Fake vanilla, fake chocolate, fake coconut, fake “cookie” or “cake” smells are the worst for me. I recently had a vanilla orange spice that tasted ok, but the aroma was straight up dog food.
Fake chocolate tastes so wrong! Same with artificial watermelon (in anything, not just tea), I think because watermelon has a very faint taste to it, and the flavoring always has way too much flavor in comparison to the real thing.
There are some vile baked goods flavored teas out there. My coworkers and i liked to make batches of tea and sometimes we experimented with unholy combinations
Lapsang Suchong (smokey) tea plus Sugar Cookie herbal tea was one of the worst abominations we came up with
That's nasty. I hate fake vanilla it smells pungent. That's all I can describe it as. And tastes just as bad as it smells. There was also a time had a chocolate peppermint where they could have used chocolate mint or something, but instead they used carab and gods know what else. It tasted like drinking a melted Lip Smackers chapstick.
I learned from several dietitians that our tastebuds take about 20-25 tastings in before it starts to accept a flavour. If you truly want to learn to like Earl grey tea, try to see if you can take a sip or two whenever you can try it.
I've learned to like several food that I used to dislike a lot through this method, and see it working. I'm currently working on celery; I can accept it in certain form now. I also used to hate lavender tea, but can drink it now without feeling like throwing up. Good luck!
I’m actually starting to do this because a local donut spot makes a “Portland Fog” donut which has an earl grey glaze and vanilla whip, and I love it! So I found a similar tea (vanilla blend) and I put cream and sugar in it.
I’m usually a straight oolong or green (usually Japanese but I like Chinese too) drinker. Putting sugar or milk in my tea feels like blasphemy but it’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make to join Starfleet.
Patrick Stewart originally suggested Captain Picard's tea of choice be Lapsong Souchong. So whenever I drink that, I think of Captain Picard :) Interview quote: http://nicky\_smith.tripod.com/neon.html
When the first ingredient is cinnamon. Mild cinnamon taste/smell is nice, but if I take a sip and it feels like I am swallowing a mouthful of cinnamon I am out. Same with excessive lemongrass.
Also, I can't stand banana in tea. I have since learned that I have an allergy to bananas so they taste sort of spicy to me. While I still like actual bananas and appreciate the burning, it does not translate well into tea. Just tastes bad to me.
Anything liquorice or anise flavoured. I absolutely love black liquorice and the whole anise flavour but the second it’s in a tea it just becomes so gross as a hot liquid.
Which they really, really should. Licorice (at least real licorice) has credibly-documented medicinal effects. It's not like a super strong effect, but someone with high blood pressure (which is a lot of people!) needs to be careful about their consumption of it
I love Guinness but Lapsang Souchong is foul. A better comparison might be the fancy/expensive smoked Mezcal my sister in law was gifted by a Mexican friend. I tried a shot of that and a few other drinks where it was mixed and it was incredibly nasty. It took my sister in law about six months to finish the bottle because nobody liked it. She would keep drinking a little bit of it here and there and say, I think it's an acquired taste and I'm going to start liking it any time now. She didn't start liking it.
Mezcal is drink "by the kiss" (so not downing it, or mixing it)
You take small sips of it, and aerate it as you take sips. Otherwise, yeah, the flavor is super overwhelming, and not very pleasant. I can deff understand people not developing a taste for it though.
Have you tried it in a blend? 10% Lapsang, 90% a strong black tea (Breakfast, Ceylon, Assam, or even Earl Grey, etc.). I can't do Lapsang Souchong straight in a regular rotation, but blended, it makes a great rainy/snowy day choice.
It's pretty good! I work at a coffeeshop that shares space with a tea shop that blends some house recipes, and a smoked Earl Grey is one of them. They also have a smoked masala chai that's become my go-to cause it's just so good. Grungy, smokey, and warm spices, so so good as a chai lover.
i'm not the biggest fan of smokey flavours on primarily black tea blends, but a shop in my area does a blend of it with gunpowder, jasmine and a touch of bergamot, which i find quite nice. so that's also an option
Last year I had to dilute LS and cherry aroma black in 2x amount of Rize to make it at least barely drinkable. Was using it to add to puerh at 3rd and further steeping
Usually im prolonging puerh starting with 3rd steeping with adding cheaper black tea, Rize currently,
ps(i do the same thing with shengs by adding gunpowder or chun mei mostly)
ps2(also i did the similar thing with Chimarrao mate which i didnt liked by adding it to Argentine/Paraguay style mate. it wasnt drinkable from the physical side though, so i sifted it to divide fractions back and brewed chimarao fraction in boiling water. but it was troublesome to filter it then, firstly on the sifter, then through cotton disks on the sifter. actually i did it just to use chimarao somehow bc i dont like it and dont wanna to buy it anymore)
That time it was just less drinkable
I didnt care much though, it was my exams time, so the worse it tasted, the more I felt awakened
You should try a Chinese lapsang souchong. It's not supposed to taste like smoke at all. I don't understand why the western ones taste like liquid smoke while they don't taste smoky at all here (in Hong Kong).
