Alphakitty

Cold brew of the day!

This was a sample from Kittenna that I was excited to try, since I’ve had lychee candy and fruit but never tea, and I heard that it was quite floral. I love floral teas. Looove them, even if they taste kind of like perfume. I guess I’m just weird like that! This steeped longer than usual because I put it in the fridge too early last night and woke up later than expected, so it got about 16 hours. Well, it still turned out well!

It’s so sweet and fruity, kind of like drinking fruit juice. Refreshing for sure! The floral element is nice and strong, similar to rose but more subtle. It’s balanced well with the fruit, so it’s not too fruity or too floral (and now I feel like Goldilocks). I’ve been cold brewing so many greens and whites that I kind of forgot what iced blacks taste like: it’s a more traditional iced tea for sure, reminiscent of the sun tea my mom used to make as a kit. And cold it’s fantastic, probably better than it would be hot. I have enough left for another big cup, so I might try hot-brewing it… but it’s so good this way I just want to make more iced!

I picked this up in the Element closing sale mainly because of the ingredient list: they were just so weird! Mistletoe, birch leaves, bean stalk? Also it was about a dollar for 2 ounces, so I figured it was worth experimenting.

This is probably the weirdest/most unique herbal blend I’ve ever had. I am not familiar enough with the individual ingredients to pick them out, but this tea tastes like walking through a forest after a spring rain. Wet green leaves, crunchy twigs and damp grass seem to live in this cup, followed by a soft citrus from the lemongrass. It’s very strange and evocative of the outdoors. I’m not sure how particularly tasty it is… I mean it’s good, but it’s hard to taste something this unusual and say “oh, that was delicious!” It’s definitely an experience, and I must admit that I found it a bit soothing so I guess it is a “stress blocker.” I’m not going to rate this because I honestly have no idea how to, but overall I did enjoy it.

Thanks to Stacy for sending me a sample of this tea! I’ve been looking forward to trying it, but I am not often in a pineapple mood so it had to be the right day, and today was that day. I’ve pretty much been eating fruit salad all day long, I have about 7 different types in the fridge and really want to get through them all before they go bad. With fruit all day long I wanted a matching tea, and this was the perfect one.

This smells divine, like a ripe pineapple. The flavor is SO juicy and sweet, and without that mouth-puckering tartness that pineapple has. Definitely a bonus: it’s a good flavor in fresh fruit, but I don’t want my tea to have me making funny faces. The oolong is delightful, floral and pleasantly creamy. This is like a beach vacation in a cup!

I got this as a surprise sample in my swap with the awesome Will Work For Tea! It’s been on my shopping list for a long time, and I’m honestly not quite sure why I didn’t order it before now—I think I just don’t like to pay for shipping unless it’s a big order, and ATR is a bit pricey so I wanted to know I’d love their stuff before committing to a purchase.

The smell of the dry leaves is amazing, like a Parisian bakery. I went to Paris with my mom when I was 15, and I remember how absolutely amazing the pastries were. Soft, buttery, flakey, sweet… just thinking about it makes me hungry. This tea smells like an almond croissant, but it tastes even better. There’s soft, gentle cinnamon, plump raisins, slivers of roasted almonds, and buttery warm bread in every sip, even a hint of pastry cream at the end. How they got tea to taste like a fresh from the oven baked good is beyond me, but it’s heavenly. This is a tea I could drink every day and be happy with!

Thanks to Kittenna for this sample!

Another day, another cold brew. Doing a different tea a night is actually a pretty handy way to go through my huge sample box, and also a nice way to keep drinking tea when it’s so hot outside! I picked this one last night because I am on a cherry blossom kick after trying Den’s Sakura Sencha. Theirs is blended only with sakura blossoms it seems, and I have another blend with sakura, rose petals, and cherries. This one is different, because… well, there’s no sakura! Kind of weird since the name is Cherry Blossom, and there’s no cherry blossom in the ingredients list. There is a host of other stuff though, like coconut (?), dried cherries, rosebuds, and 4 or 5 different base teas blended together.

