The Good: Nothing bad in it, Good aroma
The Bad: Doesn't taste exceptionally fruity.
The Basics: An only vaguely fruity tea, the Celestial Seasonings Sleepytime Peach does not truly live up to its name.
In recent years, probably through the intervention of my wife, I have come to enjoy Celestial Seasonings' Sleepytime tea (reviewed here!) a bit more. However, I have found it disappointing how the company continues to use the Sleepytime name to sell new teas, even when they are not making a tea that tastes much like Sleepytime. Such is the case with Sleepytime Peach.
Sleepytime Peach is a fair tea, but given how amazingly fruity so many Celestial Seasonings are, it is ultimately unimpressive. There have to be at least a dozen teas that taste more like peach than Sleepytime Peach. Fortunately for Celestial Seasonings, most of them are from that company!
Basics
Sleepytime Peach is an all-natural Herbal Tea from Celestial Seasonings. This is an herbal tea and as a result is caffeine free - none of the ingredients in it had caffeine to begin with so it did not undergo any chemical process to remove them. Chamomile is a wildflower and its use as a tea is interesting, but yields a tea reminiscent of dandelion juice. Sleepytime Peach beefs up the usual chamomile flavor, but then the addition of Peach flavoring seems to undermine the spicing of the traditional Sleepytime.
Sleepytime Peach comes in Celestial Seasoning's standard stringless tea bags, which are paired together with easy to separate perforations that allow one to separate the tea bags. When I make pots of tea, I tend to use two bags and leave them connected. A box of Sleepytime Peach tea comes with ten pairs (20 individual) of tea bags.
Ease Of Preparation
Sleepytime Peach is a very standard tea; it is your basic herbal tea when it comes to preparation. Like many other Celestial Seasonings teas, there are no tea leaves listed in the ingredients, so this herbal tea flower-based. A single tea bag will make the standard 8 oz. coffee mug worth of tea and could be reused and make a second, rather weak cup of Sleepytime Peach tea. The second cup often comes out afar weaker than the first, which is a serious detraction given how weak it is to begin with. I tend to make my tea using a 32 oz. steeping tea pot and that works well, though a second pot with the same bags will come out about 1/4 - 3/8 strength. In other words, this is a terrible tea for the teabag miser!
To prepare Sleepytime tea, bring a pot of water to a boil and pour it over the tea bags, in a pot or mug. This tea takes four to six minutes to steep according to the directions and if the water is truly boiling, I've found it can use the entire six minutes. Like most chamomile-based teas, this is a tea that I can never make strong enough. After six minutes, the flavor does not seem to get any stronger so there is no benefit to letting it steep longer than that. Sleepytime Peach never gets "too strong."
Taste
Sleepytime is Celestial Seasonings flagship tea and Sleepytime Peach seems to be attempting to capitalize on the name association without people considering what the base tea was. This tea smells strongly of peach and little else.
Unfortunately, the scent is not particularly indicative of the flavor of the Sleepytime Peach. This tea tastes like rice water, like most chamomile-based teas. At least the Sleepytime Peach does not have a dry flavor to break the ricewater primary flavor. Instead, it is cut with a vaguely fruity flavor. The aftertaste is strongly peach, but the primary fruit flavor is much more vague than that. The flavor is not bad, but it has no recognizable or strong peach flavor.
Honey or sugar bring out the fruit flavor, though it does not make it taste more like peach. Regardless, this tea does not have any hint of citrus sourness to it. Cold, the tea is just bland, though it is not bad or sour at all. Neither, unfortunately, is it peach flavored.
Nutrition
Like what one might expect from a tea that smells and tastes like rice water, this tea is pretty low on the scale of nutritional value. That's not to say it is bad for the drinker, it just does not have much to recommend it. This tea is primarily made of: Chamomile, lemongrass, and spearmint. It surprised me to read there was mint in this tea, as it does not have even a hint of that in the taste. It was also unsurprising how little the tea carries a peach flavor given that there is no actual peach in the tea, just peach flavoring as the fifth ingredient. There is nothing unpronouncable in this tea and it is noted as being gluten free (for whom that matters). It is also kosher.
In terms of nutrition, Sleepytime Peach is another tea in a long line of teas that contribute nothing but hydration to the body. There is no nutritional benefit or detriment to this tea. One 8 oz. mug of this tea provides nothing of nutritional value to the drinker. There are no calories (save what one adds from sugar or milk), no fat, sodium, or protein and no caffeine. This is more a flavored water than a tea!
Storage/Clean-up
Sleepytime Peach tea is very 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. The tea itself is still very light like a Chamomile, but it washes out of most fabrics easily. As well, it does not leave any residual flavor in one's teapot or mug.
Overall
Sleepytime Peach might be new from Celestial Seasonings, but it is hard to bet on Celestial Seasonings keeping it around on their permanent roster given how little it actually tastes like peach.
For other Celestial Seasonings tea reviews, please check out:
Natural Antioxidant Green Tea with White Tea
Sugar Plum Spice tea
Celestial Seasonings Sweet Harvest Pumpkin tea
5/10
For other food or drink reviews, please visit my Food Review Index Page for an organized listing!
© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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