CitizenTea

This is SO not my cup of tea! The ingredients do not blend well together in my opinion. Tried it iced.

Smells great! I wanted to love this one as I adore cherries, but this tea was way too tart for me. Tried it iced.

Tastes like a fruity black tea with hibiscus. It’s drinkable, just not a favorite blend that I want around all the time. Good to try though. Tried it iced.

I like this one but I do not taste the kiwi part of it. It is mostly strawberries and hibiscus. Tried it iced.

This makes for a light and refreshing fruity iced tea. I just wished that they wouldn’t have added sugar to the blend but the melon cube I tasted from the tea blend was delicious!

Pre-birthday cuppa. My long-time friend who is now also a coworker makes the best cookies, and he knows my love affair with Nutella, and always uses it as an ingredient in the batch of birthday cookies he makes me and brings me at work. Today is birthday cookie day (this year are some yin-yang peanut butter-Nutella cookies! Mmmm!), since this Saturday (St. Patrick’s Day) didn’t fall on my Saturday schedule. So I grabbed this chocolate hazelnut sampler I picked up from Citizen Tea to accompany!

It’s good! The base is chocolately, but has a warm nuttiness to it, too. It’s very smooth and sweet. I think my only issue is it that I wish the tea felt a little fuller and the flavor a little richer; I’m getting the impression that I’m going to have to double-leaf this to get the kind of experience that I’m currently craving out of this, based on my initial cup. Some decent flavor notes are there, they just aren’t popping enough to really wow me, and the base feels a little weak. I’m of the personal opinion one shouldn’t need to use extra leaf for an average cup, so I’d say that’s my one complaint with this otherwise tasty tea.

Green March! Since this mate isn’t roasted… eh, I say it counts! (May not be green tea, but it is most certainly a very green leaf!) Honestly I’ve always been too sissy to try plain yerba mate, because I’ve read everywhere that it tastes terrible and is very much an acquired taste, so I’ve strictly stuck to roasted mates and flavored mate blends, but this little sampler came with my Citizen Tea order, and I decided to make a large cup this morning and do a quick sipdown.

Honestly, it wasn’t at all what I was expecting (to be fair, from everything I’d read about the taste being terrible, I was expecting it to be unpalatable, and it wasn’t at all). Perhaps there are much stronger mates out there, but this was a quite easy drink for me, and I didn’t find it unpleasant at all. I’ve heard the word “bitter” used to describe it often, like coffee, and while I can kind of see the coffee comparisons (especially from what I’ve had of the roasted variety) it was far too vegetal for me to really get my head around that from this plain green variety. Really all I was tasting was a very mild astringency in the finish, but I’d say it was far less than I get from a really strong black tea breakfast blend, and didn’t really come off to me as particularly bitter. What I was getting was a strong resemblance to gunpowder green tea. It had a very similar body and mouthfeel, and the flavor had this vegetal, grassy/hay taste with hints of tobacco and smoke, which is the same sort of taste I get when I’m drinking gunpowder greens. There was also a sort of minty flavor to it, but less of a brisk, pepperminty taste and more of the menthol, and far more subdued.

All in all it was a pleasant cup, but smoky flavors aren’t my favorite, so I think I’ll stick to roasted mates and flavored blends after all. Still glad I got to try a plain mate, since it is something I’ve been curious about, but not the sort of thing I’d be inclined to spend my own money on.

Tastes like green tea and coconut.

I first made this tea last week when I had a very early morning meeting to take on a car trip; I made a big thermos of it the night before, two parts tea and one part milk, put it in the fridge to ice over night, and was surprised that my thermos was so powerful it kept the tea from fully chilling over night, so it still had a slight, lukewarm edge to it! It wasn’t bad, but hardly the best iced tea I’ve ever made, and now I know I’ll have to make my “roadtrip” tea in a mason jar and move it over to the thermos the next morning, even if it is a little more inconvenient.

This morning I made a proper warm cuppa. I was too much a zombie on the day of my twilight hour car trip to try to really appreciate the tea beyond, “yerba mate… give me CAFFEINE!” I enjoy roasted mate for having such a smooth, roasted base, free of the astringency of black teas, so I actually really like this as the base of a chai. The most recent chais I’ve tried have been very unbalanced, but this chai is very well-rounded; I don’t find any particular spice overpowering, they all blend well together, and the spices don’t leave a lingering or unpleasant heat in my mouth (and I’m a very spice-sensitive person!) so the tea goes down very smooth. This is the sort of chai I can drink plain, without having to add a ton of milk and sugar, because the spices are blended so well. However, it still takes milk and sugar well if preferred that way, as I drank it iced and latte-style the other morning and found it enjoyable that way (despite being lukewarm) as well.

A solid chai if looking for a mate alternative!

It has admittedly been a long time since I last had this tea but I swear it’s waaayyyy more of a hojicha blend than I remember it being. Why is it marketed as an oolong? It both visually looks like majority hojicha as the base AND tastes like it too!?

I should really check if this is still sold though – accuracy of name aside, the sweet syrupy baked apple and cinnamon notes of this blend as still scrumptious as ever and bang on for store bought apple pie, which is definitely a guilty pleasure food of mine.

Tasted like the generic apple pie strudels/pastries that basically every convenience store or gas station everywhere sells – the sort of generic and syrupy “apple pie filling” type of vibe and pastry cinnamon. Also roasty and nutty notes from the oolong too, though.

Hot with some maple agave for richness!

I just found myself really craving this one, and while it was a nice mug it wasn’t as flavourful and rich/indulgent as I recalled it being – even with the added agave. Still had some apple notes, a bit of a nutty quality (almond/sunflower), and that buttery cinnamon “pie crust” vibe a top some light roasted oolong notes – but in general the cup came out weak/watery even if all the flavours were still represented.

