Celestial Seasoning's Sweet Lemon Iced Tea (K-Cup)

My coffee is brewed by the Keurig system. I'm not ashamed to say it and neither should you. The Keurig system really is an excellent system for coffee and makes a nice cup. From the sounds it makes when it heats and brews, it is more than likely a vacuum system that allows the water to boil efficiently and quickly. The cups themselves are decent coffee types (Green Mountain being the pinnacle) of a variety of roasts, all sealed in self-contained filtration units in a non-oxygenated environment (I'm guessing a CO2 or maybe even an inert gas to protect the coffee). Suffice to say, I'm perfectly happy of having my daily cup from a Keurig machine as opposed to the Black and Decker Shithouse Supreme 6000 my dad uses. The key here is really the operating temperature. For the Keurig, it's about 192 while the Black and Decker's temperature is about absolute Kelvin. Since the temp. for coffee is 200...the coffee from that Black and Decker tastes like...well...antifreeze run through a hobo's underwear.

That's an assumption folks. Don't read into it.

The Keurig offers a lot of other choices for the K-Cups as well. Not suffice to stop at coffee, they have chai, hot cocoa and, strangely enough, tea K-Cups. I like tea. The main company that produces the T-Cups is Celestial Seasonings and, frankly, their tea ain't bad. They even offered an "iced tea" cup: a prepacked black tea, EVAPORATED CANE JUICE, and lemon K-Cup that you brew over ice. A pre-packaged iced tea mix that doesn't use high-fructose corn sugar? Nom. Here's a picture of the little bastard:

You can see the finished product on the right.

 Unfortunately, it is far more satisfying in thought than in application. To be honest...it was pretty goddamn gross. For being "sweet lemon" it wasn't sweet but rather super bitter and tannic. The flavor of the tea was flat and actually rather gross. The hibiscus they added didn't help things either. Curiosity got the best of me and I opened up the container.

Om.

Nom nom!

Yech. Obviously the finest quality floor sweepings from the CTC machines in India are used in this cup. The flavor is definitely an Indian tea, probably a cheap Darjeeling although it was difficult to tell over how absolutely cripplingly bitter it tasted. And it wasn't like I screwed up the directions either. The Keurig I have has two settings that produce two different volumes of liquid: 6 oz. and 9 oz. I used the 9 oz. and it was almost as bitter as Bill Hicks (but Hicks is significantly more tolerable). They suggest using the 6 oz. setting but that's approaching Hillary Clinton levels of bitter and look at how that turned out. Gonna have to give these cups a significant pass.

NYC Coffee And Tea Festival

NYC is a cool place but I'm not sure I could ever live there. Commute? Probably. There are a lot of things that I really enjoy about it. This can mainly be summed up as the sheer volume and eccentricity of cultural cuisine represented in the metropolitan area. Just walking down the street yielded several restaurants of all different cultures and regions. As an amateur foodie and professional fatty, it was pretty great. Definitely something not available upstate. Not just in food but in beverage too. In the city, not only is beverage a necessity but a pleasure as well. Eclectic and artisan tea shops, coffee shops, bars, etc. are abundant in the city. As a bound-in-blood drinker of all of life's imbibe-ables, this too is quite awesome. There seems t
o be almost a certain respect for the craftsman's art of good coffee and tea in the city. Upstate i
t's far less pronounced. Many places focusing on tea (like the tea shop that got me started) quic
kly go out of business. I feel that upstate, tea is something you find on the grocer's shelf, pre-sealed in tea bags. It's not a loose beverage. Coffee fairs better but only because it's wake-up juice. The local coffee roaster does booming business and has for years but it almost seems like its viewed more as a jump-start to the day rather than a beverage worth a sensory investment. These are just my thoughts though.

