Tea Reviews | It's All About The Leaf

Posts Tagged ‘Teabags’

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.

These teabags are adorable; little bendy strings with the leaf, the pyramid shape leaving room for the leaves to dance, the packaging.  They’re highly engineered and very cute.

However, it’s what’s inside that counts, and as a chai, it didn’t really stand out.  Chai should be bold and brave and spicy.  This is a delicate chai.  A demure chai.  Not quite a wall-flower chai, but definitely not the belle of the ball.  Nice to drink, but not something I’d actively seek out.

What I found that I really liked using this tea for was making cocktails with it.  I originally got this idea from a class I took at a local tea shop.  They had gotten the Tea Forte tea cocktails set in, and this is a modification of one of those recipes.  This is a LOVELY decadent drink, to replace dessert when you feel like laying about and being pampered.

1 Bombay Chai Tea Pyramid
Double shot of Whipped Cream flavored vodka (can be done with regular vodka, but this adds an extra dimension of yum)
ice
simple syrup
whole milk (or half and half if you feel REALLY decadent)

Take the bombay chai tea pyramid and put in a small cup.  Pour the vodka in, let sit approx. 5-8 minutes. Remove tea pyramid. Take a large juice or highball glass, fill with ice.  Pour in steeped vodka.  Then add at least 2 tbsp of simple syrup, more if you like things sweet (you can adjust after finishing the drink).  Fill the glass with milk.  Taste, adjust the sweetness with more simple syrup as needed.  Then enjoy.

The tea pyramid can be resteeped two to three times for more drinks.  (For you, or your friends - if you want to share.)  It’s amazingly yummy.  Completely decadent.  Lovely.

You can purchase the Bombay Chai directly from the Tea Forte website.

Although I normally cut open teabags and steep them loose, I decided to steep this tea in its own bag and why not, Tea Forte has one of the most attractive teabags in the industry. I kept the teabag in for the full duration of my drinking the tea. Steeped leaves show broken green leaves, stem, ginger bits, and white flower petals. Infusion is a yellowish colour. Although the leaves are not small enough, I did notice a little bit of dust components, pekoe?, that made it through the teabag and sat on the surface of the tea. Aroma is heavenly, sweet from the pear.

Unlike with many teas with ginger as an ingredient that I have tasted recently, the ginger here is surprisingly soft. Sweetness came predominantly from the white tea and pear and the ginger played the supportive role. The resulting taste of the balance of these three flavours is one similar to bubble gum. Funny, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a pear bubble gum flavour before, but the combination of these three ingredients was spot on like bubble gum. Don’t get me wrong, I like bubble gum but like with bubble gum I can’t chew more than one piece at a time. I don’t think I can drink more than one cup of this tea at a sitting. I can’t see myself drinking a lot of it.

You can purchase Tea forte white ginger pear directly from their website.

Not being much of a mint fan, in whatever form, be it candy, ice cream, or chocolates, Tea Forte has a tough job at hand to try to convince me that mint – yes, in the form of a tea is good. Well, I like citrus fruits so at least they have that going for them. Anyway, on with the review…

Dry leaf looks like the grade of a fannings, green and some brown, packaged in that familiar pyramid shaped teabag known to be Tea Forte. I cut open the 2 teabags I received (total about 3 grams) and steeped it in about 400 ml of hot water. I was pre-occupied at the time and by the time I returned to the water, it had cooled to 80C. Herbal teas should be steeped at 100C for 2-3 minutes. I knew I was going to get a sub-par tasting tea. There was a faint minty aroma, no hint of citrus. The taste was minty, not overly piercing mintyness but a softer mint. I did not detect any citrus taste. After the initial mintyness, there was a taste as if you were licking the back of an envelope – that sort of gluey-paper taste. Mind you, I think this was because of the low temperature at which I steeped the tea.

I tried a second infusion at boiling point and the tea tasted much better. There was no more of the gluey-paper taste and the mintyness was more light and tangy rather than stale if that makes any sense. I noticed that as the tea cools, the minty taste dissipates and you can taste hints of citrus. I prefer it cold rather than hot. As a hot beverage, I found that the citrus and mint did not complement each other very well. I don’t know, maybe because when I drink citrus I expect something sweet like citrus juices, because when I tasted this the sort of “lack of sweetness” coupled with the mintyness made the taste buds yearn for something that wasn’t there. It was missing an ingredient, maybe honey or cocoa shells or maybe even lavender. But then again, that could just complicate things…let’s leave that to the tea blenders shall we.

You can purchase the Citrus Mint directly from the Tea Forte website.

Celestial Seasoning’s Honey Lemon Ginseng is fantabulous! Aroma is a soft lemon; it does not smell too sour nor too sweet. Whenever I see the combination of honey and lemon, I think of it as the perfect concoction for cold and flus. Now add ginseng to the mix and you definitely give a boost to your immune system. I am partial to ginseng so of course I had to choose this tea. There is an old Chinese proverb that says if you ask 2 men to walk around the world non-stop, the one who looks untired and refreshed at the end of the journey would have a piece of ginseng hidden under his tongue. This once again referring to ginseng’s many health benefits.

A tip for preparing teas: try ripping open the teabags, pouring contents directly into the teapot and steeping from there. This little step will add more flavour to your cup of tea. You can use a strainer to keep leaves and dregs from entering into your cup of tea. I did just that with this tea, pouring 5 grams into my ceramic teapot and steeping with 600 ml of boiling water for 3 minutes.

The taste is not too lemony and although I could not smell the ginseng in the aroma, I could definitely taste it. It has that familiar characteristic I get from many hui gan teas but without the bitterness. I am referring to the sort of “coated” mouthfeel you get like when you drink milk. Having that “coated” mouthfeel makes it less of a thirst quencher. As a matter of fact, it leaves a dry feeling in your mouth, but then again thirst quenching hot teas are a little hard to come by. There is an initial refreshing quality right when you put it in your mouth, then comes the “coatedness” and dry mouthfeel at the middle and back of the tongue and lastly a hint of sweetness and cool sensation felt from the honey and pressing the front of the tongue to the front centre of the roof of the mouth. It seems that when I drank the tea using loose leaf steeping methodology, the taste of the three components were manifested more in layers – one taste, then the next and so on, whereas when I drank it from the teabag, the taste was more blended, that is, no single element came to the forefront, every sip had nuances of all three elements. The elements are certainly easier to identify using the loose leaf methodology. I tend to rip open the teabag and steep the leaves loose whenever I have teabags, but not many people do this as it is messy (because most contain dust or fannings) and more inconvenient. But you should give it a try; the teabag keeps the character, quality, goodness, and flavour of the leaves all contained; cutting it open makes for a better cup.

A notable tea that I will not soon forget. Now I just need to find it in my supermarket!

You can purchase the Honey Lemon Ginseng Green Tea directly from the Celestial Seasonings website.