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Green Tea Iced Tea Reviews Tea Reviews

Do I LOVE Tg Green Teas Iced Tea & Pyramid Teabags?

7th July 2015

Recently Tg Green Teas asked me if I’d like to try some of their products, obviously I jumped at the chance and was sent a selection of items. These included 3 flavours of Bottled iced tea and 3 packs of green tea teabags. Keep reading to get the low down on these teas from Tg Green Teas!

All 6 products are green tea, the bottles all have ginseng added alongside a choice of mandarin, jujube or standard green tea.

Iced Green Teas

Cold Bottles

The iced green teas are ready made and bottled so they’re always ready to go, the bottles are a comfortable shape with a bullet proof non leaking lid. They contain less than 30 calories each and have just enough sweetener, no less, no more. I love the taste of good quality natural green tea that these iced teas have and the sweetness is perfected with great precision, often bottled iced tea is LOADED with sugar but not these beauties!

Mandarin & Ginseng

I adore this iced tea (good thing I received 2!), the mandarin fragrance explodes from the bottle as you remove the lid and the flavour doesn’t disappoint. The mandarin is very clearly there sitting happily alongside the green tea but it doesn’t overpower it, I’ve had orangey iced tea from other companies that literally tastes like Fanta (eew!). The mandarin flavour is also sweet rather than sharp and all this with only 30 calories!

There also isn’t too much of a dry green flavour to the drink, I expect because the mandarin is so expertly blended with the green tea in precisely the right quantity.

 

Classic Green Tea & Ginseng

I shamefully expected this to be the least exciting but in all honesty it is by far my favourite Tg product, truly gorgeous. It’s so refreshing chilled and really invigorating to drink during the hot weather we’ve had recently. With just the right amount of sweetness, this is an extremely well rounded iced tea that I’ll be sure to be coming back to again and again. The only downside is I finished the bottle in a matter of minutes, and was a tad devastated when I realised!

If you only try one of Tg’s products this is the one. I’ve tried to recreate something even remotely similar myself using iced loose leaf green tea and agave nectar but it just can’t be done! Buy a couple of bottles of this classic green iced tea and pop them in your backpack next time you’re out for the day, bliss!

 

Jujube & Ginseng

Finally I tried the Jujube & Ginseng, the most noticeable difference to the mandarin flavour is that the flavour’s stronger. The Jujube takes more of a centre stage position in this iced tea, again the sweetness is perfect and there’s none of that sugar coated teeth that other iced teas leave you with (I’m looking at you Lipton!). It was so hot the day I drunk this so I got my favourite glass out, poured the pinky tinted liquid, added ice and kicked back with my laptop and got through a sweltering afternoon of work.

The Jujube really sits alongside the green tea flavour perfectly, neither flavour is over the top and both complement each other wonderfully. This iced tea was the only one that ended with a slightly dry taste, but this was a real positive quality on a boiling hot day! 🙂

 

Teabags

 

Next up is the teabags! The teabags are pyramid teabags which is great to see, pyramid teabags improve flavour by giving the leaf more room to expand and move around. I found I could easily get two mugs out of a single teabag which makes these incredibly good value at £4.15 for 15 teabags. The leaf across all 3 flavours is of good quality and much larger than you would usually see in teabags, none of that dust filling that a lot of teabags have!

All 3 flavours taste great, the green tea tastes really pure and is delicate and not too vegetal, the flavours are also just the right strength. I found these teas were better with a sweetener, Tg suggest sugar or honey but I used agave nectar to sweeten mine which made it fantastic! The expiry dates of the packets I received are all 18 months away, and the packets reseal fantastically so your tea will stay fresh for a long time. The matte black packaging features vibrant colouring, which I find really alluring as the colours pop out on my tea shelf, against a backdrop of the usual brown tea packaging.  Keep reading for my thoughts on each flavour 🙂

Ginger & Lemon Zest

Upon opening the packet I was pleased to find that the lemony fragrance wasn’t overpowering, I often find blends featuring lemon to be overly zingy. Alongside the refreshing lemon fragrance I could detect the ginger undertones peeking out.

I was easily able to get two infusions from each teabag and actually found the second infusion tasted better as the green tea is a little more subtle and allows the other flavours to take the spotlight. This tea was the one I found most in need of a sweetening, just to lightly soften the ginger flavouring. I really enjoyed just sniffing the mild zingyness of the lemon as I took a sip. This would be a great morning tea to get you feeling refreshed and energised!

