Sweet Lullaby

Sipdown! I made this to drink while making gingerbread snacking cake. I have to say THIS is the right amount of ginger….however the. Hibiscus in this is too much, making it a really tart piece of tea. A little sweetner goes a long way with this one. I quite like it, but I need less hibby…and I don’t mind hibby.

I got a sample of this with my recent order, in an effort to have some non-caffeine teas around to drink in the evening. This one is very similar to the other one I drank tonight. Both contain hibiscus, ginger & licorice. The other one also contained rose petals. This one has Valerian, an herb that I happen to love for it’s sleep enhancing effects, although the aroma can be pretty intense. Anyway, this isn’t bad, although the hibiscus is a little bright for my taste.

I’ve just spent the last hour or so going through my main black tea collection (not counting the numerous samples, I keep them in a different place). I had a lot of recycled tea canisters, & part of my project included dusting them out well & refilling them (& relabeling them as needed). I ran out of canisters before I ran out of tea, but it is a start. Some of the canisters carried the aroma of their previous contents, so I didn’t use them. Anyway, it is a start.

Thanks, Kaylee, for this tea!

I had this last night and Wooooooooeeee! That’s a powerful ginger! It pretty much hit me between the eyes and up the nose! I like all the flavors individually in this blend, but I don’t like how they came together. The licorice and hibiscus just seemed out of balance with the ginger. The valerian root did put me straight to sleep though- not that I’ve had any trouble sleeping lately.

I should be updating a little more frequently now that work is settling down a bit and I’m not so sick of staring at a computer. Also the hot water tap on the cooler at work is still broken, but should be fixed by the end of the week! yay!

Many thanks to Shelley_Lorraine for thoughtfully including a surprise sample of this. I was so excited to try it! Alas, it does not stand up against the other bedtime teas I have been trying. The problem might be as simple as “too much hibiscus”.

The dry leaves smell very strongly like a haystack… hayfield? I don’t know, I’m a city girl, but the point is it smells like a farm. My partner literally recoiled when I made him smell this.

I brewed according to directions. This brews up a lovely, vivid red color, like strawberry wine. It smells much better brewed than dry. No more hay smell. Except now it smells too sweet, almost medicinal. The flavor is just all hibiscus. The hibiscus overwhelms everything except for a slight aftertaste of valerian. This tea is just not doing it for me right now. It might be worth trying again with a substantially shorter brew time, or blended with a rooibos base. Frankly, since there are so very many other teas to try, I don’t think it’s likely that I will be giving this one another shot.

This has been my go-to bedtime tea lately.
To start with, you have to get over the “stinky foot” smell of hibiscus.
The taste is sweet/tart, and especially nice with some honey.
It definitely lives up to the promise of putting me to sleep….
It does contain valerian