Tiesta Tea

Tea pop to go with my dumpling dinner while I take a study break and watch this week’s Grey’s Anatomy. Everything is nice. Mostly because everything has nothing to do with Trust Law and I need this break from Trust Law.

I took a page out of DAVIDsTEAs book and made this as a cold brew concentrate and then topped it with lemonade. It made for a rich and juicy fruit tea…juice, basically. The lemonade comes through loud and clear but the mango adds a sweetness while orange and strawberry definitely come through as well. The pineapple blends with the bit of sour from them lemonade. All in all, this was a successful experiment…unlike the Fig Raspberry Lemon Jam disaster of earlier. I probably won’t rate this until I try it plain but this is one tasty tea when mixed with lemonade.

The dry tea looks and smells so nice! I love the look of black tea mixed with flower petals. The predominant scent is sweet pineapple with a tart undertone. Had high hopes for this one! Unforunately, the brewed tea was a bit disappointing. I’m going to give it another shot with a shorter steep time as I let it go the full 5 minutes of the 3-5 suggested. It’s quite tannic/bitter. And the tartness reminds me of teas that have too much hibiscus but there isn’t any here. I also think this would probably be better as an iced tea. For me, I t’s all around kind of weird when hot. So I’ll give it another shot with that method and hopefully it will improve, especially since I bought the 4 oz tin!

I think the chamomile flowers sifted to the top and the other stuff settled at the bottom, so most of the way through the little bag, all I tasted in the brewed tea was chamomile. This is a good flavor combination but was too bland. I like the Celestial Seasonings Lemon Lavender Lane better.

The first time I tried this chai, it was a bit lackluster. It definitely needed no less than the suggested 1.5 tsp per 8 oz and probably closer to the high end of the steeping range. I tried it again as a latte using double the suggested amount of tea (so 3 tsp per 8 oz) and a 4 minute steep and it was much better. It has a good amount of spice and was perfectly enhanced by a bit of cinnamon sprinkled over the top. The scent of the tea in the package was heavy on cloves, but that flavor was mellowed out in drinking. The caffeine kick was perfect for a Monday morning, too.

This tea reminds me a lot of Sleepy Time tea from Celestial Seasonings. It is I nice tea to drink just before bed. I usually don’t like ginger (unless it’s in chai), but the ginger in this tea is pretty mild.

I absolutely love this tisane. It has a refreshing fruity taste with just a hint of savory eucalyptus that gives is an enjoyable complexity. I like to drink this tea iced with a splash of lemonade.

This is a nice, refreshing, fruity green tea. It doesn’t taste like the cereal, but I think it is better because it has a fresh, natural taste to it. I do not like the “slenderize” labeling, because I think that might confuse consumers into believing that this is like the “skinny teas” that you see all over Instagram. This is much better than that. I drink it for the flavor, and not for the supposed weight-loss benefits.

Absolutly excellent and delicious every time. It makes a great naturally sweetened iced tea. Also, this is one of the only fruity herbals that is good hot (yay for no hibiscus!)

Thank you to Starfevre for the sample. I enjoyed this as my first cup of the day. I brewed it hot, but not boiling/super hot because I didn’t want to risk it becoming too acidic. Luckily, this heball has no hibiscus, rosehips, or citric acid. This blend is well balanced between sweet apple and cherry, bright fresh kiwi fruit, and a nice ginger and raisin dried fruit flavour. I will be coldbrewing it next, but I think I will like this brewed hot or cold. My only problem is that I get more strawberry than cherry.

sample from VariaTEA.. this one was a decent sort of tea. It was a little on the spicy side so not sure if it’s because i brewed it normally compared to VariaTEA or that i was a wimp on the weekend but it was fairly tasty. Got the sense of pumpkin out of this as well as cocoa…and clearly chili. my only complaint was that there was an oily thing going on with the brew.

Sipdown (345)

Before I left for school in 2018, my friend was very nice and bought me a very pretty wooden box for storing teas. Unfortunately the box had been divided because it was meant for storing tea bags. I have had it on display in my apartment but have not been using it and last night I decided to change that. I took a hammer to the dividers and pulled out all the nails and then, since it wasn’t exactly smooth inside, covered it with duct tape. Not the most elegant job but now I am using it as my sipdown box, storing all the teas with on serving left in it.

This is one of the teas from the box. I have had the single serving for a while but it kept getting lost in my stash…until today. It’s a nice tea, always has been. It’s not spicy but the chili adds another level that stops this from being just another sweet cocoa tea. The chocolate comes through, as does sweetness from the pumpkin and the chili is the perfect foil to those flavors.

