Lemon-Lime Iced White Tea from Southern Boy Teas

SBT-WHITE-LemonLimeTea Information:

Leaf Type:  White

Where to Buy:  Southern Boy Teas

Tea Description:

Here’s our sweet, hay-like organic shou mei white tea fannings paired with the delicious tartness of organic lemon and lime flavors. It might not be as complicated as some of our other tea blends, but it will definitely put a smile on your face.

Learn more about this tea here.

Learn about SBT’s subscriptions here.

Taster’s Review:

Lemon-Lime Iced White Tea from Southern Boy Teas … not the most innovative flavor combination out there, but, I do like the combination of lemon and lime.

There is a delicate, creamy, lightly sweet flavor to the Shou Mei tea that gives the tart, tangy notes of the citrus some contrast.  The lemon and lime flavors are strong enough to be tasted, but delicate enough to allow the white tea to shine through.

It’s crisp and refreshing.  It’s tart and a little bit sweet, too.  Is it my favorite iced tea flavor from SBT?  No, I can’t say that it is.  But, it is tasty.  It has a really light, refreshing taste that I enjoy and I think that this would be a real crowd pleaser – perfect to serve at your next family BBQ!

Blueberry and Banana Iced Black Tea from Southern Boy Teas

SBT Blueberry-BananaTea Information:

Leaf Type:  Black

Where to Buy:  Zoomdweebie’s

Tea Description:

Premium Organic black tea with organic flavors. Each 14g teabag will make one 2-quart pitcher of DELICIOUS iced tea. Re-steep the teabag and you can get a full gallon out of each one. Steep in boiling water for 2-3 minutes. (3 minutes MAX.) Then combine with ice and water to make a 2-quart pitcher. It couldn’t be simpler–OR more delicious!

Learn more about this tea here.

Taster’s Review:

I love me a Banana flavored tea.  They are hard to find, especially ones that are not red rooibos flavored.  So when I saw this one during one of the recent sales, I had to grab it.

SBT’s teas are pretty convenient.  Fill a pitcher with water, throw the tea pouch in, and a few hours later you have yourself some iced tea.  Pretty tasty iced tea too.  They make 2 quarts to share or not to share with others.  I chose the not to share route with this one.

The banana sadly in this one is more of a hint or a slight aftertaste.  The black tea base shows through the most with the blueberry falling into second place.  If I hadn’t know there was supposed to be banana flavoring in this, I would have just thought it was a blueberry tea.  I was really hoping for more banana.  But even with that, I can see this one being a purchase here and there.  The blueberry flavor that is used I really enjoy.

I’ll have to pick more of this up in the summer months for get together and family time at my parents’ pool.  I can see this one going over really well!

Cantaloupe & Berries Green Tea from Southern Boy Teas

SBT-GREEN-Cantaloupe-and-BerriesTea Information:

Leaf Type:  Green

Where to Buy:  Southern Boy Teas

Tea Description:

This super refreshing and delicious iced tea will definitely get you in the mood for spring. We’ve blended our sweet organic Chinese sencha fannings green tea with organic cantaloupe, strawberry, blackberry and blueberry flavors. Be warned, this will disappear out of your fridge really fast!

Learn more about this tea here.

Learn about SBT’s subscriptions here.

Taster’s Review:

If you’re a frequent reader of our site, then you’ve probably already read a review of this Cantaloupe & Berries Green Tea from Southern Boy Teas!  A few of the sisters are fans of Southern Boy Teas!

I recently acquired a new iced tea jar.  I’ve been looking for either a half gallon or gallon sized glass jar (not a pitcher but a jar) and I’ve finally found one.  This search started several years ago when I was still yearning to make sun tea – before I discovered the joy of cold-brewing tea.

Note:  sun brewing tea is essentially the same thing as cold brewing tea.  The big difference is that with cold-brewing tea, you don’t leave the jar out in the sun, you stash it in the fridge.  This bestows one obvious benefit onto the brewed tea:  it’s COLD when it’s finished brewing.  I don’t think the sun actually ‘brews’ the tea.  The steep in the water brews the tea.  I don’t know that the sun actually does anything to the flavor.  But, I don’t think you could have convinced me of that a few years ago before I actually tried cold-brewing tea.

So I don’t know why it was still important for me to have a jar.  I have an awesome iced tea pitcher that works great for cold-brewing tea.  And to be honest, I prefer my awesome iced tea pitcher over the new tea jar, primarily because this jar has a very annoying lid.  It screws on, the way most jar lids screw on, but the threads don’t line up as easily/nicely as I’d like them to, making it more of a chore to screw on/unscrew the lid than it needs to be.  It’s a minor annoyance, certainly, but, because my awesome tea pitcher doesn’t have this annoyance, it makes it the preferred iced tea vessel.

