Tea Reviews | It's All About The Leaf

Posts Tagged ‘Teabag’

This tea has possibly one of the most well-described packages I have ever seen. The single teabag package reads: “Hamstead Tea, London. Organic Fairtrade Earl Grey with aromatic bergamot. 1 staple-free teabag.”

Wow, that is quite a mouthful. I personally do not know anyone who buys teabags who is also concerned about saving some metal, but by the look of the string attached to the teabag, it makes me wonder why more teabag-producers do not follow this. It seems that Hamstead has implemented an easy way to do away with stables entirely. But how about the tea itself?!

The packaging recommends 3-5 minutes for steeping. The last earl grey that I tried oversteeped even with low steep times, so I boil some water and decide to go for the lower end here with 3 minutes of infusion. While I will admit that I am not big on bagged tea, this tea smells quite good, dry in the bag. A hint of orange provides a nice aroma. The steeping tea gives off a pleasant bergamot aroma. The first sip confirms that 3 minutes was a perfect amount of steeping, unless you prefer your tea stronger. For a bagged tea, this is pretty smooth, but it lacks a bit in the flavor profile. This is definitely a quality bagged tea. On my personal enjoyment scale, I would give it a 65/100.

You can purchase the Biodynamic, Organic and Fairtrade Earl Grey directly from the Hampstead Tea website.

I tend to like tropical tastes. Much to the chagrin of my family, when I order pizza, I usually choose pineapple and ham as toppings. This just grosses people out but I like it. So how about pineapple tastes in tea?…keep that thought in mind, okay now add to it guava. This combination makes me think that you’ll either love it or hate it. As separate food and drink items, I like it so I’m game to try the combo too. Not too sure about the flower petals in it though. We’ll see.

Opened up the package and found a mesh-stitched teabag filled with not small fannings or dust in the teabag but whole leaves that looked of good quality and only a tiny bit of blue flower petals. Steeped the teabag in boiling water for 3 minutes as per the instructions. Aroma is very fruity and floral. A very pleasant fragrance.

I agree with Mighty Leaf that the “green tea blends harmoniously with the sweet tropical fruits of pineapple and guava” and this may be part of the problem. It would have been more distinctive had the green tea had some of the characteristic grassy or vegetal notes of other green teas. Because of this, it tasted more like a tisane than a green tea blend. The taste of pineapple also seems to be lost in a stronger base note of the sweet guava. The blend does seem to come together quite naturally with the floral notes. It is an okay beverage but tastes too much like many fruity, floral teas I’ve tasted. It doesn’t stand out but it’ll do. I could take it or leave it.

You can purchase Mighty Leaf Green Tea Tropical directly from their website.

Teekanne is an outfit out of Dusseldorf (a name that always makes me laugh), Germany. The company has been involved in the tea trade – in one fashion or another – since 1882. One of their biggest claims to fame is the fact that most of the teabags sold commercially in the U.S. are made using Teekanne industrial equipment. Their stateside subsidiary is Redco Foods, Inc., which also has several other brands under its umbrella. One of them, I was already familiar with – Salada, producers of a decaf green tea I drank early on in my tea exploration.

The Teekanne Herbal Wellness line went public in 2008 and was endorsed by Stefi Graf (the “Fräulein Forehand” of the tennis world). Blends they marketed fell into three categories: Soothing, Relaxing, and Energizing. Being the neurotic that I am, I decided to go for something I aspired to – relaxing. Calming Chamomile, it was.

There wasn’t much to say about the tea. It was in a teabag. It smelled like chamomile. Both pluses for an end-of-day drink. Brewing instructions weren’t necessary either. Herbals could be steeped in boiling water for up to eight minutes, if one chose to. I went with a five-minute infusion in an ordinary mug.

The resulting liquor was clear-to-off-orange – a medicinal-looking palette that chamomile always yielded. The aroma was floral, faintly citrus and soothing. To the taste, it was what one expects from chamomile – like drinking a pillow that weighs heavy on the eyelids. It certainly accomplished what it set out to do; it made me ease back in my chair and sigh comfortably. Beyond that, I don’t have much to add. It is what it is.

You can purchase the Calming Chamomile directly from the Tea and All Its Splendour website.

I may have mentioned this before, but one of my ever increasing number of hobbies* is researching and recreating Medieval cooking.  Much like today, medieval people were very into conspicious consumption.  They liked using expensive pricy ingredients to show off to their guests – “See!  Look how much money I can spend – just on dinner!”  Spices were always one of the most popular ways to show off wealth.  They were very expensive and very highly valued, and saffron was one of the more popular spices.

In the cooking I do saffron is mostly a coloring agent, as it turns the food a lovely golden color, and not used for flavor.  I find the flavor very light and subtle.  So I was very curious about what affect it would have on the tea.

The teabag smelled like generic tea.  Pouring water over the bag, it did turn bright yellow for a moment – then turned into a normal tea color.  The brewed aroma again smelled like a normal tea.  In drinking, I’m getting a bitter high note – like I over-brewed the tea, but it didn’t have the tannic drying effect that normally goes along with the bitterness.    I prefer my tea sweetened, so after a few sips of the tea unsweetened, I added my favorite sweetening agent.  It toned down the bitterness, and turned it into a very bright flavor.

Either way, I don’t think I like the addition of the saffron.  The tea behind the saffron tastes quite nice, and would have likely been a very nice cuppa on it’s own.  But as it is, it’s not really for me.

*My craft room is crying from from too much stuff and too many projects. You can almost hear it crying from the street, “no more stuff, take the yarn away!  I don’t need any more embroidery floss!”

You can purchase the BLACK SAFFRON directly from the Hampstead Tea website.

Hampstead’s Ginger Green detox tea follows the trend of recent Hampstead teas I’ve tasted – that being a softer flavour of the main ingredient coupled with a more noticeable base tea flavour. The ginger taste is not potent like ginger tisanes. Here the green tea involved softens the ginger taste and mellows the sting of the ginger. I like the grassiness but it is a tad dull. If you prefer tea tastes that are not too overpowered by the flavour element, then this might be right for you. But do not leave the teabag in too long as this could lead to a bitter, tiger-balm-like taste. I think this could have ruined it for me. I steeped it too long and did not have another sample to try again. Try a 2 minute steep instead of three.

I would drink this tea if there were nothing else around but I would not purposely choose it to drink.

You can purchase the Ginger Green directly from the Hampstead Tea website.