Kitchen T.L.C.

I have to admit I have no idea what huckleberries or currants taste or smell like. So I don’t know how well this tea pulled them off. This definitely smells sweet and fruity and sort of like berry. Steeped, this is a fruity sweet tea. Still not sure if its a huckleberry taste, but it’s at least a good taste. The white tea is sort of overwhelmed by the fruity taste, but its still enjoyable. I’m gonna have to try this one iced and see how that is.

Not such a great tea. It tastes like a cheap artificially sweetened black tea with a hint of caramel. It’s somewhat in the league of 52Teas Candy Corn tea imo, so maybe those of you who liked that one would like this too. I rated that one higher, though, because the caramel in this one is what really puts me off.

It’s my birthday!

My parents and siblings moved back to Montana this past summer, so my sister won’t be baking me a cake this year :( so so sad. But….

My family was so nice to send me a ‘birthday-in-a-box.’ All sorts of pretty wrapped presents. yay! I opened a couple this morning and it was tea! Montana tea :p I got this one and the one called “Bridger Blend.”

I put the ingredients from the company website in the tea info box, but my jar of tea says that it has passionfruit rather than pineapple and papaya, so I don’t know what is correct.

I didn’t have high expectations for this. A generous-sized jar of tea from a company I am not familiar with. . . o.O That, and fruit flavored teas, especially tropical flavors, have not been kind to me.

But this tea, not bad, not bad at all. I can’t tell yet if it will grow on me or grow away from me, but for now, Im not in any hurry to be rid of it.

The flavor doesn’t taste artificial and the base isn’t bitter. I wasn’t sure how to brew a green/black tea blend and I was worried about bitterness. Cheap black bases alone are often bitter in flavored teas, but maybe the blend of green and black works to balance everything out. I let the hot water sit a minute after boiling though, so it was probably around 195 or so (depending how hot the elevation and air pressure combo here deemed appropriate for boiling temp. today :p )

I don’t even know what to do with this tea. I tried it cold brewed—again—and this time it was drinkable, but not really good. I guess I can try swapping it; based on what I’ve tried from other companies and how other people have reacted to them, I would guess that this might be tasty to some people. It’s not dissimilar to 52teas Black Currant Bai Mu Dan or Earl Black… that’s the type of flavoring. Just not my thing.

This tasting note is more a pouting note. I bumped into my Lupicia handy cooler today while it was drying and it smashed on the ground and shattered. :( :( :( I literally use it every day to make iced tea for lunch. I had to go and buy a replacement right away. Still so sad.

This was the last thing I cold steeped in it, but unfortunately it wasn’t successful. Sometimes flavored whites come out bitter and overdone even just overnight. I guess I’ll try it for a shorter time… Eventually.

Very tired this morning, so I decided to finally try this tea that I bought in Montana. There was a brief discussion on the high caffeine content of white teas recently, so I figured maybe this one would perk me up.

The dry leaf smells very highly flavored, and not quite in a good way. It took me a minute but then I remembered where I had smelled this before… 52teas Earl Black, which is also a white tea-black currant combo. This tea is called huckleberry and it has huckleberries, but it also has black currant as well. I love black currant black teas (and really nearly everything black currant), but I had problems with that tea.

Steeped it smells similar, though a bit toned down. For some reason this combo smells to me like grape medicine (not black currants unfortunately), and it is being born out here as well. The flavor is not quite so grapey in this one (maybe the huckleberry is helping?), but it’s certainly candy-ish. Why is it so hard to flavor a white tea with berries and have it taste authentic? Anyway, robust, dark berries like black currants and huckleberries seem like they go better with a nice black base. I guess I know to avoid black currant + white tea in the future. Also, this is supposed to be huckleberry, not black currant, and I am disappointed that black currant is predominant here.

I may try cold steeping this one to see if it’s any better balanced. Glad the tin I bought of this is small.