{"id":532,"date":"2008-04-27T00:40:57","date_gmt":"2008-04-27T05:40:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quirkspace.com\/jsfr\/?p=532"},"modified":"2008-06-02T15:18:40","modified_gmt":"2008-06-02T20:18:40","slug":"assi-brand-instant-plum-tea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quirkspace.com\/jsfr\/?p=532","title":{"rendered":"Assi Brand Instant Plum Tea"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n
\nThis interesting JSF came by the way of MomQ via a friend of hers (with a couple other snacks which will appear forthwith at a future time). When I first read the package I thought, “Oooo, plum tea!” but then I was all “Eh, tea. It’s not really a snack food is it? Certainly not so much from the Asian realm so maybe I’ll just have some on account sometime.” Then I noticed that these were instant<\/em> honeyed plum teas and that was just too cool.<\/p>\n


\nInstant honeyed plum tea that has, in fact, no tea in it whatsoever. So I’m not sure what that’s about but it is amusing.<\/p>\n

Later I was informed that powered tea isn’t all that since Lipton makes powered iced tea already, but this isn’t meant to make iced tea but hot tea. Well *I* think it’s cool anyway so I reviewed it.<\/p>\n


\nThe box contains about ten (give or take) packets such as this fella. They are a little bit bigger than the standard tea packets (possibly about 3-4 more millimeters of package on each side) and they rattle nicely with the dried tea “crystals”. Heh. Tea crystals. The directions say to pour hot water over the crystals (in the cup…although I suppose you don’t strictly have to use a cup), stir and enjoy.<\/p>\n

The resulting tea tastes a little like that Japanese plum wine but without the alcohol. Assi’s honeyed plum tea is indeed sweet with the honey and tart with the plum and also thicker than tea ought to be. Which is quite OK since there isn’t any tea in the packets anyway. Still, the honeyed plum tea drink when poured in a standard tea sized mug (shown above) is a bit thick and syrupy.<\/p>\n

It’s also plumy tart in a way that real plums kinda aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t. Maybe it’s a green plum flavor. I don’t know; my plums are usually nicely ripe and purple. I farmed off a packet to one of the Guinea Pig regulars and she said, “It’s very sweet, and tangy. It has the same plum flavor as plum wine — not a flavor I associate with actual plums I buy at the Farmer’s Market, but probably as close to real plum taste as grape flavor is to real grape taste.” My tea Pig noted that the tea had a bit of a smokiness to it, as did I, but we don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t exactly agree on when in the tea drinking the smoky comes in. I think that the hot honeyed tea is more smoky than the cool plum tea but not my tea Pig. She recommends drinking the tea hot rather than cold. I liked it better cold. My favorite Guinea Pig didn’t like it at all.<\/p>\n

My tea Pig also said, “It’s not unpleasant at all, but I’m not sure I would seek it out regularly. It would work as part of an Asian-themed meal if you wanted to offer an Asian tang or Kool-Aid. Douglas Adams would be vindicated by this beverage, which is almost, but not quite, completely unlike tea. Which is fair, as the packaging never claimed to contain any tea in the first place.” Hee. Kool-Aid. Also…pretty fair description of the drink in a nut shell.<\/p>\n

I’m going to give Assi Brand Instant Plum Tea a 2 pea rating with an extra half pea for the novelness (for me) of a hot tea concentrate…containing no tea.<\/p>\n

Rating<\/a> of 2.5 wasabi peas<\/strong> out of a possible 5 wasabi peas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-532","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-25-peas","category-beverage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quirkspace.com\/jsfr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/532","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quirkspace.com\/jsfr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quirkspace.com\/jsfr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quirkspace.com\/jsfr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quirkspace.com\/jsfr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=532"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quirkspace.com\/jsfr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/532\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quirkspace.com\/jsfr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quirkspace.com\/jsfr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quirkspace.com\/jsfr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}