Pineapple Upside Down Cake from Southern Boy Teas

SBT-GREEN-Pineapple-Upside-down-cakeTea Information:

Leaf Type:  Green

Where to Buy:  Southern Boy Teas

Tea Description:

Our premium buttery sweet organic Chinese fannings green tea blended with organic yellow cake, pineapple, brown sugar, and a hint of maraschino cherry flavors. This is ridiculously delicious. Don’t miss your chance to grab one.

Learn more about this tea here.

Learn more about SBT’s subscription here.

Taster’s Review:

Pineapple Upside Down Cake used to be one of my favorite desserts my mom would make as a child.  Growing up, my brothers and I were never fans of the traditional birthday cake.  My poor mom would always ending up baking a pie or some other dessert (she tried once to make orange fluff and put candles in it-true story).  She would ask us if we were sure we didn’t want a chocolate cake and we would always say no, we want pie or we want cheesecake.  Or we would ask for Pineapple Upside Down Cake.  Which was a little different than the traditional Pineapple Upside Down Cake.  My mom would make it as a cheesecake instead.  To this day, even as adults,we devour that dessert whenever she makes it.  And she makes a healthy version of it now too- so you don’t have to feel guilty about cramming huge bites of it in your face.

This tea brought all those warm and fuzzy memories to me.  This tea reminds me of that dessert my mom makes minus the cheesecake part.  So good! The green tea provides a rich buttery base.  The pineapple flavor is mixed in with just the right amount of brown sugar and maraschino cherry flavoring.  You can seriously taste each flavor separately.  But they do mingle very well together.  The only flavor I didn’t pick up was the yellow cake but I’m wondering if that was a flavor that the green tea kind of overshadowed.  Oh well.  Regardless I am really enjoying this one.

I cold brewed this one and was very happy with the results.  I didn’t try making it up like a hot beverage because I ended up steeping this one until there were just no more infusions in the poor little tea pouch.  I  see myself picking more of this one up for sure.  This one is going to be a fantastic addition to those teas I keep on hand to keep my sweet tooth from demanding a piece of candy or junk food around 2pm each work day.

Happily Headless (Custom Blend) from Adagio Tea

happyheadlessTea Information:

Leaf Type:  Black/Green

Where to Buy:  Adagio

Tea Description:

You’ll lose your head over your loyalty to this kingly brew!

Learn more about this tea here.

Taster’s Review:

WARNING: POTENTIAL GAME OF THRONES SPOILERS

(But really this is season one so if you’re not aware of this you might be living under a rock…)

I have to say, I’m quite happy I watched enough GoT to understand the character reference here! I’ve really only seen the first two seasons and part of the third. I think the ingredients picked out by this blender are pretty well thought out too; though I do think there might just be a bit more “Fire” than “Ice” – although to be fair there certainly are a lot of very visable candy cane pieces in the dry leaf. Aun-Juli Riddle is a pretty good blender; in particular her Doctor Who blends tend to be pretty good and well thought out.

This is essentially a Chai, though an unconventional one, so I wasn’t the most excited about this blend because I’m not a Chai fan myself, but it came out pretty tasty! The clove is easily the strongest flavour here, and since that’s the one ‘conventional’ Chai spice that I personally feel you can never have too much of that works very well in my favor.

The rest of the flavour is pretty nice too; there’s an even dispersal of ginger, cardamom and cinnamon with just the faintest little touch of smoke from the Lapsang. It’s not enough smoke for people who are fearful of Lapsang to be worried about, though. The candy cane isn’t as strong as I expected given how much I could see in the leaf and the fact that this is inspired by Ned Stark which obviously ties into the whole “Winter Is Coming”/Ice thing. It is present, but subtly so and it’s more acting as a sweetener than really contributing any strong mint flavour. The finish is a little bit peppery, with maybe a touch too much cardamom.

Overall I think this is better than most Adagio fan blends though; they tend to get pretty muddled because blenders pick out ingredients that are either too similar so there’s no contrast or playing off one another or they pick ingredients that fit the ‘character’ but clash with one another/don’t compliment each flavour. This kind of avoids that for the most part, while still being fairly thoughtful.

I definitely wanted more “ice” – but maybe it’s poetic irony that the “fire” was the most dominant thing…

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.