Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Black
Where to Buy: Tetley Tea or where Tetley Products are sold.
Tea Description:
Round, stringless tea bags are made with our unique Perflo tissue—sturdy, yet soft and porous, for faster tea infusion and better flavor release. 2 tea bags make 2 quarts of iced tea.
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
I don’t usually buy bagged teas off the supermarket shelf – and by this I mean to say, I just don’t do it. I guess I’m a bit of a tea snob. But when Tetley sent me a box of their Iced Tea Blend to try, I was willing to do so because a) that’s what I do, and b) tea. Tea makes me happy.
And really, when it comes to iced tea – especially cold-brewed iced tea – I really do prefer a bagged tea to a loose leaf tea. When drinking hot tea, I’m all about the loose leaf but when it comes to cold-brewing tea for iced tea, I prefer the convenience of a bagged tea because less mess = happier me.
So, I was actually happy to have this tea sent to me to try. I’m getting a little low on my cold-brew tea options (time to shop) and this helped to postpone my shopping for a little while, anyway!
To brew it, I filled my half-gallon glass iced tea pitcher full of freshly filtered water and then I dropped in two of the large tea bags from Tetley into the pitcher. Then I put the lid on the pitcher and stashed it in the fridge overnight.
Note: This is essentially “sun brewing” the tea too, because the sun doesn’t actually heat the water sufficiently to ‘brew’ the tea when you put out a jar of sun tea. By cold-brewing the tea using my above described method, you’re doing the same thing that you’d be doing to make sun tea except that my cold-brewed tea is now chilled. Eliminated a step! Yay!
The flavor: it tastes like black iced tea. This is an enjoyable unflavored black tea blend. I think I would prefer this to most other readily available grocery store blends. It’s refreshing and thirst quenching and the flavor is there.
This tastes like a pleasant iced tea. It doesn’t taste “dusty” the way some of those supermarket teas can taste. It’s smooth – not astringent and not bitter. It is brisk without an overly aggressive flavor. It’s a medium to full flavored tea, I suspect it’s a Ceylon or since it’s a blend, it’s comprised of mainly Ceylon leaves. It has that very clean, moderate, no-nonsense type of flavor that Ceylon tea is known to deliver.
If I were in need of an iced tea fix and I wanted a good, unflavored iced tea, I could see myself grabbing a box of this tea off the shelf. And since it is an unflavored tea, it allows for many interesting possibilities: try adding a few thin slices of lemon to the iced tea pitcher when you’re brewing it, or perhaps some crushed mint leaves or a couple of cinnamon sticks!
Strawberry Lemonade Iced Honeybush Tea from Southern Boy Teas
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Honeybush/Herbal
Where to Buy: Southern Boy Teas
Tea Description:
Premium organic caffeine-free honeybush with organic flavors. Each 14g teabag will make one 2-quart pitcher of DELICIOUS iced tea. Steep teabag in enough boiling water to cover the teabag (and to allow it a little room to expand) for 4 minutes or longer (honeybush cannot be oversteeped). Then combine with ice and water to make a 2-quart pitcher. It couldn’t be simpler–OR more delicious!
Learn more about this tea here.
Learn more about SBT’s subscription here.
Taster’s Review:
Strawberry Lemonade. . yes please! Any tea that has that combination that doesn’t have red rooibos in it, I’m all about. And oh mama. . .this one did not disappoint!
I have been cold brewing like mad lately! I love it. I throw a pitcher in at night with either loose leaf or one of these SBT pouches (which are just too handy!) and in the morning before I head out to take the kiddos where they need to go, I have my tea all set. It is fantastic! For some reason, I always shied away from these in the past, not sure why. Maybe I was just not sure about the whole cold brew thing. But not anymore!
I am a huge fan of lemonade. So I thought this one I would enjoy. I think I cried when I finished this one up and wasn’t able to steep it anymore ( I think I got about 3 infusions out of it). This is probably my favorite of all of the SBT offerings. The strawberry flavor is spot on. Sweet but not overly so. The lemonade has that fresh squeezed lemon taste to it. No chemical taste or artificial tastes to this delightful treat. Only berry lemon goodness. Neither flavor dominates the other either. The honeybush provides the a touch of sweetness and a hint of creaminess to the iced tea. As I am typing this up I am wondering if I can justify to myself ordering about 10 pouches of this stuff right now. . . just so I have my own little stockpile.
I am really happy with it. And highly recommend it. This tea is going to be perfect for the awesome weather coming our way in a few weeks.
Raspberry Matcha from 3 Leaf Tea
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Green/Matcha
Where to Buy: 3 Leaf Tea
Tea Description:
Vegan, Gluten Free
Ingredients: Matcha, natural flavors
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
This is a fairly new company, and one I actually wanted to order from since they’ve got a pretty diverse selection of flavoured matcha and I was interested in seeing how it differed from what Red Leaf Tea offers. Unfortunately they don’t yet ship to Canada, so it was great that my fellow SororiTea Sister TheLastDodo was able to send some for me to try!
Instead of my usual matcha in milk I prepped this cold shaken in a DAVIDsTEA timolino with plain old water. Since this is a new company to me and I’m not familiar with their base matcha I wanted as much of a “plain” taste as I could get.
