The Good: Good aroma, Good ingredients, Sweet and flavorful
The Bad: Lavender scent is not very potent, Packaging.
The Basics: Yogi Honey Lavender Stress Relief Tea lives up to its promise of being a soothing, relaxing tea.
Even though I understand completely how herbal teas are usually made with ingredients (no actual tea leaves) that usually preclude them from being caffeinated, that has not traditionally stopped me from griping about a tea’s lack of caffeine. That is not the case, though, with the Yogi Honey Lavender Stress Relief tea. In fact, the fact that I actually found the tea to be a relaxing tea was something of a miracle and I am impressed enough not to complain about what I think its ingredients ought to be (given that the brewmasters at Yogi seem to have a pretty good handle on what they are putting into the tea). I’ve been going through a stressful time at work lately and after thinking about a particularly irritating situation and getting myself worked up, drinking Yogi Honey Lavender Stress Relief tea . . . actually calmed me down. It’s intriguing; I found myself more relaxed and calm and able to manage and, yes, (given that the situation that caused the stress is ongoing) I attribute that to the tea!
Honey Lavender Stress Relief is one of the better teas from Yogi I have yet tried and were it not for how weak the lavender scent was from the tea and my desire for teas to be caffeinated, this could have been a perfect tea.
Basics
Honey Lavender Stress Relief is a tea from Yogi. It is a tea that is caffeine free, has a light aroma and 100% natural herbal “supplement” tea. Honey Lavender Stress Relief 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 four bags in my 32 oz. tea pot, and making a steeping pot of Honey Lavender Stress Relief reminds me of why I like the easy environmentalism of Celestial Seasonings' stringless bags. A box of Honey Lavender Stress Relief comes with only 16 individually-wrapped tea bags, which makes it proportionately more expensive than many teas on the market.
Honey Lavender Stress Relief is marketed as Honey Lavender-flavored/scented tea (I’m not sure what lavender is supposed to taste like, but I recognize the smell easily enough) and it is good. Like many of the Yogi teas, Honey Lavender Stress Relief trades on a medicinal property of the tea, in this case relieving stress and easing tension. To that end, it works masterfully!
Ease of Preparation
Honey Lavender Stress Relief is an herbal tea (no actual tea leaves in it), which means preparation is as easy as boiling a pot of water! Honey Lavender Stress Relief, 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; given the initial mild flavor of the tea, that makes a second cup not worth making up, in my book. I tend to make my tea using a 32 oz. steeping tea pot and that works well, even for a second pot.
To prepare Honey Lavender Stress Relief, 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
Honey Lavender Stress Relief smells surprisingly light and this is one of the few ways the tea falls down. Lavender is a pretty strong and distinctive smell and this tea does not carry that aroma well. Instead, it smells more like chamomile and lemongrass (both are ingredients in this tea) and the initial perception one gets from the scent is that they might be consuming a chamomile tea.
Such is not the case with the flavor, though. This is one of the most innately sweet teas I have tried and it is delightful for that reason. This tea tastes like chamomile and honey . . . a noticeable amount of honey. The honey flavor is intriguing in that it is present, recognizable and sweetens the tea, without overwhelming the tea at all. In fact, the best possible description I can give is that the Honey Lavender Stress Relief tea tastes like a honey tea where the sugary quality of the honey has been removed. It’s hard to conceive of honey without the sweetness, but honey has its own flavor and this tea has it!
This tea was sweet enough on its own to not require additional sweeteners be added. This tea does not have a noticeable aftertaste, which is nice as well.
Nutrition
It is utterly unsurprising that the dominant flavor in Honey Lavender Stress Relief is honey in that the first ingredient outside the extracts and leaves is Natural Honey Flavor. Honey Lavender Stress Relief 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
Honey Lavender Stress Relief 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!
Honey Lavender Stress Relief 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 (the box I just finished going through would have expired in August 2015!) 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 Honey Lavender Stress Relief tea from Yogi Tea is good, but could use more lavender scent to live up to its name. But, because I’m so relaxed from having drunk a pot, I’m not going to sweat it!
For other Yogi teas, please check out my reviews of:
Egyptian Licorice
Ginger Organic
Berry Detox
7.5/10
For other beverage reviews, please check out my Food And Drink Index page for an organized listing!
© 2014 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
No comments:
Post a Comment