As you may or may not know, over the weekend I covered the NYC Coffee and Tea Festival as press. It was, in short, wonderful to see so many either curious enough to drop a Jackson on the entrance fee or those dedicated to fine beverage. Both were there in spades, let me tell you. The 11th floor of the 7West building seemed like a vast sea of coffee and tea when the elevators first opened on that slightly cold but exhilarating February day. I entered the room and hit the road running, so to speak. There were vendors to peruse and companies to chat with and hell if I was going to miss any one company. I won't give you a play by play of the THREE AND A HALF HOURS I spent there but rather the highlights. Here we go:

Highlight one: Hancha Tea. Run by Yoon Hee Kim, a woman quite adept with all nuances of Korean tea. There were some fabulous samples there. The mulberry tea was quite nice with a flavor that stumped me in a delicious way. It reminded me of a buttered root vegetable (they said it reminded them of butternut squash). They had a chrysanthemum tea too which I didn't actually like due to its inherent natural sweetness. It was like drinking stevia in water, to be honest but a lot of people at the show raved about it. To each their own, I suppose. The final and best thing about the Hancha tea booth was the one purchase I made that day: individual pu erh cakes in both raw and cooked. They are no larger than an Oreo cookie and no thicker than a pack of matches. Circular with the classic pu erh dimple, they individually packed in small sealed plastic packaging. The cooked is very earthy and robust while the raw (my favorite) has a delicate peppery-ness and spice to it. I can't find a whole lot of info on it (the packaging is in Chinese) so if you know Mandarin (I think it is), let me know. I've got a project for ya.

Highlight two: Montauk Beverage. You know how I feel about these guys. If you don't, look here. Raymond was a very nice guy and his product is fantastic. You know the drill. Buy en masse.

Highlight three: Harney and Sons. You also know how I feel about the Harney family. I won't bother linking the multiple reviews I've done of their teas and facilities. Unfortunately, none of the Harney family was able to make it. I did manage to meet their newest exchange student who is here from France working in the factory. She was exceedingly nice and put up with my tea geek tendencies. If you're reading this, French girl, sorry I didn't stop back to see you. I had a train to catch.

Highlight four: Bailey's new coffee creamers. No link yet and I accidentally left their press docket at home. Whoops. I'll have further details on this next week when I get back to my house. They had a few flavors. I tried the Hazelnut and it wasn't any different than most other Hazelnuts but it was a bit richer. It was extremely interesting to see a traditionally alcoholic beverage brand branch into a non-alcoholic market but I'd reserve judgment until I see price points.

Highlight five: The Great Spirits Baking Company. Orange almond cake soaked in Patron Citronge. Apricot ginger cake soaked in Drambruie. They were extremely moist, absolutely delicious, and had a proof. Happy Scott is happy. I realllly wanted to try the Pyrat soaked dark chocolate raisin cake and mocha double chocolate chunk soaked in Padron XO but the stand was mobbed. Sad Scott has empty tummy.

HIGHLIGHT OF THE DAY: Fang Gourmet Tea. This was, without a doubt, my favorite stand at the festival. I rounded a corner and came upon a huge set-up of all things tea. They had extremely handsome yixing clay teapots, beautiful gaiwans and...stacks and stacks of pu erh. Lots and lots of pu erh tongs (not the grabbing pasta type but the seven cake stacks of pu erh sold as one unit). It was...beautiful. There were ladies briskly brewing up tea to try. They had an excellent oolong that I tried straight off the bat. It was sweet and floral and delicious. I wish I could remember the name of it. I then tried a rose tea that I didn't care for. I was desperate to try some of the pu erh though. One of the kind workers informed me that you could sign up for their Fang Tea Club (complete with membership card!) and you could get a discount on a gong fu style tea tasting. Well hot damn! After signing up and dropping ten small ($10 a person) we sat at a beautiful tea table with a very nice guy bustling about and pouring tea. He was brewing in the gong fu style. Minimalist infusions (about 30-45 seconds) done in a well sealed gaiwan that was drained into a communal pot and distributed into tiny little cups. The big pot may seem odd but its actually a nice feature. To pour directly from the gaiwan would leave the cups later in the pour with a stronger infusion. The jug allows a uniform infusion for all.

