Tea Forte

Greetings from the middle of a sunbeam on my living room floor. I got up to second-steep this tea and Tazo snitched my chair for a nap. (Cats clearly run this house.)

Among the jing-tinklers and tum-tinglers under the tree was a really glamorous presentation-box sampler of Tea Forte sachets, and this one caught my eye first. The first steep was nicely deep and dark and raisiny, with some truly authentic biscotti flavor. There’s chamomile in here, too, says the label—I always like it balanced against black tea.

I’ve dispensed with 2/3 of the second round and have to hunt around a little harder for the raisin flavor, although it’s still viably present.

Hope you’ve found a sunbeam to bask in today, physically or otherwise. This dark, dreary world needs a lot more light. Merry Christmas.

This is so delicious. I totally get both peach and creme brulee from this. The flavoring is done so well. The black tea tastes a little old, but I got it from a tea box, so that may be the case. So yeah, I absolutely love the flavoring here, but the base isn’t great.

Now this is a fantastic rooibos. It’s one of those where you take a mouthful and go whoa. It’s not super almondy, but the bit that comes through really elevates the flavor as a whole. I’m so glad I had the opportunity to try this one. I would certainly buy some of this for myself.

This ended up more light and floral than I imagined, but the flavor is definitely enjoyable when it cools. It’s one that tastes a little different with each sip. I like the rooibos that Tea Forte uses. I see that it gets mixed reviews, but I’m definitely feeling more on the positive side about this one.

I brewed this and then left it in the fridge overnight. It turned out a bit murky from the mint. I guess I should have made the effort to drink it in the same day. The orange comes across quite sharp and cleanerish. I wish I had enough of this to try again with different brewing parameters because this doesn’t taste very pleasant, but maybe my methods aren’t doing it justice.

(Catching up on old tastings…)

This is from the Tea Forte “single steeps” sampler that my sister bought for me to bring me into loose leaf tea. It was the first one I tried and with a little sugar it was to die for. The rest of the flavours in the sampler went quickly downhill from there, but I did drink them in the order I expected to enjoy most.

Before joining Steepster I’d already tried each flavour once as the full package as suggested, but the only flavour that worked for me at full strength was the Strawberry Apple. Such a great taste. Was so disappointed when I learned it wasn’t sold on its own. That’s what made me start looking around for more teas and yea, I’ve made two tea orders since haha…

Anyway, this tea has smaller “leafy bits” than the other loose leaf teas I’ve tried. Smells kind of apple/citrusy when dry and right when the boiling water hits, it has a very strong apple cider type smell.

I steeped half a package this time for 5 minutes at boiling, just to see how it would taste at half strength. Would love to stretch these last two “singles” to four more cups instead of two because this tea’s just so delicious and it’s unlikely that I will buy this sampler again just for this one tea.

The tea once steeped turns out an amber colour and still has the apple cider smell to it, though not as strong with the loose tea removed. Again I added a bit of sugar (I couldn’t remember if I’d added sugar the first time I tried it, so I tasted it this time before without the sugar, and it definitely tastes better to me with the sugar.)

Not as absolutely amazing as last time, but it’s still a delicious light-tasting afternoon drink. I have no problem at all drinking this at half-strength. I can definitely taste both the apple and the strawberry quite strongly. Not really picking up the citrus taste that I was smelling in the dry tea though.

As half strength, I’d probably rate this tea 85. At full strength though, 95.

Updated cup count from 3 single steep packs: 2 (1.5 single steep packages left.)

Would I buy this again? If they sold it separately, in a heart beat. But I’m not going to buy a set of teas that most I don’t find that good, just to get more of this one.

Tea contains no Yuzu, and has a terrible strong grapefruit flavor. Wife lovingly bought me this for Xmas and I could not drink it at all due to my hatred of grapefruit.

As afternoon tea I took this one from their Single Steeps solution. I have it for ages, but it was small foil wrapping with loose leaf – I thought it will be still okay.

And it was – okay.

Expected some weird, bad spicy notes and alcohol, but apparently I did not noticed any of them. I experienced mostly cloves and another spices with chocolate notes. Yep, it was like chai hot chocolate but somehow mild. It was pretty nice. Maybe little notes of biscuits were there as well.

If I take into account that it is really old one (I really have no idea), it was still pretty nice.

Prepared grandpa, 300 ml glass cup; almost boiling water.

