I have been holding on to this sample for a while because I was sure it was going to be good and I wanted to make an event of it. The name promises all the flavors that I associate with cooling and refreshing, and since it is a warm sunny day with storm clouds moving in and high humidity, now is the time!
First – the leaves. My eyes feast on the lovely, long, silvery-white leaves. Beautiful! I fill the basket and it is full of these fluffy, soft beauties. Now steep! Then pour.
The liquor is a medium gold color. I let it cool for a few minutes before tasting so I can experience all the flavors.
The first impression of the sip is mint on the tongue, then quickly afterward my tastebuds say LIME! Not sharp, puckery lime. Rays of sunshine lime! Lime can be too harsh when it isn’t done right, but used skillfully it is a ray of sunshine to a recipe or drink. What a bright and delightful lime! This is perfect lime in my book and now the mint is adding sweetness and a cooling sensation.
My sample is older and had already been opened, and I wonder if that is why I don’t taste much cucumber. Perhaps it is a delicate oil that dissipates easily. But I don’t feel anything is lacking in this tea. It is just as good as I thought it would be. As is my habit of late, I will drink half of this hot and unsweetened in the morning, and chill the rest to go with supper! I can tell it will be awesome cold.
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Leaf Type: White
Where to Buy: 52Teas
Description
This tea is no longer available but click below for teas that are.
Learn even more about this tea and tea company here!
Raspberry Kissed Coconut Green Tea/52Teas
Raspberry and coconut is a tea combination I overlooked for a very long time but one that I loved when I finally tried it. My tea journey started with DAVIDsTEA and I quickly made my way through most of the teas on their wall. One that I always seemed to skip over was Fantasy Island. For whatever reason, it just never appealed to me until a friend sent a sample over in a swap. One taste was all I needed to get hooked. The combination of raspberry and coconut was magical and it left me all the more heartbroken when the blend was discontinued.
Thankfully Anne, the genius behind 52 Teas, blended up a raspberry coconut tea, Raspberry Kissed Coconut Green Tea. The tea combined fair trade single estate zomba green tea, organic coconut, organic raspberries, and organic natural flavors.
Unlike Fantasy Island which was a black tea, this has a green tea base and that green tea is imparting a vegetal flavor. This is a coconut green tea through and through. The raspberry is present but a secondary note to the coconut, adding some brightness to the drink. For a raspberry coconut tea, it is not as sweet as you might expect. It’s a rather mellow tea which makes it nice in the warmer months when you want something light.
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Leaf Type: Green
Where to Buy: 52Teas
Description
This tea is no longer available but click below to see the current green tea lineup.
Learn even more about this tea and tea company here!
Gourmet Root Beer/52Teas. . ..
When I cut open my package of Gourmet Root Beer tea, the first thing I saw was a beautiful, WHOLE star anise. The first thing I smelled was ROOT BEER. That really needed to be in all caps because that is how it smelled. This wasn’t the scent of cheap, off label root beer. This was the rich, full scent of a craft root beer that would be poured from a frosty brown bottle, foaming into a thick and frothy head in your glass, filling the air with the scent of pure vanilla and anise. Perfection.
The blend contains black tea, sarsaparilla root, cloves, star anise, licorice root, vanilla bean, and natural flavors. Licorice root has not only a distinctive aroma but leaves a distinctive flavor and texture in the throat after you swallow. I really didn’t know that there was licorice root in this until I looked at the ingredients, because it was such pure root beer taste that the licorice root individuality didn’t stand out from it. It simply sweetened the tea to the point that a guest, who takes no sugar in any tea or coffee, remarked that this was a very sweet black tea.
I wasn’t satisfied with just trying it hot. The heat index today is 102F. That’s 39C. That’s inhumanly, ridiculously hot. I wanted to see if I could make an ice cold bubbly root beer with this. I put four teaspoons of leaf in seven ounces of water that was 200F then steeped for two and a half minutes and strained it. I poured this over 3/4 cup sugar to make a root beer simple syrup.
