The Real Me

Tea Month 2025: Tea 13

Tea Review
Name: English Tradition Black Tea
Brand: Farmer Brothers
Type: black tea
Tea bag

Notes:
This might be an unfairly positive review because of context. I had this at a diner during a recent road trip. The day before had a long travel day, a late night show, and no one was able to sleep. We were up earlier than we had wanted to be or planned and just drove until we found some place open for breakfast. It didn't look like the kind of place that would have hot tea, but I asked anyway. Not only did they have hot tea, I was bombarded with a list of the available options. My not fully awake zombie brain said, "black tea," and was told yet another list of options. This is what I apparently chose, because next thing I knew, I was presented with a mug, a lidded beaker thing of boiling water, and packaged tea bag. It was good. The flavor wasn't too strong. It was just black tea. It soothed my frazzled soul. (The eggs and hash browns were perfect, too.)

Rate
Appearance: 8
Aroma: 8
Flavor: 8

Overall Rating: 4 stars

Tea Month 2025: Tea 11

Tea Review
Name: Yerba Mate Grapefruit Guava
Brand: Mateína
Type: yerba mate with less than 1% juice blend
Canned

Notes:
I had planned on not including any pre-made teas this year, but there are two I really want to talk about and this is one of them. This tea was awful. I normally really like yerba mate, even premade in a can and I picked this one up out of curiosity because of the "grapefruit guava" flavor. It just tastes like someone dumped a bunch of citric acid packets in a glass of water and stirred it up. Yes, I remembered to shake it well. I used to drink citric acid mixed in water, but this is super intense. I checked the ingredients. Yerba Mate is first and yerba mate flavor is third. Not a trace of it in the flavor. Lemon juice concentrate, citric acid, and grapefruit juice concentrate are the last three ingredients. Knowing that it was supposed to be grapefruit guava flavored, I could almost get there, but in a blind taste it just was citric acid. The one plus was one of the "shake well" logos was cute.

Rate
Appearance: 7
Aroma: 3
Flavor: 1

Overall Rating: 1 star