(no subject)

[the_rck]

I tried the peach blossom oolong this afternoon. I tried it with honey so as not to confuse myself about how it tastes. I quite liked it.

Wednesday, I tried the white tea with honey. I was wrong about the flavor of it-- It's not vanilla bean; it's vanilla coconut. It smells a little like it would taste funny, but with honey, it didn't have that same weird taste. I still didn't love it.

Sunday or Monday, I'll try the peach blossom oolong with stevia and see how it tastes. The stevia seemed to be fine with the red zinger, but the flavor of red zinger may have been strong enough to mask the stevia. I figure trying it with the oolong will tell me whether the problem is the stevia or if it's an interaction between the stevia and the vanilla coconut white tea.

I still have a chai that I bought at Whole Foods last week yet to try. I'm putting that off for a while, though. It does occur to me, though, that if I need a strongly flavored tea to deal with the stevia, a chai might be the way to go.

Comments

[lemon_badgeress]

another thing to keep in mind with the stevia is that you probably ought to try using less of it. when I put stevia in my iced tea to sweeten it, I use /half/ as much as I would with splenda or equal, and it's still a bit sweeter.

[the_rck]

I used half a packet of stevia for a sixteen ounce mug of tea. I was guessing at how much to use because the box assumed a packet per eight ounce mug, and, from what I'd heard, that sounded like way too much. I don't want overwhelming sweetness, just something to smooth over the bitterness.

[chorus-of-chaos.livejournal.com]

ooh, what brand might that peach blossom oolong be? that's sounds like it might be nice. I love oolong teas.

It may be that it's just because I got sick on coconut once as a kid, but I've yet to find a tea with coconut in it that tasted right....I've had coconut in other things and enjoyed it, but it just seems a real flavor clash with tea, kind of like putting olives in anchovies in ice cream or something. (then again, some mad scientist chef on the food network have done that at some point, who knows....I saw olive ice cream done there once >-<

[the_rck]

The peach blossom oolong is from the Republic of Tea ( http://www.republicoftea.com/ ). I got it at Whole Foods. I like most of their teas, but buying from them tends to be a commitment because the smallest packages I've found of their stuff are thirty-six to fifty teabags. That's a lot if you're not sure you're going to like the tea. At Whole Foods, their stuff runs about $10 a package. I haven't looked around their website to see if the prices are better there.

We've liked several of their teas, but I don't recommend the hibiscus key lime tea because, while it smells like lime, you can't taste the lime at all. It's just another uninspired hibiscus tea. I also don't recommend the red velvet chocolate tea. None of us liked it; we didn't even finish our first cups. I have liked the chocolate peppermint (herbal), the orange ginger mint (herbal) and the blackberry sage (black). I think we had a ginger pineapple green tea that was decent, too.

[chorus-of-chaos.livejournal.com]

ah yea, I've had quite a few of thier teas and even had my eyes on a couple new ones I've heard about, but you are right, it's a quite a commitment if you aren't sure you like the tea. I've got one of their catalogs around here somewhere...I think it was them that now had a deal where you could get a three sampler tin for some odd amount, but maybe it was someone else. I know they have an apricot tea I've wanted to try, and I love thier mango ceylon and thier cinnamon plum, but those are all black teas which I know you don't do to much. Their oolongs are pretty decent quality, I just had not seen the peach blossom one, I had gone for the traditional quan yin type oolongs.

Their is a site called adagio teas that used to sell small sampler tins and had some very nice greens and oolongs, might snoop by them some time.