Tetley – Page 2 – One More Steep

Dream Camomile Lemon by Tetley
Herbal Infusion /Flavoured
$3.67 for 30g (20 sachets)

First Impressions

One of my favourite grocery stores had a bunch of Tetley teas on sale a while back, so I picked up several flavours to try. Not the usual type of tea that I review and feature on One More Steep, but I recently had a friend point out to me that I share a lot of teas that aren’t as easy to get a hold of (e.g. teas from stores local to me or online from overseas), so I wanted to take a moment to also include some easily accessible teas as well, hence the Tetley.

Dream Camomile Lemon comes in a cardboard container with a tight fitting plastic lid. Under the lid, there’s a foil seal to make it airtight. Tetley’s teas come in round tea bags, with no strings or tags. The aroma from Dream Camomile Lemon reminds me primarily of lemon and chamomile. The ingredients in Dream Camomile Lemon are: camomile, licorice, natural flavour, natural lemon flavour. I think it would have been a nice, and welcome, addition if there had been lemon peel or lemon grass included in the blend.

Preparation

Tetley recommends steeping Dream Camomile Lemon in boiling water (100°C/212°F) for 3-5 minutes and to serve clear (e.g. no cream/milk, sugar, etc.). I followed the recommended steeping instructions and did an initial steep of 4 minutes.

First Taste

Dream Camomile Lemon steeps to an cloudy light amber colour. It has a lovely lemon aroma to it. There’s a pleasant flavour on first taste, I notice that the lemon is quite strong while the chamomile is in the background – there’s just a light floral flavour to it. For those who like their teas sweet, there is a nice sweetness to the tea and no sourness from the lemon itself.

I also iced a cup of Dream Camomile Lemon and found it to be very pleasant iced, it would make a nice summer iced tea.

A Second Cup?

Resteeping Dream Camomile Lemon went about as well as I had thought it would. The primary flavour in the resteep was the chamomile with its floral sweetness. There was very minimal lemon flavour in the resteep.

My Overall Impression

I liked Tetley’s Dream Camomile Lemon. I thought that the flavour was quite tasty for the initial steep, but found that it did really quite poorly in the resteep. I think this could be improved with adding more lemon ingredients into the blend, just to allow it to be more present. The flavour balance of the chamomile and the lemon was really nice though, and I think it does really well both hot and iced.

Curious about the cup rating system? Click here to learn more.

Black Currant by Tetley
Black Tea / Flavoured
$4.99 for 48g

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First Impressions

Black Currant is one of Tetley’s specialty blends – this also makes it hard to find in stores. I got mine from my sister, who had some in her tea cupboard. Tetley’s containers are quite nice, the round plastic lid has a snug fit. Black Currant comes prepackaged into tea bags, much like the rest of Tetley’s products. The smell is unmistakably fruity and a bit floral. It doesn’t smell like it would be an overly sweet tea, but it does smell like black currants so that’s a good sign!

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The ingredients for Black Currant are: pure black tea and black currant flavour. I typically like my tea bags to come with strings (it just makes for easier retreival), but it’s no problem that the simple use of a spoon can’t fix!

Preparation

The recommendations by Tetley are to use boiling water and to steep for 2-4 minutes. I opted for around 3 minutes of steeping time.

First Taste

While steeping, Black Currant smells very fruity and very much like black currants. The tea is a lovely dark reddish brown colour, that almost reminds me of apple cider in its colouring. On first taste, I’m a bit disappointed. While the tea smells really good, the flavouring isn’t quite meeting my expectations. The tea itself smells great, but the scent of black currant doesn’t match up with the weak black currant taste. I put the tea bag in to step it for a bit longer (to meet the higher end of the 2-4 minutes of recommended steep time), but that did little to improve the flavour.

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A Second Cup?

I did not opt the steep Black Currant for a second time.

My Overall Impression

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I didn’t like Tetley’s Black Currant. The amazing scent of the tea that reminds me a lot of black currants fell sort of expectations with the taste. Black Currant was a very weak tasting tea, despite steeping it according to recommended specifications. At best, Black Currant reminds me a lot of flavoured water. I think it might be nice as an iced tea, when you’re looking more for something to parch your thirst, but it doesn’t do well when you want something comforting like a hot cup of tea.

Curious about the cup rating system? Click here to learn more.