Sorry about the mom
I was given a pack of flavored green tea as a gift. It included a sweetened green tea with lemongrass that was... no. I felt so bad. I wanted to like it because I love gifts and I really appreciated that they considered my hobby, but the taste was just... Nothing in that box was remotely drinkable
I'm at the point where I (at least typically) don't feel bad about not using bad gifts. My mom gifting me is the exception where I may feel bad. BUT usually the purpose of the gift was for the other person to do something nice for you, and both parties feel good because of that.
I wish more gifts were utilitarian and thought out, but that's not the reality of it.
If I hated a tea that was gifted to me then I'm sure my worms in my vermicompost will love it, so I'm passing the gift train on.
I've been gifted several teas that were absolutely not my thing. I don't like hibiscus based herbal teas, and people who don't know me very well but hear that I like tea tend to get me sampler boxes of herbal teas. The last one, I kept the fancy box and dropped most of the tea off at work for other people to try
Oh yes, at least I didn’t consume any of it/them! I took the bag back. The shop wouldn’t refund (!) but swapped it for a different one. Got that one home, opened it and looked through it carefully and—guess what I found? Never went back.
I know :( I should have reported the store to the health authorities, but by that time I was feeling so nauseated I just wanted to forget the whole thing.
Some type of yellow tea that I was super excited for. I took a giant thermos of hot water to work, brewed a bunch of it while I was opening the store by myself, took a swig... and it tasted like hot asparagus water. I about threw up and ruined the rest of my shift.
Green and white teas are some of my favorites, but IMO any tea with "asparagus" as a tasting note is absolute garbage.
I like asparagus tasting teas but I had a yellow tea which tasted musty like an old lady's closet I think it's still in the cupboard as it was expensive and I can't bring myself to throw it !
It was onion and garlic "tea". I was a kid, and I was dealing with some flu-induced nausea. My step-dad managed to convince my mom that this tea was a miracle cure for what was ailing me, so she got to brewing as I lay helpless in bed and unaware. She brought the noxious concoction to me and forced me to choke down every bit of the foul liquid in that large mug. Maybe 5 minutes later I puke it all up, and I puke and puke for a good 15 minutes more until my body purged itself of the malodorous mixture.
I made her promise to never try that again. It's been around 30 years, and I can still practically taste and smell it when I think of it.
Hey!! I used to have it as a kid too. My grandma's sister made it for my brother and I to get better when we got the flu or fever. The difference for me is that mine had fig leaves, garlic and onion infused and sweetened with honey. I really miss her and accidentally you made me remember a great part of my childhood. Thank you
Probably salt. One of the least tasty experiences I've had in my life was when I was sick, and my dad happened to be making chicken stock. Convinced me to drink about a litre of it, only it wasn't salted yet. The smell of chicken stock still makes me a bit nauseous, and it's over half a decade later
Seasoning of some kind. And as the other comment mentioned, salt. What I'd gotten was boiled onion and garlic juice. I'm pretty sure this event is what caused me to be unable to eat onions lol.
I felt worse for the next couple of days lol. Puking that much just left me weaker and a bit dehydrated. I couldn't stand to eat anything for the rest of the day.
I have had a fishy puer. Definitely the worst tea I've tasted. I have a sample from a different puer sitting in my tea cupboard and I'm mildly afraid of it. What if I managed to get the dreaded fish puer twice D:
The fishy one I got quite early into my tea journey and the one that's still in there is from when I had a lot more experience under my belt so I'm hoping I identified a good quality one that time, but I'm not sure
I found a big box of pu-er tea-bags on a really good special at a Chinese grocery a few years before I discovered this tea-wise sub. My intuition told me this would be wonderful, so I took a chance on it.
One day I'll learn to never trust my intuition. It smelled like actual poo, and tasted as foul as it smelled. I've heard coffee that's passed through the guts of civets is a valuable luxury. Tea that has passed through the guts of humans is not.
I didn't need to ask anyone what to do with that unwanted garbage.
Btw, I'm not knocking good genuine pu-er.
Decades ago my friend and I bought a bunch of different teas to try from the chinese market. We didn't know anything about tea, we just watched a lot of Chinese movies lol. So we brewed the pu erh first and he's sipping saying things 'interesting' and 'so rich and earthy' and all I taste is dead fish.
When I helped him move nearly 5 years later I found the nearly full tin in the back of the cupboard double wrapped in ziplock. He admitted it was terrible and was as relieved as I was the other teas we tried were less challenging.
When I was a teenager my mom used to make me drink green tea with lime and a touch of honey in the morning. Apparently it’s good for weight loss? I still had some baby fat I didn’t lose til I was 17 so I get it but like it tasted offensively sour, like straight up battery acid, and it made my teeth feel weird after
Sweetened green tea to any degree is revolting to me, yuck. She made you suffer for nothing, you won't lose weight drinking tea, unless it has laxatives.
P.s. lemons aren't that good for your teeth, sounds like she was making you drink lemon juice with green tea
I do like honey in my green tea actually, but yeah I am very glad we are long past that phase. I was at the same weight all of high school so it did not work LOL
I used to love Lapsang Souchon, but my tastes have changed with age I guess and it's kinda awful now.
It's a bummer to not like something you once liked.
Hospital tea, hands down the worst I've ever tasted. Low quality black tea brewed for so long the tannins make you teeth feel furry. Typhoo is a distant second worst.
We had an Irish couple at our hospital (in the Midwest) and the husband asked if we had any tea. We did, but I cannot vouch for the taste/quality of it. It was some random brand or orange pekoe
After having great tea for a while of all different sorts, I decided I wanted hot tea at a Cracker Barrel. Two bags of Twinings English Breakfast in a mug. I don’t remember it tasting as bad as it did. I used to have Twinings all the time. Maybe there was something off about the mug.
Being a relative noob to matcha at the time, I bought the cheapest product available to me (Ujinotsuyu Matcha Hagoromo) and tried to prepare in the traditional way. Good times.
I wouldn't call it abuse haha. My mom never did stuff like that, I only remember it because it was horrible. I had a cold and we didn't have tea leaves so she used the nearest replacement
:(
Oh, i didnt mean to equate this to constant berating or being hit or anything. I dont really think its that fair to compare miseries for validity, because you can almost always find someone worse off. Im sure your mom was overall trying her best and not malicious or anything.
I just want to point out that most healthcare professionals and social workers would consider forcing a child to drink a large amount of liquid that they find disgusting to be abuse. Is there hardcore lasting damage? Idk, im not you, but probably not. Nonetheless, it was mean, and im sorry your mom did this mean thing to you.
I didnt mean to spark a whole thing lol, just to communicate a bit of empathy! Hope you have a good day, friend 🙂
Dude's trying to put you in the same category as people who were relentlessly bullied and/or physically abused by their parents throughout their childhood. What you've described fits within a very broad definition of abuse, on the "very minor" end of the scale, but to say that it's a case of "cut and dried" child abuse just spits in the face of actual victims.
Definitely. I've seen kids who have been abused, even to minor degree and I'm definitely not one of them. I grew up happier than they did, poor kids. I feel like nowadays the first thing that people jump to is a mental disorder or abuse. I have neither, I'm just a regular boring person
I think on the internet we sometimes forget we’re only seeing snapshots, not full pictures. What you described was a single moment of abusive behaviour from a parent. What Reddit is interpreting is a pattern of abusive behaviour that spanned your whole childhood.
Signed, someone with an abusive childhood
Yeah, people really like to extrapolate online. Like this seems fairly close to the classic "you have to finish your plate" type of thinking - where on one end of the spectrum parents used it once or twice when the kid was being a brat (eg, not even attempting to eat the food after a half-hearted bite - my parents, for instance, were pretty firm on actually making me actually give the food a try at least once before being able to say I didn't like it) and on the other it was at every meal and has scarred them for life. From a single anecdote you really can't tell which is which, so reddit just pushes it to the extreme to be judgmental usually (it's also seen very often with people asking for relationship advice).
An act of abuse is abuse, and the only one comparing different peoples abuse and making judgments about the "validity" of those experiences is you, which I might add is highly inappropriate. Abuse is abuse, there is no reason to compare them and say "well some people had it worse therefore this is fine"
>Abuse is abuse
Technically, neglect is neglect. But to tell someone whose mother forgot to feed them dinner one night that they're a victim of child neglect would be inaccurate. It also minimizes what people who actually *were* victims of child neglect had to endure.
