Trader Joe's

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Recent Tasting Notes

73

Picked this up at Trader Joe’s several weeks ago along with the Lemon Green Tea one. I did not care for the Lemon Green tea flavor but I really like this one! It has a little bit of sugar added and is only slightly sweet. I could taste the black tea and the fruit in this one. Overall I would buy this again for when I’m on the go or need something quick. It’s a pretty good bottled tea.

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62

Impulse buy from Trader Joe’s. I’ve seen passing references to barley tea in Japanese novels (Murakami) and was curious to finally try it myself.

While I’m glad to see TJ’s beginning to stock Asian bottled teas, this one was a miss for me. My better half, who shared the bottle with me, aptly described it as “like drinking watered down coffee”. I have to agree. This is a pretty aggressively roasted tea and has a slightly oily texture. Coffee drinkers and fans of dark tea might like it but for others like me, this is at best an acquired taste.

Flavors: Coffee

Preparation
Iced
Lexie Aleah

Harney and Sons has a Roasted Buckwheat tea. I didn’t care for it but a lot of people do like that flavor profile. I almost picked this one up from TJ’s myself but was skeptical. I enjoy TJ’s bottled Golden Oolong Tea quite a bit though. You might give that one a try.

LuckyMe

@Lexie Aleah, I love the Golden Oolong too! It’s similar to Ito-En’s Golden Oolong which is my favorite bottled Asian tea. Hope they stock more unsweetened bottled teas, especially green tea.

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64

I bought this at my local Trader Joe’s with high hopes. I was underwhelmed. Not bold enough for me as either a white or pomegranate tea.

Flavors: Fruity

Preparation
1 min, 45 sec

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81

What is this exactly? Not a tea really, and not an herbal. Perhaps more honestly classified as a medicinal . It has a very clean taste. Neither the ginger or turmeric are overpowering but they are definitely both present. the same cannot be said for the other listed ingredients, I get no orange peel or orange oil. I’m assuming the sweetness comes from the licorice. No black pepper on the tongue either.
It is a nice warm tea to end the night with . I can’t quite call it cozy. But it is quite good.

Flavors: Ginger

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78

Decided against better judgment to stay home with the migraine today (work gets pissy whenever someone happens to “be sick” on a Monday or Friday, but damn it all) so I promptly got a batch of this cold-brewing first thing this morning so I could sip on it throughout the day to help with the nausea. Mint and ginger are two of the only things that help curb that rather unfortunate side effect. I don’t have a Trader Joe’s anywhere near me, but my friend Todd sent me a box of this from one of his Bay Area stores when he made a Taylors of Harrogate Yorkshire Gold run for me (which is another tea that isn’t sold in any of my local stores). Popped four teabags in a quart-sized mason jar and left it until it was that brown color you expect of mint tea.

Cool. Refreshing. Has that nice, fresh, cool menthol mintiness of spearmint that settles in the back of the throat and is calming on the tum. Mildly grassy from the green tea, and there is a gentle citrusy burst from the lemongrass, but the spearmint is the dominant note. Satisfying. I should get another jar steeping now as it will probably go quickly.

Thanks Todd!

Flavors: Citrus, Grass, Menthol, Mint, Spearmint

Preparation
Iced 8 min or more 4 tsp 32 OZ / 946 ML

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drank Red Refresh Herbal Tea by Trader Joe's
1556 tasting notes

Cold-brewed. Smells like fruit punch, tastes like nothing but sour and in a thin way. Increasing brew time and number of bags doesn’t do much for the better.

Probably ok with sugar. Even then, it might taste like Kool-Aid.

Flavors: Cherry, Fruit Punch, Lemon, Lime, Orange, Sour

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60

It’s amazing it is so well accepted here.

I have to say I am with derk in same boat. It was quite weak in taste, ginger was weak and turmeric almost non present.

Quite strong on the licorice root, I have to agree – bit too sweet for me.
Quite meh, unfortunately. But maybe it is caused I prepared it for all in the family in big family pot (two bags per liter and something).

Not a fan. But thanks derk anyway!

Preparation
5 min, 0 sec

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85

It has a good flavor and is refreshing.

Flavors: Flowers, Sour

Preparation
200 °F / 93 °C 6 min, 0 sec 10 g 8 OZ / 236 ML

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83

Very strong on the pomegranate—nice and tart!

