This is the sample I chose for virtual teasting #21. My experience with sTEAp Shoppe thus far has been that the blends are not flavourful enough for me, and I have to work to discern the flavours that are supposed to be present. Thus, I thought that choosing naturally strong flavours like lemon and ginger would work better for me. It turns out, I was half right.
This blend’s fragrance is very lemony. I could not really detect any ginger. To be fair, I didn’t smell the entire sample packet, just the bit that I spooned into my infuser. I have to remember not to smell the tea at the beginning of the steep: there’s the lemon scent, but there’s also something else, something a bit acrid. At the end of the steep, this unpleasantness was gone, and the tea smelled like hot lemonade.
I found the taste true to the fragrance: a perfectly balanced lemon herbal blend. Except it’s supposed to be a ginger blend, and I couldn’t taste any ginger at all. No bite, no mild burn at the back of my throat, no tickle in my nose, nothing. My relatively low rating is purely because I didn’t feel that the flavour was true to the tea’s name. If its name were something like “Lemon Fresh,” my rating would’ve been somewhere in the mid- to high 70s.
Tea amount: 1 slightly-above-level tsp
Water amount: 6ish oz
Additives: None, at first, then about ½ tsp demerara sugar. The sugar really went well with the lemon, making the tea taste like candy. Yummy.
All the best to you! Keep us posted on the What tea to drink during the hurricane thread discussion!