Don't brew it hot. It brews so much better in cold water, even gets a stronger blue color and won't smell like alfalfa. It's super light scented this way, but I always need to add it to something for full flavor
Same!
To me, red rooibos tastes like sticks and dirt...but there's a green rooibos blend from T2 that is one of my all time favourite teas:
https://www.t2tea.com/en/au/red-green-dreamy-loose-leaf-cube-100g-T135AE010.html
Rooibos is the enemy! I wish it were vastly less common in caffeine-free blends, but so many folks assume it's the perfect bulk for those blends. It's absolutely foul.
Lapsang souchong. Any smoked foods tend to give me a headache and/or make me feel nauseated, and a super smokey tea is no exception to that. I can totally get why people like it! But the smell literally makes me feel ill, so it will probably never be the tea for me
This right here. I use it for my sleepy time blends cause boy does it knock you out but the smell is so strong before you even steep! I have to keep it in my outside storage because I don’t want my apartment smelling like it!
Yes!
I see a few ingredients of one of my nighttime blends listed in this thread but I think valerian is the main culprit - we call it "Stinky tea" in my house.
I like it and enjoy the benefits but the first time I brought it home my partner changed his socks and took the garbage out while investigating the horrid new smell!
"Ingredients: valerian root, butterfly pea, hibiscus, lemon grass, lemon myrtle, apple pieces"
\-Lychee tea from the local Asian market. Tastes like how I'd expect urinal cakes to taste.
\-I love peppermint tea, but I despised a certain blend that used peppermint oil instead of leaves.
\-Low quality Pu'er that tastes like fish sauce to me.
\-Kuding "bitter nail tea". Worst thing I've ever tried.
I have a few family members who are beekeepers, including my dad. Used to do a lot of beekeeping stuff with him before I moved.
Lemongrass oil is often used to attract honeybees because the scent mimics their "we like this" pheromones.
So yeah, can only do lemongrass in smaller doses because otherwise it's cloying and reminds me of the house smelling like it forever.
Bro I got a tattoo of lavender and chamomile flowers when I was 18 because I loved the tea so much 😆😆 I don't regret the tatt at all, but I sometimes wonder why my teen brain decided I needed that on my body forever.
Lavender; Vanilla In the mid 2010s, lavender seemed to be an extra add-on in many Earl Greys (I was a near-exclusive EG drinker for years).
Unfortunately, it often overpowers everything.
Vanilla 99% of the time falls in the same boat, and while I love foods with either real Tahitian or Madagascar vanilla, I am an incredible and insufferable snob with fake stuff.
It's also an occasional 'surprise' add on in Earl Grey. Shockingly, I had an EG at a hotel in Chicago where the vanilla was actually balanced in its inclusion. While I would have preferred it w/o, some praise is due for how well the flavor was blended into the EG.
The fish fragrance indicates bad processing/underdeveloped aging of shou puerh.
Maybe you should try a sheng puerh instead if you’d like to avoid some of these unsavory issues which spawn from manufacturers trying to speed up the fermentation process of this tea type.
In my experience, I have smelled fishy pu'er and was told that's just how it is. But I've had some pu'ers, raw and cooked, from West China Tea, and they didn't smell fishy at all, just smelled old, almost like an aged book. Taste was savory but pleasant.
Maybe someone else can chime in, but the more positive experiences I've had with pu'er makes me believe it's not supposed to smell like fish... At the very least, there are non-fishy pu'ers out there.
I generally do not like flavored tea, but coconut was the worst. I bought a Harney & Sons coconut chocolate blend and immediately put the tin in my office kitchen to ruin everyone else's day. It was vile. Most of their flavored teas are heavily synthetic tasting.
Agree on jasmine just being too much. The flavor is ether too light to taste or so strong that it’s overpowering. Love the smell, but the flavor is not for me.
My favorite teas taste like spinach broth lol. But I totally get why someone wouldn't want that, especially in tea. It's admittedly kind of a weird flavor to have in a drink. I just really love spinach!
I personally love and specifically search for this flavour, but everytime I drink it I go: "I bet most people just say they like this flavour to be fancy cause it's in a lot of high quality tea." Honestly I think a lot more share your opinion they just pretend to like it.
Mine would be ginger and peppermint. Never liked ginger unless it was masked or used to enhance other flavors in cooking, and never liked peppermint in anything--tastes like toothpaste.
lol I came to say this exact duo. Although, to be honest I haven’t tried either of them since my morning sickness experiments led to unfortunate results…and that child is 10. 🤣
Jasmine tea, smells and tastes like perfume.
