The Good: Great aroma, Good ingredients, Amazing taste!
The Bad: I’m not wild about the packaging, Caffeine-free!
The Basics: Easily the best (by far) Yogi tea I have yet tasted, Egyptian Licorice is a pretty incredible beverage!
Right before my wife departed for the summer, she began to stock up on tea for me! One of the teas that she picked up was one I am shocked it has taken me so long to review. That is Yogi Egyptian Licorice tea and given how much I have been enjoying the beverage, perhaps the reason I have not reviewed it before now is that I have been too busy consuming it to stop and evaluate it! What surprised me even more was that this is only the third Yogi tea I have reviewed! Before now, I have only tried and reviewed Berry Detox (reviewed here!) and Ginger Organic (reviewed here!).
Egyptian Licorice is easily the best tea from Yogi I have yet tried and were it not for my usual issues with the lack of environmentalism surrounding the packaging and my desire for teas to be caffeinated, this would be a perfect tea. Easily.
Basics
Egyptian Licorice is a tea from Yogi. It is a tea that is caffeine free and it is an aromatic and 100% natural strong herbal tea. Egyptian Licorice comes in Yogi's standard individually-wrapped tea bags, meaning that each tea bag has a papery envelope it is sealed in for freshness. Each tea bag has a five-inch string with a little paper tab at the end, which is quite a bit more waste than I like from a tea bag. When I make pots of tea, I tend to use three bags in my 32 oz. tea pot, and making a steeping pot of Egyptian Licorice reminds me of why I like the easy environmentalism of Celestial Seasonings' stringless bags. A box of Egyptian Licorice comes with only 16 individually-wrapped tea bags, which makes it proportionately more expensive than many teas on the market.
Egyptian Licorice is marketed as an Egyptian Licorice-flavored tea and it is absolutely incredibly. While many of the Yogi teas trade on a medicinal property of the tea, Egyptian Licorice seems set only on warming and delighting the consumer and it certainly lives up on that front!
Ease of Preparation
Egyptian Licorice is an herbal tea (no actual tea leaves in it), which means preparation is as easy as boiling a pot of water! Egyptian Licorice, as the directions clearly state, requires water that is boiling. A single tea bag will make the standard 8 oz. coffee mug worth of tea, though reusing the tea bags yields little more than hot water. These tea bags can be reused and the resulting beverage is about 1/2 strength and has a more potent dry aftertaste than the original brewing. I tend to make my tea using a 32 oz. steeping tea pot and that works well, even for a second pot.
To prepare Egyptian Licorice, simply boil up some water, and pour it over the tea bags in a cup, mug or steeping pot. This tea is recommended to take five to ten minutes to steep and after a couple pots, I've found that with boiling water, the tea is ready at the five minute mark and letting it steep longer does not truly change the results, save that it makes it impossible to get an even passable second pot out of the same bags. Letting the tea steep more than five minutes does not net any additional flavor, nor does it denature the flavor of the tea.
Taste
Egyptian Licorice smells like unsurprisingly like licorice and anise. However, what caught me by surprise was how several of the other ingredients – cinnamon, ginger and orange peel being my primary bets – combine to create a strong underscent of chamomile. In addition to the slight chamomile scent, as the beverage cools, Yogi Egyptian Licorice tea takes on the scent of black pepper. In combination with the licorice vapors, this makes for a surprisingly inviting scent!
From the moment that it hit my tongue, the Egyptian Licorice tea surprised me with its sweetness. With all of the various scents associated with the Egyptian Licorice tea, I was most prepared for the flavor to be dry and spice. Instead, Egyptian Licorice is sweet – sweet enough to not require sugar – and the spicy flavors chase the anise flavoring. Just as with the aroma, the net result of many of the spices is that they combine on the palate to flavor the tea much like a chamomile flavor. As a result there is a primary sweet, flavorful burst followed by the drier, ricey flavor that has a slight fruit and pepper aftertaste.
For such a flavorful tea, it is astonishing that the Egyptian Licorice tea lacks any sort of strong aftertaste, nor does it leave the mouth dry and the consumer wanting something more to drink. This is a remarkably satisfying beverage!
With a teaspoon of sugar, the Egyptian Licorice tea becomes less impressive. While the licorice flavor comes out even more, the pepper taste is completely destroyed and the tea loses its subtlety and charm.
Nutrition
It is utterly unsurprising that the dominant flavor in Egyptian Licorice is licorice as organic Licorice root tops the ingredients list (followed closely by organic cinnamon bark and organic orange peel). Egyptian Licorice tea is all natural, entirely organic, and does not contain caffeine. This tea may be devoid of any nutritional value, but it is delicious and has nothing bad in it. It contains no calories, fat, sodium, carbohydrates or protein.
Storage/Clean-up
Egyptian Licorice is a comparatively light colored tea. As a result, cleanup is rather simple, save on fabrics. The mugs and steeping pot easily rinse out. This tea will stain if it is left on fabrics, so simply do not let the tea cups or mugs linger on light colored materials that might stain!
Egyptian Licorice is easy to clean up after - the tea bags may be disposed in the garbage, or composted if you have a good garden and/or compost pile. One of the nice things about this tea - like most - is that so long as it is kept cool and dry, it can last for a long time and it is easy to clean up. However, like all Yogi teas, there is extra waste from the strings, paper tabs and individual wrappings around each bag.
Overall
Organic Egyptian Licorice tea from Yogi Tea is an exceptionally good tea well worth picking up. Right away!
For other teas, please check out my reviews of:
Celestial Seasonings Sleepytime Sinus Soother
Twinings African Rooibos Red
Tazo Earl Grey
8.5/10
For other beverage reviews, please check out my index page!
© 2012 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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