Arby Advent Day 13
I accidentally knocked this over in my fridge and spilled most of it, so I only have a few sips to review. I definitely get both the hibiscus and the berry. It’s pretty tart. The flavor isn’t that tasty for some reason. There’s just a weird third flavor in there that isn’t great. I don’t mind sour hibiscus blends – this one just isn’t done that well.

Good flavor without being overpowering with the turmeric or spices & herbs.

I feel like I should have liked this tea more than I did. Every word I would use to describe it is how I describe my favorite breakfast teas. And yet…. I don’t know, something just didn’t work for me with this tea. It was enjoyable, but it didn’t blow me away.

Sipdown (689)!

This is maybe my favourite of the sampler!? But it’s a hesitant maybe…

Started off ok; sweeter rooibos based chai with the generic cinnamon/ginger notes to it and a nice, strong vanilla element to the cup as well. Weirdly, it loosely gave me rootbeer float vibes at first between the cinnamon/mild spices and assertive vanilla flavour combined with the natural sweetness of the rooibos base. I left the teabag in while I drank though, and boy oh boy that was a mistake! It got sickly sweet, and the spices took on this unpleasant taste that was almost like body odour. But sweet body odour…

Barf.

Might be ok; but keep steep time short is my advice.

Sipdown (690)!

This one was really weird; it tasted so distinctly of raspberry and chocolate that I really did get the “Raspberry Ganache” imagery quite clearly but it achieved that in the most artificial way possible. Nothing about the tea felt natural, harmonious or balanced. 100% gave a “chocolate flavouring” impression over, well, “chocolate”. Accuracy can only get you so far if the quality of the flavouring is just shit.

Miss for me.

Sipdown (691)!

This tea was the entire reason I picked up this Tea Forte sampler; I was just so incredibly stoked about the possibility of a good Rum & Raisin profile – I don’t know why but I’ve been craving Rum & Raisin ice cream so much this summer…

Sadly I did not like the tea. To quickly summarize, it was a bit too much biscotti and not enough rum or raisin. Elaborating, though, it was just a sort of flat tasting black tea with more of a bready/baked goods type of note and a hint of cinnamon – with the barest possible hint of rum; no raisin. Also a little bit drying…

I think what I really wanted was more of a sweeter and creamier rum & raisin that truly matched the ice cream I was craving – and this just wasn’t that.

Sipdown (694)!

Picked up a small Tea Forte sampler from McNally Robinson while I was in Winnipeg – looks like it was a holiday sampler with different limited edition holiday flavours. Mostly I was just deeply curious about the Rum Raisin Biscotti flavour in the kit…

This was the first one I tried after getting home to Montreal; I had low expectations – “spiced plum” is a rather played out holiday tea flavour/offering and one that’s usually done pretty poorly; plum is a deeply hard flavour to do well. As expected, the infusion did not remind me of plum – but it was still a decently nice cup. Very much a marriage of sweet cinnamon and ginger, with a tart hibiscus-y “cooked fruit”/raisiny note. By far not the worst tea I’ve tried in this vein conceptually, but still has a generic quality to it.

I’m not a spiced fruit tea fan, so this one was kind of unlikely to be a favorite. I’d say it does taste like a mulled cider type of thing. The flavor is difficult to describe, but I found it sour and a bit unpleasant overall with a touch of spice. It’s difficult to get a plum flavor without the sourness. It tasted slightly better cold, but to my taste buds at least, this tea was a bit gross to drink. It took two days to drink because I was kind of grossed out by it. I hate having to say negative things about a tea! I’m never sure whether to leave a low score or no score at all in case personal tastes are interfering too much. The flavor for this one was pretty weird though.

Oh, I’m rather surprised by all the low ratings for this one.
Not sure why it ended up a bit bitter since I used my family’s temperature controlled kettle and only brewed it a few minutes. After it cooled completely, for some reason, my last few sips were free from bitterness. Weird. Anyway, this one is pretty good. It reminds me a lot of a Teavana tea I used to like, toasted nut brulee. But I feel this one is rather accurately named. The leaf has nice big raisins and flowers in it. The second steep is okay, but most of the flavor is gone except for the black tea. It’s difficult to point to specific flavors I taste in here – black tea, sweetness, and rum maybe, but I’d say it’s a fun desserty flavor that I wouldn’t mind having again occasionally.

My sister got me a Tea Forte sampler box for Christmas and this is the first tea out of it I’ve tried so far.

This tea is just okay. Possibly I was spoiled with my good black tea over the holiday but this one is just not as good and is making me wish I was drinking something else. There’s something almost grapey to it that I don’t like. I’m not a fan of Darjeelings after all. I will not be resteeping it.