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It was already hot today when I woke up, so I decided to play around and try making a cold tea latte. My initial efforts failed spectacularly, in which I dropped a tea bag into cold milk and hoped for the best. After like an hour, some tea flavour had come out of the tea bag and there was a little tea taste in the milk, so I said, fine whatever, I’ll just drink it weak because I didn’t want to wait anymore. So I added my usual amount of sugar and this drink was SWEET. Like, unbearably so.

I then poured that tea into a container to hopefully salvage later, stuck it in the fridge, and went back to the drawing board. This time I figured I’d start with some hot water to extract the tea flavour, so I used a small amount of boiling water in a mug and steeped a second tea bag just fine as expected. Super dark, looks very strong. This cup too I put into the fridge to cool down.

Once everything was cold, I took my original drink, added a bunch more milk to it and most of the “concentrated tea”.

The result – a drinkable cold tea latte or rather a container with enough tea for two cold tea lattes!

I think I more prefer this tea warm, but I guess this is okay to keep me cool.

Thought I’d revisit my lowest rated tea tonight to see if I could improve on it at all. I see that last time I broke down and added sugar to the tea, because it felt a bit bitter to me—especially as it cooled down. I also suggested to myself to reduce my measurement back down to 0.5 tsp on my next experiment.

So, for tonight’s experiment I followed my advice, and also I thought I’d add both milk and sugar this time to see what happens. While much of the internet seems to see this as a grave error when it comes to oolong, I figure what’s the harm in adulterating a tea that I’m not entirely fond of anyway. Maybe it’ll make it better in my eyes lol… I otherwise tried to follow directions to steep at 90C for 3 minutes.

You know, with the added milk and sugar, I’m actually really digging this drink. If rice pudding were made a drink – this would be it! You know the stuff that’s made from rice, milk, sugar, and raisins? Yea, that’s exactly the taste I’m now getting from this tea and it’s really nice. So nice in fact that I’m going to rate this up because it’s so tasty. Goodbye 60 rating, hello 80 rating!

Would I buy this again? I’m thinking yes now. If it’s still available when I next buy from this company, I’m totally adding it to my order. With the milk and sugar this makes for a liquid dessert.

Updated cup count (12 oz) from 8g sampler size: 3. Still a bunch more tea in the sampler, but I think I’m done experimenting. I’ve found my preferred flavour!

I was supposed to get a package of tea in the mail today, so I held off on drinking my evening tea in the hopes that it might actually show up. Which, it didn’t, so I dipped into my collection looking for something special to raise my spirits. I went with Chocolate Strawberry, because it was one of the flavours I was most excited about when ordering this previous batch and because it’s caffeine free and it’s approaching midnight.

Upon opening the packet, there’s a strong smell of dark chocolate. That’s the overwhelming scent I’m picking up on. I’m not really sure which are the cocoa pieces listed on the ingredients list, so I’m not sure how much is actually in there vs how much it smells. Maybe the smell has seeped into everything in the packet so it all has a taste of chocolate to it, I don’t know…

One thing I did notice however, was the clump of very large strawberries sitting on top of the tea. I decided to do some surgery on them since I didn’t want to use up the entirety of the strawberries in a single cup. So I pulled out the clump, pulled apart the 6 strawberry slices that had merged into a single lump of greatness, and then used my kitchen scissors to chop them into smaller bits that I then stirred back into the loose tea. It seems much more evenly distributed now.

For the preparation, I used my standard 0.75 tsp of tea per 12 oz of water, but looking at it in the basket, it might be a little low. It’s not like there should be any overwhelming flavours or bitterness in the mix and I’m not sure how flavourful a fruit tea is on its own. (The suggested serving was 1.5 tsp per 8 oz). I otherwise followed the directions, opting for a 5 minute steep at boiling of the suggested 3-5 minute steep time.

The tea after steeping was a muted red, but pleasant to look at. I think I can faintly smell the chocolate and strawberries by sniffing the hot vapors coming out of the mug. Sipping it however, it tastes more hibiscus tang than chocolate strawberry. The chocolate strawberry is kind of there, but it’s taking a backseat to the hibiscus and comes off mostly in the aftertaste.

As for the sweetness factor, it’s definitely sweet enough on its own. No need for sugar. I was thinking I might need to add some due to the strong dark chocolate smell, but the bitterness of dark chocolate isn’t at all present in this tea.

Cup count from 8g sample pack: 1 (still plenty left for experiments)

Would I buy this tea again? I don’t know. It’s definitely drinkable and one of the better ones I’ve tried, but I still need to do some experiments. I think I’ll up the tea to 1 tsp next time and see how that goes. This is flavorful, don’t get me wrong, but just not the flavour I was quite expecting. Maybe with a larger scoop I’ll get a more even distribution of the ingredients.

This is the tea I always turn to when my stomach isn’t feeling so hot.

As for brewing method, I don’t really pay attention, just drop a tea bag into my cup of boiling water, then drop my spoon on it to make it sink to the bottom of the cup, poke at the tea bag a few times after it’s been steeping a while, then start sipping away like 10 minutes later once it’s cool enough to drink. I don’t even bother to take out the tea bag…

While I don’t really need any descriptions for myself since it’s one of my go-to teas, I’ll still write a little something since I’m here.

The dry smell is definitely minty, but as I’m not the biggest fan of mint, I enjoy that it’s not an overwhelming mint flavour once steeped. The drink in general is very mild—even with leaving the tea bag in for the duration, so it’s right up my alley. No need to add sugar.

Edit to note: Thought I should edit this to note that my score isn’t due to the flavour of this tea alone. While it’s definitely a decent tasting tea to me, it’s not something that I would normally rank a 90 for in taste. Since it always makes me feel better, however, and does so without tasting awful, it gets the 90. :) Taste alone would be more of a 75.