With milk and maple agave.

This was tasty, but it was also really weird because it tasted like the sort of apple pie filling that comes out of a can and is all sweet and gooey and great, but then also had a strong buttery cinnamon pastry/crust flavour that leaned really heavily into the creaminess of the milk. Both of which definitely seem like pie things – but there was such a weird divide between them that they didn’t even feel connected at all!? It was so weird. Plus, you also got notes of sunflower seed and maple – and they were good too, but equally disconnected to the overall flavour.

Like, I felt as if the flavour was disassociating!?

Tea Press.

Once again I found that I didn’t get a “complete” apple pie profile from this. Instead, it tasted almost exactly like the apple pie filling that’s used in A&W’s Apple Pies. Yes, A&W apple pie specifically…

I’m honestly just at a point where I’ve given up with tea at restaurants. I’ve officially become that person who brings my own tea, in a teabag, and just asks for a pot of hot water…

Maybe that’s bad restaurant etiquette – but do I care? No.

This one was great; I do find that it really reminds me of sweet, but also kind of supple and just a little bit spiced (with cinnamon) apple pie filling. There’s not much going on, or at least with this cup there wasn’t anyway, to make me think of the pie shell/crust itself so I don’t feel like I get the ‘complete’ picture. However, with how tasty that filling component is with the hints of cinnamon and coconut undertones I really don’t mind or feel I’m missing out. So it all works out overall!

So there are… a lot of ingredients in this blend and I was doubtful that they would come together in a way that actually tasted like apple pie but much to my surprise and delight when I steeped up my first cup of this it was actually pretty perfect.

It was definitely one of those situations where if you focus on the profile too much you’ll start to break up the overall flavour into all of the individual things that make up ‘the whole’ so I definitely had to actively work against myself at some moments to not do that and to just let myself enjoy the overall taste. ‘Cause the overall taste? It’s scary accurate to apple pie! Complete with like sweet filling, tart slices of apple, and buttery, flaky cinnamon dusted crust. A perfectly balanced dessert profile that captures all the things I love in the real thing!

Sipdown! But literally no recollection of what I thought while drinking it. I’m guessing it was a reasonably-flavoured black, but nothing that stood out, otherwise I would have remembered. This is likely age-related, as I previously quite enjoyed this tea.

Yeah this was delicious. A tasty, sweet, rich flavoured black. Could be a little more hazelnutty but I was pretty pleased.

Didn’t think I’d ever find this tea again, but here it is! I actually think I might still have a small amount left in a tin somewhere, as it was Creamy Nut Oolong that I really adored, but this is delicious as well. It’s exactly as I remember it from Teaopia – needs to be overleafed for best flavour, but deliciously sweet and toasty, with a hint of chocolate.

This morning, the sun was bright and warm and I thought it would be a perfect day for a walk. Well, yes and no. I set out for a sizeable stroll on the apparently clear sidewalks. Yeah, no. Once I was in motion, I discovered that the streets were coated in a thin glaze of ice, fine enough to be invisible until you had taken a flip. And so I proceeded on my walk gingerly and slowly. I did arrive at my destination eventually, but my body is sore from the stiffness of taking such care for so long. But also, I am in one piece, and for that, I am grateful.

This is tasting very very familiar to me: caramel sweet and taffy nuts. Delicious and familiar.

To be continued.

Thank you for the sample, Dexter. A most enjoyable cup.

Sipdown (513)!

Finished off the last half of the free sample I got from Citizen Tea.

I definitely over steeped this one though, and it came out really bitter tasting with very, very drying/astringent nutty notes. I tried drinking it as it was but I just could not get into it – so I ended up adding some Irish Cream flavoured sweetener to it, and that definitely made a world of difference. It almost tasted like a completely different tea so maybe I did add a little much of it, but the sweet, creamy flavour did compliment the almond brittle notes nicely and it definitely masked the bitterness from my crappy steeping.

Overall though, I think even steeped up properly, this one just isn’t a tea for me though.

Got this one as a free sample a little while back with an order.

I didn’t know much about this apart from the fact that it’s a super big favourite of Dexter’s but that alone was more than enough reasoning for me to be excited to try it out. It certainly smells lovely though; like toasted nuts, vanilla, and caramel. Mmm!

Steeped up it’s not bad, but not as smooth as I expected it to taste. Primary note is definitely nuttiness – but it’s a very heavy roasted nut kind of taste with some slight char/bitterness. Really almond dominant; but I feel like a bit of hazelnut too? It’s not bad; a little bitter in my tea definitely isn’t a deal breaker for me but for a tea that’s supposed to be a “creamy” nut flavour it was definitely a touch unexpected. Other notes are caramel, though a very heavy and rich version rather than light and creamy. Kind of simple? I expected notes of, like, vanilla or something? It feels weird that there aren’t any.

Kind of just an average tasting tea to me overall.

Sipdown (515)!

Thanks for this one Kittenna!

I got the impression from talking to Kittenna that back during Teaopia days this was a pretty popular blend? I must have missed all the hype though because the first time I’d ever even heard of it was during that conversation with her. I mean, it totally sounded lovely but I definitely wasn’t struck by the large overwhelming feeling of “shit I’ve been missing out!”.

Steeped up? It’s fine. It actually does remind me of S’more – oddly enough right down to the the graham cracker keeping everything together. And I say ‘oddly’ because I didn’t really see anything in the dry leaf that would make me think of graham cracker. So, you know, points for accuracy. Biggest issues with the blend as a whole is that the overall profile just seemed weak/watery for a flavour that should be really robust, rich and sweet and then also I got a whole lot of apple notes in the body and that felt a little bit out of place. Still a good tea overall though, and I get why people seem to enjoy it.