Pepper Mango Green Tea

Another Backlog from earlier!
I still very much enjoy this tea blend.
Gurman’s is a fun place to order from.
Something about ordering from another country just makes me feel giddy and somewhat cool haha.
For me, its not TOO peppery at all, it has just the right lift, hardly even a kick to it.
Its sweet (naturally) and savory! LOVE that kind of blend in a tea!

The dry leaf is very interesting. The tea looks like dried grass clippings. There are tan flakes that I am guessing are peels or zest. Then there are tiny red balls that are probably peppers. Finally, I notice some larger dried pieces almost an inch long that again I presume to be peppers. These could be the dragon tooth peppers that are commonly used in Chinese food. What have I gotten myself into?

The tea is rather large pieces so I used a healthy portion. I used my usual parameters for green tea. I brought the water up to a light steam but well below boiling and steeped for 2 minutes in my press. I thought this was brewing rather dark until I picked it up for a better look and realized the leaf was floating near the top and blocking the light. The liquor is light green/amber. The wet leaf smells lightly peppery. Here goes…

The sip – Wow! This is really interesting and different. There is a moderate citrus rush followed by peppery goodness. The pepper doesn’t seem as hot as I expected. Only a tiny bit of heat in the aftertaste. A very mild jalapeno maybe. You catch a hint of the green tea in the aftertaste. These three flavors combine in the most unexpected way and result in a sweet pickle taste. At least that is the best I can do to describe it.

Ok, as it cools it does get a lot more peppery tasting. I can see if you aren’t a spicy fan this could be too much. It grabs the throat a bit and charges up your nose but never in an overwhelming manner to my tastes. There is also another bit of flavor I can’t quite place.

I brewed a cup for a friend who mostly drinks Lipton but I thought he would appreciate this from a grill master perspective (His pulled pork is literally the best I have ever tasted). His words, “This is good, it has a butterscotch element to it.” Yeah, I can see that. It’s the flavor I couldn’t identify. I steeped three cups from the same leaf. The flavor of the third was still going strong. This is Cool! It is like an extremophile, bizarre and magical all at the same time.

Thank you, thank you ashmanra for sharing this!

I was a little scared to try this. My daughter said her boyfriend bought this in Ireland and he said it “almost killed him.” So they decided to pass it on to me, a total wimp when it comes to spicy things.
My daughter thinks it was the fact that it was green tea that bothered him, as he likes spicy food and therefore shouldn’t mind spicy tea.

I used an average amount of leaf and steeped it for only 2 1/2 minutes. It really isn’t bad. Because I don’t get into chili peppers I am not likely to drink this much more, but I am pleased to have found it for the most part palatable. Anyone want a sample? Send me your snail mail! I am thinking of you, K S, but I already have your address so I shall get some out to you.

Azzrian passed along some of this to me – thanks so much!!!!

This is the first tea from Gurman’s I have ever tried! YAY!

I made sure I got a Chili Pepper in there as well as a Mango Chunk or Two!!!
And, of course, various red peppercorns!

WOW! This DOES have a KICK to it! Nothing I can’t handle tho! It’s a welcomed change-up to the other flavors I have drank today! Eventho it’s peppery and barks a little it burns yet soothes the throat a bit! The Green Tea base is on the sweeter side. The pepper, peppercorns, and chili notes take the cake, tho. The mango is in there somewhere, too! It’s also a tad floral!

This is a funky flavored green tea offering and I’m happy I got to try it!

Thank you Azzrian!

The dry leaf of these tea is really exciting. When I have the time, I like to rehydrate dried peppers and then grind them into a paste in my food processor for chili. So seeing the big chunks of dried chili pepper in here is excellent!

Usually I am really sad and pathetic when it comes to spicy drinks. Soups, I’m okay, but I tried this cayenne/ginger kombucha the other week and couldn’t handle it. And I seriously love spicy food.

This is so good, and I don’t know if it’s the mango or what but I can handle it. If you leave it in your mouth too long it starts to hurt, but in the good way…you know what I mean if you like spicy food. Then the mango makes it all better, and the aftertaste has just one final kick.

I’m taking this with me to Thanksgiving. I got my brother to drink iced tea last time I was up there, and he also likes spicy stuff. But I think I’ll try to get him to drink it without telling him it’s gonna be spicy, and tell him he has to hold it in his mouth for about 20 seconds before swallowing for the best flavor of tea. Hahahahaha. I’m horrible. (He deserves it.)

Thank you to Ashmanra for sending some of this tea my way!

I was so excited to try this when I opened the package and smelled it – it smells WONDERFUL… Spicy, sweet and delicious, it makes me think of Thai food! YUM!

This is really good. It’s not REAL spicy, it has some kick to it, but, it’s not a “too-hot” kind of kick, it’s got the right amount of heat to offset the sweeter flavors, to make this a savory tea rather than something that’s sweet, or something that’s spicy. It’s very well balanced.

Like this one a lot!!!

A big thank you to Ashmanra for sharing this one. My first Irish tea! I feel like we need a big tea map in the office somwhere, probably next to the door. The wall behind the computers might work, but it would be a pain to get to. Anyway, a map! A big map where we can put pins for all the little areas where we order or drink tea from! I’d say pins for where the tea is grown, but we’d have like what… two pins? China, India, and maybe a purple colored pin in… Ecuador? Is that where maté is from?

Rambling. Tea!

I wasn’t sure what to expect with this one. I’ll admit it, I do not like mango. I do not like it in a box, I do not like it with a fox. I’ve missed out on a lot of very tasty looking things because one of my favorite flavors in the world, pineapple, seems to be attached at the tropical-fruit-hip to mango in the most inopportune number of ways. I was totally willing to try it in a tea though, especially with spicy stuff!

Missy brewed this a little low, because the tea was a bit dusty, and we didn’t want to fly straight into Bitter-town, which has happened with some green teas. I can smell fruit in the brew, coming from the cup. It doesn’t give me that old-lady-perfume smell that I associate with mango, which is a definite plus!

Now the taste of this was intriguing. Much like the smell, I get none of what I stereo-typically associate with mango. I taste indistinct-grabbing-at-the-back-of-mind-fruit that I can’t identify, but it’s so there. SO there, I just need to identify it. After that, there’s just a tiny bit of pepper aftertaste that burns in your throat after the swallow. The flavor of the green tea seems non-existent. Whether this owes to the tea, the phantom-fruit, or the lowered steep temp, I have no idea.

But the flavor of the phantom-fruit is good, so I keep drinking. The pepper in the second, much larger drink was more apparent, but still nothing (for me) to be too worried about. The third drink, and it finally clicks in my mind… the phantom-fruit is a dead ringer for soaked in syrup fruit cup pear. This flavor is EXACTLY what I want out of a pear flavored tea, now that I’m thinking about it. I never would have suspected that from a mango tea, and I’m now going to suspiciously eye every mango tea I see, and wonder whether it’s really hiding a pear-flavored treasure trove, or a perfume-flavored bomb…

Thanks again Ashmanra! I feel very privileged to have had a chance to drink this!

Thank you Ashmanra for your generous sample! We just got this in the mail today so we had to try it out after dinner.

I taste fruit but Dylan and I decided it wasn’t mango but pear. The same pear you get in those tiny fruit cups from the store. I don’t think this pear is that sweet though. It could have some thing to do with not loading the tea pot with as much sugar as I would get in a fruit cup. I get the spice on the actually swallow, while it’s going down my throat I can taste the pepper there and then. Does that make sense at all? I don’t really taste the green tea much but that could be my lack of experience with green teas.

Not a bad tea, but more cowbell please.