Organic India

Ok time for a bunch of what-I-drank-at-a-conference notes! I was at a (really great) conference this week, so of course I have teas to report back on.

I never know what kind of options will be available when I travel, so I always bring some easy basics with me. This always includes a bagged ginger and usually a bagged peppermint tea, to help cope with/mitigate/prevent my migraines and chronic pain. At the moment, this is the ginger tea I’ve been using to fill that niche! I wish I had taken proper notes but I didn’t get a chance to. It’s tasty enough though, with a noticeable but light ginger zing, and it meets my needs as an easily portable herbal anti-inflammatory.

A little green tea, herbal, medicinal.
My mom stocked a box or two of this in her tea cabinet while I was growing up in her house. It was not something I drank for the flavor.

It still isn’t, but I appreciate the apparent health benefits. It’s not bad so far as bagged tea goes with a little variety in the tastes that come through.

dry grass or hay, maybe even a little citrus bite at the end?
It reminds me of chamomile tea but with more flavor, and I’m going to place it pretty high for a bagged offering for the uniqueness and range of flavors present. Why not!

The tongue feel offers a little lingering sweetness, call it hui gan, if you will.

February 2 Sipdown Prompt – drink the same tea twice!

I finished a box of the teabags and had requested a bag of loose leaf for Christmas. The bag is far bigger than I thought. I am drinking it for the stress relief it provides and not for the taste, which is rather flat and uninteresting to me plain. I do enjoy it in Bellocq’s Ashram Afternoon but that is considerably more expensive.

I tried it two ways to see if I could dress it up. First cup had Penzey’s Cinnamon Sugar. It didn’t add enough interest and ended up rather gritty, especially at the end.

The next cup was steeped with Penzey’s Mulling Spices. This was much better but I still wouldn’t call it an exciting tea. I tasted mostly clove and I don’t love clove.

I don’t know that I feel much less stressed this time, although sometimes it helps takes anxiety down a notch. I had a sleepless night two nights ago and a busy day today while fighting a headache. Maybe one more cup will do it.

This is herbaceous, but also pretty refreshing and tasty cold. I wish I’d grabbed some more bags of this from the last TTB! Not interesting enough to buy, but nice to take on a trip for convenient steeping.

A sipdown! (M: 3, Y: 3)
Received from derk many, many months ago. And for some reason I was postponing drinking it down. Why? It is a tea bag, so no fuzz, it is a herbal, moringa is something I don’t mind.

Yet today was the time to finish it. As I am still not feeling great, I decided for some simple herbal. It should be also a stress relieving, which I don’t need now (I am surprisingly not overthinking things). Also, I finished topics for my finals (which are in a month) today!

Reading of promised heatlh benefits, those two sounds good for me right now: antioxidants and immune-supporting.

But to the tea (without expecting any health effects): It is mild, broth like, little earthy, vegetal tea. Little citrusy. Strong thick liquor.

Neglected for no reason! Well, at least it is sipdown in 2023.

The rose here is so strong, but it’s actually okay. There’s that sour rose flavor, but for some reason I’m fine with it cold today. The herbaceous tulsi flavor balances it all. I think I grabbed this bag from the last TTB.

Ah wellness teas and ginger, they seem to go hand in hand. My dad and I have been fighting off some cold/virus for several days and I went to the local natural foods store to get all the tea. This one seems ok with my dad, and I could certainly sip a few more cups as its f-ing cold outside! Gingery but not too ginger, lemony but not sour, and it tastes tulsi enough so you know its good for you. Like vegetables.

At it’s properly steeped time it’s a good tea. The sweetness is a bit much for me though. The tulsi leaves a medicinical flavor while the rose makes one think of stevia with how the flavors mix together.

Advent Calendar from Kaylee: Day 5

I don’t often get to try a tea without seeing the ingredient list first, so it was fun to go into this one with very little information! I knew there was tulsi basil and rose, but that’s it.

The rose scent was almost overpowering when I tore open the packet, but thankfully it’s much more muted in the brewed tea. (I don’t mind rose-flavored things, but sometimes when the scent is too strong, it can make me feel a little nauseated.) The packet recommended brewing for 5-10 minutes, so I split the difference and settled for about 7. I think that was a good choice!

On the first sip, I could tell immediately that there was stevia in the mix — I got that familiar feeling, like my mouth was slightly coated with something thick. It’s really a shame they added stevia, because I think this blend would be nicely balanced without it. Plus, there’s chamomile, which adds a nice natural sweetness. (I didn’t pick up on the chamomile initially, but as soon as I looked up the ingredients and saw it, I was like, “DUH.”) I actually thought I was detecting a teensy bit of cinnamon, but no!

Yeah, the stevia is a shame. This would be a surprisingly delicate floral blend without it!

To me, this is nasty. The tulsi scent does not mix at all with the raspberry flavoring, producing a nauseating medicinal aroma. Organic raspberry flavoring does not excuse its criminal over-application. It’s chemical and piercing and exits my nostrils with force when I swallow.

The taste sips alkaline then finishes with hibiscus sourness. In between is a flat taste of tulsi and hint of peach flavoring. Severely disjointed. Ugh. I definitely feel queasy. “Crowd pleaser” my ass.

Sipdown! (12 | 359)

Last one from Sips by, and my last Sips by box for the time being! I just haven’t been loving it enough to justify having more tea incoming every month.

This one is quite bland, sadly. I like tulsi and I was excited about the pomegranate and orange combination with it, but overall there’s not a ton of flavor here. I do taste a bit of the tulsi, but it’s mixed with green tea and that seems to be diluting the tulsi’s flavor without adding much of its own. There are a ton of other ingredients that I don’t seem to be tasting either, perhaps a bit of the ginger and turmeric? Certainly not cardamom though… Maybe a teeny weeny bit of the sage? As for the fruit, there’s a hint of orange but nothing that makes me think of pomegranate.