When we first sat, Ki (our amazing tea guide) was into a steeping of "Big Leaf Loose Pu erh". It was an incredible infusion. It had a definite aged quality to it with a sea brine like taste and earthy-ness that mellowed as the infusions progressed. I don't know what infusion we started on but we sat for 6 infusions of that leaf and watched it evolve. It was...delicious. We then moved onto the Dong Ding Oolong Honey Aroma which ended up being the tea I had tasted when I first stopped by. It was rich and slightly grassy with a honey tinge in the background and a tart astringency that oscillated through each infusion. It was...very good and Ki said it was a classic Taiwanese tea that pretty much put them on the tea map. Ki was a collector of yixing pots and had some pots in his collection going back to almost 400 years old. I keep telling myself that using yixing pots and gaiwans is a bad idea mainly due to the fact that I find them incredibly beautiful despite their incredible price. I'm also extremely clumsy. Bad combo.

Ki enlightened me to the fact that they do monthly tea tastings in Flushing which I am planning on attending at some point. I've already mapped things out and I can get to their store in two stops from Poughkeepsie once I'm home for break. Or, well...for good come summer. Graduating is a bitch. All in all, this booth was the highlight of the trip and I will definitely be visiting the Fang Gourmet Tea shop in Flushing at some point. Ki recommended a few pu erhs that they have to me and...well...damn it, I think I have to buy them. For the sake of the blog, of course.

The festival itself was nice and I enjoyed going. There was ample room and plenty of good cold water to cut the massive amount of caffeinated and piping hot beverages that flowed freely. The women's bathroom had a line (according to my press buddy, my mom. Hi mom!) but the men's room was devoid of users. Other than that hiccup, it was a great day and a pleasure to attend.

And now...some pictures of the gong-fu tea tasting. First, setting out the cups. He then filled them with hot water to bring the porcelain up to temperature:


Next up is filling the gaiwan with hot water. At this point, he'd already had the pu erh in there for a few steeps (he actually forgot how many steeps we had done):



Letting it brew:
Getting ready to pour it into the pot:


Filling the cups:


Dinner of champions:


Yeah, that's right. I shave with The Art of Shaving Sandalwood products. Such a smooth shave. Love that crap.

Finally, a picture of the warning sign on the train in case of emergency:


One of my favorite things is to ignore the wording under the pictures and interpret it myself. Here's a rough estimate:

1) Pretend you hear an evacuation siren.
2) Don't step into a puddle when you pretend to evacuate the train.
3) Go back into train and go one car up.
4) Lock door. Wave to everyone outside.
5) Rejoice in a now empty car! Pick your favorite seat.

Montauk Beverage Works Black tea w/ lemongrass - Monday Feb. 22

Yes.

Yes.

About damn time.

You know my quest for ready-to-drink tea. You've seen my plight. The market today is inundated with high-fructose corn syrup-laden abominations to the word "tea". They contain enough of that HFCS to knock out a mule. You can't taste the tea, which is probably a good thing considering the quality of tea they use. And even if they do use sugar (like Gold Peak tea), its so much that it's overbearingly sweet. And expensive. My school sells them for $2.59 a bottle. $2.59. Two of those and I could buy a cheap Arturo Fuente cigar. Nothing like gauging.

But, I have found the Holy Grail of RTD beverages. Today I attended the NYC Coffee and Tea Festival as press (more on this later). Among the smorgasbord of tea and coffee available was a simple stand in the middle of a room. It had a clean white tablecloth on it with nothing but a sign and several bottles of tea. A few pamphlets, true, but the bottles were the focus. The name was Montauk Beverage Works and they were sampling their first product on the market. The guy working was a hell of a nice guy. I think it was the owner, actually, who, according to their website, must have carted everything to that show in the back of a Hyundai Tuscon. He graciously gave me a bottle of his tea to review.
And I'm gonna review the hell out of it.

Here it is:


It's simple and clean. Brown and yellow, with a hand-drawn quality to the artwork and lettering. It tells the story of the founder, the nutrition info, what it is, and what it's called. No fancy, gimmicky label. It doesn't need it. The tea inside speaks for itself.

My favorite sweetener is agave nectar. If you've read about me waxing nostalgic about maple sap, you'll know how much I love it. Agave nectar tastes exactly like that sticky maple taffy of my youth, only in liquid form. It's the best stuff ever. When I saw that Montauk black tea was sweetened with it, I nearly cried. Not just sweetened with natural product, but with my favorite sweetener. Joyyyyyyyyy!

