Let’s Do Tea – After 7 Seven Rooibos and Strawberry Green Tea Review

Today I will be reviewing 2 more teas I have from Let’s Do Tea – After Seven 7 Rooibos and Strawberry Green tea.

Or should I say, After 8 Rooibos tea?

I’ll be starting with the rooibos first.  The ingredients of After Seven 7 Rooibos are rooibos, brittle bits, chocolate-nut bits, peppermint leaves, and flavourings.  Call this priming, but after I smelt this tea I was reminded of Nestle After Eights Thin Mints!  The tea smelt very strongly of mint with an undertone of chocolate.  The color became a brilliant golden brown.  The body was smooth in body and full of chocolaty mintiness.  There was also a hint of nuttiness.  Yum.  Seriously, if Nestle After Eights Thins Mints was a tea, this would be it.  So if you love minty chocolate without the guilt, this caffeine free tea is definitely for you.

Buttery strawberry popcorn in a tea

The ingredients of the Strawberry Green are sencha green tea, fog tea, pai mu tan, lung chin, genmaicha, strawberry bits, sunflower blossoms, and flavourings.  This tea contains gluten.  I wasn’t even aware that tea can contain gluten!  I wonder where it came from.  Wow.  This tea smells exactly like buttery popcorn.  You have to smell this!  The roasted brown rice from the genmaicha is coming off very strongly in this tea.  There is a faint alluring aroma of strawberries in the background.  Double wow.  This tea is so amazingly buttery at first sip.  This is one of the best loose teas I have had in a while.  The strawberries and the smoky richness of the genmaicha complement each other so well.  Phew here comes the caffeine.  Sidenote – last night I had a cup of Mighty Leaf Tea at Moxie’s really late (my friend wanted beer and I don’t drink) and I ended staying up till 7 am because of all the caffeine!

After 8 Thin Mints and Buttery Strawberry Popcorn tea.  Tea tasting doesn’t get any more fun than this.    Cheers.

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Two Leaves and a Bud – Organic Orange Sencha, Tamayokucha, Jasmine and Tropical Goji Green Teas Review

Today concludes our Two Leaves and a Bud review week. I wish you could be here to smell the symphony of aromas of all these green teas. I will be reviewing today four of their green teas – Organic Orange Sencha Green Tea , Tamayokucha Green Tea , Jasmine Green Tea , and Tropical Goji Green Tea. What a treat!

Kumquat in a cup

Let’s start with the Organic Orange Sencha Green Tea first.  The ingredients are organic Japanese green tea, organic orange peel, organic sunflower petals and organic orange flavor.  Have you ever had kumquat?  It’s like a mini tangerine or mandarin orange except the rinds are edible and deliciously sweet.  That is exactly what this tea tastes like!  It’s light, aromatic and reminiscent of sweet ripe kumquats.  The aroma of the kumquats does come on stronger than the sencha, so you only get a hint of sencha in the body.  Yum!

Try saying tamayokucha 3 times fast

Next is the Tamayokucha Green Tea.  From Two Leaves and a Bud

This incredible Japanese tea is steamed as it dries, yielding a sweet, light flavor with no bitterness. Like all high quality Japanese green teas, this tea is green, not brown.”Tama” means round.”yokucha” means green tea – so “round green tea.” This extremely green tea is finished in the shade – it is covered for the last few weeks of growth to preserve the chlorophyll.

The ingredients are 100% organic green tea from Kyushu, Japan.  This tea is extremely smooth and aromatic.  It is very light in body as the tea is steamed but it’s complex.  The flavour and umami of this tea lingers in your mouth long after your first sip.  I just wish I had some sushi to go with this!

One of the most aromatic teas on the market

I loveeeee anything Jasmine.  The scent of a Jasmine flower is incomparable to any other flower.  It’s unique and in a class of it’s own.  I encourage everyone to go out and try pure Jasmine flowers as a tea unto itself and then try it blended.  The ingredients of the Two Leaves and a Bud Jasmine green tea are green tea and jasmine petals.  The color of this tea is a light brown color, comparable to brandy.  The body of this tea is light, delicate and complex with strong Jasmine notes perfect to have with any meal.  I always get Jasmine tea whenever I have Dim Sum with my family.  This particular tea from Two Leaves and a Bud has a very strong smell of Jasmine.  I highly recommend this tea if you’ve never tried it before or want a very aromatic cup. 

A Japanese tea paired with the Chinese goji berry

Our last green tea of the day from Two Leaves and a Bud is the Tropical Goji Green Tea.  The ingredients are Organic green tea, organic goji berries and natural flavor.  The base was actually made from Japanese Sencha tea.  I think it would have been a better pairing to use a Chinese tea as a base as goji or wolfberries are from China.  The nose of this tea is sweet and berry like.  The body is light, sweet and refreshing.  It’s a simple yet aromatic tea that’s not overly complicated.  I really enjoyed this tea!  I think it would make an excellent iced tea as well in the summer.

I bet you didn’t know it was possible to conjure up such a wide variety of smells and tastes from green tea!  I highly encourage you to do the same.  To get a wide range and variety of green teas then sample them.  You will be suprised at how different green teas can be.  This doesn’t only apply to green tea.  The same can be said for any types of teas.  Enjoy!

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Yogi Tea Organic Green Tea Goji Berry Tea Review

The best of both worlds

I love love love goji berries. I’ve been eating them in Chinese soups every since I was a kid. So you can imagine how excited I was when I saw this Yogi Tea Organic Green Tea Goji Berry.

Every Yogi Tea comes with a fortune on it’s tag.  My fortune was “To be calm is the highest achievement of the self.”

