Bigelow Pomegranate Green Tea

Huh. Didn't I already review this, way back when?

Quick check says I reviewed Bentley Pomegranate Green Tea many years ago. The other major grocery store brand of fruit infused green tea. Bigelow is that tea that is used to stock every workplace ever, since it's cheap and office/workplace distributors will ship it in bulk. Some of it is pretty grim. I'd stay well away from their black teas.

But this stuff isn't that bad, for a fruit infused green tea. It tastes more of fake fruit than tea, but I like that it's fruit-ish yet not sweet. The green tea provides a bitter undercut to what would otherwise be a cloying, nasty drink. It's not the best cup of hot tea, by a long stretch. But I like it a lot as a refreshing iced drink. Is pomegranate trendy bandwagon fruit with vague and certainly exaggerated health claims? Yeah, but who cares?

Brew is easy enough, I put 1 tea bag to six ounces of water, so two for a standard office issue hot cup. Add hot water out of the Keurig. Not in my office, though. For unknown reasons, we don't have a Keurig, we have the "other brand" with the flat pods. Oh well, coffee is coffee, I've had workplaces provide worse, or no coffee at all. We have dark roast most days, and it beats waiting in line at Starbucks or Dunkies to overpay for a burnt or sour low quality cup.

Where was I? Oh yeah, the hot water out of the "coffee machine" is hot enough for a middling quality cup of green tea. I only steep it for about two minutes, cheap green can get over bitter and astringent fast. If making iced, I reduce the water by half (two bags to six ounces of water), and fill the cup with ice once steeped.

So, is it iced tea? Maybe just barely, but it is a refreshing and sugar free cold drink. I'm not a big tea snob (anymore), most days that's good enough.

Celestial Seasonings Keurig Tea Double Feature

My wife and I bought my parents a Keurig coffee machine for Christmas last year, and that thing is awesome.  You put one of the little K-cups in, press the button, and within seconds, fairly high quality coffee is shooting out.  I don't know exactly how they work; I assume high pressure water like an espresso machine, but Keurig's website is not exactly forthcoming.  It tastes too good to be instant coffee, and magic coffee elves seems probably a bit too far fetched.

We also have two of these machines in our breakroom at work, since a highly caffeinated employee is a productive one.  We have quite a large selection of K-cups, including English Breakfast tea and generic green tea from Celestial Seasonings.  Now, Celestial Seasonings, available in every grocery store I've ever been in, actually makes some nice herbal teas.  Their Sleepytime blend, with spearmint and chamomile, may not actually induce sleep, but is a pretty pleasant and relaxing cup.  I don't exactly hold their tea in high esteem though, and I had doubts at the very concept of tea in K-cups.  I mean, you can quick-brew coffee pretty effectively by raising the water pressure and forcing it through the grounds...as I noted above, this is how espresso machines work, and I'm pretty sure this is the principal at work in the Keurig, too, but I can't really see how this would work with tea.  Tea requires a long steep for the cup to fully brew, unless the tea K-cups are simply packets of instant tea (a strong possibility, as we'll see).  Why try something I strongly suspect will be terrible?  I get bored at work...

So, prep couldn't be easier.  Take K-Cup, place into Keurig machine, select cup size, and press button.  Within seconds, "tea" begins pouring out.  I can't help but be reminded of the scene in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, when Arthur Dent tries to get the food replicator to produce a cup of tea, and ends up with a cup of brown liquid, "almost, but not entirely unlike a cup of tea."

Up first, English Breakfast tea!  The liquid comes out a normal reddish brown color, but smells rather off.  Sort of faintly tea-like, like a cup that had been in the same cupboard as proper tea for a few weeks.  After letting it cool for a few minutes and adding a splash of milk and sugar, I took my first, bold sip.  This is quite possibly the worst tea I've ever had.  It's weak, very nearly tasteless, and what taste is there is unpleasant...bitter, but not in nice "cup of tea" way, more like in a bad "scary and unnatural chemical" way.  Is this just instant tea?  Survey says "probably"...in fact, I sort of hope so, since I'd feel bad if real tea tasted this abysmal.  Score:  F

Because I sacrifice my own safety and taste buds in the name of tea writing and science (and I get bored at work) I went ahead and tried the K-cup green tea as well.  The label shouts "blended with white tea for smoothness!" and I'm trying to imagine hand picked and sun dried white tea being ground up and put in this K-cup.  I guess white tea has dust leftover from sorting too.  Surprisingly, though, the green tea isn't quite as bad as the English Breakfast.  While it's nowhere near a good cup of green tea, it at least tastes somewhat like the stuff.  There are really no nuances of flavor, but I'd say it's no worse a cup than the generic green teabags you might find in the grocery store.  Still, I'd only make a cup of this if all other options were exhausted and I really wanted a cup of tea.  Score:  D-