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This week’s tea of the week! Your friend and mine – Liquid Proust – suggested to me some months ago to try blending Houjicha and Shou Mei together and I’ve gotta tell you – it’s genius! The combination creates a flavor that’s a little roasty-toasty but not quite as aggressively roasted as a straight Houjicha. The Shou Mei lightens the flavor just enough and adds some pleasant fruity notes to the toasted nutty flavor of the Houjicha. When I first tasted the two teas together (without flavoring or other components), I enjoyed the ‘foresty’ flavor of the blend. Immediately, my mind started entertaining ideas of what this flavors this flavor combination might work best with.

This is my first of a couple of ideas – Gathering Berries! To the base of Houjicha and Shou Mei, I added golden mulberries, elderberries, black currants and blueberries. And seriously though – the taste evokes thoughts of hiking through the woods just as the autumn leaves have begun to fall and gathering some of the last ripe berries that nature has to offer. (Just no nightlock, please!)

Yummy!

I didn’t blend a large quantity of this tea (why? Because the leaves are large and bulky and I can’t fit a lot of the tea in my blending vessels!) so after sending out all the subscriptions, I have very few of this tea left – so if you find yourself interested at all, you should grab some quickly while it’s here!

I cold-brewed some of this last night – it’s really good cold-brewed! The maple and cake-y flavors emerge strongly as a cold-brew. It’s sweet and really good – maybe better as a cold-brew than hot, although I enjoyed it a lot hot too.

As I mentioned in my review of this tea brewed hot, I was in the process of cold-brewing some too. I haven’t been at the computer very much over the last two days – so this is my first chance to sit down and write about this tea cold-brewed!

This is really good cold-brewed. I generally prefer hot tea and I do enjoy this one hot but the flavors of cherry and almond come out much more abundantly when it’s cold-brewed so I strongly recommend cold-brewing this to enjoy the flavors of cherry and almond!

Really nice – refreshing!

This week’s tea of the week is a Retro Monday tea. Retro Monday is the 5th Monday of a month – it only happens 4 times a year – including this month! For Retro Monday, customers vote between four different past tea blends to have reblended and this time around, Cherry Almond Gunpowder won!

Tonight, I brewed a pot of it for my hubby and me. The cherry is not as strong as I remember the original blend being – I really wanted to avoid the “medicinal” cherry note so I went lighter on the Cherry. The blend has sunflower seeds in it – but the flavoring is Almond. The sunflower seeds do relatively nothing to alter the flavor except for possibly adding some salt to the cup but I don’t personally even pick up on that. I went with sunflower seeds because I want to avoid allergens whenever possible and nut allergies are a serious thing.

Anyway – this is tasty – it has a light cherry flavor with a nice nutty tone that melds well with the nutty quality of the green tea. Sweet and tasty. I am cold-brewing some for tomorrow so I look forward to enjoying it iced!

I cold-brewed some of this last night to enjoy as iced tea today. (Yes, I realize it’s 2:13am but I’m a night owl so my days typically do not begin until around 2 pm. It’s still evening-ish for me.)

A Pinita Colada is another way of saying “virgin pina colada” – in other words, pineapple and coconut beverage – no rum. And really the reason I decided to go that route is because I felt that with the flavors of carrot cake, pineapple and coconut, that this tea had enough going on that rum wasn’t necessary and would potentially muddy up the flavors.

This tea is a little different hot versus cold. As a cold-brewed iced tea, I’m getting the tangy notes from the pineapple and the smooth flavor of coconut and a pleasant spice note from the carrot cake right up front with background notes that hint at carrot cake. Every once in a while, I get hit with a flavor that is distinctly carrot – it’s a little bit sweet and a little bit savory with that carrot note.

It makes a refreshing iced tea. Generally speaking, I prefer green tea (or white tea) for iced tea – I don’t usually go for honeybush or rooibos for iced tea but because this is the tea of the week this week, I thought I’d try it cold-brewed and I really like it. It’s sweet and tasty. If you are one who usually sweetens your iced tea before you taste it, go light on the sweetener with this because it already has a natural sweetness going on – but a teensy bit of sugar will bring out the cake-y flavors a little more.

I cold-brewed some of this tea overnight and I really like this cold brewed (it’s good hot brewed too, though!) It seems to be a different tea than when it’s hot brewed – the spices take on a deeper flavor and the clove really pops in this cold brew. It’s sweet, a little spicy (not hot spicy, but clove spicy) and a wee bit tart. Very refreshing.

This is the tea of the week this week – I’ll be adding it to the website very soon, but I wanted to first enjoy a cup of it as I didn’t take much time out today for a cuppa and I’m in desperate need of caffeine!

I wasn’t too sure where I’d end up with this tea until I got to the point where I was really pleased with it. I started out with just blackberry and bergamot and I wasn’t too terribly pleased with the end result so I decided to play around with it a bit. I added some vanilla bean and I liked that hint of creaminess that it added, but I felt like the tea still needed more. The bergamot – which is usually quite a bright, tangy flavor – just seemed to fall a little flat. Perhaps the berry sweet-tart flavor was a bit too much for the bergamot? I don’t know. So I added a little bit of lime and I liked the way this perked up the flavors. The blackberry tasted a bit more blackberry-ish and the bergamot, while somewhat demure, is pleasantly complemented by the notes of lime.

I wanted a little bit of warmth to round out the flavors so I added a little bit of clove, nutmeg and cinnamon to the tea and this added just enough spice without becoming too spicy or overpowering. At that point, when it came time to test – I was left with a smile on my face so I determined that this was the right destination for this tea journey.

A nicely rounded cup that’s a little bit sweet, a little bit tart, a little bit spiced and a whole lot wonderful!

I cold-brewed this overnight and this is SO GOOD cold-brewed. Bright orange flavor, lovely creamy vanilla notes and a nice floral tone from the orange blossoms. Love, love, love this tea – I hope it does well because I’d love to reblend this next summer too!

Another VIT that I’m working on – this may be one of the most unusual blends I’ll ever create.

I’m sure that I’ve said on Steepster more than once that I’m really not a beer person. But one of my VIPs has a boyfriend who is and she wanted to create a special tea for his birthday. So, I used my organic Yun Wu as a base (I thought that the natural hint of bitterness to the tea would work with the bitterness of the hops), and added two different types of hops (including Chinook hops from right here in the Pacific Northwest), roasted barley and sorghum and natural flavors.

I’m not a big fan of beer, as I said, but I am a fan of tea (little bit) and what this tastes like to me is a combination of beer and tea. Like equal parts beer and tea. Which to me is a win because I’d rather drink tea than beer so a tea that tastes like beer is better than beer that tastes like beer. (I’m not even sure what I just said makes sense but I hope you get the idea.)

Anyway – this will be available on the website soon – it’s different, it’s unique and it’s very 52Teas.

This is an all-new VIT that I crafted for (interestingly enough) summertime.

I had a pound of Bai Mu Dan in stock and decided that this was the time to use it since Bai Mu Dan has always been like a summertime type of tea. It’s light, refreshing and is naturally cooling. Even when I drink it hot, I find it to be very cooling and much more refreshing than a cold soda. (Then again, I may be biased?)

To that pound of Bai Mu Dan, I added orange blossoms, dried orange segments and then I diced up some vanilla bean and added some natural flavors to create a creamsicle type of experience. It’s sweet, refreshing and really, really good!

I’ll be adding this to the website by Sunday evening.