The ingredients of this tea are: organic green tea leaf, natural and organic flavors, organic green matcha tea leaf, goji berries.  The tea was a bit heavy in body for a green tea.  The taste of the green tea was very strong and heavy.  Also, I didn’t taste any goji berries, which was disappointing and there wasn’t any matcha powder in the packet.  Some green tea bags with matcha have lots of matcha in it and cover your fingers with the fine green tea powder.  The tea was very fragrant though and did have a hint of berries on the nose.  The liquor was golden amber, it actually reminded me of apple juice!  Overall I recommend this to someone who wants a medium/heavy bodied green tea with a hint of berries and caffeine in their tea.

In other news, I’ve been 80%+ raw for the past few days (today is day 4 and I feel great!).  I’ve been making lots of shakes with my Vitamix and eating big salads.  If you want to learn more about raw food The Sunfood Diet Success System by David Wolfe is an amazing book.  It’s the first raw food book I started with.

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Unif Thai Green Tea commercial

Whether you say LOL or WTF while watching this commercial, notice that the leaves that the farmer is holding in his hand is a perfect example of the leaves that tea is brewed from. Enjoy!

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Green Tea and Healthy Teeth

We have all heard of the health benefits linked with tea and weight loss, heart heart and cancer prevention, how about healthy teeth and gums?

Recently a study published in Periodontology, the official publication of the American Academy of Periodontology (AAP), irecently illustrated green tea’s ability to help reduce symptoms of periodontal disease. Periodontal disease is a chronic inflammatory disease that affects the gums and bone supporting the teeth.  It is associated with the progression of other diseases such as cardiovascular disease and diabetes.

940 male participants aged 49 – 59 were examined on three indicators of periodontal disease: periodontal pocket depth (PD), clinical attachment loss (CAL) of gum tissue, and bleeding on probing (BOP) of the gum tissue.  It was found that for every cup of green tea consumed a day, there was a decrease across all three indicators. The antioxidant catechin was thought to be responsible for the reduction of symptoms of periodontal disease in the study they did.

“Periodontists believe that maintaining healthy gums is absolutely critical to maintaining a healthy body,” says Dr. David Cochran, DDS, Ph.D., President of the AAP and Chair of the Department of Periodontics at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. “That is why it is so important to find simple ways to boost periodontal health, such as regularly drinking green tea – something already known to possess certain health-related benefits.”

Yay! Yet another reason to drink tea on a daily basis.

Source: PR Newswire March 6, 2009

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Design A Tea – 3 Cups of Fabulously Yummy Tea

The slogan at Design A Tea is where Tea Leaves Dream.  How cute is that?  It’s actually very fitting because the man who found this tea company opened it based on a dream!  Brian used to be a paramedic until one night he had a dream in 2006.  This is how the dream goes

I was walking down the rural road I grew up on. I passed an elderly lady who was cooking something on a small fire in the ditch. As I approached her she asked me if I wanted some apple tea. An odd question I recalled, because I seldom drank coffee let alone tea, but being polite I reached down and took the cup. I drank it and told her, “This is great tea.” She replied with, “Of course it is, you created it.” Thinking she was a crazy old lady, I handed her the cup back. As I did this the dream slowly started to turn from black & white to color. I turned and continued to walk down the dirt road. Soon after I awoke.

I love this story because I’m always encouraging people to follow their dreams and this is a literal example!

The concept behind Design A Tea is very simple.  You choose your base tea, pick your favourite flavours and they send you your custom blend!  How cool is that!  Each person is entitled to 2 free tea samples as long as you pay the small ($1.00 or so) shipping cost.  Brian was kind enough to send me my two tea samples and a bonus sample that he concocted.  My two teas were A Rooibos Tea with Caramel & Pecan and a Rooibos tea with Zabaglione & Cassis.  The rooibos were organic grade from South Africa.  Bonus!  When I picked the second tea I had no idea what those things were at the time and I thought why not try the most outrageous thing possible and see if it can taste good.  We’ll shortly see.  Brian also sent me a Green tea with Pina Colada & Chocolate.  Dessert teas galore!

The first tea I tried was the rooibos with caramel pecan.  OMG it smells like sweet sugary caramel popcorn.  I wish the internet would hurry up and invent something that will transport smells from peoples computers.  Yum yum.  You can see the beautiful hue that came out after steeping it for about one minute.  Wow.  I’m speechless.  If candied popcorn was a tea this is it.  Holy crap.  I created candy caramel popcorn in a tea.  I should patent this and sell it to Kernels.  Anyways on to the next tea.

As you can see Brian packages the tea samples in individual tea pouches.  T-Sacs I’m assuming.  The next one I’m trying is the Zabaglione & Cassis.  Cassis as I explained in another post is the same as blackcurrant.  Which I am a huge fan of!  Okay this tea has completely different characteristics.  It smells like someone just crushed a bunch of berries with their fist.   I smell a bit of apples on the nose.  The color is a lot darker and redder in tone than the last tea.  Let’s try it.  I love it.  I can’t believe it.  It tastes even better than the last tea.  I wish everyone could taste and smell this.  It’s very fruity but not overpowering.  I can’t believe I made this!

last tea, Brian’s pick.  Green tea with Pina Colada & Chocolate.  The green tea is actually organic sencha from Japan.  The yellowy liquor smells like pineapple yogurt.  Holy crap.  This is good too.  The tastes soo much like pina colada.  I’m not picking up any chocolate notes in the nose, but when you drink the tea the chocolate follows the pineapple.   Wow.  How can something without any sugar in it taste sweet?  Think about that for a second!  I highly recommend these to people who enjoy strong dessert teas and like experimenting.  You definitely have to steep these teas for 5-7 minutes though to get the full flavouring.  Check out their website and Happy blending!  Oh FYI don’t copy me and let the TSac hang off the side, the tea will get on your table!  =)  Cheers.

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