{"id":1549,"date":"2014-12-27T07:36:05","date_gmt":"2014-12-26T23:36:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.marga.org\/foodblog\/?p=1549"},"modified":"2024-09-27T03:10:02","modified_gmt":"2024-09-26T19:10:02","slug":"tea-lovely-tea-or-how-im-going-on-a-buying-rampage-of-esp-emporium-teas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.marga.org\/foodblog\/2014\/12\/tea-lovely-tea-or-how-im-going-on-a-buying-rampage-of-esp-emporium-teas\/","title":{"rendered":"Tea, lovely tea: Reviews of ESP Emporium flavored teas"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve never been much of a fan of flavored teas, I like black tea enough as it is.\u00a0 I’ll make an exception for Earl Grey<\/a>, but that’s about it.\u00a0\u00a0 I didn’t even begin tasting flavored teas until we started going, more or less regularly, to the Golden Tea Garden<\/a> in Hayward.\u00a0 The owner is a huge flavored tea aficionado, and her menu of teas reaches into the dozens, if not hundreds.\u00a0 Every time she gives you a taste of something new and features special flavors.\u00a0 I still always order black tea, but the girls and whoever else comes with me freely explore the flavors.<\/p>\n

Last week, as I was considering Christmas presents for the kids, I remembered how much Mika loves caramel tea and decided to buy her some. Browsing through Amazon.com<\/a>, I was amazed to find out just how expensive caramel tea was!\u00a0 Fortunately, I eventually came about ESP Emporium<\/a> teas.\u00a0\u00a0ESP Emporium<\/strong> is an online tea specialty store selling all sorts of exotic, flavored and regular teas, as well as tea making\/drinking equipment.\u00a0 Basically, they seem like a competitor to Teavana<\/a>.\u00a0 Fortunately, they price the items they sell through Amazon.com much more reasonably.\u00a0\u00a0 More importantly, they have some amazing, if very fleeting<\/strong>, sales on items – I’m not sure if they are overstock or lower quality (the photos of what I got do not always match the ones on ESP’s website) -, but the prices are definitely attractive.\u00a0 I now make it a point to add in whatever ESP Emporium is on sale at a good price whenever I’m making a qualifying Amazon purchase.<\/p>\n

ESP Emporium sells teas either in canisters or in bags.\u00a0 If you buy them at Amazon.com, it’s very clear which you are buying.\u00a0 It’s much less clear on their website – I assume they all come in bags, but don’t really know.\u00a0 They both seal very well, but the canisters are difficult to open – so if you have arthritis, you may want to order the bags instead. That said, I prefer them in canisters.<\/p>\n

Also, please note the brewing time<\/strong> for each tea on the bag\/container.\u00a0 Rooibos and fruit teas require longer times than regular black teas.<\/p>\n

I’ve been using my Keurig machine<\/a>\"\" to brew the tea, as it’s very easy.\u00a0 You can usually get at least 3 10-oz mugs of brewed tea from each filled canister<\/a>\"\".\u00a0 But fill the canister, otherwise you’ll end up with a very weak tea.<\/p>\n

Also to note<\/strong>, I only recently realized that Chinese tea comes from China (duh!).\u00a0 I mean, I knew it, but Chinese tea has been such a commodity for centuries that it did not occur to me that it might suffer from the same problems of soil contamination that every other food from China does.\u00a0 Unfortunately, studies show that it does<\/a>.\u00a0 It contains high level of lead, though fortunately the lead stay with the leaf and doesn’t make it into the tea itself.\u00a0 Still, I think I’ll be cautious and stop buying Chinese tea in the future. I’m also going to be noting where teas are made, whenever I can find the information.<\/p>\n

These are the teas I’ve tried:<\/p>\n

Fruit Teas<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"IMG_20150301_130632\"

Goldrush Bergamot\/Lemon<\/p><\/div>\n

Goldrush Bergamot Lemon Premium White Green Tea Blend<\/a><\/strong> has green & white tea, white rose buds (I didn’t get any in the photo, but they’re there), yogurt granules and natural bergaot and lemon flavors.\u00a0 This is a pretty weakly flavored tea, not too citrusy, but enjoyable with quite a bit of sugar.<\/p>\n

\"Pi\u00f1a

Pi\u00f1a Colada tea<\/p><\/div>\n

Pina Colada Rooibos Tea Blend<\/strong><\/a> is a mixture of Rooibos tea<\/a> with pineapple cubes, coconut shreds and flavoring.<\/p>\n

I also really liked this light, fruity tea.\u00a0 It didn’t remind me of pi\u00f1a colada as much as it did of candy in general.\u00a0 But it was light, and easy to drink. Again, I felt it needed sugar and did best without milk.<\/p>\n

\"Sir

Sir Stuart tea<\/p><\/div>\n

Sir Stuart<\/strong><\/a> is a blend of black and green teas with “ginger pieces, fennel, cardamom seed, flavoring, rose petals, cornflower blossoms”.<\/p>\n

This is a really nice tea.\u00a0 It is very balanced, with a grown up orangy flavor, a little bitter and a little bit spicy at time.\u00a0 I always drink my teas with sugar, and I felt this one really needed it for the full flavor to burst through.\u00a0\u00a0 This is often my to-go tea when I don’t know what else to drink.<\/p>\n

Chocolate Teas<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Chocolate\/Cream\/