Preparation
155 °F / 68 °C 3 min, 45 sec

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90

I’m sure why I bought the tea in the first place. I have this habit of leaving the tea bag in the cup which another reviewer mentioned, definitely infused a lot of cinnamon flavor. It has a slight sweetness which I love as I’m not a fan of adding sugar to my tea (diet and everything?). I wanted to try this with milk but didn’t find it necessary.

As it is a holiday tea, you will love pairing this with a Christmas Fruit Cake, a pumpkin spice muffin or any holiday cake. Can’t get cozier than this! :)

Preparation
Boiling 7 min, 0 sec 8 OZ / 250 ML

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Non-spicy ginger overpowers the weak turmeric. Strong orange oil and licorice root, no black pepper.

Do Not Like.

A tea-drinking coworker loves licorice root so I’ll be gifting the rest of this box to her, along with another licorice heavy tisane.

Preparation
Boiling 6 min, 0 sec 8 OZ / 236 ML

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60

This tea is going to be sour and tart. That was my first impressions when I took it from box from derk. Thank you. And as I had choice paralysis, I let choose tea my faithful friend – random.org

And it decided this one. I smelled the bag and yeah, it is going to be sour and tart.
Brewed for 4 minutes, it became deep red (as in the picture).

It is – sour and tart. But with some notes of raspberries or something? It should not be in, but tastes like raspberry jam or something. It is pleasantly sour. But yeah, it’s tart tea. It’s not bad, but nothing to really enjoy. At least for me.

Flavors: Pleasantly Sour, Raspberry, Tart

Preparation
Boiling 4 min, 0 sec 10 OZ / 300 ML

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I went for a walk while waiting for some new rubber seals, a boot and a lock to be installed on my truck’s camper shell. As soon as I strolled into another business’s parking lot, I ran into a coworker and her wife and two dogs… this other business being another location of the company we work for. Both of us on our days off, the four of them not visiting our employer but going for a walk along the creek across the street. I am often surprised by this ‘small town’ thing. I enjoy every encounter and learned connection I have.

After receiving dog kisses and getting a spritz on my shoe by a terribly excited standard poodle puppy, I walked back to the waiting room of the camper shell business and was surprised to find it spotless (I was scared it was going to resemble a junkyard bathroom — I’ll never go in one but my imagination was running wild after visiting a pick-and-pull last week and finding a brand new bra on the ground…) and with a selection of herbal and green teas on the counter. Picked this, something I’ve seen at Trader Joe’s but never considered purchasing.

I steeped one bag in probably 12oz of watercooler hot water and left the bag in while I sipped. I think the instructions said something like 1.5 to 2 minutes but I was feeling hypoglycemic and lazy. This tasted unlike any other tulsi I’ve had. It had a very vibrant aroma and flavor along the lines of star anise, clove and a bit of soft mintiness. No bitterness, no astringency, no flat herbaceous flavor that I was expecting. The texture was at first somewhat thin but developed into something more oily and medium-bodied as the bag continued to brew. I may have to purchase a box to have on hand until I grow my own tulsi.

Flavors: Clove, Herbaceous, Licorice, Mint, Smooth, Sweet, Tulsi

Preparation
8 min or more 12 OZ / 354 ML
Martin Bednář

This Tulsi seems better than usual :). Growing own herbs is always nice.

And your story with bra made me giggle a bit, but it’s disgusting.

gmathis

We tried tulsi in pots a couple summers ago and it wasn’t hard to grow—I am a habitual plant abuser and it still flourished. I think I dried it inexpertly, though; it wasn’t nearly as strong as the bulk tulsi I buy at the local natural grocery.

mrmopar

Of all the things to find in a pick and pull…………

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70

Arby Advent Backlog
This one is at first pretty unremarkable. Mostly tastes like a weak bagged fruit tea. As I have more bags of it, I do find myself enjoying it more. It’s tart and the berry flavor is decent. I don’t mind this one! Thanks for sharing so many bags of this, Arby! I did end up becoming a bit of a fan of the cherry flavor mixed in there with the usual berry flavors.

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I’ve always wanted to try a tea advent calendar, and, to my utter delight, my sister made me one! She’s given me a bunch of little tea samples from her own (fabulous) tea cupboard, and I am excited for the month to come.
Day one was this. It’s a pretty decent raspberry tea, not bitter at all, but not quite as juicy as I’d like.
I’ve really got to stick my head in Trader Joes soon and look at their teas.

