Tea Reviews | It's All About The Leaf

Posts Tagged ‘Tang’

This is such a light, refreshing tea.  Very mild, very light – the brewed color is a light pale wheat color.  The brew has a light hint of a tang or tart to it as well.  Lovely.

I once read a Japanese food related comic, that mentioned drinking hot tea on a hot day.  I alway thought that was absolutely insane.  However, this tea makes me understand this.  I could drink this tea on a hot day and be refreshed and happy.

For an everyday drinking tea however, I’d like something with a little more oomph.

You can purchase the Snow Buds (Xue Ya) directly from the Canton Tea Co. 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.

There’s a smell that you get from cold lemonade on a hot day. It’s the smell of sweet refreshement, a tang of sour and a scoop of sweet. It’s a smell of people outside at a country fair, sweating in unison, but happy to be there because of the gorgeous day, the riot of color and activity around them and the ice cold glass in their hand.

This tea – has that smell. The leaf for this herbal tea smells more lemony than lemons – it smells like the distilled essence of lemonade. And not just lemonade – but outdoor, perfect refreshement on a special occasion lemonade.

The flavor isn’t the same, it’s not lemonade, but it’s really good in its own right. It’s more lemon grass than lemonade, and has a warmer, mellower taste that the crisp, lemonade tang. It’s lemony, smooth and naturally sweet.

Hot, this tea is soothing and relaxing. Iced, this would be a summertime refresher. This is an amazing tea. Lemon-lovers, TRY THIS TEA.

You can purchase the Lemonade directly from the Shanti Tea website.

This sencha is one of the loose tea samples included in Den’s Tea’s Green Tea Novice sampler. The dry leaves are lovely to look at – shiny, dark green needles of tea that have a full, savory sort of smell with hints of nuttiness. When I took the leaves out after they’d steeped they looked almost like pieces of fresh leaves that had been picked today.

The colour of the tea is a vivid lemon-yellow hue despite having a fairly short steeping time. The tea itself hovers somewhere between the grassiness of matcha and the flavour of cooked vegetables. It has a distinct savory undertone to it – I think someone else called it umami and I agree with that. There’s also a bitter tang on the end of each sip that leaves a bit of a sour aftertaste in the mouth. Nothing too horrible though, and the other attributes of the tea more or less make up for it in my opinion.

I’ve not had much experience with authentic, good-quality Japanese teas, but within my limited experience I can say that I think this is an excellent sencha and something that I might consider buying a full bag of one day.

You can purchase the Sencha Fuka-midori directly from the Den website.

In general, green teas take some coddling: keeping the water temp under boiling, not over-measuring the dry leaves, keeping a watchful eye so that you don’t oversteep.

Even for the hard core tea-ophile, some days you just don’t want to have to coddle your tea. Fatigue and/or time constraints just call for a dump-and-dunk cuppa. Thanks to Celestial Seasonings, green tea fans can have just that without much of a concession on quality.

I interpreted “freshly heated water” to be in the 180-degree range and did the prescribed two minute brew. No particular flavor jumps out to get you, but there’s a mild lemony-citrus tang to each swallow. As you can see above, the ingredient listing on the package doesn’t reveal much; a note on the lid says that that white tea has been added for smoothness. Said white tea does cut the five-required-daily-servings-of-veggies taste that you get in most bagged greens.

When convenience needs to overrule preciseness, this tea is a good call.

You can purchase the Authentic Green Tea directly from the Celestial Seasonings website.