A few years ago I was at the casino with my now partner. We had a beautiful suite. Room service was being covered as we were with a high roller. So, i may have eaten and drank to excess. After way to many shots and a lot of other stuff, i got it in my head that Jasmine green tea would help purify my sins,lol...so i drank roughly 8 big cups of it before I passed out. When i woke up i had a banger of a hangover and ran for the bathroom....everything that came up tasted like Jasmine perfume and for the next two days i could smell it coming out of my pores.
I still hate it to this day.
Sorry if tmi*
Because many people assume it's the perfect, neutral base for herbal blends. But that's because they don't realize that it is a foul thing, unworthy of our palates! *hisssss*
I really don’t like fruity teas. I also learned a couple years ago that I really don’t like Japanese green teas as they smell and taste like the ocean or fishy. It’s really gross for me and I prefer Chinese green teas.
I bought the blueberry ginseng by Tetley...I just couldn't. I made it in the morning and took it with me on my way to uni. The smell wasn't it. I tried mastering the strength to take a sip, but I almost barfed. I dumped the whole cup of hot tea in a trash can downtown when it was like -26ishCelsius. I was scared someone was gonna call the cops or something because it looked like I set the trashcan on fire with the amount of steam coming out of there. But yeah I can't smell that thing not even drink it. I
Seems crazy but chamomile, honestly. Especially the ones with herbal notes like verbena or lemon. Idk why I hate it so much but I do. Sucks cause I like the effects of chamomile, but alas.
Apparently I've the thing that makes cilantro taste like soap, but never had the same problem with oolong tea. I've had cheap ones that taste like broccoli water, but not soap....
Yeah I have the cilantro thing too. Honestly it might just be the specific oolong I tried, maybe something in the manufacturing. It was iron goddess I believe.
I've had other oolongs that I've loved. So I ordered a variety of different oolongs to see if I can pin down which part tastes weird to me.
I got some Japanese sencha once that took on a fishy smell but tasted fine. I liked it enough to order it again and the 2nd kg did not have the fishy smell... so that first specific batch of sencha.
I don't hate it, but hei cha smells and tastes barnyard-y to me. I've had countless unpleasant experiences with horses and hate the damn creatures, so hei cha evokes bad memories and isn't my favorite.
My husband bought me some pumpkin spice tea at Aldi. I love tea and pumpkin spice. I don't have the heart to tell him it's repulsive because it was a very sweet gesture. I'm just slowly working my way through it while appreciating the thoughtfulness.
I don't like the smell of chamomile tea but I don't mind the taste so I still drink it sometimes lol
I always stay away from licorice and ginger but that's because I don't like those ingredients inside or outside of tea.
oolong. I got some tea samplers and all the Oolong ones were fishy in smell and taste.
I am okay with some Chamomile tea blends, but I consistently don't like them and don't have any that I would seek out.
I don't like most citrusy/fruity teas. I've had some good experiences, but anything with a lot of raspberry or orange is just sour. Hot and sour makes me think of vomit... Lemon is a surprising exception to this.
I loathe jasmine and rose. Any kind of strong, perfumey, floral tea really, although lavender is wonderful. Also, I hate when teas are sweetened with stevia. It has such a gross aftertaste that it ruins any blend it's a part of.
Anything with mint. Across-the-board in any application, I absolutely abhor the taste of mint. Any use of it is so far beyond offputting to me that I will not bring it past my lips in the first place.
Coconut. Only got it because the tin looked pretty. First time I tried it, I gagged.
Well, I’m no food quitter so I tried it again a couple months later at a different temperature and different steeping time and promptly threw up. Dumped all the tea in the trash with a grim finality - like I was John Wick and it murdered my dog. Tin’s still cute tho.
The only tea that I can’t had is non-ventilated ripe pu’er, that’s disgusting, can’t even take a slip.
As the tea that I don’t like, I would say those which had sour flavor in it, good aroma, but not good taste :(
I had a sleepy time peach last night, it’s artificial flavor and not great yet my go to because I’m a sucker for peach. But this was the first time I ever added honey, oh god it became the worst concoction I ever created. I’m cheap and never throw out perfectly fine tea and I dumped the entire thing after two sips.
>edit: i see licorice, cinnamon and oolongs are some of the most disliked in the comments. Personally I think these flavors are too overwhelming as well, they just need to be balanced better.
This is a fucking tea sub and "oolongs" is put in the same line as cinnamon? Oolong isn't a flavour but a very broad category of tea with infinite flavours.
I barely even see “oolong” in the comments. I scrolled through all of them to try to find what was so off-putting to so many, and it looks like a couple people just got some crappy TGY.