The taste is stellar. It's not sweet, no. It's pleasantly tinged with sweetener. The black tea they use is high quality and it shows through the beverage. It's not some factory sweepings that they brewed up and laced with corn-based death. It's "a special blend of nilgiri and ceylon" according to the bottle and I'd agree. Definitely not an Indian or Chinese black because they definitely wouldn't work in this instance. The lemon-grass provides this faint memory of citrus that permeates the drink, which I like over those puckering bastards where all you get is fake lemon and fake sugar from the drink. The finish, as I said, is lightly sweet with agave nectar which gives a caramel and malt like finish.

It's so good.

This tea is great. I want more. No, scratch that, I need more. I want it in every damn store, restaurant, and deli. I would drink it constantly and at only 80 calories a bottle, it's not like that's too bad of a thing. I can't wait to see more offerings from this company. I want them to succeed in every way. Is this good tea? No. Good is to generic of a word. This is drop-dead excellent tea. I'd buy it again in a heartbeat. Unfortunately, as the name suggests, he's starting in Montauk and it hasn't gotten very far from there. You want a bottle? Convince a local store to start buying cases of it. You'd better tell them to get more than one case because you'll want one of your own after you drink a bottle.

Harney and Son's Stanley's Blend - Wednesday, Feb. 17th

Oh Harney and Sons. So many teas, so very little time. As the tea samples come in to review for Teaviews I find myself drinking more and more tea in an "evaluation" setting. For me, an evaluation setting is a clean palate and undivided attention to my notes and the tea. While it's nice to sit around and focus intently on all the subtle aspects of a blend or brand...it's also hellaciously nice to sit around and drink a cup of tea while reading, watching movies, or playing video games. I decided to pop into my review cup one of the family favorite blends that I managed to steal a sample of from the house. Stanley's Blend is a blend made by John Harney in tribute to his tea-tutor, Stanley Mason. So, cheers Stanley and John. This quaff's for you. Here are the notes:

Nose is malty. Assam background, I think. Has a tinge of sea brine to it as well. Little bit of smoke and spicy/nut-like quality that I can't put my finger on. It almost smells like wet dog but in a very comforting and good way. Like the smell of your favorite pet after a clean spring rain. Reminds me of curling up with my dog, drinking tea, and reading. If Sir Mixalot was a tea connoisseur, he'd say that this baby got back(bone). Sorry, lame pun but I couldn't help it.

Taste is slightly bitter but in the way that a good IPA can be bitter. A lot of people think that when I say bitter it's a bad thing. I like IPAs, so...not quite. Earth and a vegetable quality I typically find in greens is wayyyy down deep and buried but present. Slight wood (oak?). Some malty sweetness in there, along with a dark Indian tea strength.

Tea notes: It's blend of Assam and Darjeeling. I'm guessing mainly Assam with Darjeeling for that woodsy spice qualities.

Here are some pictures. The dry:


The liquor:



The spent leaves:



In other news, this weekend is the NYC Coffee and Tea Festival which I will be attending. As press. If you're in the neighborhood and feel like stopping by, I should be there early Saturday. Just wave if you see me. Oh, and introduce yourself, if you please. I'll be with my mom (who likes tea and the city) but don't be shy. She's awesome. In her own way.

Yeah.

Peace Tea Sweet Lemon Tea - Thursday, Jan. 21st

Hey, did you know I also reviewed Peace Tea Ceylon, Green Tea, and Razzleberry? You should probably check 'em out.

Oh goodie goodie gumdrops! It's time for another Peace Tea Rorschach test! Interpreting what the drawings on the can are is half the fun of this beverage. The other half is the fact that it's actually decent for 99 cents and it uses real sugar. But first, the pictures.

Alright, here we go. Here's a frontal view of the can. This time, instead of the cool cyan blue they had for the Ceylon tea, we get a bright and cheerful yellow. Yay! But wait kids, the fun hasn't begun yet, let's play "Guess the Characters!" First we have....



This little guy kinda reminds me of either an oddly shaped, semi-humanoid Muppet (think a young Waldorf) or Danny from The Shining after a few "special" brownies. Yeesh. Next up?

