Day 4!
This tea has a great name and great flavor: Ginger Cola Black Tea. This tea is meant to reference the old timey soda shoppe flavor of ginger cola. Not to be confused with ginger ale, there is plenty of dark caramel cola taste and the sweet buzz of ginger. I think flavor comes from a time where sodas had more spice, like the New England Moxie soda, or even the cherry and spice flavors of Dr. Pepper.
Enough about soda, getting back to tea. I’m not sure what kind of tea is used as the base in this blend, but the leaves are a little longer and more tightly rolled than the typical black tea base, so they were chosen specially for this blend.
This tea smells and tastes remarkably like cola but in such a way that it’s spice still suits the tea. A touch of cloves and the caramel cola taste are balanced with the warm heat of candied ginger. The spices makes this appealing as a hot beverage but the cola flavors do make it promising as an iced tea too if you are so inclined.
As a fan of both ginger tea and ginger cola, this has been one of my favorite blends so far in the set. Hope I get a chance to order more!
Here’s the scoop!
Leaf Type: Black
Where to Buy: 52Teas
Description:
I have a confession. I have been cheating on tea with a cola. Not like all the time – not even every day . . . but every once in a while, I’ll crack open a can of the ginger cola that’s made by one of the 2 big cola giants. I’m not going to name names because I don’t want to get a ‘cease and desist’ order – but it’s in a slender, tall, bright copper-orange can and it’s sold by individual cans rather than by the 6 or 12 pack.
Anyway, I originally only bought one can of this stuff – you know – just to try it. Curiosity. But I was hooked after my first sip. It’s so good – that little touch of ginger cuts through the syrup-y sweetness that usually turns me off when it comes to soda.
I happen to like the cola flavored teas (in most cases, more than I like cola itself) so I decided I should try to craft a ginger cola black tea to get me over my affair with the cola because I like it better when tea is the main beverage in my life.
So I started with a base of black teas from China (Golden Yunnan, Fujian & Assamica grown in the Jing Mai Mountains) and added ginger as well as some candied (sugared) ginger and some cola essence. And WOWZA! I’m loving it! This is tasty as a hot tea but it excels as an iced tea!
Learn even more about this tea and tea company here!
Jump Start You Day with This Blend from Adagio Teas
Jump start your car with a blast of electricity. Jump start your brain and your day with this high caffeine cuppa! For tea lovers everywhere, it’s no secret that mate tea is a powerful pick-me-up, and often cited as a great alternative to coffee. Well Jump Start blend from Adagio teas has toasted mate and so much more.
There’s not just mate, there’s traditional black tea in the blend as well, a staple of every breakfast blend around. But let’s take this caffeine level a step further: kola nuts. Kola nuts are caffeine-containing tree nuts, previously used as an ingredient in sodas, hence where we get the term “cola.” So there’s caffeine from the mate, from the black tea, and even from the kola nut inclusion. This tea should come with a warning, like roller coasters: don’t brew this tea if you have a heart condition. You’ll be rocketing out of your socks in no time!
So how do all of these ingredients taste? The toasted mate brings roasty, earthy, dry hay notes, which serve as a compliment to the more traditional boldness of the black tea. With additions like smooth, sweet cocoa nibs, and warm, spicy cinnamon bark, it’s hard not to imagine the kola nuts adding their own kind of cola sweetness. I brewed this blend black, how I take most of my tea, but it is bold enough to hold up its flavor, even if softened with a bit of milk.
This will be an amazing tea for those of you who just can’t seem to get enough caffeine. Skip your espresso-laced red-eye cold brew coffee, and just brew a cup of Jump Start instead!
Here’s the scoop!
Leaf Type: Black/Herbal
Where to Buy: Adagio Teas
Description: Mate, Kola, and Black tea make up this well-caffeinated blend to make your mornings deliciously efficient.
Learn even more about this tea and tea company here!
Cola déthéiné Black from Dammann Freres
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Decaffeinated Black
Where to Buy: Dammann Freres
Tea Description:
Coming from the ‘Little Cristal’ collection, Cola is a decaffeinated black tea with a cola flavor that children have so dear.
At tea time, a flavored tea to enjoy the “Five O’clock” like grown people.
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
Prior to trying this blend, I’ve had exactly three cola flavoured teas: Cola Matcha from Red Leaf Tea, Cherry Cola & Cake from Della Terra Teas, and DAVIDsTEA’s Cherry Cola black tea. I remember that so specifically because all of them were super memorable experiences, and not for a good reason. In fact, DT’s Cherry Cola blend may actually be the worst black tea I’ve ever had. Cola just seems to be something that doesn’t apply well to tea, so I’m going into this tasting with extreme reservation and fairly low expectations.
I probably wouldn’t have purchased this one at all if it weren’t for the fact I got some in a group order, and therefore got to pick up a small size of it. It also helps it’s from Dammann Freres – I’ve yet to really find a “flop” from them, though there have been a few blends that just didn’t click because of personal taste. I have faith that if any company can pull off a cola tea they’re likely to be the ones to do it.
I’m cold brewing this – I just personally think that cola flavor kind of only works cold. I’ve had hot coke before (it was a dare) and it didn’t go over well. I have to say, the dry leaf of this smells pretty wonderful. It definitely conveys the smell of coke without any of the chemical/artificial qualities that I’ve experienced with every other coke tea. I don’t know how they do it! There’s even a whiff of vanilla to the smell as well!
