Tea Video

I just came across this cool vintage tea-making video. Enjoy!

Tea Making Video

Good Earth Sweet & Spicy Herbal Tea

This tea was given to me by my friend, Ina, who is a naturopath (and therefore an expert on all things natural!). She raved about this tea to me, and gave me a few teabags to try. Unfortunately, this is not available to buy in Canada...so if you have friends in the US who are willing to send it to you, count yourself lucky!

Sweet and Spicy is a rooibos blend of many different ingredients. Many ingredients. It smells just like its name, sweet and spicy. On drinking it, though, the overwhelming flavour is cinnamon, like those cinnamon heart candies that everyone except me seems to love, ha ha!! This tea also tastes like you've added a couple teaspoons of sugar to it. I've never tasted a tea that tasted sweet, but hasn't had any sweeteners added to it. I like the concept, as I do like a bit of sweetness in my tea.

This is by far the most flavourful tea I've tried. If you get the chance, definitely try it for yourself!

DavidsTea Hot Toboggan

DavidsTea Hot Toboggan is part of the Winter Collection from DavidsTea. This is a green tea, but I'm not sure that green tea is the main ingredient, seeing as it's so full of apple pieces and lemongrass. When it's steeped, it is really pale, and cloudy, so much so that it doesn't even look like a green tea. It smells sweet, like cinnamon, and the taste is a tart/fruity combo, which is really nice and smooth.

Get fired up

Playing in the snow can be pretty hard work. You’ve gotta stay energized. Focused. Warm. So, what’s in your thermos? How about this blend of green tea, apple, cinnamon, and almonds? You get all the benefits of green tea plus all the sweet, creamy flavour of a caramel apple. Pack some to go and you’ll really heat things up on the toboggan run. And with a tea this delicious in your hands, you’ll never want to come in from the cold. 

 

ingredients

Organic: apple, almonds, Saigon cinnamon, lemongrass, green tea. With natural flavouring*.

Allergens: Tree nuts

DavidsTea Creme Brulee

DavidsTea Creme Brulee was given to me by a coworker who didn't like it. When I open the bag, it smells sweet, with an almost alcoholic smell to it. Once steeped, it smells strongly of vanilla. The flavour is very smooth and mellow, I actually quite like it. I don't know what my coworker didn't like about it, but her loss is my gain!

From the website:

 

Sweet seduction

No one can resist this organic green rooibos tea. Seriously. The aroma is just too outrageously tempting. Creamy, caramel, decadent, rich. And the taste! How can something so sweet be so light and fresh? Plus, rooibos is caffeine free, making it the perfect drink for after dinner or before bed. Could life be more wonderful?

 

Ingredients

Organic green rooibos, organic safflowers, organic calendula marigold, natural flavouring*.

Some teabag teas!

In the course of trying to use up the tea I have before buying more, I realized that I have quite a few types of teabag teas. Now, if I had to choose between loose tea and a teabag, I would choose the loose tea hands down. But, there are times when I'm feeling lazy, or I'm in a rush and I don't want to deal with the mess of loose tea. That's when I go for a teabag. Here are my thoughts on a few Tetley teas...

Tetley Rooibos Vanilla  is my first Rooibos in a teabag. It smells faintly spicy, but once steeped, it smells faintly like vanilla and Rooibos (you know, that burnt smell). Drinking it, there is very little flavour, but I can make out a hint of vanilla, and surprisingly, it does NOT have the burnt flavour I associate with Rooibos.

Tetley Naturally Decaffeinated Lychee Pear Green Tea is a nice, sweet-tasting green tea put out by Tetley. I assume the sweetness is from the lychee, and I can smell/taste the pear essence as well. This is a nice tea cold as well as hot, and it's refreshing. It also travels well in the stainless steel thermos.

Tetley Earl Grey Vanilla is a surprisingly nice tea, for a teabag. The overwhelming aroma is vanilla, which gives it a nice creamy flavour. I swear that I can't taste any bergamot in this, but it's listed on the ingredients list, so I guess it's there. I like this one if I'm in a rush and don't want to deal with cleaning the loose tea out of my tea maker.

My tea collection

Okay - for the tea enthusiasts out there, I'm sure you would agree with me that there can never be such a thing as too much tea. I had a tea party a few weekends ago, and I put out my entire tea collection so that my guests could make their own choices as to what they wanted to drink. When I counted everything up, I realized that I had more than 80 kinds of tea. Aiee! The sight was a bit shocking to my friends, so I took a picture to share on my blog.

Having said that, since this picture was taken, I have finished off 5 packages of tea, so my number *is* decreasing.

Vampire Voodoo

I was looking around the Teastore website and placed a small order to try out some of their teas. They're a Canadian store with two locations, Ottawa and Kingston. They've got quite the extensive list of teas, and what caught my eye was their list of Holiday "Hallows Eve Blends". From that list, I picked Vampire Voodoo and Witches Brew, just because the names sounded intriguing. This morning I tried the Vampire Voodoo, and it's a yummy blend of fruity flavours. The ingredients listed are cranberry, apple, orange, vanilla, and cardamon. It was a bit tart, so I added a sugar cube to take the edge of the tartness away, but overall it's a really nice herbal blend.

My only complaint is that the teas have no steeping instructions, so I went with my standard 5 minutes at 100 degrees for herbal brews.