Tea Reviews | It's All About The Leaf

Posts Tagged ‘Chamomile’

For the last few weeks I’ve been stricken with an odd quandary. At the end of my day, I found myself too tired to brew up tea. Even the herbals. There was a time – not long past – when a good tisane was what the end of the day (or night) required. That ritual fell by the wayside in favor of…well…zoning. Tonight was about to be such a night until I turned to my “It’s All About the Leaf” box (yes, there is an actual box dedicated to this site).

One of the samples I forgot about in the fray was a Mighty Leaf offering. How this escaped my notice (and memory), I have no clue. I love Mighty Leaf, and their tisanes are topnotch. They made one of the best citrus chamomile fusions I’ve ever tried, and don’t get me started on how they made yerba mate drinkable.

The nighttime cup o’ “Thud!” I was turning to this time was aptly dubbed “African Nectar. From the name, it was obviously a rooibos base. In fact, I expected it to be straight rooibos with, maybe, a few other additives. Well…there were more than a few. Along for the rooibos ride were hibiscus (a mainstay in a lot of rooibos blends), rose petals, mallow blossoms, and marigolds. Natural flavors and natural tropical flavors rounded out the medley. Why flavoring had to be mentioned twice, I dunno. Emphasis, maybe.

What I loved best about this? It came in a sachet! Perfect for the lazy, lethargic steeper that I was at 2AM. To the sight, however, the contents didn’t look like the floral menagerie I was picturing in my head. I saw one marigold and a few other pieces, but for the most part, it was just rooibos. Smelled quite tropical, though.

Brewing instructions were dead simple. On the bag, they said to brew for five minutes. That’s it. No water temperature listing, no cup size, nothing. They simply expected you to fill a cup with hot water and dunk the bag in. At two past Witching Hour, I was quite okay with this.

I didn’t time the infusion as much as watched the clear mug dark from gold to crimson – really cool effect. The cup smelled as tart and tropical as the un-dunked bag did. It’s very promising when the natural flavoring can hold up to a long steep. To the taste, there was a mild citrus tang and hibiscus bite on the front, followed by the requisite rooibos nut-sweetness in the middle, and – not surprisingly – it ended on a floral note. There was also the texture of nectar, just as the namesake promised.

In my limited experience, it’s hard to find tisanes that do exactly what they promise. This did so. I think that should be Mighty Leaf’s credo: “We do what the name says, damn it.” (Okay, maybe phrased differently.)

You can purchase Mighty Leaf African Nectar Loose Tea or Mighty Leaf African Nectar Tea Pouches directly from their website.

Valerian root is the one thing I recommend to people that complain about insomnia. Perhaps I’m sensitive to herbal effects, but relaxants knock me the “eff” out. Valerian, especially. The stuff is like NyQuil in leaf form. Kiss the next twelve hours of your life good-bye. Too bad it smells wretched. Other herbs are needed to dial back the skunky, weed-like odor it emits. Usual suspects for this task are of the lemony variety; verbena- for instance – works wonders.

Hampstead Teas does something similar by employing strong lemon balm to counteract the pungent Valerian. Funny thing, though. I didn’t smell it when I put nose to tea bag. Chamomile came to mind. No surprise since the Roman-borne relaxant was the third ingredient rounding out the pass-out pastiche.

The HT site recommended a steep of three-to-five minutes in boiled water. No mention of cup size. I went with a 10oz. glass and a six-minute steep. It was knock-out juice. As such, I felt obligated to brew it strong.

The liquor color was…well…herbal-looking. Everyone knows what that looks like – kind of off-yellow with a tinge of green, like pond water only shinier. The mouthpiece aroma screamed herbaceous as well with a mixed message of citral, flowers, and sleepy wilderness. I somehow pictured myself falling asleep on first sip. Luckily, I didn’t. This was a damn smooth ride to relaxation. Lemon balm took point, followed by fluttery/creamy chamomile, all wrapped in a grassy, Valerian-coated blanket wrought with pillow-whispers. I eyed my bed after finishing this, I’ll confess. It was a mighty splendid sleepy-time capper.

You can purchase the Lemon Valerian directly from the Hampstead Tea website.

Teekanne is an outfit out of Dusseldorf (a name that always makes me laugh), Germany. The company has been involved in the tea trade – in one fashion or another – since 1882. One of their biggest claims to fame is the fact that most of the teabags sold commercially in the U.S. are made using Teekanne industrial equipment. Their stateside subsidiary is Redco Foods, Inc., which also has several other brands under its umbrella. One of them, I was already familiar with – Salada, producers of a decaf green tea I drank early on in my tea exploration.

