Lemon Sherbet

The last tea to try from my monthly club package. I did intend to try using this as a morning tea but unfortunately this morning my stomach was too raw to drink tea. Still I could do with a kick of energy so perhaps it will make an equally good afternoon pick me up tea.

The blend looks green and herbal, lots of light green lemon verbena and only a light sprinkle of dark green tea leaves. All roughly chopped together. It smells strongly like lemon with a creamy yet sour undertone.

Once steeped the tea is gold in colour with a rich lemon verbena scent. Not as sour as expected, more creamy than sour.

Flavour is not as strong as it’s scent and if I’m completely honest I cannot taste anything sweet or sour enough to be considered sherbet like. It’s just missing something, perhaps a touch of sugar and hibiscus?

So sherbet it is not but it is a nice green tea and lemon verbena blend. Gentle, creamy and fresh tasting lemon with a wonderful citrus after taste. I love lermon verbena teas and this is a nice blend, not too strong nor too weak but a nice balance inbetween the two.

I my try this with a little sugar next time to see if any sherbet comes out in the flavour.

Finished last night with this tea, and what a sweet reward it was.

Lemon in tea goes medicinal so quickly, which is a shame because lemon is a lovely tea flavor. This tea, by contrast, was like drinking a lemon pastry or lemon drop. It felt like a bright lemon candy in a cup – which I suppose is what they were going for! My partner disagreed and said it felt like drinking a cough drop (I want whatever cough drops he’s finding now).

As an aside, would you believe that my box actually has printed on the label Lemon SherbeRt?

Bird & Blend Caffeine-Free Advent, Day 2

For the July sipdown prompt, “a tea flavored like your favorite ice cream.” I think most types of ice cream I’d say is my “favorite ice cream” but lately I’ve really been enjoying a lemon cheesecake one that is at my local grocery. I no longer have any lemon cheesecake teas, so I went for lemon + frozen-dessert-in-title. Prepared cold brew.

This is just a lemon-flavored green tea, so a pretty standard sort of tea. “Sherbet” is not really a word I’d use to describe it, as there is no vanilla/creamy sort of flavors, nor would I even call it “sorbet” as I’d expect a brighter and punchier lemon if that were the case. The lemon is a bit on the mellower side. Sometimes I feel the lemon flavor comes off a little cleaner-like, but other times it is very refreshing, so maybe it’s just a matter of what ends up in the scoop or how long I left it in the fridge before straining. Over all, it is pleasing enough, but not really anything special. It doesn’t hold a candle to, say, Sun and Cloud Mist by 52Teas, which has such a vibrant and pillowy lemon flavor. This is a much lighter and artificial lemon flavor.

Easy to sipdown, but not a tea I’d order again.

Sipdown! I am on fire today! (181/397)

This blend is light on the green tea, which if anything is a plus for me since I’m not a big fan, but it’s worth noting for anyone wanting to pick this up because they like green tea. It’s actually pretty accurate to the name, though, with some sourness alongside the herbal lemon which is reminiscent of sherbet, and a sweetness which I didn’t expect. I checked Bird & Blend’s website to see if there was any stevia added, but it’s not listed in the ingredients (though this blend is discontinued on the main site, it’s still available on the VIP site). I was actually planning to add some sugar to make it more reminiscent of the sweet, but there was no need to! Though I wasn’t blown away by this tea, I was pleasantly surprised, and I drank my cup down in a flash. It was just what I needed after an afternoon drinking rich black teas.

Thank you KittyLovesTea (who I don’t think uses Steepster any more, sadly) for sharing this with me.

Home – 8:30 PM

This was one I considered getting from Bird & Blend, but it didn’t quite make it into my order. Thankfully VariaTEA was kind enough to send me some in a swap! Now, I know from Bake Off that sherbet is an entirely different thing in the UK. Here in the States, it’s a sort of fruit-flavored ice cream. But in the UK, it’s actually a tart powder candy that is packaged in various ways (sort of like Pixy Stix, I imagine). The things you learn from watching Bake Off religiously! ;)

Anyway, this is a fairly plain lemon tea. It tastes more herbal than green to me because of the copious amount of lemon verbena in the mix. But I’m much happier with that than I would be with lemongrass! It also adds a nice tartness that makes it more interesting than just lemon-flavored tea.

