Day 33: Piccolo

Brand: Lupicia
Type: Flavored Herbal (Rooibos)
Brew Time & Temperature: 5 minutes, boiling
Leaf Appearance: Dark red/orange rooibos; there doesn't appear to be anything else added other than what looks like flower petals
Color: Bright orange
Smell: Fruity (mainly oranges and some berries) with the smell of cough syrup
Recommended with/as: As is, honey
Rating: 7/10

Tasting notes and thoughts:
When I first read the description of this tea, I was a bit interested since the flavor combination is different than the usual fruit tea. The Japanese on the packaging says there's honey, berries, and apricots, and that you should try the tea with milk (which is a little weird for rooibos).

Anyway, when I opened the tea bag, I started second guessing myself since the loose leaf smelled a lot like cough syrup (which is probably the rooibos), and barely like the fruits listed in the description. Brewing it made the smell a little better, but I was still getting hints of the medicine smell.

The taste, I thought, was decent enough. There's little astringency, which is to be expected of rooibos, and it was relatively smooth. The fruit flavor was a bit lacking, however, and instead the medicine taste overpowered it. Sadly, I couldn't try it with milk, as was suggested, but I did try it with honey. The honey brought out the taste of the fruit a little bit more and mostly got rid of that cough syrup taste, but I still wouldn't recommend it. Overall, berry flavor + medicine taste of rooibos = a tea that I'm not too fond of.

Other notes:
Nothing today, other than more science fair stuff, a birthday, and piano. There's no school tomorrow, but I'm probably going to be stuck filming a bunch, editing (both the video and some essays), and homework.

Next on the 100 Days of Tea: Sencha "Matsuri"