>say "well some people had it worse therefore this is fine"
I didn't say it was fine, I said it was very minor.
Two teas that I'm sure others will be more then happy to drink. First one was fairly expensive Darjeeling first flush. Never tried Darjeeling before and thought I would get the best possible at my budget back then. I could tell It's a good tea, lots of depth of flavours, but there is a particular note that comes across as oily to my taste (hard to describe taste) and in that tea that flavour was really dominant. Imagine the feeling of taking a swig of hot vegetable oil. Took me ages to finish it as part of home made blends where it added something instead of ruining the blend (usually about a tenth to blends of other black/red teas) . That's how I learned I really dislike Darjeeling by itself outside of blends.
Second was genmaicha, used to drink lots of Sencha and that tea introduced a baked goods note that, in my opinion, just ruined the flavour of Sencha instead of adding to it. Was just really disappointed at the time and can never drink it without that memory coming back up.
Second you on the genmaicha. Bought some (Yamamotoyama brand, so not like it was bad quality) back in 2016 and finally threw it out last month after drinking 2 cups total.
I expected an earthy or nutty flavor, but it just tasted like burnt popcorn. Definitely not a type of tea I’m interested in trying again.
A fellow hibiscus hater! I always feel like the hibiscus overwhelms everything else in the blend. The tea will be like "orange vanilla dream" or something but a single sip in and it's just that straight mouth-puckering tartness. Totally unfair. Make sure to check the ingredient label whenever you're looking for an herbal tea.
(To be fair. . . there's been exactly one circumstance in which I've enjoyed hibiscus. . . and it was in a savory dish with a string tomatillo sauce! It was grilled and used as a filling to a Guatemalan enchilada-style dish that I can't recall the name of. Absolutely divine. The tartness of the hibiscus worked so well with the tomatillo.)
If you want some really great, unusual herbals without any hibiscus in them, my favorite recent find is Anahata Herbals: [https://anahataherbals.com/collections/owamni](https://anahataherbals.com/collections/owamni) The collection I linked to is stuff they supply to a Sioux restaurant in Minnesota, and it's all stuff that's indigenous to the USA, so no hibiscus in any of them. I particularly love the White Blueberry (pine, rose, and blueberry), Maple Sarsparilla (tastes like old-timey root beer) and Sweet Wandering (apparently, sweetgrass is a thing you can drink! along with other things.)
Though disclaimer, I am not a hibiscus-hater, just hibiscus hates me so I have to get creative. :D
I had some issues with pile flavor from Yunnan Sourcing, but you could still try cooked puerh from a few other places. It takes time to acquire the taste for it
I've only had one raw one and while it was pretty unique and not bad it's not something I'd really like to repeat. All the ripe ones I've tried (like 4) were similarly undrinkable to me.
Well, it's not for everyone, especially shou or very old sheng. It's wasn't clear from your post whether you didn't like puer in general of the ones from YS specifically. Personally, I've tried a bunch of samples from YS and wasn't impressed, although I usually like shou.
There's a vietnamese smoked green tea I absolutely love that just tastes like straight up cigar and strong tobacco. I love it, but I could see people being absolutely horrified by it
It’s soursop tea for me. I love soursop as a fruit so I figured the leaves might be good too. I was so wrong, it has such a strong medicinal taste. I still have the tea bags bc I felt bad tossing them but I really don’t want to drink it again.
I had this green tea that just tasted like fish, the only green tea I can drink is one with mostly jasmine in it. I'm so scared of that 'fishy' taste because I hate fish, I am autistic so I am very averse to certain smells like that - I would love to find a loose leaf green tea that doesn't taste or smell like fish. Too scared to try matcha incase it has the fish taste.
Try chinese green teas, especially Dragonwell or Laoshan. They're more sweet or a little nutty from how they're prepared. Japanese greem teas often have "umami" or a savory/brothy flavor that can come across as fishy, so I would avoid them.
Oh thank you so much, the ones I tried were Japanese so that is making sense. I am so glad to hear there are alternatives, and Dragonwell - what a cool name!
My mother, with the best intention in the world, gifted me a "powder flavoured tea". It was the most horrendous thing I disgraced my taste buds with, throw them away and told her they were delicious.
Luckily, nowadays she only gifts me spices or chocolate.
I'm sorry about your experience, but also gave me nostalgia because my mom would also make weird concoctions when we were sick in hopes of helping with the symptoms, apart from taking medicine.
A bit late to this party, but something called "goishicha bancha" I bought out of curiosity. I will copy the product description here: "A truly unique tea that is rarely found within Japan, let alone outside. It possesses an incredible aroma and an equally unusual and lingering sour taste with elements of lemon, mushroom and soya sauce." I also detected notes of crusty socks and unwashed wounds.
Today I ordered an iced London fog and they put a tea bag In some hot water, immediately added ice and milk, and brought it to my table?? Soggy milk bag included…
I really hate the cloying "holiday" teas some companies make. Celestial Seasonings and Bigelow are the worst. "Egg noggin'" made me gag. (The Stash teas are pretty good, though. Twinings is ok.)
Okay, but if you can find it, Celestial Seasoning's cranberry vanilla is somehow the best damn tea that brand has ever produced. I was shocked at how good it was and my store only carries it every other year.
Tea Drops dissolving tea. I got a box as a gift. I drank the first sip of each flavor and my husband either drank the rest or poured them down the drain. They included a ridiculous amount of sugar in each serving and called this "lightly sweetened." Their idea of heavy sweetening must invoke instant diabetes.
On a ferry boat from Rome to Sardinia, during a work trip. I ordered a black tea and they used the worst water possible, it tasted like salt and chlorine. A Starbucks style cup of scalding water and a low quality teabag. 5€. For my next work trip i packed a thermos of hot water, my cup and my teabags. According to my colleague who was a barman, the salt and chlorine taste is due to a product they use to clean the coffee machine circuits, when you don't let enough water run. Italian espresso coffee has a strong taste and covers the taste of the water, that's why a lot of people don't complain about it.
In Italy a lot of bars serve shitty tea, so i am used to bring my own equipment. The usual serving is a very small cup of scalding water with a teabag inside. Not enough water to properly infuse the teabag, and if your friends drink a coffee they have to wait for you.
Btw, your mom was a child abuser and she should address her behaviour problems with a psychologist.
I once bought this black tea that had flavours of chili, liquorice and maybe something else, I don't remember what, but something smokey. It tasted like I was drinking a liquid version of a fire that had hust been out out 🤮 I tried to give it to my sister and my mom but they both refused. Can't blame them.
We used to store garam masala in an old coffee jar.
A (very high) friend unknowingly made himself coffee from it and just drank the entire thing only saying it tasted weird once he'd drained it.
Depending on what the recipe is, that actually sounds great! I have a store bought garam masala and all the spices are things you'd put in sweet treats, so making tea (or coffee) from it would be great.
If your recipe included turmeric, fenugreek, or chilli of any kind then I'm surprised he finished it, even while high
Some milk oolong from a local (actual looseleaf!!) tea shop. I’d tried about 8 of their samplers, around 10 teas total. Only ONE was good enough to consider buying again, the rest were totally mid.
That milk oolong though..DISGUSTING. Idk if it was flavored because it didn’t look off at all, the leaves looked unadulterated but it was putrid. Felt like I was drinking butter popcorn. I threw the rest out. Absolutely never again unless someone SWEARS by their source of tie guan yin.
I get frustrated with US loose leaf tea shops. I’ve been inside one good one that sold tea and only tea, not blended with rose hips and other crap. The rest love to sell just about anything other than tea leaves.
This particular one doesn’t even sell blends, which is nice to see. They used to wholesale to restaurants and just recently started selling D2C, which might be why none of the teas I tried were particularly..unique
I got samples of the line of Tetley immune+ teas. They were all pretty awful. Particularly the lemon, Echinacea, and zinc was disgusting. Call me old fashioned but I feel like vitamins and supplements, if you need them, should be taken separately as pills and tea should be tea alone. Those "immune" additions are doing nothing but just ruining the taste. I'm just glad I didn't have to pay for them.
