Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Black
Where to Buy: 52Teas
Tea Description:
A Mokalbari Estate GFOP Assam blended with freeze-dried apple pieces, and organic apple and brandy flavors. This rich Assam base has a long and wiry leaf style with some golden tips and makes a beautiful cuppa with the hints of apple and brandy.
Learn more about this blend here.
Learn more about 52Teas’ subscriptions here.
Taster’s Review:
Wow, this review is scheduled to publish mid-January and I’m just now getting into my December teas from 52Teas! Time to get with it!
I steeped this tea in my trusty Breville One-Touch. I love this machine! I measured 2 bamboo scoops of tea into the basket (these were heaping scoops because the pieces of apple are large and took up a considerable amount of space in the scoop!) and I measured 500ml of water into the jug. Then I set the parameters: 2 minutes (it’s an Assam so I use a little less time) and 205°F (again, with an Assam, I take the temperature down from 212° to 205°).
At first I wasn’t too sure about this tea. I wasn’t really picking up on any flavors at all.
I could taste the Assam. It tasted like a wine-like Assam to me – then again, that could just be the Brandy flavoring playing games with my palate – but I can taste a wine-like taste to this and not so much a malty tone.
I do taste some malt, just not as much as I typically do with an Assam. I really like the base, though, because it’s a rich and full-flavored tea. It’s very enjoyable and has a really good flavor to it.
I’m not a big alcohol drinker, as I’ve confessed many times (I’m a TEA-totaler) so I can’t really tell you that what I’m tasting is definitely brandy. But I do taste a wine-like/brandy-like flavor to this and this flavor develops as I continue to sip.
Because as I said at the start of this review, I wasn’t too sure about this tea. It took a while for the palate to start picking up on the flavors of this tea. After a short cooling time and as I now continue to sip (I’m now halfway through my mug of tea), I’m tasting more flavors that taste of brandy/wine.
And I can taste the apple too! The apple notes started to really pop after drinking about 1/4 of my cup of tea. The flavor is sweet and crisp and I like the way it melds with the brandy and Assam.
This is tasty!
Berry Mocha Truffle Black Tea from Octavia Tea
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Black
Tea Information:
Let’s keep this simple. This blend smells and tastes exactly like dark chocolate covered fruit. It’s seriously good. You get the mocha & dark chocolate first, a fruit blast in the middle and a slight bitter chocolate and floral finish. To make it more indulgent, stir in some milk and sugar.
This tea is available from Amoda Tea.
It’s also part of Amoda Tea’s Holiday Box!
Learn more about subscribing to Amoda Tea here.
Taster’s Review:
As I’m sitting here with the aroma of this tea wafting through the air, I find myself in total agreement with Amoda Tea’s description above: Yep, it smells exactly like dark chocolate covered fruit. My mouth is watering right now. It smells SO GOOD.
It’s the cocoa husks! (Aka cacao shells!) I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: tea companies should use cacao shells if they want a strong, true flavor for their chocolate teas.
As for the taste: Yum! I get the mocha notes up front, and as the sip continues, I pick up on a strong berry note that lingers into the aftertaste.
This has a really pleasing chocolate note. I love the dark chocolate flavor of this tea. Bittersweet! It’s a really nice contrast to the sweet-tart flavors of berry.
My one criticism of this tea is that the black tea seems just a wee bit lost in these strong flavors. Yes, I taste the black tea, but I don’t think it’s quite robust enough to be with all this chocolate mocha and berry flavors.
I don’t know what type of black tea is used as a base for this blend, but I think that an Assam or a Nilgiri would have been a good choice for it because I think that those malty notes that Assam and Nilgiri teas are known for would taste amazing with these chocolate mocha notes. My taste buds are “mmm-ing” just at the thought of a malty, rich Assam tea with the mocha flavors.
But as it is, this is really a nice tea. I can taste the tea – and I find that the tea flavors come through a little stronger as I make my way down the cup (and a slurp now and then doesn’t hurt!) But this really tastes more like a mocha than it does a tea.