A very thirsty grandma! Long day of watching Matlock? Need a small pick me up before that bridge game with the gals at the senior center? Don't want coffee but don't feel like getting the caretaker to brew a cup of tea? Slam down a can, ya old bat! It'll make ya feel alive and your mouth lemony fresh! The best part? It's actually a bearded guy with a mohawk. I love these damn cans. Finally, last but not least, we have a celebrity endorsement:


That's right, ladies and gentlemen. Charles. Bronson. Promoting from beyond the grave. Good gravy, I love these damn cans.

As for the tea, who the hell cares? No no, I kid. It's not too bad. The sucralose flavor is pretty much masked by the lemon flavor which doesn't taste completely natural but also doesn't taste like watered down Pledge either. Honestly, I would recommend these more for the can than what's inside. Which, I'm sure, will make my friend Ryan very, very happy.

Peace Tea Imported Ceylon - Wednesday, Dec. 30th

I've also done reviews of the Green Tea, the Razzleberry, and the Sweet Tea. Since they're linked for your convenience, I'm pretty sure you have to read them now. Besides, the other ones have my interpretations of the can art. 

I love iced tea. I love tea in general but iced tea is an especially fond portion of my beverage consumption. I am, by blood, almost half Scottish so a good deal is also something I'm especially fond of finding. Enter canned iced tea. Arizona puts out about 20,000 kinds of canned iced tea (including the Arnie Palmer, the greatest beverage in the world) in a huge 23 fl. oz. can. All for a whopping buck. $1. One greenback, one smackeroo.

Needless to say, they rank high on my list of Awesome Quaffables.

However, one thing that bothers me about Arizona is they love to use HFCS, or high-fructose corn syrup. It's not that I don't like drinking it because I'm afraid it's bad for me and it'll make me fat (I'm a beverage reviewer and I'm already fat), it's mainly because I don't like the mouth-feel it gives beverages and, honestly, HFCS is generally just too damn sweet. So, while walking through the grocery store I saw a beloved 23 oz., $1 can of tea and I reached for it. But it wasn't Arizona. It was a company called Peace Tea.



As you can see above, the artwork on the can is pretty cool. There's a hand giving a peace sign (obligatory) as well as a guy that looks like Merlin, an Indian chick, a guy in the background that looks like an Oompa Loompa wearing a red chef's hat, a cow, and Clark Kent at 50 off in the far corner. I'm gonna hedge my bets on this is supposed to be the local people of Ceylon. For the record, I want to live there if it means living near Merlin and a neon-blue cow. Anyway, the tea itself is pretty good. The color isn't thin and watery looking, it's thick and rich like a good brewed tea. The smell itself is pretty muted but it smells like a black tea (albeit not a very fine one). But the best part of this beverage is that it's made with real, honest-to-goodness cane sugar. Om nom nom! This tea comes so close to perfection I can almost taste it. Almost. The first sip is glorious: ice cold, perfectly brewed tea with the fresh sweetness of real sugar and just a hint of citrus bite from citric acid. Then the last bit hits. This sickly sweet, chemical-like sweetness.

Fuuuuuuck.

The last ingredient in this tea is made with my bane of manufactured sweetners: sucralose. You know this by its brand name of Splenda. I hate Splenda solely because the first taste of Splenda dupes you into thinking its sugar, then the aftertaste is like the baby of HFCS and a gallon of methanol. It's this sickly sweet artificial taste that kills it. And this tea doesn't have a lot of it, but just enough to piss me off to levels I've never been to before in my life. If it didn't have the sucralose in it, I would just start funneling this into my body as quick as I could buy cans. But Captain Splenda has to come in and give me a big 'ole "Screw you, buddy" and then leave me with a can of tea that could have been so very perfect.

So, yeah. This is a thinly veiled rant against manufactured sweeteners. I hate them and my degree is probably responsible for creating them. Sweet-N-Low, Splenda, Nutrasweet...they all need to burn. HFCS needs to be dropped into the deepest mineshafts the world has. Plain brown sugar or agave syrup are the best things to sweeten things with, bar none. Oh, and maple syrup. That stuff is great.