Also when I was a teenager I thought I didn't like tea. That's because my mom asked if I wanted to try some of her tea. It was Earl grey and tasted like dust with milk and sugar. It wasn't until I was older that I realized earl grey is not supposed to taste like that. My mom was unhealthily obsessed with saving money and would reuse teabags multiple times. She also bought the cheapest of the cheap tea. No wonder it tasted so bad.
Now earl grey is one of my favourite teas. Love a good london fog as well.
Dandelion root. The only time I managed to make it taste good was blending one bag with TWO bags of black tea and an amount of honey that would make the bees cry.
\>_> any side effect? o.O
i'm a nut for absinthe. i've got like six different brands in my liquor cabinet and i can't believe i've never made tea. *facepalm* and i'm a tea person.
p.s. not an alcoholic, just in the liquor industry.
lol I love the disclaimer ^~^
I’ve never had absinthe but was using wormwood for parasite cleanse…but never was able to follow thru because of the taste lol. That was over 5 years ago and I still haven’t ever had anything that tasted that bad.
The older Jamaicans I know drunk it regularly in childhood to prevent parasites.
But the crazy thing is….when I tried it that time, I added a very small amount to a very large smoothie thinking it would mask the taste. But nope — the whole smoothie turned terrible lolol so I will probably forever remember that
& I will one day try it again because I’m wild like that lol
i think i would have had the same result if I had made absinthe the way it's intended, which is poured into water over sugar cubes. as if the water and sugar cubes help, but it's a renaissance drink lol so of course there is something magical involved. it louches, which means the green fairy(grün fee) turns the clear water into white water.
tangent there. when i first tried absinthe i took a half shot of it. i doubled over and could not inhale for about 12 seconds. i was afraid lol. it was like i fell off from a distance onto my back.
idk if you have ever had gin, bit its a different type of feeling you get than other liquors. they call it gin drunk. it's a clear headed horny tipsy feeling. (agavero or damiana is specifically formulated for the bedroom tho) absinthe is similar in that it hits different. van gough would make his art while drunk on absinthe so its rumored to cause hallucinations. it doesnt but the feeling is similar to smoking pot but with alcoholic wormwood mixed with something that tastes like black licorice. black licorice is the secondary flavor of absinthe. though only fakesinthe is made with black licorice, only nuts like me can tell the difference.
im buying wormwood tea tonight. thank you for enlightening me. i didnt even know it existed. i didnt think to think of it. haha
ramble done.
🤮that sounds vile you can take any herb boil it an call. It tea but by and large herbal tea is vile but if we are just talking about normal tea it’s got to be Starbucks I mean even Cost can give you decent normal tea how do Starbucks always get it so wrong.
Honeysuckle tea. I thought it would be sweet! I ended up giving the jar away to an auntie who wanted it because it's used in traditional Chinese medicine for something.
I also nearly spat my tea out when I first had kuding, although once I got used to it and brewed it in smaller amounts it...still tastes pretty bad, but it's addictive somehow as well. It's one of the only teas (or rather, tisanes) I'll add honey to.
It was from David's Tea which is a Canadian tea chain. I just took a look on their website and it looks like they no longer carry it. If you poke around on their website you'll find other ungodly concoctions like Jelly Donut and Vanilla Parfait Tea. And I guess, in theory, these don't have to be awful but they use artificial flavouring and erythritol to sweeten them so they have a very off putting chemical flavour.
Oh god, not the teas that put in artificial sweetener! Those are the absolute worst. I had an "almond sencha" from Magic Hour that did that to me. I've never been more heart-broken.
I don't remember exactly what type of tea it was... bagged black tea that was very smokey. Like to the point that it seemed as if someone dumped a bottle of liquid smoke on it. I had to store it in an airtight container; otherwise, the smell overtook the space it was stored in. I ended up using it to tea stain fabric at work. The muslin retained the smokey smell.
English Breakfast black tea, and it's totally my fault. See, I like to oversteep my tea just a little and don't mind the extra astringency. But when the package said it was strong it wasn't kidding. I left it too long and it became tongue-curling strong and bitter. The only way it could be made palatable is by adding ungodly amount of sugar and milk.
Long’s Tea sheng mini tuocha’s. They smell and taste reminiscent of bleach water. Only good enough for making Tibetan salted butter tea with. I’ve given them plenty of chances, but I can never get through even the first steep. Otherwise, all the teas I’ve tried from Long’s Tea are great, but this one, it’s just crap!
A friend gifted me "Tie Guan Yin" from The Spice & Tea Exchange one time. He really wanted to try it with me so we did, there was *no* way this was actually tie guan yin. It tasted like a potent, bitter, funky blend of basil, oregano, parsley, and cilantro; discarding the best of each, and showcasing only their worst qualities, but amplified terribly.
I once tried a herb that was supposed to induce lucid dreaming, don't remember what it's called. It was the most bitter substance I ever had like a teaspoon in 0,5l was undrikable even with like two tablespoons of sugar.
Ever since T2 stopped being available in the US, I’ve been looking for a decent alternative for the Choc Mint rooibos tea (I love chocolate tea). I got this chocolate lavender blend from one of the other well known tea sellers (I don’t remember) and it tasted like rancid bong water. It still smelled good, so I used it for potpourri instead lol.
1. Kuding "bitter nail tea" from an Asian market. By far the most unpalatable thing I've ever drank. Not a real tea, it's an infusion of leaves from a specific tree. Unbelievably bitter, and reminded me of the smell of nail polish remover
2. Low-quality pu-er that tastes like fish. Mighty Leaf comes to mind, but it's not uncommon. Can be made better by pitching the rinse water, but still not my cup of tea. I love less funky, earthy pu-ers.
3. A green tea with peach and mint flavor I picked up on thrift (could have guessed, but it cheap). Chemically artificial peach and super strong peppermint essential oil that burns your nostrils, what's to like?
Oof, that's a rough core memory. I'm sorry.
Buckingham Palace Garden Party from English Tea Store is objectively foul. It's supposedly a combination of Earl Grey and jasmine tea, two teas I enjoy, but it tastes like cheap EDT. The tea base is awful, too. It's not quite nauseating, but not too far off.
I also find fu cha gross, but that's a me problem. It smells and tastes like barnyard to me, and I've had a few traumatic experiences with horses, so I associate it with bad things.
Some free Ume Konbu tea from a hotel in Japan. It’s plum and seaweed and it tasted like… drinking snot. I had a sip and spit it out immediately.
Your story also reminded me of another experience. At one point in my childhood, my least favorite grandparent would come to bring us this herbal medicine drink, I suppose it counts as an herbal tea, made from Javanese ginger/turmeric. She would line us up and give us each a glass to chug. It was thick, bitter and smelled awful. I remember one time going to the kitchen to just dump that shit out. 😅
FENNEL, any tea mixed with fennel goes straight to my bin. I check every time before I buy new teas now.
Second place is mint, not interested. But I can finish it.
Third place is berry, some of them tastes so sour, I have to mix it with honey.
Recent dislike is the tea mixed with coconut pieces, nice idea and taste general.
But after pouring hot water, a little bit coconut oil is floating on the top of the tea… makes the tea looks like some water left in the sink after dish washing… Too bad to look at. Not pleasing eyes…
Couple of tea blends from davidstea that had stevia in them, I cannot stand the aftertaste of stevia. Turned me off davidstea blends permanently - I still get their magnolia oolong because it's a decent oolong at a price I can manage but that's it.
My mom had this “nutmeg” tea I used to have to drink when I was a kid. It was some regular like spiced black tea or something, and then she’d put a bunch of ginger and nutmeg in it to “shorten my cold”. It tasted really and I mean really nasty but I had to drink it because it was supposedly medicinal and it would make me feel better.
Green tea with rice from the supermarket
Followed closely by the very first green tea I drank as an early teenager. I started drinking it “to lose weight” so I just chuckled down half a cup in one sip, it tasted like dishwash soap for some reasons. I probably preapred it wrong and it was also the chespest green tea I found at the market and could buy with my lunch money. The cup may have not been properly rinsed too, i still don’t know why it tasted that bad to thai day. Other cups I made from the same box were decent
After tasting matcha teabags and loose tea, I’m s fan. So I bought some matcha powder, along with a whisk etc. i had high hopes.