AJRimmer

They have a nice tea section for sure! I bought a pumpkin rooibos from them years ago, mostly for the cute tin, which I still use to refill with whatever other pumpkin tea I have on hand.

gmathis

Tea that is a thoughtful gift always tastes twice as good!

Dustin

I bought that same pumpkin rooibos for the tin! They used to carry a really nice bagged jasmine that contained little balls of rolled up tea leaves. It was so good!

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71

Come for the tin, stay for the outrage over the phrase “pumpkin spice”. Historically, these spice combinations have been called “sweet spice” for they spice up sweet things. Rooibos is not a sweet thing. And the sweet spice blend doesn’t make it a sweet thing. In fact, to my palette, the sweet spice blend might as well have taken the day off because I just cannot taste it. I’m sure they are there, hanging out, being noticed by people with more refined palettes than I have.

But as for me, I wanted a cup of rooibos, and I got a cup of rooibos (with reusable tin as a bonus). Expectations were met.

Flavors: Rooibos

Preparation
Boiling 7 min, 0 sec 16 OZ / 473 ML

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100

Come for the medicinal properties, stay for the taste. That about sums up my experience. I was having a lingering cold so wanted ginger for my stomach, turmeric for my immune system, and black pepper for inflammation, and found this tisane which combined all of them without having caffeine (I’m extremely sensitive to caffeine so hope to avoid it whenever possible). The bonus properties of licorice and citrus compounds were add ons I hardly wanted to refuse.

But what surprised me was the flavor. I was prepared for it to be overwhelmingly gingery as an unbalanced tea would be. I was prepared for that too-much-tumeric flavor. I was prepared to be drinking hot black pepper water. I was even prepared for the flavor of the turmeric and black pepper hot water concoction that I’d made myself (because those two in combination are a dynamite hedge witch medicine combo). But no. None of that. Instead, I got a pleasant, well rounded flavor that wasn’t dominated by any one thing at all; one might even say mild and mellow. The flavor is definitely unique, and I found it yummy in an unexpected way.

This would be my absolute favorite tea, but for the single-use plastic envelopes that each individual tea bag is wrapped in, within the box. If other boxes of turmeric/ginger/black pepper tea blends can manage paper wrappers or no wrappers to their bags at all, that tells me that this blend isn’t using the plastic envelopes for any purpose I would appreciate. I just don’t like the amount of landfill trash that one box of these tea bags produces since I know that there can be boxes of tea bags that produce no landfill trash. While this isn’t a tasting note, the plastic envelopes left a bad taste in my mouth, and so I’ve simply stopped buying this tea. Please, Trader Joe’s, do something about that!

Flavors: Broth

Preparation
Boiling 6 min, 0 sec 16 OZ / 473 ML

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80

My stomach is hell this morning, so I’m having to give up my morning cuppa of black tea to make something more soothing that might settle the nausea a bit. My go-to for nausea is either mint tea or ginger tea, so I’ve had a box of these teabags on hand for a while that Todd mailed me (I don’t have a local Trader Joe’s and always seem to be rather unimpressed with the bagged mint offerings I find around here… at least the Bigelow one I found retchid). I have liked this one a lot, though. I think I enjoy my mint blends more when they are a mix of peppermint and spearmint, and the touch of lemon helps add another slight note to cut through what would otherwise just be that heavy menthol taste. This one is nice and strong and minty which is precisely what my tum-tum needs, but I do get just a bit of citrus and my tongue is left cool and tingly. The mint is strong enough that the lemongrass doesn’t come off very herbaceous in this particular tea, so while I do prefer other lemon herbs more, it works okay here. This also makes a nice iced tea, as I’ve dropped 4-5 teabags into cold water and let it sit overnight (or 2-3 in a water bottle to take on the go) in the past before to have minty ice cold refreshing tea too.

Flavors: Citrus, Menthol, Mint

Preparation
Boiling 5 min, 0 sec 1 tsp 12 OZ / 350 ML
mrmopar

Hoping you feel better soon!

gmathis

Yep, peppermint is my go to for nausea, headaches, stuffy noses, and general owies!

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83

This one came from a ten-pack of loose leaf teas presented in plastic vials. I think I like it better cold. The vanilla flavor comes through and the rooibos is sweet and lacking any sort of unpleasantness. I’m a rooibos lover, but I think it’s very nice. I only tried a sample, but it reminded me that I need to order a plainish rooibos somewhere since I don’t have anything like that right now.