The berry notes brighten the cup in a really nice way. The sip starts out with the strong mocha-esque flavors and then all the sudden, a bit of bright, berry flavor hits the palate. Nice!
This is the tea I’d recommend to someone who is a former coffee drinker and decided to turn to tea because the caffeine of coffee is harsh on them (it was on me!) but they still miss that mocha flavor from their favorite coffee shop! This tea will help them miss their mocha less – or perhaps not at all – because I’d rather drink this than a $5 mocha any day!
Lime Marshmallow White Tea from Butiki Teas
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: White
Where to Buy: Butiki Teas
Tea Description:
Our Lime Marshmallow pairs our Organic Bai Mu Dan with gentle lime and creamy marshmallow. The sweet lime flavor is immediately noticeable followed by a marshmallow flavor that lingers. Adding some sugar will create a gooey marshmallow flavor with hints of sweet lime.
Read more about this tea on Steepster.
Taster’s Review:
OK, this was the tea that got me. I wasn’t going to order more teas from Butiki Teas since they did announce that they were going to close. I was sad to hear of their closing, but I figured that I had enough teas that I need to review that I didn’t really need more tea. That is until I saw “Lime Marshmallow.” How do I pass that up?
Answer: I don’t!
And this is delicious. This cup that I’m drinking at the moment is actually the second time that I’ve had the tea. The first cup was a little less flavorful than this one. I steeped that in my Breville One-Touch and I have often stated that white teas shouldn’t be steeped in the tea maker because the leaves just aren’t conducive to the way the tea maker operates. Or something like that.
I’ve found that when I steep white teas in the Breville, not all of the leaves that I’ve put into the basket get submerged into the water. For a white tea, I recommend using a teapot and allowing the leaves to steep loose, or if you’ve just gotta use an infuser basket, try a Kati Tumbler.
This time when I steeped it, I got my ceramic teapot and I measured out 3 bamboo scoops of leaf into the teapot. Then I poured in water heated to 170°F and let the tea steep for 4 minutes. Now we’re talking some tasty tea!
I tasted it first before adding any sweetener. It’s nice with a bright, vibrant lime flavor. But I didn’t get a lot of creamy, marshmallow-y flavor. So I took Butiki’s advice and added a little bit of turbinado sugar to the cup and now I can taste that “gooey” marshmallow flavor. It tastes sweet and fluffy.
The white tea is a good base for these flavors too. It’s light and has a subtle hay-like flavor. It’s delicate enough for the flavors of lime and marshmallow to emerge fully without it becoming a really cloying taste, and I am still tasting tea. The tea doesn’t hide behind the flavoring.
I’m glad that I placed that order!
Organic Tanzania Tea from Culinary Teas
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Black
Where to Buy: Culinary Teas
Tea Description:
This organic tea comes from Usambara in northern Tanzania. Years ago lions freely roamed this region. The tea is reddish and the cup has a full and malty flavored.
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
Mmm! It’s been a little while since I last had a pure Tanzania black tea. It’s a tea that’s always welcome in my teacup! I love the rich, malty flavor!
The dry leaf is a very small CTC leaf. What that says to me is that I need to make a couple of adjustments to my brewing routine. First, I have a smaller leaf so there is more surface area exposed. So, I want to cut the brew time a little bit so that I don’t wind up with a bitter tasting cup! With a small cut leaf like this, I usually brew the tea for just 2 – 2 1/2 minutes. Since I brewed this in my Kati tumbler, I went with 2 1/2 minutes. If I were brewing it in my Breville tea maker, I’d go with 2 minutes.
Also with the smaller cut leaf, you have more leaf in a measuring vessel than you would with a full leaf. That is to say that 1 bamboo scoop of this tea would be more tea than 1 bamboo scoop of a whole leaf tea. So, I reduce the amount of tea that I measure into the basket of the tumbler. So instead of a bamboo scoop, I went with 3/4 bamboo scoop of leaf.