Visually the matcha is a really bright green colour – exactly what I want to be seeing! It smells really intense, and maybe a little bit artificial? That’s something I don’t want to be getting from this one. Hmm; I kept my expectations really neutral going into this.
I actually liked it a lot; I thought the raspberry was very sweet and natural tasting with just a tease of natural tang to it. It also didn’t seem to eclipse the flavour of the matcha itself which tasted subtly grassy and very, very floral. It had me thinking loosely of both orchids and peonies. The artificial smell I was picking up didn’t cross over into the flavour – hooray! Plus, the flavour and base together worked very well – the floral components absolutely complimented the natural tasting raspberry.
It definitely makes me wish I could try more flavors from this company – in particular I’m curious about the pineapple matcha and the apple matcha. I love the pairing of pineapple and floral flavours like orchid so I can see that working really, really well. Basically, I’m saying people should give this company a little bit more love because hopefully then they’ll be able to expand their shipping into Canada!
Nettle Leaf Herbal Tea from Tealux
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Herbal/Tisane
Where to Buy: Tealux
Tea Description:
It may be a brash statement to say that one prickly green herb is the panacea for almost everything that ails you; but, in the case of stinging nettles, it’s mostly true. If there’s one plant to have on hand at all times that provides a cure for arthritis, an herbal treatment for allergies, relieves hair loss, treats Celiac disease, bleeding, bladder infections, skin complaints, neurological disorders and a long list of other conditions — it’s nettle leaf.
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
So after Butiki closed up shop they put together two ‘travelling tea boxes’ for Steepster; one was an educational box with samples of various straight/pure teas and the other was a box of just herbal ingredients so people could try blending their own teas. While I didn’t participate in the Educational box I did get in on the herbal one! Since I was the only Canadian on the list, I was at the end of the shipping list to save people some shipping costs (darn postage; why do you have to be so expensive!?). Along the journey, other herbal ingredients were added to the box including this Nettle Leaf tea from Tealux!
This is one of a few ingredients in the box that I’ve either never had or never had plain; the latter in this case. Before mixing it with anything else, I wanted to try it on its own to know what I’m working with flavour wise – this also gave me a good opportunity to review it! I brewed up about sixteen ounces of this and had half of it hot, and the second half iced. Steeped up this has a very dark, swampy olive green colour. It’s both pretty and kind of intimidating. It reminds me a lot visually of what steeped up mulberry leaf looks like.
I started off by trying out the hot half of the two versions. I found that while this tasted very, very grassy with a bit of sweetness and also a bit of bitterness that along with those bold flavours was an equally bold medicinal kind of taste and aroma. It reminded me a little bit of the smell of a dentists’ office – an environment I’ve had a lot of exposure to recently. Of the two halves, this was definitely the one I least liked.
And on the note of ‘medicinal’ stuff – apparently there are a whole lot of health claims for drinking nettle leaf tea. I want to be really clear that I’m no expert on the health claims here nor do I necessarily believe all of them; and that’s definitely not why I’m drinking this tea. My personal belief is that any ‘health benefits’ I get from tea is a great added bonus, but I completely drink tea for the taste – and I review it for the sense of community, and to learn from other people’s experiences.
The iced version of this was very similar; incredibly grassy with sweet and pleasant bitter notes – however I didn’t taste anything especially medicinal and the aroma seemed less powerful too. It was just the taste of very obviously herbal tea. I’d definitely drink this plain again were it iced; I’m not so sure I’d be as willing to try it hot again unless it was sweetened, and I don’t normally sweeten my tea so that’s probably just a safe no on that front.
At least it gave me some good ideas of what to blend this with for my next herbal mix! Or I might just finish it off plain too; this was one of the ingredients in the box that was actually in a reasonably small quantity.
Earl Blue Iced Black Tea from Southern Boy Teas
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Black
Where to Buy: Southern Boy Teas
Tea Description:
Our awesome organic Iyerpadi black tea blended with organic bergamot and blueberry flavors. This is sure to wow your guests.
Learn more about this tea here.
Learn about SBT’s subscriptions here.
Taster’s Review:
I know that I’ve mentioned on this blog at least once before in a review of one of Zoomdweebie’s Earl Grey/Bergamot teas that I’m not particularly crazy about the bergamot flavoring that Zoomdweebies uses. Maybe I’m a bit of a bergamot snob or something but Earl Grey tea is something I take very seriously and it should be right. So, when this Earl Blue Iced Black Tea from Southern Boy Teas was announced as a recent tea of the week for SBT, I wasn’t all that excited about it.
But this isn’t too bad. It’s actually pretty tasty. As an Earl Grey tea or more accurately as a ‘twist’ to the classic Earl Grey -well, it doesn’t really cut it as an Earl Grey, I’m afraid. But, as a flavored iced tea, it’s really pleasant. The blueberry is strong and yummy. The bergamot – well, it doesn’t taste as bergamot-y as I’d like it to. But when I just drink it and I don’t think “bergamot” and instead, I think “citrus” it works for me.
It has a really enjoyable, sweet-tart fruity flavor to it. And the black tea base is smooth and brisk. No bitterness, no astringency – just really tasty black tea and fruity flavors.
This is something that I could see myself putting in my shopping cart again the next time I’m shopping at Zoomdweebies dot com. It’s very refreshing and it’ll be really nice to have it chilling in the fridge on those warm summer days that lie ahead.