Tea Reviews | It's All About The Leaf

Posts Tagged ‘Pyramid’

To review this tea, I decided to once again utilize my awesome Tea Forte Cafe Cup!

Tea Forte’s website recommended steeping this for at least five minutes, so I poured just boiled water over one pyramid bag and let it steep. The teabag actually remained in the cup for six and a half minutes, but I figured this would not be an issue, as most rooibos blends rarely oversteep.

The dry leaf smells delicious! Lots of tasty smelling berry aroma.

The liquor brews a deep, dark red, very nearly the colour of some red wines. While it still smells like berries, the berry scent has changed to smelling very nearly like juice.

The taste of the steeped tea is very smooth, with a fullness that is neither thick nor watery. The finish is much stronger in berry flavour than is the taste while on the tongue, as though the dominant flavour migrates seamlessly from rooibos to berry.

The smell of this tea was far more bold than the flavour, almost making it a bit disappointing to drink. (I guess I shouldn’t let the aroma set my expectations.)

All in all, it was a very tasty tea. Wonderfully fruity, the hint of the rose petals that are part of this tea even peek out in the aftertaste.

On my personal enjoyment scale, I believe I would rate this tea a 75/100.

You can purchase the African Solstice directly from the Tea Forte website.

Black tea with Madagascar vanilla and coconut slivers? hmm, hmm, hmm. Now we’re talking. The dry tea pyramid smells fantastic, can’t really make out the coconut smell, reminds me more of hazelnut for some reason.

Steeped for four minutes in boiling water. Can smell the coconut and vanilla now and it’s killing me to have to wait for it to cool (debating whether or not it’s worth the risk of a burnt tongue). Decided to wait – last two minutes. This yum in a cup. Rich and full bodied, smooth with a coconut twist, and sweet enough on it’s own.

Made it through three steeps with this one before it fizzled out. Ripping the pyramid bag open with the next one, thinking I might get one more good infusion out of it if the leaves are loose.

You can purchase the Orchid Vanilla directly from the Tea Forte website.

This tea smelled wonderful like fresh, fragrant peaches when I opened the little package. There was only one serving in one of those pyramid-shaped sachets – a big thank you to TeaEqualsBliss for sending it to me, BTW.

The taste is distinctly that of a dark oolong – bakey with a slightly woodsey note to it. Unfortunately I found that it tasted more than a little on the harsh side in the way you’d expect a lower-quality oolong to taste. The peach flavouring was nice – it wasn’t too artificial and meshed pretty well with the oolong like it belonged there, and I think made it less unpleasent.

Most of the harshness seemed to be gone when I resteeped it (@ 4 min) and enough of the peach flavour still lingered to make it interesting. So this tea is definitely good for more than one go.

You can purchase the Peach Blossom Oolong directly from the zhenas Gypsy Tea website.

Tonight, I need to relax so I’ve chosen two decaf teas from Tea Forte. 

Pulling out my specially made Tea Forte cup with it’s perfect little hole in the lid, getting set to try their African Solstice.  Love rooibos in the evening and this blend smells delicious.  I’ve failed with some other Tea Forte pyramid teas in the past because it just never seemed that there was enough room for the leaves to steep properly, this one I hope is going to be different.  I can’t see the rooibos clearing enough (through the pyramid) to tell what grade it is but I’m hoping the needles are long enough to not sneak through the mesh.  The dry tea smells only of rooibos, can’t smell any of the other ingredients.

Steeped it per their instructions, and now I am starting to smell the berries and the flowers in the pyramid sneaking through the hole in the teacup lid.  Taking the lid off and now I’m getting hit with a smell of vanilla and berries.  Brews up a nice dark red with a negligible amount of dust.  Tastes good but the flowers are a bit overpowering, still a soothing rooibos with a berry twist.  Well suited to the shape of the pyramid, dancing rooibos is such a sight.

You can purchase the African Solstice directly from the Tea Forte website.

Through my use of the tea tray, I have come to determine that it is a wonderful product.
At first, the tea trays seem a bit frivolous. The question that initially came to my mind is “Why would anyone spend money on something created specifically to hold used tea bags, when they could just as easily use a small plate, or even just dispose of the tea bag straight away?”
So, determined to answer this question, I prepared myself some tea (Tea Forte’s Orchid Vanilla, as the trays were clearly meant to be primarily used with Tea Forte pyramid bags).
Here were my findings:

Great things about the tea trays:
-They’re small, thus conserving the space used on one’s desk/table/etc. (This was especially helpful on my desk, which has a lot of papers and other items on it, and where a small plate for used tea bags would be a waste of space)
-They provide a drip-free resting place in the chance that you want to save the tea bag for another steeping.
-The tea trays are aesthetically pleasing, making them great to give as gifts or to add a bit of decoration at tea time.
-The size of the tea trays is such that they could just as easily be used with other tea bags as drip trays.
-The construction is really solid. These trays are not going to break easily if they are accidentally dropped.

Not so great things (that might not matter) about the tea trays:
-These trays really are not so special and innovative that one would go out and buy them to complete one’s collection of teaware.
-The shallow indentation in the tray was not deep enough, and the excess liquid in my teabag ended up overflowing the lip of the tray’s depression. (I may not have let the tea bag drip off long enough.)
-Because of the shallow indentation, when I picked up the tray to drain it off and clean it, the smallest tilt caused tea to run off the edge.

You can purchase the Tea Tray directly from the Tea Forte website.