Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Green
Where to Buy: Good Earth online or Wherever Good Earth Teas are sold.
Tea Description:
Sure we all have responsibilities, but that doesn’t mean we have to settle into a routine. Break things up with the tingling intensity of Pomegranate Burst™. Blended with the goodness of green tea and the unexpected tart flavors of pomegranate and cherry, one sip will be enough to shake up an ordinary day.
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
I brewed this Pomegranate Burst™ Green Tea from Good Earth without knowing the ingredients in the tea – only knowing it’s a flavored green tea. So, I brewed it the way I’d brew any other bagged green tea: using 8 ounces of hot water (170°F) and steeping for 2 minutes.
After I finished steeping the tea, I noticed the color – it’s a vivid ruby color, just like the color of a pomegranate aril. This communicated “hibiscus” to me. And after my first sip, yep … there’s hibiscus in this. Ugh. That first sip told me something else: there’s stevia in this too. Double Ugh. And it’s not even the natural leaf from the herb “stevia” it’s steviol glycosides which is the chemical compound of stevia. And I can taste that chemical taste from it too. Triple UGH!
Served hot, this just isn’t my cup of tea. I taste to much hibiscus and stevia and a syrupy cherry flavor (read: cherry flavored cough syrup) for me to derive much enjoyment out of drinking it. I do taste pomegranate and hints of raspberry. Those flavors might be nice if my palate wasn’t overwhelmed by the flavor of hibiscus, chemical tasting stevia and cough syrup.
No green tea flavor to speak of here. Just none.
Not one to want to give up on a tea so quickly, I decided to cold-brew a few bags in my half gallon pitcher, hoping that the cold brew might soften the overpowering flavors that I experienced with the hot steep. I used 5 tea bags for 2 quarts of water and stashed it in the fridge for about 8 hours.
As an iced tea, this is a little bit better but not much. The cherry flavor is not quite as cough syrupy as when it’s brewed hot but it still has that cough medicine taste. The chemical stevia notes are a little less apparent although I can still taste it. To offset the flavor of the stevia somewhat and try to make the sweet taste more natural, I added some agave to it and this addition helped make the drink more palatable.
On the positive side: I do like that I taste the pomegranate and the raspberry and these two fruits have a pleasant fruity flavor. The hibiscus is also less apparent as an iced tea. This tastes a lot more like a fruit drink than a tea though.
I think it’s fair to say that this was not a win for me. It wasn’t horrible but I find it difficult to move past that artificial taste of the stevia. It really ruins this drink for me.
Organic Teatox Tea from Fit Life Tea Company
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Herbal
Where to Buy: Fit Life Tea Co.
Tea Description:
Say goodbye to weight gain, bloating and digestive stress. Two daily cups of Organic Teatox can help burn fat, stimulate weight loss, boost your immune system and cleanse your digestive system.
Our pyramid tea bag extracts maximum flavor to infuse more essential oils and flavor into your cup. Steeping releases purifying dynamic ingredients that can ease bloating and, together with proper diet and exercise, help promote weight loss.
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
I’ve never been one to go for the whole ‘detox’ or weight loss tea fads that are going around because I basically don’t buy it. I’ve been drinking tea for years and I simply do not believe that simply drinking tea (or a specially crafted tea blend) will cause significant weight loss. If you want to lose weight, you need to change your overall diet and you need to exercise. Drinking tea isn’t going to be your miracle weight loss cure. If it was, after drinking all the tea I’ve consumed over the last ten years, I’d have a body like Jennifer Aniston. I don’t.
But, that doesn’t mean that drinking tea doesn’t offer you some great health benefits because I believe that there are health benefits to tea. I just don’t think it’s the cure-all that some tea companies try to suggest in an effort to sell their product. But as long as you find a tea that also tastes great, there’s nothing wrong with adding tea to your diet to enjoy some health benefits.
But you’re not going to know if it tastes great until you try it – .so I decided that I’d give this Organic Teatox Tea from Fit Life Tea Company a try
To steep this tea, I placed 1 sachet in an 8 ounce teacup and heated freshly filtered water to 195°F. Then I poured the heated water over the sachet and let it steep for 6 minutes. Then I let it cool completely before I poured it into the Fit Life BPA-Free Plastic Bottle (I’ll review that in a few days!) and refrigerated it to get it nice and cold.