 

Jujube & Osmanthus

The jujube & osmanthus teabags have a nice earthy but sweet smell, the kind of smell that makes me think of curling up on the sofa for a Netflix session! 😉 Once brewed I found the flavour was quite savoury but with a sweet fruity smell accompanying the green tea. These teabags also easily do 2 infusions, so what could be better than sharing a teabag and a chat with a friend?

Again the quality is top notch with large leaf, good quality pyramid teabags and none of the dust that you find in inferior teabags. The thing I found really convenient about these teabags is they do offer you loose leaf quality without the hassle. Admittedly, I do find it quite fun to prance around the kitchen preparing my loose leaf tea and getting my gadgets involved but if I’m in a rush these are the first teabags I reach for!

 

Classic Green Tea

Again I left the classic green tea for last, I found the flavoured teabags more compelling to try, but the unflavoured green tea is actually really relaxing and comforting. With all the crazy flavourings of tea I have, I sometimes forget just how nice straight unflavoured tea is. The classic green tea from Tg is LUSH, when you taste it unaltered you can really appreciate the quality of the leaf that goes in to their teabags. The classic green tea has a slightly dry vegetal flavour, with that healthy feel, but it’s also great lightly sweetened.

 

Final Thoughts

I had such fun trying these products and found it especially exciting to try some new iced tea! I’d like to say a massive thanks to Tg Green Teas for sending me such a generous selection of products to try. I strongly suggest you keep an eye out for these teas or even better, buy directly on Tg’s website.

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Black Tea Fruit Tea Green Tea Tea Reviews

Gently Stirred Tea Tasting! Russtea’s Review

19th May 2015

A few days ago I was sent some samples from Gently Stirred.

I opened my package and I was blown away by the care that had gone in to packing this for me. It was beautifully wrapped in green tissue paper and had a string tied in a bow. It looked like a present you’d receive from a good friend and I really fell in love with the presentation and attention to detail of the package. There was also a printed catalogue and small information sheets for each tea, you just don’t get such a personal service anywhere else!

The Flavours

I received Cucumber & Orange Marmalade, which is a black loose tea with character! I was also given a tea bag of Uki Uki which is a black tea with a tropical fruit flavour, amazing or what?! The third tea I sampled was Saint Clement’s Green Tea, this was also in teabag form.

The Taste

Cucumber & Orange Marmalade Bag

Cucumber & Orange Marmalade

I decided to get stuck in straight away with the cucumber and marmalade, I was a little hesitant about the cucumber but also really excited to try something different. The smell of the tea is very strong, it overpowered the smell of the others. The pieces of cucumber and orange are HUGE, I’ve never seen such big bits of fruit in tea before!

I began steeping the tea and watched as the water turned a beautiful amber colour, the cucumber and orange erupted out of the mug. I steeped the tea for 2-3 minutes using one teaspoon of tea and it was just the right strength.

Saint Clement's Teabag

Saint Clement’s Green Tea

This is a gently fragrant tea made using Gently Stirred’s popular Pai Mu Tan as a base. Added to the Pai Mu Tan are oranges, lemons and bergamot oil. Green tea is renowned for it’s health benefits which is an added bonus with Saint Clement’s. It has a slightly floral taste, which usually I’m not a fan of but this was different, it was there just enough to sweeten the blend, without feeling like you’re actually eating flowers.

The tea turned a slightly pink colour and smells fantastic every time you take a sip. I used my teabag 3 times and all three mugs were different, the first was sweetest and then the other 2 were more savoury but just as delicious. The other thing I could detect was a herbal taste which was really lush!

 

 

Uki uki

Uki Uki

The third tea was a black tea with tropical fruit called Uki Uki, this was an absolute dream. Instantly it smells like a tropical paradise, or at least how I’d expect a tropical paradise to smell :p . It tastes so sweet and is so addictive, unbelievably fruity, even to the point where the fruit is stronger than the black tea, which is really rare. There’s also no bitterness, even if it’s steeped to quite a dark strength, I assume this must be due to the sheer amount of the succulent fruit flavour that’s packed in.

My boyfriend said that he felt that the tea had a slight spicyness to it which I didn’t really detect, it became less sweet when we made additional mugs with the same teabag but that’s to be expected, and all of them were immensely pleasant.

 

Conclusion

Overall I was thrilled with these teas, I love it when I find something a little different and these flavours really are unique. There’s just a handcrafted pleasantly warm feeling to all of three of the teas Gently Stirred sent me. I’d like to thank Gently Stirred for giving me the chance to try these three teas and I urge you to go and check them out!

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You can check out Gently Stirred’s website here.

What teas have you found that are a bit different? 🙂 xXx