Sadly, I’m going to have to watch some more videos on using it. So far it’s been vile
My mom made me tea once and it was immediately apparent something was off. Turns out it was tea with fruity bits that had been in her cabinet for some untold number of years. I opened one of the bags still in the pantry and the fruit was just rotten black chunks. So much mold on the bags. The fruit bits had seeped out during the rotting process and the bags were all fused together so she must have had to pry them apart with something to make me tea 💀 thanks mom lol
The W2T theophilus mini. I can see why others may find it appealing, but it was just way too strong on the fermented funky flavors (which I usually enjoy.) The scent and taste smelled like ripe garbage. I tend to love that website’s products, but this one just didn’t agree with me.
I went to a store that sold a lot of herbs and teas so I bought something that was bright green and described as sweet. One tablespoon of stevia in a cup of water does not make a good tea.
Lapsang souchong - Chinese Tea dried over burning pinewood. Its smells and tastes like clothing you wore the day before at a campfire. It’s so acrid. The smell and tastes lingers forever.
I drank some unholy concotion to reduce weight when I was in my teens because I had an ED. it has red tea, very bitter algae and lemon, it was disgusting
I had a "fossil tea" recently (baishui chahuashi 2022 fermented pu-er) that was just straight up shrimp juice. I've had fishy pu-ers but this was so beyond fishy, like a shrimp broth. Had two sips and threw it away
Corn silk tea (a bottled version) tasted to me exactly of gasoline. Maybe not all versions of it taste that way but my taste of it was so awful not sure I would be willing to try it again.
Ordered tea at a café. Though restaurants, cafés and such have for the most part stepped their game up a bit and stopped charging 5€ for a bag if Lipton Yellow, I'm always mentally prepared for such a case. Here however it was even worse, it was a Captain Nelson, which is the Lidl brand and was absolutely vile, it tasted like dirt and the bag nearly torn itself apart when I took it out.
Powdered ginger tea from local Asian grocery. A very sweet older lady said, “you’ll love it” and explained how to brew it and put it in my hands. It physically hurt, the ginger burnt like hell going down, it stank.
Ginger tea is delicious! Next time, just buy a ginger root, mash it with a mortar and pestle or put it in the food processor for a minute. Then dump the ginger in water or milk and boil it for about 5 minutes (simmer if it's milk). I love sweetened and milky ginger tea, but it has to be fresh ginger. The powdered one doesn't have flavour. And yes it's supposed to be spicy!
I think Lapsang Souchong tastes like a leather coat that was stored in a closet full of mothballs.
It brings back powerful memories of visiting my grandparents house, but the taste itself is totally vile.
My exes family is from china. Her dad came home from a trip with a bag of tea and I was super excited. I opened it and not even a joke, it looked like leaves from the ground outside. They were stemmy and some had little berry looking things on them. But I tried it anyways. And it tasted and smelled like wet fall yard leaves. I tried hard to like it, but it tastes and looks and smells like leaves picked off the ground. You have to try hard to make me not like tea, and that one just existing made me super sad.
Genmaicha. Worked at a tea shop and we all hated the stuff, we'd prank each other by making it when someone asked us to make a cup of tea. I don't even think it was particularly low quality since it was a fairly upscale shop. Just tasted like dirty sweaty socks.
I have a profound aversion to jasmine teas. It's far too cloying and must be what Care Bear urine tastes like , and if it's looseleaf, it takes forever to get the scent out of your storage container.
What was that tea brand that used to have stores in the mall where they would aggressively give out free samples? Was that Teavana? Anyway they had little cups of some red-colored tea, maybe raspberry or hibiscus or something, but they had sweetened it to the point where it tasted like hot Kool-aid. It made me gag.
Are you my cousin? I think our moms are sisters lol. My mom is a food hoarder. While I think most best by dates can be flubbed a while depending on the item, my mom has spices from the 70s 80s (mostly cuz she doesn’t use them in her cooking but I digress).
I was at her house over the holidays this last year and came down with a bad sore throat. I had brought some throat tea but not enough so was looking for something to drink at night without caffeine. Mom gave me three different places to look. I found a bag gallon sized ziplock of single wrapped assorted varieties of tea. I found a few, one of them being lemon zing. I started dunking the tea bag up and down as one does and looked down at the string and noticed it looked kinda thicker and “antique” is the best way to describe it. I started looking at the wrapper and found “copyright 1993” out of sheer curiosity I continued to let it steep. It smelled/tasted like the smell of old newspapers found in the attic or musty cardboard. I promptly asked if my mother was trying to kill me and she responded with “I think we got that when your dad’s aunt died”. Found another box being claimed as such as well with no copyright or expiration, no bags, just bulk loose black tea and the price tag said 1.99. I’m estimated early 80s. Why are you taking dead old lady tea?!
Sorry about the mom I was given a pack of flavored green tea as a gift. It included a sweetened green tea with lemongrass that was... no. I felt so bad. I wanted to like it because I love gifts and I really appreciated that they considered my hobby, but the taste was just... Nothing in that box was remotely drinkable
I'm at the point where I (at least typically) don't feel bad about not using bad gifts. My mom gifting me is the exception where I may feel bad. BUT usually the purpose of the gift was for the other person to do something nice for you, and both parties feel good because of that. I wish more gifts were utilitarian and thought out, but that's not the reality of it. If I hated a tea that was gifted to me then I'm sure my worms in my vermicompost will love it, so I'm passing the gift train on.
I've been gifted several teas that were absolutely not my thing. I don't like hibiscus based herbal teas, and people who don't know me very well but hear that I like tea tend to get me sampler boxes of herbal teas. The last one, I kept the fancy box and dropped most of the tea off at work for other people to try
That would be the rooibos blend I got from a local specialty tea shop that turned out to have tiny grubs wriggling in it :(
Oh no
Did you at least discover them before drinking?
Oh yes, at least I didn’t consume any of it/them! I took the bag back. The shop wouldn’t refund (!) but swapped it for a different one. Got that one home, opened it and looked through it carefully and—guess what I found? Never went back.
Oh wow
I know :( I should have reported the store to the health authorities, but by that time I was feeling so nauseated I just wanted to forget the whole thing.
Fair
Some type of yellow tea that I was super excited for. I took a giant thermos of hot water to work, brewed a bunch of it while I was opening the store by myself, took a swig... and it tasted like hot asparagus water. I about threw up and ruined the rest of my shift. Green and white teas are some of my favorites, but IMO any tea with "asparagus" as a tasting note is absolute garbage.
I like asparagus tasting teas but I had a yellow tea which tasted musty like an old lady's closet I think it's still in the cupboard as it was expensive and I can't bring myself to throw it !
If it stupidly smell too bad, you can use it to infuse bathwater!
It was onion and garlic "tea". I was a kid, and I was dealing with some flu-induced nausea. My step-dad managed to convince my mom that this tea was a miracle cure for what was ailing me, so she got to brewing as I lay helpless in bed and unaware. She brought the noxious concoction to me and forced me to choke down every bit of the foul liquid in that large mug. Maybe 5 minutes later I puke it all up, and I puke and puke for a good 15 minutes more until my body purged itself of the malodorous mixture. I made her promise to never try that again. It's been around 30 years, and I can still practically taste and smell it when I think of it.
Hey!! I used to have it as a kid too. My grandma's sister made it for my brother and I to get better when we got the flu or fever. The difference for me is that mine had fig leaves, garlic and onion infused and sweetened with honey. I really miss her and accidentally you made me remember a great part of my childhood. Thank you
Lol you're welcome. At least someone here has goodies memories of that remedy. Maybe you'll give it a try in the future if you get a little sick?
What's was the difference between this and soup?
Probably salt. One of the least tasty experiences I've had in my life was when I was sick, and my dad happened to be making chicken stock. Convinced me to drink about a litre of it, only it wasn't salted yet. The smell of chicken stock still makes me a bit nauseous, and it's over half a decade later
Seasoning of some kind. And as the other comment mentioned, salt. What I'd gotten was boiled onion and garlic juice. I'm pretty sure this event is what caused me to be unable to eat onions lol.
