I’ve downed many hundreds of cups of Bigelow Plantation Mint Black Tea (catalog # 00189) over the past decade or so.
This Plantation Mint black tea, that is strongly flavored with spearmint leaves, is among the best spearmint flavored beverages I’ve ever sipped. It’s color is a deep orange or brown, perhaps owing to the black tea content within, and no bitterness once sweetened.
Benefits, Features, Pros, and Advantages
This all-natural beverage is sold at practically any larger grocery store. So it’s generally easy to find.
Gluten free.
Each tea bag is individually wrapped for freshness; so tightly in fact, that no spearmint scent appears until you tear away this little pouch just before steeping. This opaque wrap also protects the tea from light, which further preserves the mint taste.
This product can keep for years in a cool place without appreciable flavor degradations.
The taste of this tea closely resembles other spearmint flavored teas, but is a more pronounced spearmint flavor.
This spearmint flavored tea has no bitterness once sweetened.
It has significant caffeine. So it can effectively restore full alertness each morning you drink it. But, withdrawal symptoms (caffeine headaches) can also occur when not consumed for a couple days, especially if this is your only source of daily caffeine.
The flavor is predominantly spearmint. But this product contains mostly black tea. I like both black tea and spearmint herbal teas separately as well as this delicate blend of them together, in this Plantation Mint tea product.
The box includes a “caff-o-meter,” that shows in a relative way, as compared to other popular drink beverages, just how much caffeine this product has.
Cons, Disadvantages, Problems, and Limitations
Avoid sweetening with honey or maple syrup, as this can destroy the mint flavor. Stevia or Truvia however, sweeten this tea very well, without eradicating the mint taste.
At approximately $2.32 for 20 tea bags, Bigelow Plantation Mint Black Tea is a bit higher per serving than some other similar products.
My teeth stain somewhat, due to tea consumption. However, the potential health benefits of most any tea are worth the modest extra hardship of more frequent teeth cleaning.
Bigelow should consider packaging a pure spearmint tea product; one that does not contain the caffeine that black tea has. At 30 to 60 milligrams of caffeine per serving, folks can become quite wired later in the day, once they’ve drunk a few cups of Plantation Mint tea. Now I personally would still drink this version of the product but would enjoy a similar-tasting decaffeinated version to “retreat to” now and again. Apparently, they once packaged a decaffeinated version of Plantation Mint. Perhaps they’d consider bringing it back?
Though this product contains about half the caffeine of coffee, it has more caffeine than green tea. Due to the black tea within, this is not considered an herbal tea.
Brewing Instructions
It’s best to use fresh, cold, filtered water, although cold tap water works great also.
- In either case though, bring the water to a full, rolling boil.
- Remove one tea bag from its foil wrapper, and place in your favorite cup or mug.
- Pour the boiling water into the cup, over the tea bag, and fill to top.
- All bag to steep for two to four minutes.
- Remove the teabag from the cup, but do not squeeze it. Squeezing can add undesired flavors to your drink.
For iced mint tea, follow the above instructions. But allow to steep a minute or two longer, and then pour the tea over ice, in a tall glass.
Our Rating
But all of that notwithstanding, I’d still highly recommend Bigelow Plantation Mint Black Tea, caffeine and all. I’d rate this tea at 98 out of 100. It’s got enough caffeine kick to drive the morning drowsiness away, but not enough to produce caffeine nausea; unless of course, you drink several cups in rapid succession.
Where To Buy Bigelow Plantation Mint Black Tea
Look for this tea product in the bright green box with white lettering and the tear-off strip on the top, at larger grocery stores. The local Walmart carries many Bigelow tea products.
References
- Bigelow Web Page for Plantation Mint Tea
- Black Tea on Wikipedia
- Caffeine on Wikipedia
- Spearmint on Wikipedia
- Where to Buy Bigelow Plantation Mint Tea
Revision History
- 2014-11-25: Added whitespace and adjusted positioning of ads.
- 2014-09-02: Updated and extended content, and fixed typos.