This is the largest quantity of a tea I ever purchased. A whole pound in a bag! And with good reason, the price was right and peppermint is nowhere near as fragile as something like Japanese green tea. The 16oz bag of Davidson’s Organic Peppermint loose leaf tea goes for under $15 most of the time at amazon.com. That’s under $1 per ounce.
The bag is actually pretty good. When you open it for the first time, it has a pull tab up top that unseals it. Then below that, once opened, it has a horizontal solid reclosing. That’s pretty strong but to be on the safe side (or because I have too many of them) I gave the bag “mouse ears” (kitchen clips) 🙂
HOW DOES IT TASTE?
Considering the price, this is a good bang for the buck tea. I compared it to peppermint loose leaf tea I purchased from a local seller (at close to $3 per ounce). The local seller’s Peppermint has a stronger minty smell on opening the bag, and tastes a bit better, but it definitely does not taste three times as good as the price difference may suggest. Tea (as with many hobbies) has a law of diminishing returns as prices go up [just ask the audiophiles!].
Overall, I think this is a good everyday peppermint at less than $1/ounce. Good for “mindless” tea drinking ~ I call that when I drink tea while working or doing something else that distracts me from paying attention to the drink. I do not want to use/waste my top tier tea on “mindless drinking”.
When I have fresh mint leaves, I drop a few of them in the tea pot along with the tea, giving it some extra mintiness cred 🙂
If you are looking for premium peppermint tea though, this is not it. You are better off buying locally or in smaller fresher batches.
The price makes this a good candidate if you like to try mixing and experimenting with different teas and foods. You won’t risk the “good teas” on experiments 🙂
One thing I think is underappreciated with peppermint tea in general (not just this particular tea) is how nice and crisp it tastes when it cools off on its own to room temperature (without a heater or AC on).
INGREDIENTS and BREWING INSTRUCTIONS
There is only one ingredient, certified organic peppermint tea and nothing else! The bag has the “USDA Organic” certification logo.
The bag does not have official brewing instructions for this tea, but rather they have standard brewing instructions for herbal teas. The usual 5+ minutes of boiling water. That’s more or less what I do.
Sometimes I do multiple sessions western style, sometimes when I have time (or remember) I use the Equalizer approach, and sometimes I just let it brew for a while (western session auto-converting into grandpa style).
These are two teaspoons sitting on a gaiwan lid. No, I did not brew it with a gaiwan, the leaves are too small.