Before I let it cool, I did take a sip of the hot tea to determine if I liked it better hot or cold. (Since they did send me the bottle, I decided that I needed to try it iced!) And so I’ll start by saying that this tisane is definitely better iced. The hibiscus loses some of its biting tartness. Oh, it’s still tart, but, it’s not quite as tart as what I experienced from the hot tea.
Fortunately, the apple in this softens the tartness of the hibiscus just a bit. And the allspice gives it a nice little hint of spice. I think hibiscus is much better when it’s in the midst of some spice like it is here. The contrast between the warm spice and the tart hibiscus works nicely.
Overall, this is actually quite tasty. The combination of the tart hibiscus, the sweet apple and the warmth of the allspice creates a very palatable taste. I would recommend to not oversteep this, at 6 minutes, there is a pleasant texture to the drink, but I think if I had steeped it longer, it might have been a tad too syrupy. If you like that kind of texture from your hibiscus beverages – then go for it!
It surprises me to say this, but I’d drink this again. That’s not something I’d say often about a tea with hibiscus as the main ingredient, so kudos to Fit Life Tea!
Fit Life Tea Company has this Teatox in two different sizes, a 14 day detox and a 28 day detox.
Peaches and Cream from Piper & Leaf
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Black
Where to Buy: Piper & Leaf
Tea Description:
This tea is rich and creamy, with bright elements of peaches and apricots. A black tea base, blended with locally grown peaches, apricots, papayas, pineapples, hibiscus, and vanilla. Smooth over ice, brighter served hot. Delicious with a dash of milk! Brew this tea for 3.5-4 minutes. Taste develops nicely as the pot sits(after loose leaf is removed) so make a pot and enjoy the journey. This tea is lightly caffeinated.
Learn more about this tea here.
Learn more about their Tea of the Month program here.
Taster’s Review:
I wish we had a tea shop where I live. About the extent we have are grocery stores and some coffee shops around the area. So when I see shops like Piper & Leaf, I seem to get a wee bit jealous. This has to be one of the cutest shops I’ve seen online in a while. They even sell these very cool drinking jars with their logo on them. (Those might just end up in my cart one of these days)
This tea smells like peach candy! It smells fruity and brews up to a very pretty amber color. I made this tea up per their instructions and then dumped the tea into a huge glass of ice. First taste and I was surprised. I’m not picking up the intended peaches’n cream sort of flavor. This tea comes across as being very tart. I am for sure picking up the hibiscus that is in this blend. It almost seems to over take the tea, which makes me sad. From the description this tea sounds like it would be a great light tea for the summer. The pineapple flavor is also there and shows up more and more as I drink the tea. The black tea base is also pretty overwhelming, giving the tea a slight astringent factor. It is good, just not what I was hoping for. I am completely missing the Peaches ‘N Cream flavor.
I wish the tea tasted more like what the name of it is. A great iced Peaches ‘N Cream tea would be fantastic for the summer. I wonder if it would be better with a green tea base. . . or maybe even a green rooibos base. . .
I probably just need to try again and shake the bag up more. This little bump is in no way going to stop me from placing an order for some more samples. There are some tasty looking blends on their site that I think I just have to try!
NOTE: The second infusion was a lot better than the second. I added in another scoop of tea as well. The creaminess shone thru and the vanilla became a star. I think if you “monkey” around with the steepings and a few other variables a bit you can pull out the Peaches ‘N Cream flavor.
Wild Woman Black Tea from Tay Tea
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Black
Where to Buy: Tay Tea
Tea Description:
An organic high-grown Ceylon tea with wild blueberries, black currants, hibiscus, elderberries and corn flower petals. One heavenly sip of this organic tea is enough to make you go wild! A perfect tea to wake up to.
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
This is a tea I was looking forward to a fair bit; despite the hibiscus in the blend which I personally think it completely unnecessary to include in most blends but especially in berry ones.