It’s tasty and very enjoyable. I’m not sure I’d feel the need to stock it, since the lovely Yuzu from Lupicia fills the same sort of niche for me. But I’m glad to have tried it!

Made this as a teapop with strawberry Perrier. It mostly tastes of the strawberry Perrier up front witha lemon pop at the end. It’s alrigjt, albeit grassy at times.

I’m not really getting much sherbet at all from this. It tastes like a regular lemon green tea. The green tea has that common grassy taste to it, which isn’t unpleasant. It’s a nice enough tea, but pretty standard.

OH NO.

In a moment of weakness, I just ordered 3 new teas from Taiwan Tea Crafts. I’m supposed to be not buying any more tea, since I sort of accidentally ordered twice as much Bluebird as I’d planned to, due to a confused shopping basket. But never mind that. It’s jolly good stuff, I’m packing up some gingerbread chai to a friend as a little birthday gift (shh, don’t tell her) and I may well be foisting some fancy French teas on you guys, if anyone fancies helping me make a little room in my cupboard.

But that’s that, and this is what I’m drinking this dreary afternoon. I’d had my eye on this one for a while, as I like sweet lemony things and have far too little of it in my tea rotation. This one looks like there’s a lot of verbena and lemongrass and other lovely herbs going on, with a sprinkle of sweet little dark buds of green tea poking out here and there. This tells me it might be a good choice for evening drinking, without leaving me in that awkward state of wiredness where, in spite of being fatigued all day, I SUDDENLY WANT TO DO ALL THE THINGS and devote myself to doing a terrible sketch of Captain Phasma holding a stack of performance reviews.

(Seriously – I actually get paid to be an illustrator, and I just feel constantly in awe of how much faster and better literally everyone else is at drawing than me. It’s weird.)

But I digress. As for the flavour of the brew itself, it’s a pleasantly herby not-too-tart Meyer lemon sort of lemonyness, which I think I like taking brewed strong and with a spoonful of sugar to ramp up the sherbet part of the name. I think this one might have to become a fixture in my cupboard, for those times when only sweet lemon will do.

Sipdown (128)!

Thank you to Scheherazade for sending me a sample of this tea!

Personally speaking, this is one of those blends that I probably wouldn’t have chosen myself just because I’m not drawn to green blends normally and I think the pairing of citrus/lemon and green tea is a little played out, but the dry leaf smelled really strongly of sweet lemon juice or lemon candy, and I do like the simplicity of the tea so I was actually kind of excited regardless.

Because it is something I’ve kind of tried before, though, I wanted to do something a little different than usual – so I made this into a tea soda; while I wont take the time to explain my process of doing that (unless anyone would like me to) I will point out that the process uses sweetener though – and with a tea like this that’s already pre-sweetened due to the stevia in it a preparation method like this negates that aspect of the blend a little bit because when I tasted this tea I knew it would be sweet and expected that; theoretically with a more traditional tasting/preparation method I could have tasted the stevia and been more critical about it’s presence – I don’t typically like when my tea is sweetened for me; I want to have the choice to do that and pre-sweetened blends eliminate that choice.

I think the simplicity of the blend ultimately works against this tea though; the flavour was very monotone and I think the only reason that didn’t read as ‘flat’ was because of the carbonation which makes it hard to view anything as tasting ‘flat’. The green base was eclipsed and instead this had a really strong, distinct taste of lemon verbena or lemon myrtle; not exactly a ‘realistic’ lemon flavour and while strong and steady only really enjoyable if you’re big into those flavours to begin with. And you better be, because it’s all you’re going to taste.

Decent blend overall; the name’s pretty accurate so kudos for that. I just wish it had a little more to offer; I shouldn’t feel like I have to resort to creative methods like tea soda just to make this feel a little less mundane.

I also recently received a super-generous swap package from Nattie and haven’t gotten around to writing any of her teas up yet! Time to make amends and work through the ones I’ve tried :D

I really liked this one – it was lovely and lemony, with the green tea staying as a nice non-dominant background! I did get a hint of that astringent fizz that you get from a sherbet, and this tea was definitely sweet enough for me. Then again, as someone who hasn’t eaten a lemon sherbet/similar sweet for a good long time, I’m not exactly the best judge XD

Still, I happily drank this down and will look forward to my second (and probably final) cup – thanks Nattie :D