Following my baking extravaganza from last Sunday, I am experimenting with the little bit of sweetened condensed milk left over. Earlier I made a iced latte with it and DAVIDsTEA’s Pumpkin Chai. It was good but I thought more spice and a hot tea would be better.

I grabbed this and brewed it normally and just added the condensed milk. Then I topped it with whipped cream which almost instantly melted. The end result is…not good. At all. It got dumped. It’s like drinking sugar water with a little spice at the back of your throat. Blech.

No curdling after a cold brew in chocolate milk! I’d call that a success. Also given this is essentially a chai, I’d say it was a good call to steep this this way. The chocolate milk is sweet and on top of that there is a a distinctive pumpkin sweetness that weirdly works with the more chocolatey flavors. Cinnamon, ginger and clove are also not to be missed here. I do wish there was more of a kick given the actual chili peppers in this but that may be for the best in the case of this chocolate milk cold brew. All in all I’m happy with it but will wait to try it plain in order to rate it.

Super tart cuppa from last night; far too much of an acidified apple taste to be enjoyable. I was feeling tired anyway, so I just didn’t bother finishing the mug. Anti climatic tea to be ending the day on…

Had a coworker make this one for me iced, but we just let it steep for like half an hour.

I think a longer steep time was really beneficial for this one because it just drew out so much extra flavour – it was sweet and robust with these mega juicy apple notes, sweet but a little tart lime undertones and then some actual cooling/crisp and distinct mint notes in the finish. That’s right guys, the mint finally came through!!! Ah!

Also, I feel like I haven’t gushed enough lately about how much I love and appreciate working something that’s not just tea related but with coworkers who can, for the most part, get on my level when it comes to my raving ‘tea talk’. It’s also really nice to be able to say “Jessica, can you make me a cup of INSERT TEA HERE” and for them to actually be able to make the tea, and make it well! I love my coworkers.

Tasted like fresh squeezed lime juice, with granny smith apple undertones. I don’t know how they did it, but I felt like I got the distinct taste of the apple skins as well. Again not as much mint as you’d expect from a mojito but it was present in the finish just slightly following the wave of acidity from the lime/apple combo.

It’s kind of a weird profile, and I don’t hate it – in fact I think the lime and mint is totally growing on me, but it’s definitely not something I’d say is ideal for hot tea which is how I drank this cup.

Cold Brew!

I do think I enjoyed this one a little bit more as a cold brew – the flavours seemed a bit juicier and the finish was very crisp/clean. I got a lot of apple, again, but also quite a strong presence of lime and hints of lemon as well. However, once again I just did not taste the peppermint in the blend apart from the part it likely played in terms of that really clean/crisp finish. What is a Mojito without mint!?

Maybe this is a good candidate for some peppermint agave experimentation…

So, a fancy ass coffee shop recently opened up near me downtown and a coworker let me know that they also carried a selection of Tiesta Teas – I figured I’d go take a peak and see if anything jumped out to me.

Honestly though? The majority of the selection was pretty boring. You know a lot of standards/classics in terms of flavour: A straight green, a chai, a jasmine scented tea, a generic orange flavoured tisane…

I did want to grab something though, and I ended up opting for this one. I thought it seemed like the most original/inventive of the flavour options they had – and I thought it might be a nice addition to my cupboard. I have had different Mojito inspired teas before so there’s definitely a mental comparison between those blends and this one, but why not give it a shot? I don’t hate Mojitos in general, so this could be fun!

Now, I’m pretty sure the sweet spot with this one is gonna be as an iced tea, but the first way that I tried it was hot despite that belief. It smelled very strongly of apple both as dry leaf and while it was steeping; and to be fair there are a lot of very large apple chunks in the blend. Like, very distinct sliced apple segments.

Flavour wise, not surprisingly, it was also very heavy on the apple notes. Now, that’s not a bad thing – but considering apple isn’t one of the main flavours in a Mojito I found myself craving more of those sort of notes. The lime was present though; it sort of transitioned out of the tartness of the apple top notes and then become part of a coupling of apple and lime notes in the body. I didn’t taste any mint though, which was really disappointing to me. I mean, what is a mojito without mint!?

Overall, I didn’t hate this – but I did find it pretty disappointing in terms of flavour profile compared to what I’d expect from a Mojito inspired blend.

Pleasant but pretty generic. I definitely prefer the lychee black from the Asian market.

The floral notes came out for me this time, in addition to the citrus. The finely ground rooibos planted it all nicely. Quite enjoyed it. Raising my rating to reflect this newfound joyfulness in the cup.

To me, this tastes like Red Rose tea, but it’s a rooibos. It’s ok. It might benefit from additives, ie. milk and sweetener.