Teapigs

I don’t love the rooibos that Teapigs uses as much as other brands. I’m drinking this one cold, and it’s a bit metallic and plain. I really wouldn’t call this caramel at all. It’s just a simple, not that flavorful rooibos.

This is the first tea in a long time that I wasn’t able to finish. Shan’t rate it, because probably if you like green tea and mint tea, you will like this.

Y’all, they turned V8 into a tea and I’m not sure how I feel about it. Also V8 has a tomato base and there’s no tomato in this tea so basically this blend is sorcery. There’s a bit of tartness from the hibiscus (whyyyy), but it’s not overwhelming. I dunno, it’s just all a bit confusing.

Oh, gosh. The sachet doesn’t smell like anything much. While steeping, all I could smell was peppermint. While drinking, all I could taste was liquorice. This amused me greatly but my tastebuds were in vehement disagreement.

I don’t know if it does this to you, but liquorice has a tendency to coat my tongue and throat. This is a quality I appreciate in a cough syrup, but not in a tea. And then there’s the odd, fleeting, zap of sweetness. Which feels kind of sweet, but kind of completely different from sweet.

It is true to what it is, but what it is is not for me.

This is really the best kind of tea. It has only four, natural ingredients. It’s naturally caffeine-free. Since it’s herbal, it’s very forgiving in terms of steep time. The flavours are fantastically well balanced and needn’t be improved with additives. As it cools, the ginger actually intensifies a bit, which is wonderful.

I really don’t know where the flavour is coming from, given that it’s just ginger, lemon, lemongrass, and liquorice, but somehow the sum of its parts tastes like a fruit cereal—Trix or Fruity Pebbles, I don’t remember which—sprinkled with ginger. It’s super weird, makes me laugh, and totally works.

I should mention also that you might be thinking, it’s lemon and ginger, how special can it be? But I’ve never tasted a lemon and ginger blend that tastes like this. It’s worth a try.

This blend is almost perfect. Honestly, it’s more like proper chai than their chai blend—and it’s herbal! The fragrance is wonderful. I may have singed my nostrils a bit by inhaling too much steam. I definitely have a thing for warm, spicy teas. I’m not a fan of the lemon and think it’d be better without it, but it’s still really lovely. I can’t pinpoint what it is, but there is a note in the fragrance that actually reminds me of my home in Bombay.

I prepared this very lightly sweetened. I wanted to add mylk but at this point I don’t trust teapigs blends to retain their flavour when I do, so I didn’t risk it. It was fine without. It’s so good. You know when something is really yummy, you savour its aftertaste by making sort of nyum-nyum motions with your mouth? I was doing that for like 15 minutes after drinking the last drop. I could easily drink it by the litre.

Oh, friends, we were SO close! I love rose and I love lychee, but tart hibiscus and I are very rarely on the same wavelength. This blend is light, refreshing, suuuuuper lovely, and would have been even lovelier without the hibiscus. Prepared plain: it’s unsweetened, but it doesn’t need sweetener. I had no idea rose and lychee made such a great combination. If I ever get more of this, I shall try sweetening it with a drop or two of Rooh Afza, which is a rose-flavoured syrup.

Huzzah! I’ve been trying to hard to like the teas included in teapigs’ 2020 advent calendar and I haven’t been having much luck. But this is a nice one! It’s very light, very mild. I get the kind of grassy, green notes, maybe a touch of rice, but not the super vegetal flavour that gives a lot of green tea its depth. I’m happy with this “shallow” one. =] Drink it quickly, though—I could feel bitterness creeping in as soon as it started to cool.

Ach, this should have been amazing. Earl Grey is one of my favourite blends. And don’t get me wrong—it is nice, it’s just weak, like every one of their bagged blends I’ve tried so far. I have my Earl Grey with (non-dairy) milk and (non-sugar) sweetener; by the time I added just a bit of each, the flavour was gone. I’m not a fan of the added lime (and miscellaneous “natural flavourings”), either. I’ll stick to the bergamot-heavy Earl Grey blends that can withstand a little milk ‘n’ sugar.

The hibiscus is strong in this one. And there’s another flavour I can’t identify. Smells and tastes bad. Blech.

Oh, goodness. I’ve had chamomile tea before, but always a blend, never pure chamomile. This smells and tastes just awful. Not flowery, not with a hint of natural sweetness (as implied), just kind of flat. If this is how pure chamomile smells and tastes, I need to stay away and stick to blends.

I’m so irritated. The dancing figure on the packet, “bolly good,” “chai tea,” “the colour and vibrancy of India in a cup”—all of it. At least the ingredients are pretty close to proper chai, except for the vanilla. Prepared with (non-dairy) milk and a non-sugar sweetener, the blend is weak and needs way more ginger. I am engrumbled.