Drinkable but I really wanted to taste more of the tulsi and the herbs and spices, and more of the fruit as well. More of the everything really, except for that super bland green tea! :P

TTB #3

I enjoy rose blends, and decided to give this a try (I probably never would have tried this if not for the TTB)
It is indeed sweet, like a sweet rose perfume. Luckily it didn’t taste strongly of stevia over the intensity of the rose.

A nice cooling blend of herbs and spices to chill with some Krishna and Vana tulsi. It’s a different kind of wind-down herbal tea that, along with the tulsi, consists of cardamom, peppermint, dwarf morning glory, ashwagandha and gotu kola along with the typical bedtime chamomile. It feels different and I like the feeling quite a bit.

But there’s also stevia.

And it is much more noticeable to me in this blend than in Organic India’s other blends.

How unfortunate.

Sipdown & Backlog

Apparently I rated this highly in the past. Maybe since this has ‘aged’ for a while, the flavors were off. It was like sipping burnt spearmint. I added honey to cut the unpleasantness.

I’m a lover of peppermint and spearmint. My parents planted it within it’s own ‘garden’ on the side of our house. It grew rapidly, so they have to trim it down every year. My mother still dries the leaf out and sips on it during the summer. I grew up sipping and loving peppermint hot or iced. My parents loved it as a sun tea.

Any peppermint tea reminds me of those early days. It was quite lovely; sweet, minty, and refreshing. I make sure to always have some around the house and this is one of those that’ll be good to get more of.

A vibrant range of tastes imparted by 3 different types of tulsi.

It’s tulsi. What more can I say? Less star anise-clove forward than I recall Trader Joe’s tulsi being, which I think was also a blend of 3 types. This feels lower toned, more grounding, but it doesn’t taste like earth.

Good for a morning where I had to talk myself down from calling out before forcing myself out of bed 20 minutes before work, heh. I said to myself, “derk, you can go home for the day at lunch”, but then now begins the post-Thanksgiving year-end scramble to complete projects. Work was actually a good way to separate mind from body today and I finished out the full day with relative ease. Maybe the tulsi helped.

Another Organic India tulsi blend that just does it for me. It’s a strange mix, honestly. I’d expect another ingredient to tie together the tulsi and hibiscus but it works well as is. The tulsi is much more prominent than the hibiscus, so I could see this working for hibiscus haters. A little tartness and fruit punch taste, nothing crazy.

Bought a box for work and after a week, I’m almost out. Really good and fresh. Turmeric and ginger are the stars but really well balanced by clove and cinnamon woodiness and a black pepper spiciness. The tulsi I think lightens it considerably such that not any of the spices truly dominate. Stevia’s in this blend like in the Tulsi Sweet Rose but I honestly don’t taste it; there’s just enough to give the slightest hint of sweetness once the brew cools.

Recently, between this tea and 2 others, I’ve had 3 of Organic India’s tulsi blends and from each one I’ve tasted colors. With Tulsi Turmeric Ginger, it’s mostly orange with some underlying dark yellow-brown, purplish-red, and green-off-white.

Sipdown! (66 | 270)

This has a weird sourness to both the dry scent and the taste.

I’m going to assume that’s not a good thing. It tastes a bit like it’s gone off… :/

A good while back I had snagged a bag from my aunt’s tea drawer. I was so impressed with it that when I saw it was on sale, I bought a box.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been brewing a cup as soon as I roll out of bed. Let it steep and cool to room temperature while I take a shower or make breakfast. This batch seems more lemongrass heavy than the lone bag I’d tried before. While I’m not a big fan of lemongrass, it’s fresh and balanced so well with the nutritious-vegetal-earthy quality of the moringa and the clove-basil-licorice notes of the tulsi that I can’t help but chug it. Hints of pepper and a roasty tone give more depth.

Full-flavored, complex, brothy-juicy. The taste is saturated yellowish green and brownish purple. Sounds weird, doesn’t it? The invigorating and grounding character makes me crave it as my first morning cup.

How many times have I had a tea with moringa? Once? And I don’t remember that blend highlighting the moringa profile. This Tulsi Moringa is also a blend, containing moringa, 3 types of tulsi and lemongrass. I still don’t have a good grasp on the moringa flavor but I think it’s highlighted enough in this blend to say it tastes kinda like nettle in that it has a nutritious taste and is predominantly herbaceous-vegetal. I also pick up a touch of an earthy smokey-roasted tone. The tulsi leans more heavily into sweet clove than the Sweet Tulsi Rose I had yesterday. Lemongrass gives a bit of a green, citrusy vibe but I don’t taste it distinctly. One thing I wasn’t expecting from this tea is that it has a juicy swallow. It was a great cup to start the morning and awaken the senses. Bright, clean, fresh, grounding, aromatic.

Bought a box for work. Seems less rose forward than the bag I snagged from my aunt months ago. Grounding tulsi has a stronger presence.

Still love it and still taste colors. Vibrant!

I’ve been buying bagged teas for work even though I have a desk now, a spare electric kettle at home and enough loose leaf to provide endless cups to our little army in the back corner. I’m starting off as a tea messenger of sorts, spreading the good word by providing some fresh, high quality tea bags. It’s always unsettling venturing into new territory as a stranger (weirdo is more like it), but I bring gifts of peace and goodwill. I found common ground with one of the back-corner denizens, and from there it is spreading quickly <3