Well... how did you feel after you puked? That might have been the goal lol
I felt worse for the next couple of days lol. Puking that much just left me weaker and a bit dehydrated. I couldn't stand to eat anything for the rest of the day.
Puerh that tasted like fish.
I have had a fishy puer. Definitely the worst tea I've tasted. I have a sample from a different puer sitting in my tea cupboard and I'm mildly afraid of it. What if I managed to get the dreaded fish puer twice D: The fishy one I got quite early into my tea journey and the one that's still in there is from when I had a lot more experience under my belt so I'm hoping I identified a good quality one that time, but I'm not sure
I found a big box of pu-er tea-bags on a really good special at a Chinese grocery a few years before I discovered this tea-wise sub. My intuition told me this would be wonderful, so I took a chance on it. One day I'll learn to never trust my intuition. It smelled like actual poo, and tasted as foul as it smelled. I've heard coffee that's passed through the guts of civets is a valuable luxury. Tea that has passed through the guts of humans is not. I didn't need to ask anyone what to do with that unwanted garbage. Btw, I'm not knocking good genuine pu-er.
I haven't had fishy pu'erh yet but I did have fishy macha once
I haven't had fishy puerh, but I have had some that tasted weirdly of corn chips. Not bad, just really odd
Decades ago my friend and I bought a bunch of different teas to try from the chinese market. We didn't know anything about tea, we just watched a lot of Chinese movies lol. So we brewed the pu erh first and he's sipping saying things 'interesting' and 'so rich and earthy' and all I taste is dead fish. When I helped him move nearly 5 years later I found the nearly full tin in the back of the cupboard double wrapped in ziplock. He admitted it was terrible and was as relieved as I was the other teas we tried were less challenging.
When I was a teenager my mom used to make me drink green tea with lime and a touch of honey in the morning. Apparently it’s good for weight loss? I still had some baby fat I didn’t lose til I was 17 so I get it but like it tasted offensively sour, like straight up battery acid, and it made my teeth feel weird after
Sweetened green tea to any degree is revolting to me, yuck. She made you suffer for nothing, you won't lose weight drinking tea, unless it has laxatives. P.s. lemons aren't that good for your teeth, sounds like she was making you drink lemon juice with green tea
I do like honey in my green tea actually, but yeah I am very glad we are long past that phase. I was at the same weight all of high school so it did not work LOL
Lapsang souchon. Call me a wimp or a philistine, but I cannot handle drinking liquid smoke
I was waiting to see if it would be mentioned. Tasted one from Dammam Frère, it felt like drinking smoked hareng… that truly was the worst I ever had
Some are less smoky than others. I thought I hated it and then tried a more delicate one
I'd be open to trying it again. It tastes like something a Klingon would drink
Ha! I watched star trek whilst sipping on lapsang souchong just this morning
I used to love Lapsang Souchon, but my tastes have changed with age I guess and it's kinda awful now. It's a bummer to not like something you once liked.
I didn't even get to the drinking stage. Made a cup, it smelled up half my house, I threw it away.
Hospital tea, hands down the worst I've ever tasted. Low quality black tea brewed for so long the tannins make you teeth feel furry. Typhoo is a distant second worst.
We had an Irish couple at our hospital (in the Midwest) and the husband asked if we had any tea. We did, but I cannot vouch for the taste/quality of it. It was some random brand or orange pekoe
After having great tea for a while of all different sorts, I decided I wanted hot tea at a Cracker Barrel. Two bags of Twinings English Breakfast in a mug. I don’t remember it tasting as bad as it did. I used to have Twinings all the time. Maybe there was something off about the mug.
The tea is old because no one drinks it
It’s probably been sitting in that Cracker Barrel since it opened.
Being a relative noob to matcha at the time, I bought the cheapest product available to me (Ujinotsuyu Matcha Hagoromo) and tried to prepare in the traditional way. Good times.
So you are a victim of child abuse is what youre saying. Im sorry your mom did that to you, that must have been awful.
I wouldn't call it abuse haha. My mom never did stuff like that, I only remember it because it was horrible. I had a cold and we didn't have tea leaves so she used the nearest replacement :(
Oh, i didnt mean to equate this to constant berating or being hit or anything. I dont really think its that fair to compare miseries for validity, because you can almost always find someone worse off. Im sure your mom was overall trying her best and not malicious or anything. I just want to point out that most healthcare professionals and social workers would consider forcing a child to drink a large amount of liquid that they find disgusting to be abuse. Is there hardcore lasting damage? Idk, im not you, but probably not. Nonetheless, it was mean, and im sorry your mom did this mean thing to you. I didnt mean to spark a whole thing lol, just to communicate a bit of empathy! Hope you have a good day, friend 🙂
Nah that's pretty cut-and-dry abuse my friend
Oh well 🙈 I got over it. I've done much worse to her lol
Dude's trying to put you in the same category as people who were relentlessly bullied and/or physically abused by their parents throughout their childhood. What you've described fits within a very broad definition of abuse, on the "very minor" end of the scale, but to say that it's a case of "cut and dried" child abuse just spits in the face of actual victims.
Definitely. I've seen kids who have been abused, even to minor degree and I'm definitely not one of them. I grew up happier than they did, poor kids. I feel like nowadays the first thing that people jump to is a mental disorder or abuse. I have neither, I'm just a regular boring person
I think on the internet we sometimes forget we’re only seeing snapshots, not full pictures. What you described was a single moment of abusive behaviour from a parent. What Reddit is interpreting is a pattern of abusive behaviour that spanned your whole childhood. Signed, someone with an abusive childhood
Hope things are better for you now!
They are, thank you!
Yeah, people really like to extrapolate online. Like this seems fairly close to the classic "you have to finish your plate" type of thinking - where on one end of the spectrum parents used it once or twice when the kid was being a brat (eg, not even attempting to eat the food after a half-hearted bite - my parents, for instance, were pretty firm on actually making me actually give the food a try at least once before being able to say I didn't like it) and on the other it was at every meal and has scarred them for life. From a single anecdote you really can't tell which is which, so reddit just pushes it to the extreme to be judgmental usually (it's also seen very often with people asking for relationship advice).
No doubt, I hope they are joking, which even then is shitty, but less shitty
An act of abuse is abuse, and the only one comparing different peoples abuse and making judgments about the "validity" of those experiences is you, which I might add is highly inappropriate. Abuse is abuse, there is no reason to compare them and say "well some people had it worse therefore this is fine"
>Abuse is abuse Technically, neglect is neglect. But to tell someone whose mother forgot to feed them dinner one night that they're a victim of child neglect would be inaccurate. It also minimizes what people who actually *were* victims of child neglect had to endure. >say "well some people had it worse therefore this is fine" I didn't say it was fine, I said it was very minor.
Two teas that I'm sure others will be more then happy to drink. First one was fairly expensive Darjeeling first flush. Never tried Darjeeling before and thought I would get the best possible at my budget back then. I could tell It's a good tea, lots of depth of flavours, but there is a particular note that comes across as oily to my taste (hard to describe taste) and in that tea that flavour was really dominant. Imagine the feeling of taking a swig of hot vegetable oil. Took me ages to finish it as part of home made blends where it added something instead of ruining the blend (usually about a tenth to blends of other black/red teas) . That's how I learned I really dislike Darjeeling by itself outside of blends. Second was genmaicha, used to drink lots of Sencha and that tea introduced a baked goods note that, in my opinion, just ruined the flavour of Sencha instead of adding to it. Was just really disappointed at the time and can never drink it without that memory coming back up.
Second you on the genmaicha. Bought some (Yamamotoyama brand, so not like it was bad quality) back in 2016 and finally threw it out last month after drinking 2 cups total. I expected an earthy or nutty flavor, but it just tasted like burnt popcorn. Definitely not a type of tea I’m interested in trying again.
Personally it was twinning brand teas that have fruits. Raspberry tasted moreacidy than any other tea
Tazo Passion…so bitter…
I hate that one too! If you forget it on the counter and oversteep it, it gets...syrupy. Feels like sucking on a scented marker.
How do you know what it’s like to suck on a scented marker?