The Teekanne Herbal Wellness line went public in 2008 and was endorsed by Stefi Graf (the “Fräulein Forehand” of the tennis world). Blends they marketed fell into three categories: Soothing, Relaxing, and Energizing. Being the neurotic that I am, I decided to go for something I aspired to – relaxing. Calming Chamomile, it was.

There wasn’t much to say about the tea. It was in a teabag. It smelled like chamomile. Both pluses for an end-of-day drink. Brewing instructions weren’t necessary either. Herbals could be steeped in boiling water for up to eight minutes, if one chose to. I went with a five-minute infusion in an ordinary mug.

The resulting liquor was clear-to-off-orange – a medicinal-looking palette that chamomile always yielded. The aroma was floral, faintly citrus and soothing. To the taste, it was what one expects from chamomile – like drinking a pillow that weighs heavy on the eyelids. It certainly accomplished what it set out to do; it made me ease back in my chair and sigh comfortably. Beyond that, I don’t have much to add. It is what it is.

You can purchase the Calming Chamomile directly from the Tea and All Its Splendour website.

This tea is a dream.  But I don’t mean that in the standard “yay – happy – life is great” meaning of dream.  I mean the actually discordant random chaining of events your brain comes up with late at night, possibly after eating too much late-night pizza.  Let me explain.

The packaging on this is beautiful.  They send their tea in an amazing brown and pink high-end gift box complete with big satin pink bow.  I should be at a spa for packaging like this.  In the dream, there would be cherubs and happy music.  Until you untied the bow and opened the box.  Then the lighting would change, and possibly add a whole bunch of discordant notes to the score.   My first though: it looks like chamomile and pot.  Lots of small little bits of green with twiggy parts, and flower heads.   And now I’m lost for words.  Really.  Wow….

Now, as I’m at my work in this dream, I’ll risk running afoul of my HR department and brew this up.  (Think they’d believe me if I claimed “No, no!  Really!  It’s just tea!”  I know we’re a drug-free workplace!” ??)  Opening the plastic, the aroma is quite strong.  The main scent is chamomile with an underlying hint of something green and something sweet, but undefined.  Time to add the water. In the dream, the scene would shift quickly to a Japanese tea shop because –  WOW – it looks almost like matcha.  It’s very thick, opaque, and GREEN.    As it brews, it’s turning more brown.  It’s reminding me of murky swamp water.  Um.. I don’t like where this dream is going.

After about 3 minutes, I strain the tea, and try it.  And now we’re in a nightmare.  Very chamomile but with a cloying natural floral sweetness I can’t place, and an almost chemical aftertaste.  I cannot finish this cup.  It’s like drinking a hippie’s herbal perfume experiments gone wrong.  I try cooling it down, and watering it down, but no luck.

If you think that chamomile is the best thing in the world, you may like this tea.  But I’m sorry – this tea scares me.  I can’t drink any more of this.  I don’t even think I’ll pawn this off on someone.

But I will keep the box.

You can purchase the Inner Peace directly from the Sacred Rose Tea website.

I have a confession.  I consider myself an herbal tea fan.  Yet, I hate chamomile.

And a lot of teas, especially ones designed to soothe and relax, like to focus on chamomile.   So I used to convince myself  (on those nights where I’ve had a horrible long day and want a nice, mellow cup of tea  to help me relax) that maybe the chamomile won’t be so bad this time.  So I brew, and I relax, and I sip.  And then I go and calmly dump the cup out and wonder why it’s still on my shelf of tea.  Blech. 

This cycle continued until I found Sleepytime Vanilla.  This is an herbal tea, designed to relax you.  And it has chamomile in it.  And I actually like it.  The blend of mint and vanilla with the chamomile mellows the flavor, and enhances the brew.  As you sip, you’re first hit by the mint and chamomile, pleasantly combined, then the vanilla shows up with a creamy aftertaste.    The flavors play off each other, and remove whatever it is that consistently makes me go BLEA.

These days, when I’ve had a horrible long day and want to relax, this tea is the one that finds its way into my cup.  I sip contentedly, and actually gain that relaxation I am so craving.

You can purchase Celestial Seasoning Sleepytime Vanilla directly from their website.