SpecialTea Brew is an online outfit out of my neck of the woods – the Pacific Northwest (of the U.S.). According to their origin story, the op was inspired by tea with a grandmother. This is the third “tea with grandma” foundation tale I’d heard, and – you know what? – it works on me every damn time. I never had tea with my grandparents, so I feel like I missed out on something growing up. Perhaps my tea exploration would’ve begun sooner had I a “tea with grandma” story of my very own. But I digress.

Their Mountain Berry herbal blend consisted of hibiscus, rosehips, orange peel, cornflowers, and blueberries. The last bit, they did NOT skimp on. There were big, plump pieces in the medley; same with the rosehips. Usually, freeze-dried fruit additives are small or cut-up in blends like this. Not so here.  My only nitpick was the fragrance; it was dry and tart, usually a sign of too much hibiscus. However, there was a citrusy follow-up thanks to the many chunks of orange peel present.

Brewing instructions per the vendor site recommended a four-to-five-minute steep in 208F water – 1.5 tsp. per cup. I did about a tablespoon in 8oz. for the full five. It was a berry blend, so naturally it could take a lot of infused abuse.

The liquor brewed up cherry red – as is to be expected from anything with hibiscus. The nose was, oddly enough, mostly berry and citrus – hibiscus tartness was a distant second. There seemed to be sweetness to the scent as well. Hibiscus did rear its red-tart head in the taste, dominating the forefront, although I welcomed it. The fruity aspects picked up right after, and the flavor lingered to a rind-like finish. Other than the blunt introduction, I rather liked this blend. I’m certain that the best way to have it would be sweetened and/or iced. On its own, though, it holds up well enough.

You can purchase the Mountain Berry directly from the SpecialTea Brew website.

This review is being written in the middle of a heat wave.  Industrial air conditioners around town are failing in the force of the oppressive heat.  The skin on the back of your legs begins to cook the moment you step foot out of the house, causing many to turn and run back into air conditioned houses, making the heat worse on the next visit outside.

What better time for a tea that tastes of ice cream and mentions it would be great iced?

Like all the NecessiTeas blends I’ve tried, it smells amazing.  Orange peel, creamy notes and tea blend into an aroma to make the angels of frozen confectionaries cry.  Once brewed up it’s a lovely light yellow green.  Unsweetened, the tea and the orange peel are front and center.  The pleasantly bitter flavor of the orange combines well with the green tea base to make a pleasant drink.  There’s a hint of a creamy after note.  When I let the cup cool, the green tea took over more and the flavors hid.

But it’s an ice cream flavored tea, so that, to me means SWEET.  So I sweetened my next cup.  YUM.  It brought out the cream flavors, and mellowed the orange flavor while not loosing the tea itself.  When this cooled, it retained the dreamcicle flavor, and stayed an excellent sipping tea.  I tried steeping the leaf again – and was pleasantly surprised that the added flavors remained strong.

This is a yummy, yummy tea.  It’s a flavored green that manages to highlight the added flavors without losing it’s basic tea-ness.  I’d strongly reccomend a sweetened iced cup of this for a warm summers evening, sitting out watching the fireflies.

You can purchase the Orange Creamsicle directly from the The Necessiteas website.

The NecessiTeas’ selection of rooibos teas reads like a decadent bakery menu. Chiffons and cocoas and various sweet temptations are elements of every item. My first sniff of the Orange Marzipan dry mix sent my taste buds crazy, craving sugar cookies with almond flavoring–because the almond is what hits you first, strong and sweet.

The heavy almond scent dissipates a little once you steep the tea. But rooibos is complemented well by sweetish flavors and the blend is still cookie-pleasant. Orange flavor is present, but stays modestly in the background.

As tea ingredients, oranges and almonds have the potential to turn on you if you don’t steep carefully–oranges go sour, almonds go bitter. But in the case of this culinary concoction, it’s all good; well balanced.

You can purchase the Orange Marzipan directly from the The Necessiteas website.

The Blue Q company of Pittsfield, Massachusetts sells odds and ends on their internet store. Ok , really odd things such as hand sanitizers, pencil cases, chewing gum and factory seconds on insulated mugs. So right there, tea sales probably won’t be taken seriously. A business that mixes its product lines is apt to create confusion for a serious consumer of tea.

The tea is Today’s Special Green Tea Orange. It is a green tea with a heavy hand on orange peel. It is not “a playful pinch of Spanish orange peel” as suggested on the Blue Q web site. The green tea, peel, flavourings and even the tea bags are organic. There is no official organic certification mentioned however, and there is no mention of the source of the tea of its type, other than “green”. So, the only thing left to do is to boil the water and taste the tea.