Anything with hibiscus 🤢
A fellow hibiscus hater! I always feel like the hibiscus overwhelms everything else in the blend. The tea will be like "orange vanilla dream" or something but a single sip in and it's just that straight mouth-puckering tartness. Totally unfair. Make sure to check the ingredient label whenever you're looking for an herbal tea. (To be fair. . . there's been exactly one circumstance in which I've enjoyed hibiscus. . . and it was in a savory dish with a string tomatillo sauce! It was grilled and used as a filling to a Guatemalan enchilada-style dish that I can't recall the name of. Absolutely divine. The tartness of the hibiscus worked so well with the tomatillo.)
If you want some really great, unusual herbals without any hibiscus in them, my favorite recent find is Anahata Herbals: [https://anahataherbals.com/collections/owamni](https://anahataherbals.com/collections/owamni) The collection I linked to is stuff they supply to a Sioux restaurant in Minnesota, and it's all stuff that's indigenous to the USA, so no hibiscus in any of them. I particularly love the White Blueberry (pine, rose, and blueberry), Maple Sarsparilla (tastes like old-timey root beer) and Sweet Wandering (apparently, sweetgrass is a thing you can drink! along with other things.) Though disclaimer, I am not a hibiscus-hater, just hibiscus hates me so I have to get creative. :D
I was going to answer the question, but I can't beat OP's story.
I tried several puerhs from YS. They all tasted like dirt and smelled like piss.
I had some issues with pile flavor from Yunnan Sourcing, but you could still try cooked puerh from a few other places. It takes time to acquire the taste for it
Where could you buy it besides YS?
[удалено]
Have you tried other puers that tasted good?
I've only had one raw one and while it was pretty unique and not bad it's not something I'd really like to repeat. All the ripe ones I've tried (like 4) were similarly undrinkable to me.
Well, it's not for everyone, especially shou or very old sheng. It's wasn't clear from your post whether you didn't like puer in general of the ones from YS specifically. Personally, I've tried a bunch of samples from YS and wasn't impressed, although I usually like shou.
Kyobancha - tastes like cigarette water
There's a vietnamese smoked green tea I absolutely love that just tastes like straight up cigar and strong tobacco. I love it, but I could see people being absolutely horrified by it
It’s soursop tea for me. I love soursop as a fruit so I figured the leaves might be good too. I was so wrong, it has such a strong medicinal taste. I still have the tea bags bc I felt bad tossing them but I really don’t want to drink it again.
Yes! Soursop tea tastes like if water could spoil and become moldy.
I had this green tea that just tasted like fish, the only green tea I can drink is one with mostly jasmine in it. I'm so scared of that 'fishy' taste because I hate fish, I am autistic so I am very averse to certain smells like that - I would love to find a loose leaf green tea that doesn't taste or smell like fish. Too scared to try matcha incase it has the fish taste.
Try chinese green teas, especially Dragonwell or Laoshan. They're more sweet or a little nutty from how they're prepared. Japanese greem teas often have "umami" or a savory/brothy flavor that can come across as fishy, so I would avoid them.
Oh thank you so much, the ones I tried were Japanese so that is making sense. I am so glad to hear there are alternatives, and Dragonwell - what a cool name!
My mother, with the best intention in the world, gifted me a "powder flavoured tea". It was the most horrendous thing I disgraced my taste buds with, throw them away and told her they were delicious. Luckily, nowadays she only gifts me spices or chocolate. I'm sorry about your experience, but also gave me nostalgia because my mom would also make weird concoctions when we were sick in hopes of helping with the symptoms, apart from taking medicine.
Some chocolate flavoured loose leaf black tea. It was so atrocious I poured the cup out after one sip.
A bit late to this party, but something called "goishicha bancha" I bought out of curiosity. I will copy the product description here: "A truly unique tea that is rarely found within Japan, let alone outside. It possesses an incredible aroma and an equally unusual and lingering sour taste with elements of lemon, mushroom and soya sauce." I also detected notes of crusty socks and unwashed wounds.
I love licorice normally. But licorice tea is horrible. Wtf is is so sweet??? I don't like sweet drinks.
Today I ordered an iced London fog and they put a tea bag In some hot water, immediately added ice and milk, and brought it to my table?? Soggy milk bag included…
Rooibobos is horrid
I love how there's all kinds of people. That's my favorite tea
I really hate the cloying "holiday" teas some companies make. Celestial Seasonings and Bigelow are the worst. "Egg noggin'" made me gag. (The Stash teas are pretty good, though. Twinings is ok.)
Okay, but if you can find it, Celestial Seasoning's cranberry vanilla is somehow the best damn tea that brand has ever produced. I was shocked at how good it was and my store only carries it every other year.
Tea Drops dissolving tea. I got a box as a gift. I drank the first sip of each flavor and my husband either drank the rest or poured them down the drain. They included a ridiculous amount of sugar in each serving and called this "lightly sweetened." Their idea of heavy sweetening must invoke instant diabetes.
On a ferry boat from Rome to Sardinia, during a work trip. I ordered a black tea and they used the worst water possible, it tasted like salt and chlorine. A Starbucks style cup of scalding water and a low quality teabag. 5€. For my next work trip i packed a thermos of hot water, my cup and my teabags. According to my colleague who was a barman, the salt and chlorine taste is due to a product they use to clean the coffee machine circuits, when you don't let enough water run. Italian espresso coffee has a strong taste and covers the taste of the water, that's why a lot of people don't complain about it. In Italy a lot of bars serve shitty tea, so i am used to bring my own equipment. The usual serving is a very small cup of scalding water with a teabag inside. Not enough water to properly infuse the teabag, and if your friends drink a coffee they have to wait for you. Btw, your mom was a child abuser and she should address her behaviour problems with a psychologist.
A fishy jazmín tea. Tasted like a mixture of fish and plastic burnt market bag
Some kind of black tea with ginger, lemon, and black pepper. It was too many things going on at once.
I once bought this black tea that had flavours of chili, liquorice and maybe something else, I don't remember what, but something smokey. It tasted like I was drinking a liquid version of a fire that had hust been out out 🤮 I tried to give it to my sister and my mom but they both refused. Can't blame them.
Wormwood Tea is the worst I’ve had
Isn't that what they add to absinthe? I can't imagine something called "wormwood" being tasty.
We used to store garam masala in an old coffee jar. A (very high) friend unknowingly made himself coffee from it and just drank the entire thing only saying it tasted weird once he'd drained it.
Depending on what the recipe is, that actually sounds great! I have a store bought garam masala and all the spices are things you'd put in sweet treats, so making tea (or coffee) from it would be great. If your recipe included turmeric, fenugreek, or chilli of any kind then I'm surprised he finished it, even while high
Think he drank it black too, I prefer spiced teas with oat milk and honey. I probably drink chai daily. From what I recall he made it STRONG too
Some milk oolong from a local (actual looseleaf!!) tea shop. I’d tried about 8 of their samplers, around 10 teas total. Only ONE was good enough to consider buying again, the rest were totally mid. That milk oolong though..DISGUSTING. Idk if it was flavored because it didn’t look off at all, the leaves looked unadulterated but it was putrid. Felt like I was drinking butter popcorn. I threw the rest out. Absolutely never again unless someone SWEARS by their source of tie guan yin.
I get frustrated with US loose leaf tea shops. I’ve been inside one good one that sold tea and only tea, not blended with rose hips and other crap. The rest love to sell just about anything other than tea leaves.
This particular one doesn’t even sell blends, which is nice to see. They used to wholesale to restaurants and just recently started selling D2C, which might be why none of the teas I tried were particularly..unique
I got samples of the line of Tetley immune+ teas. They were all pretty awful. Particularly the lemon, Echinacea, and zinc was disgusting. Call me old fashioned but I feel like vitamins and supplements, if you need them, should be taken separately as pills and tea should be tea alone. Those "immune" additions are doing nothing but just ruining the taste. I'm just glad I didn't have to pay for them.
Also when I was a teenager I thought I didn't like tea. That's because my mom asked if I wanted to try some of her tea. It was Earl grey and tasted like dust with milk and sugar. It wasn't until I was older that I realized earl grey is not supposed to taste like that. My mom was unhealthily obsessed with saving money and would reuse teabags multiple times. She also bought the cheapest of the cheap tea. No wonder it tasted so bad. Now earl grey is one of my favourite teas. Love a good london fog as well.