I’ll come right out and say it; this is easily the best cola tea I’ve had. Simply put, it tastes like those shimmery silver cola ball candies that are basically pure sugar – though not as cloying as you’d imagine. There’s a really nice freshness to the tea and more natural notes as well like very mild citrus and possibly also pear. It’s ‘fancy’ cola ball candy! Definitely no sweetened needed with this one though; it’s just barely treading the line between natural sweet and ‘cavity’ sweet. I like that the base is also pretty strong, but not overly brisk. The fact it’s decaffeinated is a huge plus – as a generalization black tea is my favourite type and being limited with how much I can drink at night without the jitters is definitely a concern of mine; this will fit seamlessly into my evening routine.
I can totally see why this is marketed towards children as well; it’s something familiar flavor-wise, definitely sweet enough on its own, obviously healthier than actually giving a child a bottle of Coke, and what parent is going to complain about the lack of caffeine!?
My opinion on cola teas has been completely changed; and I’m already imagining interesting ways to try this one: tea soda, as a latte (because ‘floats’), and possibly even hot…
Cherry Cola Flavored Iced Black Tea from Southern Boy Teas
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Black
Where to Buy: 52Teas
Learn more about Southern Boy Teas here.
Taster’s Review:
I don’t drink a lot of soda, but on the rare occasions that we go out to eat and the iced tea available at the restaurant is questionable, I usually ask for a cherry cola.
So I was excited to try this iced tea flavor from Southern Boy Teas, because it’s a flavor that I enjoy and would be able to identify and also because in the past, I’ve been impressed with the cola flavored teas that 52Teas has offered. They really do have a bubbly, effervescent taste of soda pop, which is a little weird when I would drink the hot tea. Weird, but in a wonderfully weird sort of way.
To brew: The Southern Boy Teas are a “bagged” tea, sealed in a large tea pouch that makes it easy to cold-brew (put it in a pitcher with a half gallon of freshly filtered, cold water and then stash that into the refrigerator overnight. In the morning, take out the sachet – and save it to resteep later! – and enjoy) or to hot brew.
I do have another pouch of this tea and I plan to cold steep it to see how that turns out. I’ll have to come back and comment on this review to let you know how that turns out when I do that.
I usually hot brew all these iced teas for the first tasting, because I feel like I’m getting the true, intended flavor that way and since I want to write about the experience, I think that this is the best way to do that.
To hot brew this, I start with a quart of freshly filtered water and put it in my kettle and heat it to boiling. Then I just toss the sachet into my kettle and let the tea steep for 2 minutes, strain the tea into my favorite iced tea pitcher, and then I repeat the process, pouring another quart of water into the kettle, heating it to boiling and then resteeping the pouch, this time for 3 minutes. I let this come to a room temperature cool before I put the hot glass pitcher into the cold refrigerator. Then I let it chill for several hours (or overnight).
This is a tasty glass of cold refreshment. I can taste the notes of cherry and cola. And I can taste the black tea flavor too. It’s a bit like someone poured some flat cherry cola into my iced tea.
Yes, I’m still getting some of that aforementioned bubbly taste from this, but, it’s not as bubbly or effervescent as you’d get if you were drinking a straight soda pop. Nor should it be. This is tea, not a carbonated beverage. However, you can make it a tea soda.
I can taste that bubbly sort of flavor that I’ve experienced in the past with 52Teas soda flavors, although for some reason (I’m not sure of the reason) and this is something that I’ve noticed with the other cola flavored iced teas from SBT, the “soda” or “cola” flavor doesn’t shine through quite as copiously as it seems to when I sip on a cup of hot soda flavored tea from 52Teas. As I said, I’m not quite sure why this is.
That said, this is still really tasty. It quenches the thirst and it tastes great while it’s quenching the thirst, and that’s what I look for in an iced tea.
Lime Cola Guayusa from Bluebird Tea Co.
Tisane Information:
Leaf Type: Guayusa
Where to Buy: Bluebird Tea Co.
Tisane Description:
Energy boosting Guayusa tea is blended with cola nut and linden leaves in this lime and cola flavoured tea blend. Guayusa is another one of those Amazonian energy charged super plants and Linden leaves (Lime) has been used for centuries to treat colds, fevers and inflamation.
Learn more about this blend here.
Taster’s Review:
It’s been a while since I’ve had a guayusa tisane, so when I saw that Bluebird Tea Co. had this Lime Cola Guayusa, I knew it was something that I just had to try!
Guayusa is an herb that has a high caffeine content, so it’s one of those tisanes that you should consume earlier in the day so that you’re not overstimulated as the day comes to an end. I find that after I’ve consumed a cup of Guayusa, I’m much more alert and energized!
This is a tasty blend. I don’t know if I’m getting a true “Lime Cola” taste out of this, but it does taste good. Guayusa tends to have a slightly coffee-esque taste to it, but its smoother and not bitter the way a cup of joe tends to be. And I do get that thinned coffee taste from the Guayusa here.
Then I taste lime! It’s a bright, uplifting flavor that elevates the cup. I taste the citrus notes throughout the sip and well into the aftertaste where I’m getting a little tarty tingle on the tongue.
I do get a slight cola-like flavor and this is especially noticeable as the drink cools. While the drink is hot, though, I could barely taste any cola notes at all. This definitely tastes better chilled!
Even though I didn’t get as much “Lime Cola” taste as I thought I would based on the name of this tisane, I did really enjoy this. I found it tasty and of course, invigorating! A really tasty blend!