If you’ve ever had peach-mango juice or—even more similar—peach-mango water enhancer (those drops you put in your water to make it more palatable), this is just like that. It’s actually a little bit surprising to me that there are so many ingredients; all I taste is the peach-mango flavour mix. Anyway. I’ve never had a cold brew herbal tea sachet before and it’s really nice! It’s light and refreshing, as it should be, and the flavour is true enough that I wasn’t even tempted to add sweetener.

This is a pretty tasty blend. Nice combination of spices so nothing is super dominant. I get the cinnamon, ginger, and cardamom for sure. I’m enjoying it with some milk. I’d totally drink this one again!

This is a very chamomile-focused blend, with a tiny bit of tang at the back end. I’m not a fan of tart, so I prefer this kind of herbal blend without lemon-lime flavouring. It also tasted a bit … vegetal? to me, which was really surprising. Pleasant enough, just not outstanding.

teapigs 2020 advent calendar, day 2. Needs more flowers. =) Nice fragrance, but gets too bitter, too quickly. I would blame the preparation if I hadn’t been so careful about the water’s temperature and the steep time. I’d also be happy to give it another go—just in case I goofed—if they hadn’t included just the one tea temple in the box. =)

It’s always strange to me when I see a tasting note from like eight years ago on a tea made by a company of which I’ve only just heard. I had no idea teapigs had even been around that long. New to their blends, I ordered their 2020 advent calendar thing so I could give them a try. This was day 1.

Spiced winter is quite nice. Ingredient-wise, it’s nearly identical to RoT’s “chai” (spoiler alert: not chai), which I recently tasted—except this this has a red rooibos base, unlike RoT’s base of black tea. It turns out I like this better. But I adore red rooibos and could drink it plain all day, so it was all but guaranteed that I would like this blend. I’m just glad teapigs didn’t call it chai. =P

Again, though, my complaint is that the flavour is too weak. I’m beginning to think this may just be a consequence of buying bagged tea, but I could swear I’ve drunk bagged tea before that was both bold and flavourful.

I generally like to prepare my first cup of a new blend plain and the second cup with some form of non-dairy creamer and non-sugar sweetener. Sadly, teapigs saw fit to include only one tea bag (sorry, “tea temple”) in their advent calendar thing, so I took just a couple of sips of plain tea before adding oat milk and stevia. I feel like I liked it better sweetened and with milk, but I’m not super certain.

Just all right. Brewed in a glass mug using a full-leaf sachet at 205 °F for 4 minutes. No milk, sweetener, or lemon used.
Neither the Darjeeling base nor the bergamot came out particularly dominant. It actually smells almost like oregano, which is weird. The Darjeeling doesn’t taste bitter to me; all I can taste is raisins and grapes. Not sure that raisin and bergamot is my favorite flavor profile, especially when the tea overall is weak. I’ve definitely had better and more interesting EGs.
Meh.

Good morning, everyone!

The DAVIDsTEA matcha advent selection for today is a matcha-infused chocolate, but I’ve been enjoying my morning matcha and toast, so I pulled out another matcha to try! I had a single serve stick of this in my drawer and thought it was the perfect time to try it out. It’s funny that they call it “matcha latte” but there is no sweetener and no milk powder or anything like that. It’s just a mixture of matcha and cocoa powder. Sounds delish! Prepared it (mostly) according to their instructions, making a paste with warm water and then topping with warm milk.

Well, it’s certainly delicious. The matcha and cocoa go together so well, with the sweet grassiness and umami roasted seaweed and the slight toasty note of the cocoa powder. It’s decadent and chocolaty. I will say, I think in the future I would either do a mixture of water and milk or use two sachets, because since it’s only half matcha the milk is overpowering it just a little. But very scrumptious, I could see myself reordering this. It would also be interesting to try as a non-latte. Unfortunately it’s rather expensive, harrumph. I’ll have to try adding cocoa powder to my straight matchas!

On to the jam! Today it’s Strawberry-Verbena Spread which sounds highly interesting to me. I quite like it, though the verbena is reminding me more of mint than lemon. It’s surprisingly quite strong, holding its own against the sweet strawberry. It’s very different and I’m enjoying it a lot! I would love to try more jams with herbs in them in the future. :)

(today’s advent teas: https://www.instagram.com/p/CIbA7q0g6Fu/)

I bought at Wegman’s with high hopes based of my previous Gluhwein TeaPigs experience. I brewed this on a fall morning with great expectations. It was fine but not special. Both the chocolate and orange were underwhelming. I will try two tea bags in my next mug. L and S hated so much could not finish the mug.

Bought at Wegman’s Grocery. A terrific blend of warm spices great for anytime of day during the cool fall and cold winter months. The spices are almost chai but not slightly fruity. Delicious.