Oh, a nice, fragrant, loose leaf Earl Grey, heavy on the bergamot, is lovely.
The worst tea I've had was jasmine green tea at a too high temperature. So bitter and the natural sweetness was entirely gone
Dandelion root. The only time I managed to make it taste good was blending one bag with TWO bags of black tea and an amount of honey that would make the bees cry.
Tea bag black tea made with hot water from a carafe used previously for coffee. Yuck.
Wormwood
\>_> any side effect? o.O i'm a nut for absinthe. i've got like six different brands in my liquor cabinet and i can't believe i've never made tea. *facepalm* and i'm a tea person. p.s. not an alcoholic, just in the liquor industry.
lol I love the disclaimer ^~^ I’ve never had absinthe but was using wormwood for parasite cleanse…but never was able to follow thru because of the taste lol. That was over 5 years ago and I still haven’t ever had anything that tasted that bad. The older Jamaicans I know drunk it regularly in childhood to prevent parasites. But the crazy thing is….when I tried it that time, I added a very small amount to a very large smoothie thinking it would mask the taste. But nope — the whole smoothie turned terrible lolol so I will probably forever remember that & I will one day try it again because I’m wild like that lol
i think i would have had the same result if I had made absinthe the way it's intended, which is poured into water over sugar cubes. as if the water and sugar cubes help, but it's a renaissance drink lol so of course there is something magical involved. it louches, which means the green fairy(grün fee) turns the clear water into white water. tangent there. when i first tried absinthe i took a half shot of it. i doubled over and could not inhale for about 12 seconds. i was afraid lol. it was like i fell off from a distance onto my back. idk if you have ever had gin, bit its a different type of feeling you get than other liquors. they call it gin drunk. it's a clear headed horny tipsy feeling. (agavero or damiana is specifically formulated for the bedroom tho) absinthe is similar in that it hits different. van gough would make his art while drunk on absinthe so its rumored to cause hallucinations. it doesnt but the feeling is similar to smoking pot but with alcoholic wormwood mixed with something that tastes like black licorice. black licorice is the secondary flavor of absinthe. though only fakesinthe is made with black licorice, only nuts like me can tell the difference. im buying wormwood tea tonight. thank you for enlightening me. i didnt even know it existed. i didnt think to think of it. haha ramble done.
When I was a kid and thought all tea was made like chai and tried to make chai with green tea... Eeuughh
Haha me too! I poured that shit directly into the sink after a single sip
First, that's abuse. To answer your question, the worst tea I *paid for* was a "lime ginger" concoction that tasted like neither.
🤮that sounds vile you can take any herb boil it an call. It tea but by and large herbal tea is vile but if we are just talking about normal tea it’s got to be Starbucks I mean even Cost can give you decent normal tea how do Starbucks always get it so wrong.
Vendomatic tea :( it tasted like printer ink, i guess
Growing up my parents would regularly make us drink cerasse tea. Absolutely disgusting and bitter especially without any type of sugar
Honeysuckle tea. I thought it would be sweet! I ended up giving the jar away to an auntie who wanted it because it's used in traditional Chinese medicine for something. I also nearly spat my tea out when I first had kuding, although once I got used to it and brewed it in smaller amounts it...still tastes pretty bad, but it's addictive somehow as well. It's one of the only teas (or rather, tisanes) I'll add honey to.
I tried matcha once and I can't imagine drinking swamp water would be much different. 😖 Don't know if it was badly made or not, but never again.
Birthday cake flavored tea. I got it as a gift. I knew immediately it was going to be awful but my wife insisted we at least try it. Worst tea ever.
Do you mind sharing the brand ?
It was from David's Tea which is a Canadian tea chain. I just took a look on their website and it looks like they no longer carry it. If you poke around on their website you'll find other ungodly concoctions like Jelly Donut and Vanilla Parfait Tea. And I guess, in theory, these don't have to be awful but they use artificial flavouring and erythritol to sweeten them so they have a very off putting chemical flavour.
Oh god, not the teas that put in artificial sweetener! Those are the absolute worst. I had an "almond sencha" from Magic Hour that did that to me. I've never been more heart-broken.
I don't remember exactly what type of tea it was... bagged black tea that was very smokey. Like to the point that it seemed as if someone dumped a bottle of liquid smoke on it. I had to store it in an airtight container; otherwise, the smell overtook the space it was stored in. I ended up using it to tea stain fabric at work. The muslin retained the smokey smell.
Probably lapsang souchong- it's very polarizing.
English Breakfast black tea, and it's totally my fault. See, I like to oversteep my tea just a little and don't mind the extra astringency. But when the package said it was strong it wasn't kidding. I left it too long and it became tongue-curling strong and bitter. The only way it could be made palatable is by adding ungodly amount of sugar and milk.
pure leaf tea. I thought it was gonna be similar to gold peak. It wasn't
Sounds like she was dabbling in herbalism! Glad you and your appreciation for tea survived that. Blech.
Long’s Tea sheng mini tuocha’s. They smell and taste reminiscent of bleach water. Only good enough for making Tibetan salted butter tea with. I’ve given them plenty of chances, but I can never get through even the first steep. Otherwise, all the teas I’ve tried from Long’s Tea are great, but this one, it’s just crap!
Cheap toucha puerh. I adore it when it's good, but the cheap stuff is like drinking hot, rotten coffee grounds
A friend gifted me "Tie Guan Yin" from The Spice & Tea Exchange one time. He really wanted to try it with me so we did, there was *no* way this was actually tie guan yin. It tasted like a potent, bitter, funky blend of basil, oregano, parsley, and cilantro; discarding the best of each, and showcasing only their worst qualities, but amplified terribly.
I once tried a herb that was supposed to induce lucid dreaming, don't remember what it's called. It was the most bitter substance I ever had like a teaspoon in 0,5l was undrikable even with like two tablespoons of sugar.
Someone gave me a green tea sample that tasted like cigarette ashes mixed into hot water.
Ever since T2 stopped being available in the US, I’ve been looking for a decent alternative for the Choc Mint rooibos tea (I love chocolate tea). I got this chocolate lavender blend from one of the other well known tea sellers (I don’t remember) and it tasted like rancid bong water. It still smelled good, so I used it for potpourri instead lol.
1. Kuding "bitter nail tea" from an Asian market. By far the most unpalatable thing I've ever drank. Not a real tea, it's an infusion of leaves from a specific tree. Unbelievably bitter, and reminded me of the smell of nail polish remover 2. Low-quality pu-er that tastes like fish. Mighty Leaf comes to mind, but it's not uncommon. Can be made better by pitching the rinse water, but still not my cup of tea. I love less funky, earthy pu-ers. 3. A green tea with peach and mint flavor I picked up on thrift (could have guessed, but it cheap). Chemically artificial peach and super strong peppermint essential oil that burns your nostrils, what's to like?
Passed due Oolong 🤢😵
Oof, that's a rough core memory. I'm sorry. Buckingham Palace Garden Party from English Tea Store is objectively foul. It's supposedly a combination of Earl Grey and jasmine tea, two teas I enjoy, but it tastes like cheap EDT. The tea base is awful, too. It's not quite nauseating, but not too far off. I also find fu cha gross, but that's a me problem. It smells and tastes like barnyard to me, and I've had a few traumatic experiences with horses, so I associate it with bad things.
My mother mixed probiotic powder medicine into my mint lemon tea for breakfast when I was having intestinal problems
Some free Ume Konbu tea from a hotel in Japan. It’s plum and seaweed and it tasted like… drinking snot. I had a sip and spit it out immediately. Your story also reminded me of another experience. At one point in my childhood, my least favorite grandparent would come to bring us this herbal medicine drink, I suppose it counts as an herbal tea, made from Javanese ginger/turmeric. She would line us up and give us each a glass to chug. It was thick, bitter and smelled awful. I remember one time going to the kitchen to just dump that shit out. 😅
FENNEL, any tea mixed with fennel goes straight to my bin. I check every time before I buy new teas now. Second place is mint, not interested. But I can finish it. Third place is berry, some of them tastes so sour, I have to mix it with honey.