Chocolate\/Cream\/ Truffles Black Tea Blend<\/p><\/div>\n

Chocolate\/Cream\/ Truffles Black Tea Blend<\/strong><\/a> is a mixture of black tea with “broken cocoa bits, coconut shreds, chocolate chips” and “flavoring”.<\/p>\n

I got a bag of this one and the smell when you open it is unbelievable.\u00a0 The chocolate and coconut really come through and work well together, so that the end product is really neither.\u00a0 It’s very tasty though, but I do thing it needs both milk and sugar for the true flavors to shine – otherwise I found the tea sort of weak.<\/p>\n

\"Chocolate

Chocolate Sun<\/p><\/div>\n

Chocolate Sun<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

This is a Sencha green tea from China and includes cocoa peel, orange peel, cocoa pieces and other flavoring.<\/p>\n

I made this in my Keurig and I found it to be very weak.\u00a0 Of course, the Keurig doesn’t give it the 2-3 minutes seeping time this tea needs, but yet it does well with other teas that require longer seeping times.\u00a0 I will try it again using a tea kettle and report back.<\/p>\n

Caramel Teas<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Caramel

Caramel tea<\/p><\/div>\n

Caramel Black Tea Blend<\/strong><\/a> is black tea with caramel pieces and flavoring.\u00a0 It retails for $11.50 for 100g. I paid $3.<\/p>\n

I originally came across ESP Emporium while looking for caramel tea, so I was very disappointed at how weak this tea is, both in terms of caramel flavor and flavor altogether. This was the case both through a regular brew and in the Keurig.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Maple Taffy<\/p><\/div>\n

\u00a0Maple Taffy Black Blend<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

This black tea has cinnamon pieces, dehydrated maple syrup, cinnamon rods, popcorn, white cornflower blossoms and flavoring.<\/p>\n

I have to confess that I just loved that this tea came with popcorn.\u00a0 I don’t know if it added anything to the flavor, but just how cool is it to make popcorn tea?\u00a0 The tea, meanwhile was very good.\u00a0 It had a nice old-fashion caramel flavor and was definitely better than the caramel tea.<\/p>\n

Flower Teas<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\"teagarden\"

Flower Garden Fruit Tea Blend<\/p><\/div>\n

Flower Garden Fruit Tea Blend<\/strong><\/a> is a mixture of pieces of dried sour apples and pears,\u00a0 pink rosebuds,\u00a0 freeze-dried strawberry and raspberry pieces, blackberry leaves, cornflower blossoms, marigold blossoms, rose petals, Roman chamomile and flavoring.<\/p>\n

This tea is just beautiful, pretty much just a combination of flower bulbs. And it tastes like flowers too. If I had to describe it, I’d say it’s mostly like a rose hip tea.\u00a0 Definitely needs sugar to bring up the flavors, though.<\/p>\n

Rooibos Teas<\/strong><\/p>\n

Also see Pi\u00f1a Colada<\/strong> tea above<\/p>\n

\"Creamsicle

Creamsicle Tea<\/p><\/div>\n

Creamsicle Rooibos Tea<\/span><\/a><\/strong> has rooibos tea, flavoring, orange peel and freeze-dried yogurt pieces.\u00a0 I guess I was expecting this to taste like an orange creamsicle, but it tasted like a very good, very balanced cup of tea with milk.\u00a0 It was really nice, and definitely something to keep in the pantry for when you want just a classic tea with milk, but have no milk around.<\/p>\n

\"Tiramisu\/Mascarpone

Tiramisu\/Mascarpone Rooibos Tea<\/p><\/div>\n

Tiramisu\/Mascarpone Rooibos Tea<\/span><\/strong><\/a> adds chocolate chips, brittle pieces, caramel pieces, freeze-dried yogurt pieces, roasted coffee beans, Roman chamomile and flavoring to the rooibos tea.<\/p>\n

I’m not sure I can see all those ingredients in the tea, and perhaps that’s why it doesn’t actually taste like either Tiramisu or Mascarpone or a combination of either.\u00a0 It lacks the sour element of both, other than perhaps as an aftertaste.\u00a0 While I can’t quite describe the flavor of this tea – beyond being a well balanced rooibos – it is very pleasant, with or without milk.<\/p>\n

\"

Ginger\/Pepper\/Orange tea<\/p><\/div>\n

Ginger\/Pepper\/Orange Rooibos Tea<\/span><\/strong><\/a> has almond slivers pistachios, orange peels, coriander, pink peppercorns and flavoring added to the rooibos tea.<\/p>\n

This is pretty much a generic rooibos tea.\u00a0 It’s good if you like rooibos tea, which I do, but I think the added ingredients substract from each other rather than add, and what you are left with is pretty generic.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve never been much of a fan of flavored teas, I like black tea enough as it is.\u00a0 I’ll make an exception for Earl Grey, but that’s about it.\u00a0\u00a0 I didn’t even begin tasting flavored teas until we started going, more or less regularly, to the Golden Tea Garden in Hayward.\u00a0 The owner is a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,4],"tags":[355,365,28,254],"class_list":["post-1549","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-drinks","category-food-items","tag-amazon-com","tag-eps-emporium","tag-reviews","tag-tea","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marga.org\/foodblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1549","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marga.org\/foodblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marga.org\/foodblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marga.org\/foodblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marga.org\/foodblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1549"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.marga.org\/foodblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1549\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marga.org\/foodblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marga.org\/foodblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marga.org\/foodblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}