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80

(Steepster is behaving strange again. I wanted to write another tasting note for this one, remove it from cupboard et cetera. And when I click on the main page of tea, it shows like on mobile and can’t do anything there. If I click on “Rate this tea” it brings me back to main page.) As of 16th January

So, at least somehow, late. It’s copied from yesterday comment :D of first my tasting note.
Thank you derk for this tea. It had got unique property – when I wanted to brew it, I couldn’t find it. When not, it was there. But today, when I was preparing teas for you I found it and… took to some other place so it won’t disappear again. And of course, it hid again.
But I have found it.

It is still somehow same tea, even after 6 months. Certainly more on melon side this time. It is quite weird to drink this while outside is 0°C, but why not. It reminds me nice summer weather. I really hate this season, when it is freezing, but no snow outside.

Derk, thank you for this one. Although it is summer tea, it is enjoyable even in winter.
As for 17th January, tea site worked without any problems. Weird things…

Flavors: Melon, Mint, Sweet

Preparation
205 °F / 96 °C 4 min, 0 sec 10 OZ / 300 ML

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80

A tea bag I have received from derk – thanks a lot for all I have received. Now I am really having lots of tea. No more tea for me, need to drink my stash down a bit. Thank you Izzy too, for envelope from you.

I prepared this tea traditional – hot water, one bag per cuppa. I wanted something simple, not really in mood for doing gong-fu. I steeped it for maybe four minutes, while fresh melon aroma comes out.

It has got typical, bronze, colour, with aroma of melon (naturally) with little refreshing mint notes.

In taste… it is cold now, meh… nice watermelon, maybe bit more watermelon seeds with refreshing mint note. Black tea base is not present at all.
Not bad, though.

Flavors: Melon, Mint

Preparation
Boiling 4 min, 0 sec 10 OZ / 300 ML
derk

You’re welcome. Did that chocolate-dipped candied orange survive? Bad time of year to send it :P

Martin Bednář

Derk – the orange looks fine. I just need to pick up a tea to drink it with.

Martin Bednář

Steepster is behaving strange again. I wanted to write another tasting note for this one, remove it from cupboard et cetera. And when I click on the main page of tea, it shows like on mobile and can’t do anything there. If I click on “Rate this tea” it brings me back to main page.

So, at least somehow – this way.
Thank you derk for this tea. It had got unique property – when I wanted to brew it, I couldn’t find it. When not, it was there. But today, when I was preparing teas for you I found it and… took to some other place so it won’t disappear again. And of course, it hid again.
But I have found it.
It is still somehow same tea, even after 6 months. Certainly more on melon side this time. It is quite weird to drink this while outside is 0°C, but why not. It reminds me nice summer weather. I really hate this season, when it is freezing, but no snow outside.

I would rate it higher this time; but I can’t. 80/100.

Mastress Alita

When a tea is stuck in mobile view, you have to click to “Edit” the entry, even if you don’t want to edit the information. Save it from the Edit screen. It should go back to the normal view.

Martin Bednář

It worked normally today, so I have added a proproper tasting note. But I will keep it here, just, why not?

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It’s hard not to associate the taste of watermelon-flavoring with candy, and the smell of it with like, scented bath products. To be fair, I’m not the biggest fan of flavorings a lot of the time. I also haven’t tried it iced—I could see that working better. Maybe if the black tea was stronger, I’d enjoy it more, but the watermelon just smells and tastes overpowering.

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100

We’ve never lived near a Trader Joe’s, so whenever we visited a town that had one, we’d always stock up on everything, including this tea. We’d absolutely demolish pitcher after pitcher of it iced. Unfortunately, they stopped carrying it a few years ago, and I saved my last bag to have on a special day. It’s just as good as I remembered. I’ll miss it so much! I’ve had a lot of honeybush and rooibos, but for some reason this one makes the best iced tea. It’s so smooth and sweet and truly different from other blends. I’ve been meaning to email them and see where this tea is sourced from, but I keep forgetting.

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65

I love the jitters-free caffeine boost from mate, but I have to really be in the mood for mate in order to make myself a cup. And I’m only in the mood for it like, once a year.
I like this one better than the Guayaki kind. It has a milder flavor.
But yeah, it still tastes like grass.

Flavors: Grass

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