When I first started drinking teas I was actually rather hesitant about trying blueberry teas because I don’t actually like the fruit a whole lot, and I definitely don’t like the taste of anything artificially blueberry flavoured but when I finally did try out a couple blueberry blends I learned that it’s a flavour I surprisingly quite enjoy – especially when paired with a black base like this one is. In fact, my most logged tea on Steepster happens to currently be DT’s Blueberry Jam tea – it makes a great everyday sort of tea and brews up very consistently, so when I tried this one I was kind of internally measuring it against that blend.
Dry, the leaf smells mildly of blueberries and black currants with the faintest scent of something sweet and almost black licorice like – which is odd given that none of the listed ingredients are ones I’d associate with that sort of flavour or scent. Visually, I don’t see much (if any, really) hibiscus in the leaf I’ve measured out. I’m slightly relieved about that, though I wonder if it’s going to make for a skewed sampling.
Taste wise, the blueberry is definitely the first flavour here though it’s quickly followed by a little bit of elderberry and the sweeter side of black currant. I don’t actually know how much black currant is blended in here, but for people who dislike the medicinal taste black currant sometimes has I don’t really see that ever being a problem with this blend; it’s all sweet and jammy, and faint in contrast to the blueberry anyway. I will say that compared to Blueberry Jam, this has the same level of berry flavour with the same accuracy when it comes to how realistic it is.
The downside is the base. This had a recommended steep time of three to five minutes and I steeped on the lower end of the spectrum – three and a half minutes in total. Even with a steep on the low end of Tay Tea’s suggested spectrum it brewed up quite bitter, and sadly that bitterness is the finishing note which lingers well after you’ve finished the sip. It greatly detracts from what would otherwise be a very well done blueberry tea.
For that reason, I don’t think I’d order it for myself though I do think it’d be worthwhile to try it again with a steep time closer to two and a half minutes to see if the bitterness could be lessened without losing out on the robust blueberry notes.
Summer Solstice Herbal Tea from Tealux
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Fruit/Herbal Tisane
Where to Buy: Tealux
Tea Description:
Summer solstice is the name for the mythical night of the 21st of June ‘ the shortest night of the year. Midsummer is often described as a pause in-between a change in nature and provides us with the opportunity to pause for a moment in order to align ourselves with the energy changes of the natural forces. We have united the taste of ripe sun fruits and fresh herbs with the Swedish midsummer tradition of blossoms, in order to keep the rays of sun a little while longer in your cup.
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
It’s not quite the Summer Solstice yet, but the weather is definitely getting warmer! Perhaps that’s why this particular blend really spoke to me today. It’s hard to tell from the description exactly what you’re going to get, so I jumped right in and brewed up a cup. The first thing of note is the size of the fruit pieces contained in this blend. There are whole raspberries, generous slices of freeze-dried strawberry, and large pieces of apple, pineapple and papaya (about 1 inch square.) There are smaller pieces of hibiscus, small flakes of nettle leaves, and a scattering of sunflower blossoms. The blend as a whole is bright and colourful – very summery-looking. It smells quite rich and fruity, rather in the manner of fruit cake.
I used approximately 2 tsp of leaf, and gave it 4 minutes in boiling water. It’s by no means easy to measure, due to the large leaf size, but I did my best! The resulting liquor is golden brown, and the scent is mildly fruity – I’m picking up blackberry and coconut primarily.
To taste, the raspberry and strawberry are a lot more prominent than I thought they might be. They’re juicy and natural-tasting, sweet initially and then a little tart. The more “tropical” flavours develop in the mid-sip; a lot of coconut, a hint of pineapple, and a slight pepperiness from the papaya. It’s a slightly odd combination, like two halves of two different teas have been unexpectedly brought together. It’s not unpleasant, but the transition from summer berries to tropical fruit is a little jarring. The fruit flavours linger well into the aftertaste, and I can detect a splash of blackberry at this point. It’s tart and a little sour, but again incredibly juicy, and I could see this working well with the initial strawberry/raspberry combination. Somehow, though, it’s not quite what I wanted after the tropical explosion that preceded it.
I quite like this one, purely for it’s accurate fruit flavours and sheer juciness. It’s a great thirst quencher on a warm day. I would have preferred it to be either berry or tropical, though, rather than both. The two flavour sets aren’t a brilliant match to begin with, and nothing is gained when they have to compete with each other for dominance. Still, it’s a pleasing cup on the whole, and I can imagine it working well iced in the warmer months to come.