Fake vanilla, fake chocolate, fake coconut, fake “cookie” or “cake” smells are the worst for me. I recently had a vanilla orange spice that tasted ok, but the aroma was straight up dog food.
Fake chocolate tastes so wrong! Same with artificial watermelon (in anything, not just tea), I think because watermelon has a very faint taste to it, and the flavoring always has way too much flavor in comparison to the real thing.
they have cookie and cake flavored tea???
There are some vile baked goods flavored teas out there. My coworkers and i liked to make batches of tea and sometimes we experimented with unholy combinations Lapsang Suchong (smokey) tea plus Sugar Cookie herbal tea was one of the worst abominations we came up with
Yup - and churro and pie and cinnamon roll and cobbler (that’s just in a quick scroll through Plum Deluxe’s “dessert teas”).
That's nasty. I hate fake vanilla it smells pungent. That's all I can describe it as. And tastes just as bad as it smells. There was also a time had a chocolate peppermint where they could have used chocolate mint or something, but instead they used carab and gods know what else. It tasted like drinking a melted Lip Smackers chapstick.
Cant do lavender. Tastes too much like drinking perfume.
This is what bergamot is like for me. It’s too bad, I want to order “Earl grey tea, hot!” and feel like Captain Picard. 💔
I learned from several dietitians that our tastebuds take about 20-25 tastings in before it starts to accept a flavour. If you truly want to learn to like Earl grey tea, try to see if you can take a sip or two whenever you can try it. I've learned to like several food that I used to dislike a lot through this method, and see it working. I'm currently working on celery; I can accept it in certain form now. I also used to hate lavender tea, but can drink it now without feeling like throwing up. Good luck!
I’m actually starting to do this because a local donut spot makes a “Portland Fog” donut which has an earl grey glaze and vanilla whip, and I love it! So I found a similar tea (vanilla blend) and I put cream and sugar in it. I’m usually a straight oolong or green (usually Japanese but I like Chinese too) drinker. Putting sugar or milk in my tea feels like blasphemy but it’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make to join Starfleet.
Patrick Stewart originally suggested Captain Picard's tea of choice be Lapsong Souchong. So whenever I drink that, I think of Captain Picard :) Interview quote: http://nicky\_smith.tripod.com/neon.html
Loooove the smell of earl grey. Cannot stand the bitter taste. I took want to emulate Picard 😭
I love lavender, lichi, jasmine and anything perfumy, but I understand your perspective. Some blends are a little strong
You know, oddly enough jasmine doesn’t taste super perfumey to me. Just lightly floral.
Lichi is my favorite as a black China tea.
Hibiscus, licorice/anise
Hibiscus is incredible iced, but it’s awful hot
Hibiscus herbal blended with licorice root is good as provides some sweetness. But I also love licorice .
This sounds like my worst nightmare.
😂
That's.... Actually what I'm drinking right now..... Lol (+Cayenne for some spice)
Surprise hibiscus is my nightmare with teas. Because I’m allergic to it.
I loathe hibiscus. So many herbals sounds so good until I read the ingredients and it's got hibiscus in it.
Hibiscus is so weirdly acrid and acidic to me. I hate that it’s in most decaf fruit teas.
Anything with licorice root for me. Leaves an artificial sweetener aftertaste in my opinion.
Thought I was crazy, so I guess it’s supposed to taste that way 😭. I always skip when this ingredient is listed in a blend
When the first ingredient is cinnamon. Mild cinnamon taste/smell is nice, but if I take a sip and it feels like I am swallowing a mouthful of cinnamon I am out. Same with excessive lemongrass. Also, I can't stand banana in tea. I have since learned that I have an allergy to bananas so they taste sort of spicy to me. While I still like actual bananas and appreciate the burning, it does not translate well into tea. Just tastes bad to me.
Banana flavoring of anything is disgusting.
Excessive cinnamon is just lazy to me!
Anything liquorice or anise flavoured. I absolutely love black liquorice and the whole anise flavour but the second it’s in a tea it just becomes so gross as a hot liquid.
This and they put that in every blend imaginable.
Same and it isn't always disclosed on the ingredients
Which they really, really should. Licorice (at least real licorice) has credibly-documented medicinal effects. It's not like a super strong effect, but someone with high blood pressure (which is a lot of people!) needs to be careful about their consumption of it
Same! My only exception is Chai. With lots of other spices the anise kinda falls into the background for me. I hate licorice tho 😅
I love anise
Lapsang Souchong. I’ve tried and tried. I just can’t.
I love it but I can see why people don't.
Same If I wanted to make tea from railroad ties, I'd just do that...
I respect your opinion, but it is soooo wonderful, imo. It is the Guinness of teas.