This tea is a little tart and a little sweet, with a nice cherry flavor. Not cherry blossom, but actual cherry. It’s not fresh cherry (which is a flavor I’ve never found properly replicated in tea) but it has a tart, juicy edge that’s pretty close to the real thing. I thought the rose would be more prominent, but I’m only getting a hint of it towards the end of the sip. The coconut is there too, in a mild way, adding some sweetness and another fruity dimension. If someone gave me this without me knowing what was in it I don’t think I’d ever guess “coconut” but there is definitely another fruit layer going on.

The disappointment comes with the base: you’d think with 4-5+ different kinds blended together, you’d get a ton of complexity. However, I’ve found that the more kinds of tea are in it, the less complex it is. Two is fine, especially if they are similar (white peony and a light Chinese green, for example), but add more than that and they are just competing for attention. There’s no fruity taste, no floral notes or grassiness, not even a hint of vegetal goodness. It’s just a basic “tea” taste, which is a shame because it seems like there are some interesting types in here: I think this would be better on a white peony or sencha base, to be honest. It’s not bad by any means and in fact I am really enjoying it, but you have to think of it as “cherry tea” rather than “complex floral cherry blossom tea.”

This tea is… disappointing. The bf asked for “something raspberry” tonight and this ended up being what we settled on: I remember it being so-so the first time I tried it, but tea is always worth a second cup! However, it didn’t really end up much better this time. It’s very fake raspberry. Not in a bad, icky, artificial way, it just tastes like raspberry hard candy rather than fresh fruit or a jammy quality (both of which I’d find acceptable). This isn’t a bad tea, it’s just not to my taste—I usually end up mixing it with other things like Adagio’s cream to cut some of that candy quality. The weird thing is their other raspberry tea I have (Ripe for Romance) isn’t fake raspberry at all and more jammy/ripe fruit-y. I wonder why a company would use two different raspberry flavors instead of just, you know, the good one?

One of my samples from Teavivre! It’s so hot out, there was pretty much no way I was going to be drinking this hot this afternoon, but I’ve kind of neglected my teas from them so I was determined to make this one. I cold steeped it for 15 hours or so, maybe for too long—it has an ever so slightly bitter taste that I haven’t encountered in cold brews before. It’s not really unpleasant, just there in the background. I also dumped a whole one of the cute little packets in, so maybe that had something to do with it?

This is a soft, light oolong, with mild floral and fruity notes. The floral taste reminds me a bit of gardenia, the fruit like a faint whiff of fresh peaches. There’s also a bit of palate-cleansing creaminess at the end of the sip, perfect for a hot day! I’m getting some light vegetal notes as well, maybe some grassiness though it’s honestly a bit harder to pick out such subtle things when your glass is ice-cold! I’m definitely enjoying this iced though, very refreshing and summery.

So I could have sworn this tea was in my cupboard, but apparently it’s not on Steepster… nor could I find it on Culinary’s website. I got it a few months ago when I won the $100 gift certificate, which I used to indulge in some dessert blends I usually wouldn’t buy for myself. This one popped right out at me, since caramel apples are some of my favorite fair food and they have such a high calorie content recreating them in tea-form seemed like a good way to relive the experience without all of the sugar. I made this last night while hiding out in the bedroom: I am SO tired of this heatwave, and it’s the only room of the apartment that gets fully cool when it’s in the 100s. On the plus side it’s arctic chilly in there, so I can have a hot cup of tea without feeling like I’m on fire!

This is a great dessert blend, and you can clearly taste the caramel and apple notes, along with a rich, creamy undertone. It’s quite indulgent, especially with a little cream and sugar. It doesn’t need much since it’s naturally quite sweet! Like many of their black blends that I’ve had, boiling water is a big no or it ends up a bitter mess, but brewed at a more gentle 195 this is heavenly. Frankly there’s not much “tea” taste and more “holy wow this tastes like a melted caramel apple” but sometimes that’s really exactly what you want.

