Tea Reviews | It's All About The Leaf

Posts Tagged ‘Tea Tea’

I have two tea bags with which to form a review of this tea. So, I will be sharing my thoughts on this tea as I progressed through both tea tastings.

First tea bag:
The smell from the dry tea bag is minty. The teabags from Hampstead Tea are really full, not your typical tea bag. I brewed the bag for 2 minutes, added a splash of milk and sipped. “What does this remind me of? Dirt? No, mint.” For me the tea has a mint aftertaste. Is this bad? It depends, do you want your breakfast tea to remind you of mint? I decided on this first cup that I did not want mint with breakfast.

Second tea bag:
The smell from the dry tea bag is minty. No denying the mint flavor. As I brewed for two minutes, I braced myself for the previous flavor profile. I sipped my first sip and hum…it seems better to me. Is it a tea that I would pick for breakfast? Probably not. I did read another reviewers take on this tea and they compared it to a Darjeeling. I can see that comparison now that I have drank two full cups of this robust black tea.

Overall, I like Hampstead Tea tea bags, they are full and brew up nicely. This particular EB left me wanting something else. It is just not my cup of tea.

You can purchase the Organic Fairtrade English Breakfast directly from the Hampstead Tea website.

“Tuo Cha” means block of tea. Tea blocks are compressed tea made from the leaves of wild trees, not cultivated tea bushes. The leaves are harvested and steamed into shaped molds. There is usually an indentation in the mold to prevent the tea from sticking. Thus, you will see most tea cakes have a bowl-shaped dent in the middle. It is a bit of a novelty to have a small cake of pressed tea, often called a” mini tou cha” such as the sample from Chicago Tea Garden. You will also see a small indentation in the mini tou chas. The Chrysanthemum Pu-Erh Tuocha is a “cooked” variety of pu-erh, a fermented tea that is processed further than the raw form that is aged naturally.

If interested in he health benefits of this tea, medical experiments in France showed that with regular consumption of pu-erh, blood lipids (cholesterol levels) were lowered by 13% (3 cups/day in one month). Other benefits include: cuts fat consumption, as an aid in digestion and lymphatic secretions, invigorates the spleen and dispels toxins.

The pu-erh tuo cha sample is typical of a single 4 gram serving for a 150 ml Gaiwan or traditional Xishing tea pot. I used boiling water and poured off the first infusion to rehydrate the leaves. The second steep was 15 seconds. The liquor was a red-brown colour and smelled as pu-erh does, a bit musty and bit like damp earth. You are not going to examine much of the leaf because its quite chopped. You can try about 4-5 steeping from this tea provided you pour off quickly.

The mini tuo cha will have a chrysanthemum flower tucked into the bottom, so look for this flower as the tea opens up. Chrysanthemum gives a distinctive floral flavour. Any floral scent will tend to get a bit lost in the cooked pu-erh because the earthy smells can overpower the florals. Still, you can taste a light fruitiness to the tea. The chrysanthemum while quite small does the job to provide some sweetness on the aftertaste. I didn’t agree with the description that there is a nutty and smokey flavour as my sample lacked these flavours.

The Chrysanthenmum Pu-erh Tuo Cha is not a very deep tea as some pu-erhs are. It is fermented, yes, but light enough to enjoy as a beginner pu-erh tea for someone new to its flavours. It also makes a light refreshment with a meal or on its own as it is smooth. This tea is not as full in the mouth as an older pu-erh, but it is easy to prepare, can’t be over-steeped and holds up to multiple steepings.

You can purchase the Chrysanthemum Pu-erh Tuocha directly from the Chicago Tea Garden 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.

Kalahari describes this tea on their website as “The blend of naturally caffeine-free herb with deep flavor or roasted cacao, and fresh essence of lush, juicy ripe raspberries.”. (side note: Copy editing is available for a nominal fee – grammer/spelling mistakes on an e-commerce website are a no-no!)

I always approach samples with trepidation when I receive teabags for review. I am happy to review anything, but I WANT to like the tea. Tea companies send their teas for reviews, because they believe that they have a good product, and we receive many of these, however, I seem to have developed a bias against tea bag teas. That being said, Rooibos is naturally a small, in fact tiny leaf, so we are not dealing with fannings or dust necessarily as we would with, say, a green tea tea bag.

The smell of this tea in the bag is a pleasant mix of Chocolate and Raspberry, which are individually among my list of favorite ingredients, so we have a promising start! While the bag is brewing in the cup, I get that nose of Raspberry with subtler Chocolate undertone.

I brewed the tea with boiled water, for 5 minutes, my standard Rooibos brewing method. The color is a dark red, as are almost every single Rooibos cup I have ever had. The taste is a bit more subtle than I had expected however. I was wanting a burst of Raspberry and Chocolate, but got only a hint of each. Despite the scent, the Chocolate is the more predominant flavour, with the Raspberry just barely there. It is not overpoweringly Chocolate, which is good, but I personally would prefer a bit more tartness from the Raspberry. Since the ingredients list only Raspberry flavour, not actual Raspberry, it is to be expected that there is no actual tartness, which this blend could have benefitted from in my opinion.

Overall it is not a bad tea, but at $0.31 per bag, I am not sure that you have value for money, when you can get other loose leaf Rooibos blends for closer to $0.10 or $0.15 per cup.

You can purchase Kalahari Tea Raspberry Truffle directly from their website.