Even though it was still hot, I just couldn’t wait to try my experiment. I filled a twelve ounce glass about a third of the way up with ice and poured three tablespoons of the root beer syrup over the ice. Then I filled the glass the rest of the way with pre-chilled Perrier for the bubbles. I pronounce it DELICIOUS.
It was a fun experiment and I can’t wait for hubby to get home and try it. My daughter sniffed it and said she expected it to smell like cream soda but it really did smell like root beer to her. It is really good, and doesn’t have sodium benzoate like most soda. I added the sugar without thinking because that is how you make simple syrup, but if you wanted to cut your sugar intake, I bet this would be still be good with just the sweetness of the licorice root that is already in the blend. Or you could easily make the simple syrup and just add cold water if the carbonation isn’t important to you, but I was trying to replicate actual root beer.
If you love root beer, give this a try. It is not in stock at the time this review was written, but 52teas is all about keeping an ever changing offering of new blends and they do rotate the favorites back around now and then.
Now have fun with your tea and experiment!
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Leaf Type: Black
Where to Buy: 52Teas
Description
This tea is no longer available
Learn even more about this tea and tea company here!
Carrot Cake Pancakes/52Teas. . . .
I have come to expect some pretty astounding combinations of flavors from 52Teas. It is almost like people wake up from a dream where their favorite foods collided and they call and say, “Hey, how about making up some….” and this time it was Carrot Cake Pancakes.
When I saw the name I thought it was just a mash up of someone’s favorite foods, but I have since heard that there are such baked goods available in different forms here and there. They are real, people! REAL!
So let’s give it a go!
This is a really brisk black tea base, fairly strong. It is strong enough to carry instructions to only steep for 2 1/2 minutes. After the black tea, I really taste the spices first. Cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg…and then comes maple syrup on the back. It isn’t sweet, though. That is the strange part to me, that I taste maple but not sugar. I don’t usually add sugar to my tea and I am sometimes disappointed to find that a vendor has added to a blend, so I am glad this isn’t already sweet. If you like sugar in your tea, this would probably taste like maple syrup, but for me it tastes like maple without the sugary taste, which brings it across as deep, dark, and lightly smokey.
When it cooled, the spices seemed to get stronger and the black tea a little milder, though the brisk affect is growing as I continue to sip.
Then, just for you guys, I decided to try it with sugar to see what it would taste like. And now it tastes like a mulled tea for Thanksgiving or Christmas, with lots of black tea heft!
I think this would be really good paired with sweets, which I don’t usually do, preferring to serve a strong but plain tea with sweet or rich foods. Otherwise I would serve it when I want a rich and full tea experience when I am distracted and need to focus, perhaps at work, rather than serving it as a soothing, contemplative cup.
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Leaf Type: Black
Where to Buy: 52Teas
Description
This tea is no longer available but click below for teas that are.
Learn even more about this tea and tea company here!
Chai Spice Marshmallow Treat Genmaicha/52Teas. . . .
I let my daughter pick the teas we would drink together during our visits. She loves chai, she loves marshmallow treats, and she loves tea so this was a natural choice out of my box for her to try.
When she started making it, I hadn’t seen that it was a Genmaicha, so when the water hit the infuser basket I thought, “Oh no! Someone must have left coffee in the pot!” Ah no! It was the roasty scent of genmaicha, that comforting burned aroma that smells like warmth in winter time, like a campfire on a late fall night, like a warm mug clutched by frozen fingers.
Add to it the scent of chai spices and you have a real comfort food vibe. This tea has a lot of whole or large spices in it, so stir it up to distribute them according to your liking. We love cardamom and this had lots, giving it a lovely lemony flavor.
The funny thing was that almost together, as I was about to say that these were very pleasant chai spices, one daughter said, “Oh, it’s so cardamom-y!” at the same time the other said, “It tastes like marshmallow!” I think we each picked out our favorite flavors and focused on them.
And the good news is that it resteeps like a champ! Since these are almost all limited edition teas, you want to get all you can out of your favorites.
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Leaf Type: Green
Where to Buy: 52Teas
Description
This tea is no longer available but click below for teas that are.