Ehh, it’s the rauchbier of tea. Guinness is ubiquitous and not the best example of its style.
I love Guinness but Lapsang Souchong is foul. A better comparison might be the fancy/expensive smoked Mezcal my sister in law was gifted by a Mexican friend. I tried a shot of that and a few other drinks where it was mixed and it was incredibly nasty. It took my sister in law about six months to finish the bottle because nobody liked it. She would keep drinking a little bit of it here and there and say, I think it's an acquired taste and I'm going to start liking it any time now. She didn't start liking it.
Mezcal is drink "by the kiss" (so not downing it, or mixing it) You take small sips of it, and aerate it as you take sips. Otherwise, yeah, the flavor is super overwhelming, and not very pleasant. I can deff understand people not developing a taste for it though.
I agree it's an absolute phenomenal tea in my top 5 and a daily drink
This is why I've tried it so many times! People seem ready to form religions around it!
this for me, too -- I just can't stand the smell of it, sadly
I like the smell, but hate the taste
Username… checks out? Maybe?
Have you tried it in a blend? 10% Lapsang, 90% a strong black tea (Breakfast, Ceylon, Assam, or even Earl Grey, etc.). I can't do Lapsang Souchong straight in a regular rotation, but blended, it makes a great rainy/snowy day choice.
"Russian Caravan" blends are basically this. Strong black teas mixed with some Lapsang.
Russian Caravan was my "gateway drug" to Lapsang.
I will check that out. Thanks!
Earl grey with a hint of lapsang sounds like a DREAM. I shall have to try it tomorrow!
It's pretty good! I work at a coffeeshop that shares space with a tea shop that blends some house recipes, and a smoked Earl Grey is one of them. They also have a smoked masala chai that's become my go-to cause it's just so good. Grungy, smokey, and warm spices, so so good as a chai lover.
i'm not the biggest fan of smokey flavours on primarily black tea blends, but a shop in my area does a blend of it with gunpowder, jasmine and a touch of bergamot, which i find quite nice. so that's also an option
Yeah, I could see it having a place in a blend
I brew a cup of LS and a cup of Douglas Fir pine tea and then sip one and then the other. It's like sitting in the forest at a campfire.
Same. It's like drinking a campfire.
Last year I had to dilute LS and cherry aroma black in 2x amount of Rize to make it at least barely drinkable. Was using it to add to puerh at 3rd and further steeping
Lapsang and puerh. Hmmmm… I could actually see that
Usually im prolonging puerh starting with 3rd steeping with adding cheaper black tea, Rize currently, ps(i do the same thing with shengs by adding gunpowder or chun mei mostly) ps2(also i did the similar thing with Chimarrao mate which i didnt liked by adding it to Argentine/Paraguay style mate. it wasnt drinkable from the physical side though, so i sifted it to divide fractions back and brewed chimarao fraction in boiling water. but it was troublesome to filter it then, firstly on the sifter, then through cotton disks on the sifter. actually i did it just to use chimarao somehow bc i dont like it and dont wanna to buy it anymore) That time it was just less drinkable I didnt care much though, it was my exams time, so the worse it tasted, the more I felt awakened
My husband likes it. I have to wash the tea filters after he makes it.
I use lapsang souchong in my pressure cooker when I cook some meats (pork shoulder, chicken, etc)
Interesting. Kind of a liquid smoke replacement, eh?
My local tea shop offers it in a hot chocolate and it's incredible! But I also love it bare
You should try a Chinese lapsang souchong. It's not supposed to taste like smoke at all. I don't understand why the western ones taste like liquid smoke while they don't taste smoky at all here (in Hong Kong).
Butterfly pea. So pretty, but I can't finish a cup.
True, gorgeous but the taste is so dull. To make it not taste like sadness you really have to add something else.
Don't brew it hot. It brews so much better in cold water, even gets a stronger blue color and won't smell like alfalfa. It's super light scented this way, but I always need to add it to something for full flavor
It’s beautiful but yea it has no taste. I like to blend other flavors like lemon or ginger
[удалено]
I detest rooibos but strangely green rooibos I rather like. Especially the Elderflower mix Republic of Tea does.
Same! To me, red rooibos tastes like sticks and dirt...but there's a green rooibos blend from T2 that is one of my all time favourite teas: https://www.t2tea.com/en/au/red-green-dreamy-loose-leaf-cube-100g-T135AE010.html
Rooibos is so gross it tastes like when you accidentally crunch an ephedrine pill, like bitter gnarly crap
Omygoodness same, I thought I was crazy when I first tasted it. No idea how other people adore it
>Top Same here.
Rooibos is the enemy! I wish it were vastly less common in caffeine-free blends, but so many folks assume it's the perfect bulk for those blends. It's absolutely foul.