By the way, the packaging is cute, very cute, with little fluffy kitties all playfully tied up in an orange ball of wool. The tea bag sleeve is foil pouch and sealed individually. On he inside walls of the tea packet there was a coating of dust. I used a damp finger to scoop some up and tasted it. It was gritty but I’m not sure from what. The smell of the tea bag was unappealing, no pun intended. That Spanish orange is probably a Seville orange, smelling slightly oily, slightly pungent, perfumy and burnt. I used a 8 oz cup and 85 degree Celsius water and a 3 minute steep. The instructions on the packet say 2-4 minutes for the steep. The smell of the orange is almost overpowering. There is no green tea smell. The liquor is golden yellow and fairly clear.

The trouble is, I find the scent of the orange too strong. I try one sip and there is bitterness from the orange and the orange oils coat my tongue and mouth. There is a bitter aftertaste that lingers. I try 3 sips and that’s enough for me.

Someone should re-think this idea of an orange and put something else inside the lovely packaging. Its a cutsey idea, a novelty product line but its not serious tea.

You can purchase the Today’s Special Green Tea Orange directly from the Blue Q website.

I have tried a lot of Rooibos tea. I have had a lot of Fruit Tisanes. Over time, they can tend to blur together into a single impression. For Rooibos teas, there is almost always a sweetness, no matter the flavouring. For Fruit Tisanes, tangy. So when we received a sample of Cranberry Crush from East Pacific Tea Company, I was anticipating that this was going to be just another flavoured Rooibos.

In cas you had not guessed, this tea is a combination of Rooibos, Cranberries, Orange Peel and Hibiscus. When you look at this tea, you can see all of these ingredients mixed together. If I had not dug into the tea, and read the ingredients, I never would actually have noticed the Rooibos. There seems to be a very small ratio of it in this tea, leaning it more towards a supporting role in a Fruit Tisane, rather than the dominant role in a Rooibos mix.

The smell of the tea is strongly orange, with an undertone of Cranberries. With Cranberries, Orange and Hibiscus, I expected the tang that you get from a Fruit tea, but I was unsure of how the Rooibos was going to show up in this.

As it turns out, I need not have been afraid. This tea brings the best of a Rooibos, with an underlying supporting sweetness, and the best of a Fruit Tisane, with a tart fruity cranberry flavour. The Cranberry is most definitely the star in here, but the orange does not back down either. The Hibiscus plays a background role, which is just fine with me, as it is not my favorite addition to a blend.

Hot, I like this tea, but cold, I can see a whole new window of opportunity arise. I know even without making a cold version, that this tea will shine as an iced tea. Typically I make an “Arnold Palmer” iced tea, blending 50/50 with lemonade, but this one I think I will have to try as-is.

Overall, this is a great tea for someone that is not a Rooibos lover, but also may be tired of the typical Fruit tea. I enjoyed this offering from the East Pacific Tea Company, and I am looking forward to digging into some of their other samples!

You can purchase the Cranberry Crush directly from the East Pacific Tea Co website.

I was really excited to taste this tea. The ingredients of orange peel, cinnamon and cloves sounded wonderfully delicious. The directions recommend steeping 1.5 tsp per cup of water for 5-6 minutes. I was using a 2-cup teapot, so I doubled my amount of tea and steeped it, using boiling water, for five minutes. The smell of cloves and cinnamon wafts up from the pot to my nose enticingly. This tea is aptly named, as it reminds me of sitting next to a fire, perhaps during the Christmas season, where these smells are often common around my home.

Pouring myself a cup of this dark, red-orange tea, cloves take the greatest part of its aroma, with edgings of cinnamon in that scent. Sipping this tea, it goes down smooth, the biggest flavour being the cinnamon and the rooibos (which is pleasantly not overpowered as in many rooibos blends I have tried). The orange aftertaste is quite appealing.

My overall impressions were that this tea has very well-balanced flavours and really does make for a very soothing beverage. I certainly enjoyed it and would rate it a 90/100.

You can purchase the Fireside Rooibos directly from the TeaFrog website.

As much as I love discovering new teas from lesser known companies, it’s nice to have a company that I’m know will not disappoint. This blend however, isn’t one that I would think of when I thought of Rishi. Just when I thought I knew the company they surprise me with this one! It look and smells delicious and the list of ingredients is certainly enticing. The strongest scent I’m getting is that of orange and cinnamon, also smells like berries to me though there aren’t any listed in the blend.

Steeped it per the website recommendations and waited a couple of minutes to let it cool. The tea has turned a light red color and the and the scent of apple has become more pronounced. The taste is sweet and tangy and a lot heavier than I expected, it’s really satisfying and the scent alone has given me a boost. Have to say that I do feel ‘recharged’ even with just one cup in my system. Thinking this would be better suited as an afternoon pick-me-up rather than a bedtime herbal.