And the flavor is exactly what I was looking for this morning! It’s rich, full-flavored and loaded with the gusto I need to get myself going today! It is so malty – it would rival a favorite Assam! And the flavor is less harsh than Assam (Assam can sometimes be bitter!) This has a lovely caramel undertone that melds nicely with the malt. Notes of earth, leather, hints of molasses. As I near mid-cup, I start to pick up on some stone fruit notes. Plum. Caramelized plum!
Delightful! I love that this tea is organic. But even more than that, I love that this is a full-bodied, flavorful cup of tea that has given me the invigorating kick that I needed today!
Gingerbread Flavored Iced Honeybush Tea from Southern Boy Teas
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Honeybush
Where to Buy: Zoomdweebies
Tea Description:
This is a crowd pleaser. Order this today and offer your Thanksgiving dinner guests an awesome caffeine-free treat with organic flavors of gingerbread and a hint of cream cheese frosting. This is a real treat and likely to go fast. Do not miss out on this one.
Learn more about this tea here.
Learn about SBT’s subscriptions here.
Taster’s Review:
Gingerbread is not something I eat often. I like some gingerbread, but most that I find tends to be a little on the wimpy side with no real ginger flavor. An exception to that is the gingerbread that I’ve tasted from Nikki’s Cookies. Good stuff.
But a lot of the gingerbread that you can buy in the grocery stores (about a month ago, you couldn’t walk into a grocery store without seeing a “gingerbread house kit.” And most of that stuff tastes like it was made from cardboard. No real ginger flavor – it’s as if the ginger that they use in the recipe is ground ginger that had been sitting on the shelf since Christmas in 1990. Boring flavor with no ginger kick.
So I’m hoping this tea will give me the kind of gingerbread flavor I want!
I hot-brewed this tea. I brought a quart of water to 195°F and dropped the sachet into the kettle and let it steep for 9 minutes. Then I strained the liquid into my favorite half gallon iced tea pitcher and repeated the process: heated a quart of water – 195°F – and put the same sachet into the kettle. This time, I let it steep for 11 minutes. Then I let the pitcher come to room temperature before I stashed it in the refrigerator to cool overnight.
Today, I have a pitcher full of gingerbread tea! Well, I guess I should say, I did have a pitcher full of gingerbread tea. Now I have about 1 glassful of tea remaining at the bottom of the pitcher and that glassful will be consumed soon!
This has a nice ginger flavor. The ginger is subtle but present in every sip. It doesn’t have a strong, peppery zing from the ginger, but there’s enough ginger in there to know that you’re tasting ginger. And there’s a pleasant sweetness, almost molasses-y, and that’s something I want to taste with gingerbread too.
This is sweet and enjoyable without being cloying. The ginger cuts through enough of the sweetness to keep it from tasting too sweet. The honeybush is a good base for the gingerbread flavors because the nutty and honey-esque flavors of the honeybush really tie in well with the overall gingerbread concept.
If I’m to offer any “complaint” about this tea, it would be that I want a little more “buttery/pastry” like flavor. That – it would seem – has become a common complaint of mine about some of the baked good flavor teas that 52Teas/Southern Boy Teas/Zoomdweebies has been producing as of late. I’m just not getting the buttery/pastry-like flavor that I’ve come to love from some of 52Teas’ classic flavors like their Pancake Breakfast tea. I think that would make this taste more like a gingerbread cookie.
That said, I found this iced tisane to be enjoyable. I like the flavor of the ginger and the molasses notes are quite delightful. It’s not my favorite iced tea selection from Southern Boy Teas, but it’s tasty and refreshing. The fact that the half gallon pitcher is nearly empty after it being in the refrigerator for less than a day should be testament to the fact that I enjoyed the flavor and it is very easy to drink.
Please take a moment to check out Frank’s Kickstarter campaign! He’s looking to take Southern Boy Teas to new heights and the fundraising effort will help get him started in the right direction! Please help this small business!