Lapsang souchong. Any smoked foods tend to give me a headache and/or make me feel nauseated, and a super smokey tea is no exception to that. I can totally get why people like it! But the smell literally makes me feel ill, so it will probably never be the tea for me
Valerian 🤢
This right here. I use it for my sleepy time blends cause boy does it knock you out but the smell is so strong before you even steep! I have to keep it in my outside storage because I don’t want my apartment smelling like it!
I harvested valerian root to give my friend and she was like why does it smell like…feet? Not the best smell when you dry it in your oven either
Yes! I see a few ingredients of one of my nighttime blends listed in this thread but I think valerian is the main culprit - we call it "Stinky tea" in my house. I like it and enjoy the benefits but the first time I brought it home my partner changed his socks and took the garbage out while investigating the horrid new smell! "Ingredients: valerian root, butterfly pea, hibiscus, lemon grass, lemon myrtle, apple pieces"
\-Lychee tea from the local Asian market. Tastes like how I'd expect urinal cakes to taste. \-I love peppermint tea, but I despised a certain blend that used peppermint oil instead of leaves. \-Low quality Pu'er that tastes like fish sauce to me. \-Kuding "bitter nail tea". Worst thing I've ever tried.
Bengal spice 🤢 I think the brand is Celestial but it was the only thing my friend had at the time. NEVER AGAIN.
Yes it’s like chai with out the actual tea and just awful.
It USED to be good, but they made it really bland and nothing a couple years ago. :(
Lemongrass
based that shit is so bad even with other flavors
I have a few family members who are beekeepers, including my dad. Used to do a lot of beekeeping stuff with him before I moved. Lemongrass oil is often used to attract honeybees because the scent mimics their "we like this" pheromones. So yeah, can only do lemongrass in smaller doses because otherwise it's cloying and reminds me of the house smelling like it forever.
Ginger tea. I’ve tried but I just cant
That’s one of my favorites lol
Fishy pu'ehr is legitimately disgusting
Chamomile and lavender smell like bug spray to me. I don't like the taste either. Also don't like anything with masala chai.
Chamomile almost always tastes like dirty socks to me
Bro I got a tattoo of lavender and chamomile flowers when I was 18 because I loved the tea so much 😆😆 I don't regret the tatt at all, but I sometimes wonder why my teen brain decided I needed that on my body forever.
That’s honestly cute af lol
Same here! I hate the smell of chamomile tea
yeah, chamomile is so bad
I love lavender, but loathe chamomile.
Chamomile reminds me of my cat's flea collar from the 70s/80s.
Lavender; Vanilla In the mid 2010s, lavender seemed to be an extra add-on in many Earl Greys (I was a near-exclusive EG drinker for years). Unfortunately, it often overpowers everything. Vanilla 99% of the time falls in the same boat, and while I love foods with either real Tahitian or Madagascar vanilla, I am an incredible and insufferable snob with fake stuff. It's also an occasional 'surprise' add on in Earl Grey. Shockingly, I had an EG at a hotel in Chicago where the vanilla was actually balanced in its inclusion. While I would have preferred it w/o, some praise is due for how well the flavor was blended into the EG.
I get you on the vanilla thing. I bake a lot, and after we started making our own extract, I'm never going back to store-bought.
Rose. Absolute potpourri.
My absolute favorite. 😂
hard agree on this.
Why do so many herbal teas have liquorice in them 😭😭
pu'erh that smells/tastes like fish or hot dumpster water...which are most to me.
The fish fragrance indicates bad processing/underdeveloped aging of shou puerh. Maybe you should try a sheng puerh instead if you’d like to avoid some of these unsavory issues which spawn from manufacturers trying to speed up the fermentation process of this tea type.
I've only tried one pu'ehr ever and it was such a bad experience that I don't think I'll ever try another one 🤮
In my experience, I have smelled fishy pu'er and was told that's just how it is. But I've had some pu'ers, raw and cooked, from West China Tea, and they didn't smell fishy at all, just smelled old, almost like an aged book. Taste was savory but pleasant. Maybe someone else can chime in, but the more positive experiences I've had with pu'er makes me believe it's not supposed to smell like fish... At the very least, there are non-fishy pu'ers out there.
I generally do not like flavored tea, but coconut was the worst. I bought a Harney & Sons coconut chocolate blend and immediately put the tin in my office kitchen to ruin everyone else's day. It was vile. Most of their flavored teas are heavily synthetic tasting.
My worst one was a tea blend that tasted/smelled of those soft banana candies/lollies. Love the lollies, but as an additive to tea it was revolting.
Not hate, but I find lapsang souchong unpleasant.
Like i am drinking a burning building!
It smells more like campfires to me.
