Notes on Beyond Blueberry/Akova -skysamurai-

I’m taking a leap out of my purist comfort zone to taste some cuppas by a new tea company.

The smell immediately pulsates up your nose when you open the bag. The blueberry aroma is like a club playing EDM.

Makes me wonder if we’ll ever see clubbing again…

This wonderful smell prepares you for something amazing in the flavor. Which unfortunately isn’t there.

It is tepid blueberry in flavor. To be honest, the flavor is very bland. Even the black leaf uninspiring.

My suggestion would be to add real blueberries to the blend (freeze dried if possible). Out of curiosity I’ve also steeped it cold to see if that would reveal better flavors. At five minutes it is still bland but something seems to be trying to peek out.

After 10 minutes there is a bit of cream and a bit more fruity. Which makes me wonder if this would be a good overnight iced tea. .


Want to Know More About This Tea?

Leaf Type: Black

Where to Buy: Akova Teas

Description

Intoxicating black tea with the aroma of wild blueberries.

Ingredients: Black tea*, Elderberry* + Currant pieces*, Hibiscus petals*, Natural flavors (organic compliant)

Learn even more about this tea and tea company here!

Blueberry Time Machine/ Wise Ape Tea Co. -Skysamurai-

Darjeeling is a black tea, not a green tea. Sorry as a tea nerd I had to put that out there first or I couldn’t continue with the review. Though personally I think Darjeeling is unique enough that it should get it’s own tea type or be placed with oolong.

But that’s for another day, let’s discuss this tea.

It’s full on blueberry in your face paroxysm. Which is quickly tempered down with the muscatel Darjeeling. All of the other flavors blend very nicely. Nothing tries to overwhelm and upset the balance.

The aroma is dominated by blueberry but it’s delightful. This is great warm but also good cold.


Want to Know More About This Tea?

Leaf Type:  Black/Green Tea

Where to Buy:  Wise Ape Tea Co.

Description

A refreshing blend of pure darjeeling green tea, moringa leaf, and two-parts bilberry traverse the time-space continuum, delivering an antioxidant infusion to your cellular defenses. Delicate notes of high-altitude green tea merge with brilliant blueberry to teleport your taste buds into another dimension. Designed to defend, refresh, and renew.

Learn even more about this tea and tea company here!

Blueberry White/Adagio Teas -Skysamurai-

Top of the morning to you. Had to wait till I was done with my granola to drink this one because I knew it was going to overwhelm the flavor.

The aroma though, I don’t think, would have been overcome. It’s intensely blueberry. Not the artificial type but that same smell you get from blueberries in blueberry muffins. Delightful. This can be found in both the dry and wet aroma, surprisingly. The wet aroma, I find, generally lacks the fruity aromas as they percolate into the water.

The flavor is good both hot and cold the blueberry flavor is dominate while the white tea gently sits on your palate with a few earthy tidbits. I would try to guess what type of white tea this is but honestly it’s ctc’d too much to tell.

 

 


Want to Know More About This Tea?

Leaf Type:  White

Where to Buy:  Adagio Teas 

Description

White Blueberry tea blends together the taste of juicy blueberries with premium white tea from Fujian province, China. Very fragrant, like freshly harvested ‘highbush’ blueberries (the aromatic variety). Soft, rounded mouthfeel with a clean, refreshing finish. White Blueberry tea is a customer favorite, delectable both hot or iced.

Learn even more about this tea and tea company here!

Organic Blueberry Black/Tea Sparrow

Organic Blueberry Black by Tea Sparrow is a blueberry black tea (shocking!) comprised of organic black tea, organic dried blueberries, organic blackberry leaves, and certified organic blueberry flavor.

I have had this tea once before, cold steeped in lemonade. That time, the drink tasted mostly of lemonade but had a bit of a blue candy sweetness added in. Like those gummy sharks that are meant to be blueberry but mostly just taste sweet.

This time I made the tea as a plain hot brew, letting 1.5 teaspoons of leaves steep in 10 ounces of 200F water for 3 minutes. The hot tea definitely tastes a lot more like blueberry than the tea lemonade. However, it is not like the fruit so much. It also isn’t much like blueberry gummies. Instead, I would say this tastes similar to blueberry pie filling as it has the blueberry essence with a whole lot of rich sweetness as well. The base tea gives this a thickness that compliments that gooey filling flavor, but it can also be a little brisk at times (for my tastes, at least).

I was surprised at how this captured blueberry flavor, even if it wasn’t quite true to the berry. Tea Sparrow has mostly been a lot of misses and though the brew of this cold steeped in lemonade wasn’t bad, it didn’t really scream blueberry to me. This hot tea is definitely blueberry-inspired and it is a nice dessert-like treat.


Want to Know More About This Tea?

Leaf Type: Black

Where to Buy:  Tea Sparrow

Description

Tea Sparrow is a tea subscription service. Check out the site below.

Learn even more about this tea and tea company here!

Light Side from Geek+Tea. . . .

Tea just goes with geeks. Or maybe geeks go with tea. Either way, if you get a bunch of tea lovers together you are likely to find a high proportion of geeks, or at least people who are really passionate about more than just tea.

Geek+Tea caters to this group of tea lovers with fandom blends for nearly everyone. Being a Star Wars geek myself and mother to a 501st member, I was pretty excited to try Light Side, even though the Dark Side allegedly has cookies and would probably be more up my alley.

This is an organic Bai Mu Dan with blueberries, blue cornflower, Scotch heather, and elderberries. Of all those ingredients, there is only one that is completely new to me – Scotch heather. It can be a bit of a challenge to describe an ingredient you have never tasted when it is blended with other ingredients, but I will do my best.

First of all, I have had a few blueberry teas that are quite delicious but taste like grape Dimetapp. While this well-known antihistamine is indeed delicious and candy-like, it is not quite like real blueberries.

I found this tea to be more…believable. The white tea is organic, the blueberries are the real deal, the elderberries I recognize from my sambucus concoctions, so… that remaining hay flavor must be from the heather. Although many white teas have a hay flavor, Bai Mu Dan is more floral, so I must credit the heather. I searched sites selling pure heather tea for a description and didn’t get an adequate one, just a statement that it tasted like regular tea but milder, which I am not finding here.

Fun fact: The tea steeped up blue, and surprisingly with such light and natural ingredients, it resteeped quite handily and the second pot was as strong as the first. I also tried it cold since they remark that it makes a naturally sweet cold drink and I enjoyed it that way. It is a light sweetness and nothing like the Southern sweet tea I grew up on, which is nearly syrup. This is something light and natural, and thanks to the natural ingredients, you can drink up without guilt, more like the ready made unsweet or lightly sweetened teas that are the rage now in health food stores.


Here’s the scoop!

Leaf Type:  White
Where to Buy:  Geek + Tea
Description

… and 43,300 light years from the Galactic Core covered in dense woodlands, tall mountains and savannah, you will find a foreign forest moon filled with fresh, crisp scents and floral breezes in the morning fog of Endor.

 

An infusion of Bai Mu Dan white tea and organic herbs, the Light Side is an exotic blend of blueberry and scotch heather and is relaxing as a hot tea, and comes out wonderfully sweet when iced

Learn even more about this tea and tea company here!