Furious Cupping and the Harney and Sons Ti Quan Yin

Sorry for the lack of updates lately. I've been swamped with end-of-semester work. Also, I've been furiously and unabashedly cupping tea to submit my reviews to Teaviews.com. Since I've been slacking quite a bit, I figured I'd put up some images for you to enjoy. Some delicious Bamboo Yi Wu Pu erh from Norbu Tea Company (after about 4 steeps):



Some equally as delicious Jasmin Silver Tips from We Are Tea:



And finally some Kaze Sencha from Boulder Tea:


As promised, my final review of the Harney and Sons Ti Quan Yin, pictured below:

Brew 1: color of pale yellow (above). Smell was earthy and...hoppy...very flowery as well. Taste is wet earth, peach, and fresh cut lawn.

Brew 2: same color. Smell is more pungent. Smells of apricot/peach and fruit sweetness. Jasmine. Oxidized and deep. Tastes peach, green grass. Has a sweet/sour quality to it like a good lemonade.

A quite nice oolong. The peach was unexpected but pleasant. My mom loves the shit out of this so it's always available in the house and that makes me pretty glad. So, yeah. Still going to be busy for the next few weeks, so posting will be sporadic but I'll do my best to do an update at least a few times.

By the way...is it just me or does the title of this post sound like a total bad-ass band name?

CTC Assam and State of the Uni...Blog

Drinking a nice cup of CTC Assam, one of the lower grade Assams offered by Harney and Sons. CTC stands for "Crush, Tear, Curl", a cheap method of automated tea picking that often results in broken bits of tea instead of whole leaves. Normally, I'm all about the full leaf and single estate teas but, as I've said before, there is a time and place for blends et. al. The CTC Assam is the stronger parts of an Assam. My favorite, the Mangalam, has a wonderful body to the liquor. It is strong and assertive and classically "black tea", but it also has a malty sweetness as well. CTC Assam is all "black tea" flavor. It brews dark and astringent, with a wallop of a body and a rather muted nose. The nose smells slightly of the wonderful maltiness but the taste is straight up black tea in your face. No frills, no layers of flavor, nada. Just good old fashioned straight tea. I'd throw a picture up here but you're really not missing much. They look like brownish BBs, curled up into tiny little balls that release this pungent tea upon hot water's command. Why am I drinking this tea?

I have food poisoning.

This and soup have all been thrown down the hatch successfully after waking up to a wonderful morning puke. Missed all of my classes, have to turn the homework in tomorrow. I feel significantly better now and tea, soup, and massive quantities of water have been input and not output, so it looks like we're in good standing.

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In other news, I've been pondering about this blog and what I want to do with it. So far I've seen some interest in the topics I've addressed. This makes me relatively happy. It's always nice to wake up, check my Google Analytics, and see how many sheep I have shepherded to my ideas. This said...I'd like to expand further and increase traffic. I want the world to see what I have to say, damn it, no matter how crude and blue I work. I'm currently sifting through how to operate Dreamweaver in order to fill out the website and domain I've acquired and I'm always actively searching for anybody who is curious enough to contact me about anything I've written as well as what I should write about. I'm also extremely open to press samples. Really, I am. I had quite a few up on bat over the past few weeks that I've perused through and, dare I say, it was a rather entertaining endeavor for all parties involved. In the coming days I still have to do a review of Pocket Shots (they sent me a vodka in a "sturdy" package, expect Hammer Time), but other than what press releases companies graciously (and quite mysteriously) send me, I am extremely limited by my own personal funds. I'd like to continue reviewing beverages at the rate I do, but its getting...costly. In the coming months, I may shift a bit more to tea as samples of tea are significantly cheaper to acquire than beer ($7 for 40 cups as opposed to a $2-$3 beer). Either that, or I may start dipping back into the cheap beers, a la the Malt Liquor Adventures. I do suppose most of you enjoy seeing me suffer.

Regardless, if anyone has any questions, comments, concerns, snide remarks, off-the-cuff remarks, crazy remarks, or fish, please email me. The email is drinkreviews AT gmail DOT com. Sorry spammers. I love email, but I only like emails from people that aren't trying to extend my pen 15 or make my non-existent girlfriend/wife/spouse/mistress a lot happier in certain places of sleeping (or...well...not sleeping, be that the case). I'm talking about a bedroom. Sorry, not good at subtlety.