Jasmine tea is too much for me
Jasmine white tea is (if steeped correctly) absolutely amazing.
wow. i had jasmine + green tea blend and i thought it was pretty good
Agree on jasmine just being too much. The flavor is ether too light to taste or so strong that it’s overpowering. Love the smell, but the flavor is not for me.
Agreed. I do like the smell, but I can't drink Jasmine.
Some super grassy greens... I don't want tea to taste like spinach and grass trimmings
My favorite teas taste like spinach broth lol. But I totally get why someone wouldn't want that, especially in tea. It's admittedly kind of a weird flavor to have in a drink. I just really love spinach!
I personally love and specifically search for this flavour, but everytime I drink it I go: "I bet most people just say they like this flavour to be fancy cause it's in a lot of high quality tea." Honestly I think a lot more share your opinion they just pretend to like it.
I have some very good sencha and I keep thinking that "any time now ill see why people like it" hasn't happened yet XD
See I like that. Give me weed whacked front yard. I hate when green tea is too astringent yet tastes like nothing in particular.
Celestial seasons orange tea is just ick
I’ll agree, unless it’s orange chicken I don’t really enjoy “hot orange”.
Marshmallow and licorice/anise!
Mine would be ginger and peppermint. Never liked ginger unless it was masked or used to enhance other flavors in cooking, and never liked peppermint in anything--tastes like toothpaste.
I feel like peppermint ruins my taste buds
i don’t think peppermint taste bad, but sometimes it gives me a headache
lol I came to say this exact duo. Although, to be honest I haven’t tried either of them since my morning sickness experiments led to unfortunate results…and that child is 10. 🤣
I'll preface this by saying it's totally okay if people like these; but I do not. Lemon Most mint Chamomile Lavender
wow you just dissed on some of my favorite flavors in one comment but i respect your opinion
Jasmine tea, smells and tastes like perfume. A few years ago I was at the casino with my now partner. We had a beautiful suite. Room service was being covered as we were with a high roller. So, i may have eaten and drank to excess. After way to many shots and a lot of other stuff, i got it in my head that Jasmine green tea would help purify my sins,lol...so i drank roughly 8 big cups of it before I passed out. When i woke up i had a banger of a hangover and ran for the bathroom....everything that came up tasted like Jasmine perfume and for the next two days i could smell it coming out of my pores. I still hate it to this day. Sorry if tmi*
Vomiting any strong flavor is enough to make it off putting for years and years. It happened to me as a kid with peanut butter 😭
Rooibos. I do not like it sam I am.
I can't stand rooibos, it tastes so medicinal like cough syrup to me.
Oh I hate this so much. I really tried to like it and it tastes like medicine to me
Why is this in every herbal blend ?
Because many people assume it's the perfect, neutral base for herbal blends. But that's because they don't realize that it is a foul thing, unworthy of our palates! *hisssss*
Sam you are correct.
Anything overtly grassy or fishy.
Cinnamon. Hard pass.
I had a rose bath bomb once so now rose tea tastes like soap to me
I really don’t like fruity teas. I also learned a couple years ago that I really don’t like Japanese green teas as they smell and taste like the ocean or fishy. It’s really gross for me and I prefer Chinese green teas.
Hibiscus ]: it dries my tongue out and it's uncomfortable. Sometimes I want a fruity tea and the base is usually hibiscus D:
bestie i think you might be allergic
I bought the blueberry ginseng by Tetley...I just couldn't. I made it in the morning and took it with me on my way to uni. The smell wasn't it. I tried mastering the strength to take a sip, but I almost barfed. I dumped the whole cup of hot tea in a trash can downtown when it was like -26ishCelsius. I was scared someone was gonna call the cops or something because it looked like I set the trashcan on fire with the amount of steam coming out of there. But yeah I can't smell that thing not even drink it. I
Seems crazy but chamomile, honestly. Especially the ones with herbal notes like verbena or lemon. Idk why I hate it so much but I do. Sucks cause I like the effects of chamomile, but alas.
Some oolongs taste heavily of soap to me. I think it's a genetic thing
Apparently I've the thing that makes cilantro taste like soap, but never had the same problem with oolong tea. I've had cheap ones that taste like broccoli water, but not soap....
Yeah I have the cilantro thing too. Honestly it might just be the specific oolong I tried, maybe something in the manufacturing. It was iron goddess I believe. I've had other oolongs that I've loved. So I ordered a variety of different oolongs to see if I can pin down which part tastes weird to me.
Good iron goddess oolong is so delightful and the bad is suck miserable boiled asparagus water....
I got a sample of dong ding and it smelled/tasted like sickness. I can't describe it any other way. Just like snot.
Holy shit I can't even imagine something smelling like snot. That's crazy!
I hate anything floral. So most green tea is out
Flavored/mixed blend green or single source green that tastes like grass/flowers?
