I have always loved tea since i was young and i thought it's time to explore its different types and flavors. Today i will discuss my experience with Celestial Seasonings SleepyTime Herbal tea which is marketed as Celestial Seasonings take on chamomile tea.
PACKAGE:
It comes in a 3"x3" box that contains 10 tea bags with a caption at the back with the following text:
-"The comforting aroma and flavor of spearmint from the pacific northwest blends with soothing egyptian chamomile to make this the perfect cup of tea for bedtime. The ingredients come from all over the world. Generations have wound down their day with this classic blend. With herbal ingredients that have been soothing for centuries. Sleepytime helps you relax by blending the best of nature. There's no time like Sleepytime!"-
On another side of the box, we are advised to steep the tea in boiling water for 4 to 6 minutes and is said to have the following ingredients:
-"chamomile, spearmint, west indian lemongrass, tilia flowers, blackberry, orange blossoms, hawthorn, and rosebuds"-
Opening the box, I was surprised to find a big white paper pack that contains all the tea bags. The seal on the white paper was held by a thin sticky but probably non toxic and non tasting glue of some sort.
The smell gushed out as soon as i opened the paper pack and it had a strong smell of peppermint (same smell as the doublemint chewing gum) with a light aroma of what seems to be flower petals. I must confess that I enjoyed sniffing its aroma for a while and pondered about the taste as I wait for my water to boil.
I grabbed a tea bag from the bundle and was again surprised to realize that there wasn't any string for me to dunk the tea bag up and down in the cup, but i guess that's ok since I will use a spoon anyway to stir and press on the tea bag to extract that tasty smelling tea essence. I have also noticed that Celestial Seasoning invested on tough tea bags as i pocked and played around to see how much force it would take to puncture it and it didn't puncture at all. The smell was quite pleasing due to the mixed minty and flowery smell.
TASTE:
6 minutes have passed, Time to taste the tea! I took small sips at first and tried to circulate some in my mouth and tongue to analyze the taste. My first impression was, "this is weird, I can't detect any hint of tea" I took a good look at the packaging again (specifically on the ingredients list) and realized that this is what herbal tea is.
Herbal tea doesn't contain Camellia Sinensis leaves (Camellia Sinensis leaves is basically TEA itself) rather, herbal tea is made by taking leaves, petals, or what ever they want from plants and made them go through the same process that Camellia Sinensis leaves goes through to make it into tea.
I was deeply disappointed and hoped that I have known that earlier because I was hoping to taste some sort of Camellia Sinensis taste jiving and jazzing it up with other ingredients. Despite my disappointment, I kept on drinking this tea day by day to decipher what made it appeal to some people.
Same as its smell, the taste is govern more of peppermint and a mixture of flower petals (with the chamomile and rosebuds standing out). I also realized that you have to have a very analytic sense of taste or atleast an extended experience with all the other ingredients to successfully distinguish them from the mix due to the mildness of their taste.
This tea also has a very mild after taste, milder than what tea fanatics usually look for and enjoy when drinking tea.
I have also tried mixing this with several strong teas like black tea and sencha green tea to see how the flavor reacts but the peppermint taste is simply too strong that it covers most of whatever flavor you mix with it (unless maybe if you put just a little of this tea which I didn't have the chance to try).
FINAL THOUGHTS:
Although I don't have plans of purchasing this tea again because I want the natural taste of tea in the mix, I can definitely see its applications.
The name sleepy time may have something to do with the fact that this has no actual tea leaves hence drinkers will be able to maximize the relaxing effect of tea without the kick of caffeine to wake them up.
Both the aroma and taste can also help a drinker visualize what it's like to be on a field of flowers and enhance the relaxing effect. The peppermint however is a double edged sword. While peppermint has some soothing effect, it also has a stimulating effect on some people that may keep them alert.
That said, I can see people using this tea to aid them in meditating, to help them relax, to serve as a substitute for decaf tea, or simply to experience the taste of herbal chamomile tea.
Thank you for reading my review and i hope you had fun and learned something from it. I would love to hear your thoughts and/or suggestions about tea in general.
Please let me know if there are any other product you want me to review =)
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