But one advantage that the new tea jar has over my awesome iced tea pitcher is that the tea jar has a 1 gallon capacity.  Therefore, I could hot-brew a whole GALLON of this tea all at once and didn’t have to stash the tea bag in the fridge to resteep.  I got my full gallon during one brewing session.  (Well, technically, it took four infusions to fill the gallon tea jar.)  Plus, it freed up my iced tea pitcher for another tea so I can have 1 1/2 gallons of iced tea in the fridge for the warm weather ahead.

So, yes, I brewed a gallon of this tea.  I steeped it one quart at a time, bringing the water to 170°F and then allowing the bag to first steep for 1 1/2 minute and adding 30 seconds to each subsequent infusion.

Refreshing!  I like the combination of cantaloupe and berries.  The berries offer the strongest flavor – with strawberry and blackberry dominating, but not by much.  I also get a nice amount of blueberry flavor.  The berries are sweet with that familiar berry tart note.  The cantaloupe offers a sweet, delightful melon note that contrasts nicely with the tart and tangy berries.

The green tea is a little lost in this – but I do get a hint of buttery flavor as well as a hint of that buttery mouthfeel.  I also get just a hint of a fresh, grassy taste.  These notes are subtle and even though I think I’d like the green tea flavors to be a little more distinct, I found this tea very enjoyable overall.

Peach Apricot Iced Black Tea from Southern Boy Teas

Peach-ApricotTea Information:

Leaf Type:  Black

Where to Buy:  Southern Boy Teas

Tea Description:

Here’s our organic Iyerpadi black tea paired with the sweet, juicy flavors of peach and apricot. This is a great thirst-quencher and palate pleaser. Serve some of this to your guests and watch the double-takes you get out of this delicious iced tea.

Learn more about this tea here.

Learn about SBT’s subscriptions here.

Taster’s Review:

This Peach Apricot Iced Black Tea from Southern Boy Teas is a glassful of yummy, ice cold refreshment!

The flavor is spot-on!  I’m not sure if it’s the way that the Iyerpadi single estate tea melds with the apricot and peach flavors or just the flavors themselves, but it tastes like someone pureed a peach and an apricot and strained it into a glass of black tea.  The flavors are very true to the fruit!

The black tea is a smooth tasting tea – it’s strong enough to assert its flavor into the sip without being too aggressive.  It doesn’t taste bitter or astringent.  Just smooth and delicious.

Together with the authentic flavors of peach and apricot – this tea has a taste that’s sweet – the kind of sweetness that you experience when you take a bite of a sweet, juicy peach or a tree-ripened apricot.  It doesn’t taste overly ‘sugary’ sweet and it doesn’t have a fake taste to it.

There are a lot of ready to drink iced teas on the market out there and peach seems to be a flavor that those RTD tea companies embrace – but they are all so loaded with sugar.  This is so much better than anything I’ve tasted RTD!

Passion Fruit Cheesecake Iced Black Tea from Southern Boy Teas

SBT-Passion-Fruit-CheesecakeTea Information:

Leaf Type:  Black

Where to Buy: Southern Boy Teas

Tea Description:

Passion fruit and cheesecake? Does it get more decadent than that? Well, yes, actually it does, when we combine the organic flavors of passion fruit and cheesecake with our premium organic Iyerpadi black tea to make an iced tea from heaven!

Learn more about this tea here.

Learn about SBT’s subscriptions here.

Taster’s Review:

I made a half-gallon pitcher full of this Passion Fruit Cheesecake Iced Black Tea from Southern Boy Teas last night, and now (less than 24 hours later and I’ve only been drinking this for about 3 of those 24 hours!) the pitcher is nearly empty.  I think I have one glass of this tea left in the fridge!

In other words:  this stuff is so tasty that I don’t want to stop drinking it!

The black tea base is a very harmonious flavor with the added flavors of passion fruit and cheesecake.  The natural fruity notes of the Iyerpadi single estate black tea marries well with these flavors, allowing the flavors to come alive in my glass of iced tea while still managing to maintain its own presence there.  It tastes brisk and refreshing.  It’s strong without being aggressive or overwhelming.  It’s not astringent or bitter.  Just really, really lovely.

The passion fruit is a very well-defined flavor here.  The cheesecake is less pronounced but it adds a really lusciously smooth and creamy taste to the sip.  The tangy note of the cheesecake is there too, it’s a subtle little note that hits about mid-sip.  A slight contrast from the sweet and creamy that is quite welcome and keeps the tea from becoming cloying.

Every once in a while, I also pick up on light buttery/pastry type of notes.  This buttery/pastry flavor seem to mostly be hidden within the ubiquitous cheesecake note, not really standing on it’s own so much as being part of the collective ‘cheesecake’ but every once in a while, I taste a little more of that flavor, as if it is trying to stand up and shout: “Hello, I’m here too!”

So I guess if I were to offer any sort of criticism at all about this tea, that would be it.  I might like just a tad more of that buttery/pastry flavor here.  But as I mentioned at the start, I’ve nearly polished off an entire half-gallon of this magical liquid in fewer than four hours.

I think I’m going to be needing more of this.