Tea Review: Trader Joe Organic Peppermint Cinnamon Herbal Tea

Trader Joe has been bringing new teas the last few weeks, that’s why you see more Trader Joe teas mentioned these days.

Today we take a look at the first of two Organic tea pyramid teas. The Organic Peppermint Cinnamon Herbal Tea has just two ingredients, organic peppermint and organic cinnamon, product of Sri Lanka. Nothing else! No flavors, nothing else!

UPDATE: the second tea that came out with this is the Organic Moringa, Ginger, Mango Herbal Blend

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Tea Review: Davidson Organics Mandarin Chai with Anise

This was a mild surprise, I found it at the Grocery Outlet. You can find a random selection of teas there, so I always check every time I’m there. It was an 8-pack for $1, so it became an impulse buy. It turned out to be not bad given the price, and for something in a simple flat tea bag.

Each tea bag is sealed in its own wrapper. The tea bag is a flat square, no tags, no string, no staples…

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Cup Review: Insulated 11oz Cool Gear Cup with Basic Infuser

And we are back with a new review! This time we are taking a look at the 11 oz Cool Gear tea cup with a built-in infuser. This is my go-to cup for slow-drinking hot tea at home, especially during the winter months and cold nights. I found these on clearance at a B&M store (I believe Staples) and got two of them. The one in the pictures is the unused one. The one in use has a visual stain history of many of the teas I drank (it is a light green color) 🙂

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Tea Review: Ambiance Orange Jasmine Green Tea: Meh Hot, Not Bad Iced

We are back with another tea review. No drink is left behind here, I literally drink every tea that’s in front of me 🙂 Today’s review is the Ambiance Orange Jasmine Green tea, delivered in tea bags. I picked this up at Smart and Final B&M stores, where this brand typically goes for under $3 in 25-packs, such as the one I got.

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Trader Joe replaces their Pomegranate White Tea with fully organic version

So I was strolling and trolling the Trader Joe tea section the other day and I noticed something interesting. Their Pomegranate White Tea has been replaced with a new version! The differences are both in packaging and in content. The new version is fully organic, while the previous version was marked as 94% organic. I have both of them as you can see in the picture, and will try to compare them side by side later on when I find time for a direct comparison.

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Tea Review: Trader Joe Chocolate Mint Black Tea

I have dozens and dozens of teas to review, but as fate would have it, it’s another Trader Joe tea that drew the assignment! This is a relatively new addition to their line-up, a flavored tea bag mix, the Chocolate Mint Black Tea! You get 20 tea bags per box. The price is $2.49 per box. [updated]

The taste is as the name suggests, you get a reasonably good mix of the three advertised flavors (chocolat-i-ness, mint-i-ness, black-tea-ness) ~ considering the price. There are various Natural Flavors, in addition to the tea leaves (peppermint, black, spearmint) and the various chocolate-y ingredients (cocoa bean shells, carob pods and such) and glueware (sunflower oil in the roasted chicory). So definitely not something for a tea purist 🙂

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Tea Documentary Review: “Mr Tea” (2009, 61 min)

There is plenty of tea content on YouTube, but if you also like to watch documentaries on the subjects you are interested in, this is my quick review of the documentary “Mr Tea” that came out in 2009 and has a 61 minute runtime. I found this on the streaming service IndieFLIX, when T-Mobile Tuesdays gave all T-Mo customers a free 3-month subscription. So of course the first thing I searched for was tea 🙂

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Tea Review: Trader Joe Organic Mango and Chile Black Tea

It’s tea time! It looks like this is the first tea review on this blog. Finally 🙂 I was supposed to be writing a lot more and a lot faster, but things happen, procrastination wins, etc, etc, etc.

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Book Review: “The World Atlas of Tea” (September 2016)

Adding to my infinitesimal tea cred, I used the Amazon Black Friday book coupon to purchase a brand new tea book, the “The World Atlas of Tea” (September 2016, Firefly Books) by Krisi Smith. This review is based on the Hardcover edition. I should point out I am not a tea guru, and it will take a few centuries before I become one, so this is not a tea master level review 🙂

tea_world_atlas_front

TL;DR = ONE-PARAGRAPH SUMMARY

A very visual book, great for beginners and intermediate level tea fans. It avoids many of the tropes of pop-culture tea books (only one page talking about health benefits, no food recipes). It looks great as a gift or a coffee table or waiting room book. Tea evangelists can use this to lure the general population into the tea cult 🙂

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T-fal BF6138 Electric Tea Kettle Review

One of the first things I bought once I became “serious” about tea was an electric tea kettle. I did not want to spend too much on the first purchase, so after reading lots and lots of reviews, I decided on the T-fal BF6138 Electric Tea Kettle because it had variable temperature control (three options) and the price was right (around $25 when I purchased it). This review is based on two years of almost daily use.

This is the modest cardboard box it comes in. You get the tea kettle and its base, and the user manual. No “bonus” items are included.

tfal_box_600

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My Tea Origins Story: from Coffee to Colas to Tea!

For a long time, tea was something I would drink if there was no coffee (or other alternative beverage) or if I had a cold or something like that. It was only thanks to …the Colas and Coffee that I ended up in TeaLandia 🙂

I drunk a lot of coffee and eventually reached a point where I needed at least three cups of coffee just to wake up in the morning. A coffee problem, because I couldn’t function without it.. So I tried to systematically reduce coffee to just a couple of cups per day. One of the easiest replacements turned out to be a trap in itself, Colas! They have some caffeine, but not as much as coffee, and their spike and crash is nowhere near as high/low as coffee. The other helpful beverage was bottled unsweetened Tejava tea and the bottled Trader Joe blueberry-green tea, I think Tejava had more caffeine than most bottled teas at the time, so it helped a lot during the transition.

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Welcome to Tea Non Guru

As you can guess from the title, this is a blog about all things tea. I am not an expert, and it will probably take me a few hundred years to become a tea guru, but I love tea, and this blog is all about tea! I can only taste and experience tea as me, and it’s those experiences and opinions I will be writing about here 🙂

So much Tea

On the definition of tea, I’m taking the practical route. I am drinking both “real tea” (Camellia Sinsensis) and herbals/tisanes, sometimes separately, sometimes purchased blended, sometimes making my own random and semi-random combinations. The philosophy here is to be open to the possibilities. Sure, only Camellia Sinensis is tea, but the term “tea” is used so interchangeably now, trying to enforce correct naming becomes yet another thing to argue about. So herbal tea is tea too 🙂

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