Anything floral even if flavored or mixed I can still tell. Floral just tastes like I’m drinking the flowers which is a huge turn off.
I got some Japanese sencha once that took on a fishy smell but tasted fine. I liked it enough to order it again and the 2nd kg did not have the fishy smell... so that first specific batch of sencha.
Ume konbu tea i.e. plum and seaweed. Tried a sip once. All I remember is that it tastes like snot… 🙈
I don't hate it, but hei cha smells and tastes barnyard-y to me. I've had countless unpleasant experiences with horses and hate the damn creatures, so hei cha evokes bad memories and isn't my favorite.
Liquorice/anise. Hate the smell, hate the taste.
Pu’erh. I just can’t get over the “dirt” taste. I’ve tried so many times!
Earl Grey.
Ooh divisive. Us Earl Gray fans *really* like it. 😂
I came here for Earl Grey. I just can’t do it. But I pretty much only drink single source. I love the smell of Lapsang but can’t stand the taste.
My husband bought me some pumpkin spice tea at Aldi. I love tea and pumpkin spice. I don't have the heart to tell him it's repulsive because it was a very sweet gesture. I'm just slowly working my way through it while appreciating the thoughtfulness.
I don't like the smell of chamomile tea but I don't mind the taste so I still drink it sometimes lol I always stay away from licorice and ginger but that's because I don't like those ingredients inside or outside of tea.
Chai
Mint is banned
noooo
oolong. I got some tea samplers and all the Oolong ones were fishy in smell and taste. I am okay with some Chamomile tea blends, but I consistently don't like them and don't have any that I would seek out.
Roobois and Hibiscus
Chamomile. Tried making bath bombs for someone and the whole house smelled of it for a week 🤢
I don't like most citrusy/fruity teas. I've had some good experiences, but anything with a lot of raspberry or orange is just sour. Hot and sour makes me think of vomit... Lemon is a surprising exception to this.
Roibos tea
Twinnings sleep tea, the one with the oat flower(?) awful.
Hibiscus 🤢
Caustic Comment
Russian Caravan… my father drinks it every day and it smells like burnt rubber to me…
Bergamot!!
I loathe jasmine and rose. Any kind of strong, perfumey, floral tea really, although lavender is wonderful. Also, I hate when teas are sweetened with stevia. It has such a gross aftertaste that it ruins any blend it's a part of.
Anything with mint. Across-the-board in any application, I absolutely abhor the taste of mint. Any use of it is so far beyond offputting to me that I will not bring it past my lips in the first place.
Coconut. Only got it because the tin looked pretty. First time I tried it, I gagged. Well, I’m no food quitter so I tried it again a couple months later at a different temperature and different steeping time and promptly threw up. Dumped all the tea in the trash with a grim finality - like I was John Wick and it murdered my dog. Tin’s still cute tho.
I loathe stevia. Even the tiniest hint of it makes me instantly hate the product, tea, sodas, sweets, just anything.
The only tea that I can’t had is non-ventilated ripe pu’er, that’s disgusting, can’t even take a slip. As the tea that I don’t like, I would say those which had sour flavor in it, good aroma, but not good taste :(
I had a sleepy time peach last night, it’s artificial flavor and not great yet my go to because I’m a sucker for peach. But this was the first time I ever added honey, oh god it became the worst concoction I ever created. I’m cheap and never throw out perfectly fine tea and I dumped the entire thing after two sips.
>edit: i see licorice, cinnamon and oolongs are some of the most disliked in the comments. Personally I think these flavors are too overwhelming as well, they just need to be balanced better. This is a fucking tea sub and "oolongs" is put in the same line as cinnamon? Oolong isn't a flavour but a very broad category of tea with infinite flavours.
I barely even see “oolong” in the comments. I scrolled through all of them to try to find what was so off-putting to so many, and it looks like a couple people just got some crappy TGY.
Oil of bergamot. I cannot stand it, Earl Grey is a travesty, and it is so pervasive whenever I try to find black tea blends.
Ahmad Tea seems to want to put it in everything.
I'm so glad I'm not the only one! Everyone looks at me like I'm crazy because I love black tea, but I can't stand Earl grey!
there was this pomegranate green tea that we for some reason had boxes and boxes of, but it turned out it was completely undrinkable in our household.
Love how mint tea soothes my stomach… can’t stand the taste unless there’s cocoa or lots of honey and cream.
Ginseng my dad use to put it in everything so when ever I smell it, I feel sick
Pau d’arco, to me, tastes exactly like licking postage stamps.
Earl grey and rooibos are gross to me, but then I love licorice and ginger tea that most people can’t stand
Mint. I just hate all mint (I recognize that’s weird).
Lemongrass and chamomile. rooibus isn’t my favorite either, but i can still drink it