This is my 100th tasting note! Didn’t think I’d get here so soon!

Rose Marzipan was one of the teas in my Fire Sale box, and I was thrilled to see it in there. This is a discontinued blend, but one I’ve been wanting to try for a while. I’m pretty vocal about my love of rose blends, but I also adore marzipan. When I was a kid my parents used to get me the little fruit-shaped ones for Christmas every year. Actual marzipan seems really hard to get in tea-form, most “marzipan” teas just taste like almond. As a side note, I’d really love a rainbow cookie flavored tea—marzipan, chocolate, raspberry or apricot jam…. I have some in the fridge, and I think I am going to consume them immediately after writing this.

Anyway, back to the actual tea! The dry leaf and brewed tea smell very similar: heavily floral, but the rose is a little different than what I am used to. It’s kind of… sugary, like rose candies. Rose-flavored Turkish Delights! That’s what the smell is. And underneath, there’s heavenly marzipan—not almond, but pure and delicious marzipan. It smells better than it tastes, though it’s still good—it just loses some of those delicious candy notes. It’s mostly rose (sweet, though not as candy-like as the smell) and there’s a definite almond undertone. So close to marzipan, but not quite there! It’s still delicious, though I spend more time sniffing the mug than I did drinking it! Overall very pleasing, mostly because it appeals to some of my favorite tastes. I want to try the blend that replaced this now, though I’ve heard it’s not quite as good.

This is from my Fire Sale box from Rachel (iHeartTeas). I’ve been looking for a good, cheap, everyday lemon blend for a while: the bf and I both love citrus, but most of the current blends we have are either variations of earl greys, grapefruit (which he hates), or lemon teas with green bases which require cooling off the water. After dinner I’m always a little lazy and don’t want to get into complicated brewing, so it’s nice to have a few simple standards.

Well, this is definitely a contender for an everyday lemon tea! The base is smooth and mild, but with enough body to stand up on its own. There’s a hint of maltiness, and I’d hazard to guess that it’s a Ceylon base. It’s nice when the “tea” part of a flavored blend is strong enough that you can distinguish specific qualities in it! The lemon is nice, also mild, not overpoweringly citrus but with a bright and vibrant taste. This is nothing special or complicated, but it’s pretty damn tasty.

I try to taste my teas in the order they come in, and I still have several left from a few assorted sales. This came in today, though, and I just couldn’t wait. I’ve dubbed this “kitten tea” and there was no way I wasn’t going to rip the package open after dinner and brew some up.

I saw other reviews that said this smelled like lemon pound cake, and it does, frosting included! It’s kind of intoxicating, and I wanted to keep sniffing it. It doesn’t really taste like pound cake (which I suppose is good, so you don’t get an overly dessert-y flavor), more like lemon meringue or a fresh-baked lemon pie. It’s sweet, citrusy, and so fresh tasting. The marshmallow tastes like the real homemade kind, airy and not too sweet. It comes in at the end of the sip, and sandwiched between the lemon and marshmallow is a gorgeous green base. You can tell this is a high quality tea, and it holds up to the strong flavors so well.

This tea is fantastic, amazing! I could probably drink it every day, but I feel like this is going to be a tea I horde for special days. I’m already considering buying another pouch and I’m only one cup into the bag I have! Oh kitten tea, I love you.

EDIT: So I played around with this last night and got a really great second steep. It’s way more marshmallow-y than the first one, much like how the Cheesecake Earl Grey is more cheesecakey on the second steep. It’s also sweeter, almost candy-like (but in a good way). The mouthfeel is creamier and richer as well.