You can purchase the Red Ginseng Recharge directly from the Rishi Tea website.

I really like grapefruit. As a small child, I always wanted my mother to get me those sweet smelling grapefruit bath products from the overpriced but immensely-fascinating-to-children bath product shoppes (whose quality could be told with the extra, pretentious “e”). And as an adult, I continue to gravitate towards grapefruit scented items and grapefruit flavored things. To me it combines the juicy satisfaction of an orange with a little extra edge, that little hint of sour. If a grapefruit were musical, it would not be top 40, but a harder rock, maybe tinged with punk. A Gwen Stefani of No Doubt as compared to the more sweet and Miley Cyrus-eqsue orange.

So, it was with great anticipation that I got this tea sample. I had some amazing luck with the Blood Orange Black from Drink the Leaf (the blood orange – another edgy citrus relative), and I was hoping to repeat it with this tea. The packet I got however, left me a little concerned. The tea was not in an air-tight packet. And when I opened it to sniff, you could very much tell; no aroma other than the glue for the sticker. I steeped my two teaspoons of tea (which did have visible chunks of peel, getting my hopes back up) in 2 cups of boiling water for 3 minutes, and the resulting brew was a light amber color.

This grapefruit? This is repressed grapefruit. This grapefruit was teased in elementary school and ignored at home. Whether the result of exposure to air or something else, drinking this tea is… well… boring. There is no grapefruit flavor to the tea. The tea itself tastes like it just remembered an important appointment somewhere else, and gee, sorry, it’s got to run. There is a slight hint of sweet behind the mild tea flavor, but I couldn’t discern if it was from the leaf or a very light citrus sweetness. A second steep with sweetener didn’t bring out any additional flavor. Either way, I have no other way to say it – I’m disappointed.

You can purchase the Pink Grapefruit directly from the SpecialTea Brew website.

First things first: turmeric is pronounced TUR-mer-ick, and if I’m to believe the claims I’m reading, it’ll cure what ails ya, be it Alzheimer’s, prostate trouble, arthritis, obesity, or skin conditions. It also appears to be useful in zazzing up roast lamb, pickles, and chicken dishes.

Pair that with ginger, legendary for its digestive benefits, and you have a combination that at least by reputation, ought to preserve you well into a ripe old age.

Rishi’s blend looks like something that belongs in your spice cabinet–heavy on the ginger powder visually and in flavor. Just past the ginger is the presence of licorice root–noticeable, but not so cloyingly sweet as to be annoying (I’m biased against licorice on general principles). However, about the time your taste buds settle down for your brain to catch up, BAM! the turmeric hits the back of your throat with the burn of a mild chili powder. Not hot enough to make the eyes water, but warm enough to make the eyes widen.

It’s nice to find a healthful herbal alternative that doesn’t lean toward the lemony. Rishi’s Turmeric Ginger would be a natural choice for chai and spice lovers as well as herbal drinkers looking for a warm and healthy something-to-clear-out-the-esophagus come cold and flu season.

You can purchase the Turmeric Ginger directly from the Rishi Tea website.

The name makes me curious. Why would a tea be called Love? Aside from being TeaFrog’s most popular rooibos blend (imply that people love it), I couldn’t figure out the reason for the name. So, taking this initial assumption in hand, I had high hopes for this tea. Opening the package, I placed my nose at the opening and was assailed by a myriad of aromas, not the least of which smelled like the Fig Newton cookies I enjoyed as a child. It was different, yet delicious smelling.

The boiling of the water teases me as the scent of the dry rooibos wafts from the open teapot to my nose. Clock-watching begins as the time ticks toward zero…and toward tea time! Three teaspoons, two cups of water, and six minutes later I was ready to enjoy this aromatic treat. The package says to steep for 5-6 minutes, and I chose the upper end as I like my rooibos strong.

And strong it was! Wow, this tea brewed up a dark red, almost muddy complexioned. The ingredients are well balanced, as I can definitely smell the red rooibos in amongst all the other ingredients. It has almost a spicy aroma to it now. Taking my first (big) sip, the subtly fruity liquor, with a tinge of spice (possibly from the orange peel), flows quickly and easily over the tongue. The flavour is well balanced between the rooibos and the additions. This tea definitely leaves one eagerly wanting to take the next sip. While it seems to have a light mouthfeel, the tea leaves a strong aftertaste of the non-rooibos ingredients. It really is quite a delicious blend and seems to be a tea that one would enjoy on a cold day, as the other ingredients combine with the rooibos to create a brew that warms the body and mind. Sadly, more descriptive words fail me as I’m lost in the tasty flavour of this tea. I give it 75/100 on my personal enjoyment scale.

You can purchase TeaFrog Love Flavoured Rooibos directly from their website.