Tea Reviews | It's All About The Leaf

Posts Tagged ‘Kalahari’

Rooibos, in my bizarre tea-description vernacular, is the sensory equivalent of a favorite faded and ratty flannel shirt. My favorite rooibos add-ins are gentle comfort flavors like chocolate, vanilla, almond, and cream. Since lemongrass is a nice, gentle tisane on its own, I reasoned it would be a nice blend-in for rooibos, prompting my sample cup of TeaFrog’s Kalahari Flavored Rooibos.

I followed the vendor prep suggestions, leaning toward the six minute mark for steeping time. The first thing that caught my eye was the beautiful red-gold velvet color of the finished cup. The first thing that caught my taste buds was the citrus–not only the lemongrass, but the hint of lime flavoring mentioned on the TeaFrog website.

Instead of blending smoothly and unobtrusively, the citrus and rooibos flavors do sort of a tap dance on your tongue, hitting your senses separately all the way down. This is a pleasant combination that would be enjoyable to citrus lovers looking for an herbal alternative to flavored black tea.

You can purchase the Kalahari Flavoured Rooibos Tea directly from the TeaFrog website.

I was told to cut out caffeine for a bit so I went to Teafrog looking for some rooibos decaf amusement and they came through for me with three tisane recommendations. Grabbed them all because I’m self indulgent that way (tea is my only real vise, I swear).

Sitting here looking at the Kalahari Flavored Rooibos and smiling. Teafrog teas are always so pretty (pretty in a gender neutral, men who drink tea are hot, kind of way). The rooibos is a nice red color, looks really fresh, need to ask but it looks like super grade. Don’t have to read the ingredient list to see what’s in this blend. Blue cornflowers mixed with lemongrass and rooibos. The leaves smell almost chocolaty, maybe vanilla, but with something else going on. Really can’t work out what to compare the scent to, mystery blend here.

Steeped it for 6 minutes in boiling water and now I’m waiting for the dark amber tisane to cool. The scent hit me right away but I still can’t make out what it is or whether or not I like it. Still kind of chocolaty but with a grassy hint that’s overwhelming it. Okay weird taste, wonder if the cornflower is throwing my palate off. Tossed.

Brewed some more, steeped it for less time (4 minutes) and the ‘grassy’ taste is gone but I’m still not liking this blend. Quality ingredients that I’ve grown to expect from this tea company so I guess it’s down to personal taste…

You can purchase the Kalahari Flavoured Rooibos Tea directly from the TeaFrog website.

Sitting down to review a couple of teas from Kalahari Tea, one from their Energy Tea line and the other from their Chocolatte Red (Rooibos) line. Both teas are bagged but I’m open minded and I have had high quality teas that happened to be prebagged in the past (usually tear them open so I can watch the leaves dance freely -yes, I’m easily amused).

I’ve been wanting to try this tea for awhile and am thrilled to have some in my hands now. The description on the packaging sounds so uplifting- “Ruby Grapefruit White Tea – Fatigue Fighting Brew”.

Opened the packet and studied it a few minutes before deciding against opening the bag. From an outside look, all I could make out was a lot of monochromatic dust, not even any pretty bits of grapefruit. Weird. Checked the ingredients list again and I’d apparently missed the word ‘flavor’ that falls after ‘Natural Grapefruit’. Now I’m not sure what ‘flavor’ means exactly (natural chemical agent number 12321?) but whatever the flavor is, it sure has a nice citrus smell so I’m going to pretend that I think that means they squeezed some grapefruit pulp around the Bai Mu Dan. I love white tea but (obviously) couldn’t discern the quality from an ‘outside of the bag’ look, though I can say that I’ve never seen white tea dust before…

Anyway it really did smell nice so I steeped it for four minutes, anxious for the energy boost. The brew color was really dark compared to other white teas I’ve had (back to the ingredient list), must be the Eleuthro Root darkening things. It held the citrus smell but it wasn’t a ‘crisp’ smell like I’d hoped it would be and it didn’t make me feel energized hmmm. Inhaled the deepest smell I could, still hoping for the citrus zing, but it was flat. It tasted really watery, unsubstantial, zero complexity, but I fought the urge to toss it and let it sit for a few minutes – maybe it just needed to cool.

Right, letting it cool was a horrid idea. I went from zeroness to a chemical aftertaste that lasted through three glasses of milk before I could shake it. From meh to bleh…

Note: we could not find a link to purchase this on the website, but you can see the packaging for the tea here.