I also tried something new and cold brewed the leaves I’d already steeped twice. I hate to waste a tea like this which is both amazingly delicious AND a limited edition. I let it steep for around 16 hours, longer than usual for me, but I didn’t know how strong the flavor would be. It’s very lemony and light, with the green base more prominent here than on the previous steeps. The marshmallow is the least-prominent, though some sweetness comes in at the end of the sip. It’s pretty much the opposite of the second steep, while the first was right in the middle. It’s great to see so many different aspects of the same tea!

I got this as a surprise sample from Azzrian! I love sakura flavored teas, so I was kind of giddy upon finding it in my box. It’s been way too hot for hot-brewing tea so I decided to cold brew this—I actually meant to yesterday but it totally slipped my mind, so it was done overnight. I know some people are pretty specific about how long they cold brew stuff but I’ve found it nearly impossible to overseep anything in cold water so my usual time is 12+ hours, I put everything in around midnight and get to it when I wake up (I’m a night owl!).

The leaves for this are so pretty—dark, rich sencha interspersed with these perfect little pearls of cherry blossoms. It’s almost too pretty to put in water! But the smell is too enticing to just let this sit around. Sakura is a lot lighter than that heavy cherry flavor you can get from some teas (and I dislike that) so this blend is perfect for me. Iced it’s fantastic. You get the buttery sencha with the slightest hint of grassiness, followed by the delicate sweet floral taste from the cherry blossoms. It’s fruity, but so lightly so that it’s not at all overpowering. This is a dainty cup of tea for sure. Thanks so much Azzrian for letting me try out this gem!

I’ve been dying to try this tea—I love melon, it’s probably my favorite fruit flavor, both for teas and just for eating! I was lucky enough to get a sample of this from Kittenna in my swap with her, and then I got some more only a few days later from Stacy with my Butiki order! Of course I was over the moon, but somehow I hadn’t tried it out until today.

I cold brewed this with 1 small scoop in a tall glass of filtered water for about 16 hours or so: I was worried it might be a little weak because I used very little tea, but it is amaaaazing. The cantaloupe is the freshest fruit flavoring I’ve ever had in a tea, it legitimately tastes like fresh cantaloupe juice. The cream is very subtle and adds a hint of softness and a rich mouthfeel, and the white base sparkles. This is an exceptional blend, and of course now I want to brew some up hot just to compare…. but a tea this special is definitely not an everyday luxury.

This is one of the samples from my box from LiberTEAS, and also one of the only teas I specifically requested. Rose and chai are two of my favorite things, so it was a winner before I even tried it! She was nice enough to send me the last she had of this blend, enough for 3 or even 4 cups (not counting re-steeps). That sample box was probably the best tea-related things I’ve ever purchased—it’s been about a month since I got it and I’ve been trying to taste one of the samples every 2 days or so, but so far I have only actually run out of ONE kind! Okay, sorry this is sounding like a paid advertizement, I just get a little giddy whenever I look at how much stuff from it I have left to taste/finish~

Anyway, the tea. I love floral teas, creamy teas, and chai: all of those elements are very prevalent here. It’s floral, but not overpoweringly so, and I’ve always found rose to be the “sweetest” floral scent so it adds a nice balance to the spices. The chai part is warming, not too spicy but it has a great mouth-feel. There’s not a ton of ginger and I don’t think any pepper, which is what usually gives you that “heat”. This blend has more aromatic spices—cardamom, cinnamon, clove, maybe a little allspice? They work SO well with the rose. Then there’s that creaminess from the vanilla, perfectly balancing the spice/floral so nothing is overpowering and everything is in harmony. This is one of the best chais I’ve tasted and is most definitely going on my shopping list!

