I want to start my Pukka Peppermint Licorice tea review with an apology to all my British readers. Every time I write “licorice” instead of “liquorice” a little piece of me dies. But this is the actual name of the tea that’s sold in the UK.
Why Pukka couldn’t change the name for their UK drinkers to use the UK spelling, is beyond me.
But now we are past that, let’s dig in. This tea review covers the flavours and ingredients of the tea, a method to brew it, and a little more info about Pukka themselves. You can also find links to buy this tea on Amazon, if you want to try it for yourself.
Pukka Peppermint Licorice Tea at a Glance
- Blend: Peppermint leaves and liquorice root
- Flavour: Sickly sweet liquorice, with medicinal mint notes
This is a deeply unpleasant tea, even for me – and I usually like both peppermint and liquorice. However, the liquorice produces a sickly artificial sweetness and the mint just isn’t enough to brighten it.
Full Review – Peppermint and Licorice Herbal Tea
- Type: Tagged paper filter teabag
- Ingredients: Peppermint leaf, liquorice root
- Health Benefits: Refresh and settle your stomach
- Flavour Notes: Sickly sweetness, medicine, artificial sweetness
- Aroma: Dried liquorice, musty herbs, dull menthol
- Milk or Lemon: Lemon
- Where to Buy: Amazon
Ripping open the paper wrapper, the immediate aroma is that generic musty herbal aroma that all Pukka teas seem to have. It’s not good. But there is a hint of sweetness that indicates there’s some liquorice in there somewhere.
It brews into a musty, dusty, caramel brown tea colour which is interesting. Peppermint usually brews a dark brown green colour, so the liquorice is really taking over this tea already. And that’s just a hint of what’s to come.
The aroma swirling up from my teacup is dull menthol peppermint. It’s not great, but it’s certainly not bad.
Unfortunately, the flavour of this tea is very unpleasant. The menthol hits you first, but it’s very dull and not at all the sharp, fresh flavour it should be. The liquorice, on the other hand, is incredibly overpowering and sweet.
Now, I have a sweet tooth and I love liquorice, but this was just unbearable. The combination of dull menthol and sickly sweetness instantly brought back memories of taking medicine as a child.
Overall, I found nothing redeeming about the flavour notes of this tea, and I couldn’t finish my cup.
Sorry, Pukka, but like several of your herbal tea blends, you’ve gone OTT with the liquorice root and completely destroyed my tastebuds.
How to Brew Pukka Peppermint Licorice Tea
If you are certain you want to brew this tea, start off with a VERY light brew. Give it 60 seconds in your cup with boiling water before removing the teabag and giving it a taste.
Pukka give extremely vague instructions, telling you to brew it for “up to 15 minutes”. I think you’d have to be absolutely crazy to brew it for that long.
Obviously, don’t add any sweetener to this tea. I think something sharp, like lemon, could be a good idea though.
Why Pukka Organic Herbal Teas?
Putting the flavour and aroma of this tea aside, Pukka are a pretty good tea brand to buy from. Their packaging is entirely biodegradable and their paper teabags are unbleached too. Furthermore, Pukka are Soil Association Certified Organic, which covers all their ingredients in this tea blend.
Unfortunately, Pukka love to pulverise their ingredients. I think this is really what went wrong here. By really chopping up the liquorice root, it allows more of the sweetness to be extracted into the water. And by finely chopping the peppermint leaves, they’re allowed to oxidise and lose their freshness. As a result, the liquorice is far too strong and the peppermint is far too weak.
You can see how dusty and fine the ingredients are in my photograph. It’s a real shame.
Summary
If you love liquorice then I do recommend you check out this tea. It has strong liquorice flavours and the organic quality of the herbal tea ingredients is nice. But otherwise, I can’t honestly recommend that anyone drinks Pukka Peppermint Licorice tea. It’s just not well balanced.
Tea Recommendation
That sums up my review! I’m sorry that it’s been so disappointing… but here’s the silver lining: great peppermint teas do exist and you can find them in my Tea Review Index. This is where I catalogue all my tea reviews at Immortal Wordsmith so you can quickly find something new (and actually appetising).