and Cybermen. They both attacked my university and everyone got evacuated to the Conference center (since that’s the direction of travel), but there was this one lone student that wasn’t fast enough. A Dalek caught up to him and did the suction cup thing and sucked the life out of him and enjoyed it a bit too much, hence the burnt bone fragments. Then a Cyberman got hold of the student and tore him to pieces as they marched over to the Conference center, hence all scatter throughout the quad. Oh this is going to be great :)