I made a lot of tea last night and this morning, but this is the last of them! I cold-brewed this one for the bf, since strawberry and chocolate are some of his favorite flavors, though I am not a huge fan. I was worried that this would be weird cold, since, well… I’ve never had chocolate iced tea. Thankfully, it works pretty well! The strawberry isn’t that prominent (next time I’ll chop up some actual berries and add them), but the chocolate surprisingly is. At first it just tastes like a nice black iced tea with a hint of berry, and then at the end of the sip it’s quite chocolatey. Not heavy mouthfeel decadent chocolate, more light and airy. It’s pretty nice, but I’m not going to rate this one as it’s not my thing. Thankfully there’s someone in my house who loves it—and he’s a bit pickier about teas than I am sometimes, so it’s always nice when I find something that he loves!

I got this in my fire sale box from Rachel (iHeartTeas). I realized yesterday that there are two Rachels, so perhaps I should specify which one from now on. I’ve never tried and Zoomdweebies teas, and to the best of my knowledge they’re what turned into 52teas (correct me if I’m wrong!)! This smelled soooooo good in the bag. I love lemon, I love spice, what could go wrong? Well apparently nothing, because this is a great tea. It’s not heavily lemony, but it’s still nice and bright. The spices (cinnamon only according to the packaging, but I am definitely getting some clove, maybe even orange peel) are wonderfully warming, not overpowering the lemon but accenting it. If you could make mulled lemonade, I think it would taste a lot like this. It’s also great hot and cold (tea cools down pretty fast with the AC blasting), which is always a big bonus. This is a more wintery tea I think, but I don’t know if I’ll be able to save it until then!

I love the flavor of wine, but generally not the alcohol part. Not that I have anything against alcohol, from my tasting notes it’s clear that I am not above throwing a few splashes in my tea if the flavors match. XD But for me it just makes wine a… less pleasant experience. So I like cooking with it, I like making desserts with it, but I don’t generally drink a whole lot of it. Thus, I was pretty excited to see a wine-flavored tea, since I’d never heard of such a wondrous thing. I snatched this up in Element Tea’s closing sale (possibly the last one, as it vanished a few minutes after I ordered it).

The dry leaves are beautiful downy white peony, and all of them in my bag are intact. A good sign, since they’re quite easy to crush in transit (and tea comes a pretty long way!). There are whole jasmine flowers and rose petals too, but the smell was… weird. Very fake grape-y. It was a little beast to brew too: first I had way too much water, then I dumped some and ended up brewing it for twice the recommended time. I felt bad possibly screwing up a tea that might be the last of its kind, but oh well.

It still smells kind of artificial in the cup, and the taste hot was… not exactly my stripe. So I let it sit for a few hours, tossed some ice in, and magic happened. Lightly floral, sweet and almost fruity from the white peony, and BAM wine! It’s pretty assertive (possibly because I brewed it for so long?) but it really works iced. And I know it’s very wine-y tastes, because the bf tried it and made a “blech” face—he hates wine XD. And now I’m depressed that I can never buy this again.

I got this tea mostly for blending, since I don’t have any light whites to mix with stuff. In the spirit of making at least one cold brew a day, I mixed this up in a glass with cucumber slices, some shredded mint, and very finely chopped cantaloupe last night and let it steep for about 14 hours. I strained it all, including the cantaloupe, leaving a gorgeous-looking peachy brew. And it might be the most refreshing drink I’ve ever had—sweet from the cantaloupe, vibrant from the mint, cooling from the cucumber and there’s a lovely subtle tea taste in the background. A little floral and fruity, which really elevates this from “water with stuff steeped in it” to “fancy iced tea.”

I’m not supposed to be buying any more tea, but I can never pass up a sale, and it was all of $2 for 2 ounces of this. I mean, that’s just impossible to resist! Plus with summer at full blast, I need some nice tropical teas and take my mind of the suffocating heat for a while. It’s so hot that our local squirrel is laying spread-eagle on the fire escape and is too lazy to even move if I open the window.

