An online friend contacted me out of the blue and asked if I wanted some tisanes. Since I’ve been told to stay away from any form of caffeine (stomach issues), I immediately accepted. A few days later, I received two packets of herb teas/tisanes from Karel Capek! I’ve heard of the brand, but I’ve never tried the teas, so I was very excited to try them. Both tisanes are 水出し (mizudashi) tisanes, which means that you don’t need hot water to brew them – just put in room temperature or cold water. [1]
The first tea I tried was the Beauty Red Herb tea:
It is basically a blend of rosehip, hibiscus, rooibos, apple, kiwi, strawberry, and flavourings [2]. The tea is a ruby-red colour and smells fruity and sweet. It’s a bit on the sour side, which makes it a refreshing cold drink. The most obvious ingredients are the hibiscus and rooibos – I could taste those right away. It would have been nicer if the flavours blended together a little more, but overall, it’s a nice tea.
There’s a lot of text at the back, but basically it’s saying that this if a herb tea for people who “place importance on beauty that is theirs” (or ‘beauty that is like them’ – basically natural beauty). They then go on to talk about how the ingredients are good for you; for example, they claim that Cleopatra drank hibiscus tea [3] and even added it to her carbonated water.
The next tea I tried was the Refresh Green Herb Tea:
This tisane is made from lemongrass, nettle, elderflower, and flavourings. It tastes like a lemongrass tisane, with a slight added sweetness to it. I didn’t taste the other ingredients, but then again, I’m not too certain how they should taste.
The back of the packet says that this tea is for people who want to maintain their heart and body in a fun way. Apparently they also added a grapefruit fragrance to this, but I did not smell it at all. This is supposed to be a zero caffeine, zero calorie tisane that is full of multivitamins (from the lemongrass), with a touch of sweetness from the elderflower (maybe that was the sweetness I tasted).
Personally, I prefer the Red Herb Tea, but that’s because I quite like the tart taste of hibiscus tea.
How to brew the tisanes
Basic method: Put one teabag into 300 to 500ml of water and leave overnight in the fridge.
Very Popular method <Carbonated herb tea> [4]: put one to two tea bags into a 500ml bottle of carbonated water (take out about 30ml of water first so it isn’t too full). Leave overnight in fridge.
Notes
[1] To be honest, any tea can be brewed using cold water, it’s just a matter of time and how much tea you use. But 水出し teas/tisanes tend to be formulated for quick brewing, compared to conventional teas. Another cold brew tea I’ve tried was the Twinning’s one.
[2] Something that I learned recently is that flavourings are often used in cold brews to get the flavour out faster. In this case, I didn’t find the teas overly artificial so I don’t think too much flavouring was used (it’s also the last item on the list so I think there would be more rosehip and hibiscus in this.
[3] I did a quick google search but only found this claim in descriptions of hibiscus tea. I would be interested in knowing how the story came about, so if you do know, please comment or contact me!
[4] This is a literal translation.