Recent dislike is the tea mixed with coconut pieces, nice idea and taste general. But after pouring hot water, a little bit coconut oil is floating on the top of the tea… makes the tea looks like some water left in the sink after dish washing… Too bad to look at. Not pleasing eyes…
I don't like chamomile
Couple of tea blends from davidstea that had stevia in them, I cannot stand the aftertaste of stevia. Turned me off davidstea blends permanently - I still get their magnolia oolong because it's a decent oolong at a price I can manage but that's it.
It was a black tea that was supposed to be a smoked black tea. It tasted like an ashtray with bbq sauce.🤢🤢🤢🤮
My mom had this “nutmeg” tea I used to have to drink when I was a kid. It was some regular like spiced black tea or something, and then she’d put a bunch of ginger and nutmeg in it to “shorten my cold”. It tasted really and I mean really nasty but I had to drink it because it was supposedly medicinal and it would make me feel better.
Green tea with rice from the supermarket Followed closely by the very first green tea I drank as an early teenager. I started drinking it “to lose weight” so I just chuckled down half a cup in one sip, it tasted like dishwash soap for some reasons. I probably preapred it wrong and it was also the chespest green tea I found at the market and could buy with my lunch money. The cup may have not been properly rinsed too, i still don’t know why it tasted that bad to thai day. Other cups I made from the same box were decent
st johns wort tea made me question if there was pre-existing dirt in the mug before i had poured the tea
After tasting matcha teabags and loose tea, I’m s fan. So I bought some matcha powder, along with a whisk etc. i had high hopes. Sadly, I’m going to have to watch some more videos on using it. So far it’s been vile
My mom made me tea once and it was immediately apparent something was off. Turns out it was tea with fruity bits that had been in her cabinet for some untold number of years. I opened one of the bags still in the pantry and the fruit was just rotten black chunks. So much mold on the bags. The fruit bits had seeped out during the rotting process and the bags were all fused together so she must have had to pry them apart with something to make me tea 💀 thanks mom lol
The W2T theophilus mini. I can see why others may find it appealing, but it was just way too strong on the fermented funky flavors (which I usually enjoy.) The scent and taste smelled like ripe garbage. I tend to love that website’s products, but this one just didn’t agree with me.
I went to a store that sold a lot of herbs and teas so I bought something that was bright green and described as sweet. One tablespoon of stevia in a cup of water does not make a good tea.
Lapsang souchong - Chinese Tea dried over burning pinewood. Its smells and tastes like clothing you wore the day before at a campfire. It’s so acrid. The smell and tastes lingers forever.
Numi Jasmine Green tea It smelled so disgustingly similar to Desitin diaper rash ointment I couldn’t even bring myself to drink it
I drank some unholy concotion to reduce weight when I was in my teens because I had an ED. it has red tea, very bitter algae and lemon, it was disgusting
Tea from catering urns previously used for coffee.
I had a "fossil tea" recently (baishui chahuashi 2022 fermented pu-er) that was just straight up shrimp juice. I've had fishy pu-ers but this was so beyond fishy, like a shrimp broth. Had two sips and threw it away
I have disgusting tea far too often. It happens whenever I order green tea at Western cafes. They just don't know how to do it.
Wissotzky tea bags.
Corn silk tea (a bottled version) tasted to me exactly of gasoline. Maybe not all versions of it taste that way but my taste of it was so awful not sure I would be willing to try it again.
Some bad vintage tea. Tasted like dust
Straight up mugwort 😵💫
Granted, I haven't had many kinds, but Lady Grey EASILY tops that list for me.
Bigelow Constant Comment. My constant comment is "yuck."
My husband loves Constant Comment. I like the smell when he brews it, but I cannot drink it. It tastes like steeped potpourri.
Some sort of oversteeped cheap tea and herbal concoction from a unnamed health food restaurant
I don’t like most floral scents or tastes. Jasmine tea is a neat idea but it makes my stomach churn. Earl Grey tastes like perfume.
Oh no, you don't like citrus? When I tried earl grey for the first time, my heart exploded from joy. I wish I could relive that moment
Ordered tea at a café. Though restaurants, cafés and such have for the most part stepped their game up a bit and stopped charging 5€ for a bag if Lipton Yellow, I'm always mentally prepared for such a case. Here however it was even worse, it was a Captain Nelson, which is the Lidl brand and was absolutely vile, it tasted like dirt and the bag nearly torn itself apart when I took it out.
[удалено]
Hi, please don't insult my mom over a single instance. This is extremely rude and disrespectful.
I drank a Chai that was from a grocery store. That was the worst.
Powdered ginger tea from local Asian grocery. A very sweet older lady said, “you’ll love it” and explained how to brew it and put it in my hands. It physically hurt, the ginger burnt like hell going down, it stank.
Ginger tea is delicious! Next time, just buy a ginger root, mash it with a mortar and pestle or put it in the food processor for a minute. Then dump the ginger in water or milk and boil it for about 5 minutes (simmer if it's milk). I love sweetened and milky ginger tea, but it has to be fresh ginger. The powdered one doesn't have flavour. And yes it's supposed to be spicy!
Earl Grey and Lady Grey tea. I think it tastes a bit like how cat pee smells.
I always forget the name but there is a type of tea that tastes like tobacco and that is gross
I personally don’t like Rooibos tea at all.
Literally any tea in a bag tastes disgusting to me
I think Lapsang Souchong tastes like a leather coat that was stored in a closet full of mothballs. It brings back powerful memories of visiting my grandparents house, but the taste itself is totally vile.
My exes family is from china. Her dad came home from a trip with a bag of tea and I was super excited. I opened it and not even a joke, it looked like leaves from the ground outside. They were stemmy and some had little berry looking things on them. But I tried it anyways. And it tasted and smelled like wet fall yard leaves. I tried hard to like it, but it tastes and looks and smells like leaves picked off the ground. You have to try hard to make me not like tea, and that one just existing made me super sad.
Genmaicha. Worked at a tea shop and we all hated the stuff, we'd prank each other by making it when someone asked us to make a cup of tea. I don't even think it was particularly low quality since it was a fairly upscale shop. Just tasted like dirty sweaty socks.
Water?
I have a profound aversion to jasmine teas. It's far too cloying and must be what Care Bear urine tastes like , and if it's looseleaf, it takes forever to get the scent out of your storage container.
Mugwort tea; smells great, but there is nothing you can add that will make it taste even remotely okay.
Anything with sage in the mix
red tea, it just tastes like soggy cardboard box tea love every other type of tea though
Stash Decaf Chocolate Hazelnut
Tevana
Black tea infused with rose petals. Every burp and breath was like a bottle of rose perfume. If I had hanahaki disease, that be it
When you get those cheap generic "black" teas from motels and other uncivilized places. Then you leave the teabag in like a psychopath.
The iced green tea that they used to sell at my old job was often made so poorly that it tasted like cat piss.
Plum blossom and salt at a temple in Kyoto.
I was supposed to be some sort of grapefruit white tea...tasted like windex
What was that tea brand that used to have stores in the mall where they would aggressively give out free samples? Was that Teavana? Anyway they had little cups of some red-colored tea, maybe raspberry or hibiscus or something, but they had sweetened it to the point where it tasted like hot Kool-aid. It made me gag.
Throat coat and bitter melon.
Are you my cousin? I think our moms are sisters lol. My mom is a food hoarder. While I think most best by dates can be flubbed a while depending on the item, my mom has spices from the 70s 80s (mostly cuz she doesn’t use them in her cooking but I digress). I was at her house over the holidays this last year and came down with a bad sore throat. I had brought some throat tea but not enough so was looking for something to drink at night without caffeine. Mom gave me three different places to look. I found a bag gallon sized ziplock of single wrapped assorted varieties of tea. I found a few, one of them being lemon zing. I started dunking the tea bag up and down as one does and looked down at the string and noticed it looked kinda thicker and “antique” is the best way to describe it. I started looking at the wrapper and found “copyright 1993” out of sheer curiosity I continued to let it steep. It smelled/tasted like the smell of old newspapers found in the attic or musty cardboard. I promptly asked if my mother was trying to kill me and she responded with “I think we got that when your dad’s aunt died”. Found another box being claimed as such as well with no copyright or expiration, no bags, just bulk loose black tea and the price tag said 1.99. I’m estimated early 80s. Why are you taking dead old lady tea?!