Anyway, I made this last night for the bf and he loved it, but I only had a little sip so I decided to re-steep it this afternoon. The flavors are just as strong on the second steep, which is always a goof sign with a flavored blend. There are big chunks of pineapple and coconut in there, and they are sweetened according to the packaging but thankfully this is definitely not overly sweet. This has such a nice tropical flavor, though the coconut is more dominant than than the pineapple. It’s surprisingly good hot—usually blends this fruity I only drink iced, but this is good both ways. Mostly because they used a pretty tasty black base that comes in at the end of the sip. Though with it being 100 degrees outside and all this will definitely make it into the iced tea rotation (probably with a splash of rum!).

I suspect that I looked like a kid on christmas morning when I pulled this out of my Fire Sale box from Rachel. I knew it would be good stuff, but I was expecting samples…. not, you know, several practically full bags of awesome discontinued/unavailable teas. That’s right, I have a whole bag of this! Which is nice, because it’s so good it makes me cry a little to think about drinking the last of it.

The bf had a sip from my cup and described this as “earl grey with a slice of cheesecake melted in.” It’s just…. perfection. The earl grey is very strong, pretty heavy on the bergamot actually, and with a hint of lemon as well. First you get the bold, super-strong earl grey, then there’s the creamy, sweet cheesecake. There’s no crust element, it’s more like cheescake filling. But for me that’s the best part!

EDIT: I resteeped this twice last night: the second steep was even cheescakey-er than the first, and the third held up well too!

Trader Joe’s has these amazing dried mango slices that are soooo juicy, and they roll them in cayenne pepper for the tastiest spicy/sweet combo I’ve ever had. I was kind of hoping that this tea would taste like that, and Krystaleyn sent me some in our swap! I’ve been wanting to try it for a while but there are so many teas I have to get through ;~;

This is a juicy tea, and has a really strong mango flavor. I did steep mine for extra long, because I’ve found that DAVIDsTEA blends tend towards the weaker side of things. There is a nice green tea flavor, but it’s not that strong—mostly this is just mango-y. The chili, though, is disappointingly lacking. I wanted spicy, and this really isn’t—there’s a bit of heat after the sip that lingers in your mouth, but it’s not spicy enough for my taste. There are really big chili threads in this blend so I thought I’d have more oomph. It’s tasty for sure, but I think the name is a little misleading… there’s definitely no Diablo in here!

I got this tea what seems like a very long time ago, and I still haven’t tried it! I try not to dip into my 52teas that often since I know I can’t get them again once they’re gone for the most part, and I just knew I would love this tea which made me even more hesitant to try it. I don’t want to love it, I want to think “oh it’s good but I can live without it.”

Well, this is a tea I can’t live without. I cold-brewed it overnight, and sweet gods of cotton candy is it perfect. At first it’s just a very nice iced tea, the black base really shines and is wonderfully layered but not too heavy. Then, BAM, cotton candy. It’s not fake or artificial, it seriously tastes like cotton candy jut melted in your mouth. And the taste lingers, filling you with giddy childhood memories of eating cotton candy at the county fair and then running around in the petting zoo on a sugar high. It is SO good, I can’t really imagine this tea hot but iced it’s…. urgh, so amazingly perfect. Thank god they’ve added iced tea bags of this, though I think I could drink a pitcher of this every day which would put me in serious tea-debt!

There’s only one thing I would add to this blend: I wish it was blue! I’m tempted to put some food dye in mine just to make it that much more like liquid cotton candy.

I love grapefruit, but it’s hard to find a truly grapefruity tea that isn’t overly bitter or too much like orange or lemon. Upton’s Summer Blend was close, but not quite there—Dylan recommend that I try this one (which happily enough I’d already ordered a sample of), which I finally remembered when digging through my samples. All those Upton ones packaged for Batman are on the very bottom of the bin!

This should be called “Earl Grapefruit.” It’s BAM POW GRAPEFRUIT, right up in your face. Tangy, bitter, acidic, sooooo good. I mean, good if you like grapefruit, since it’s kind of an acquired taste. My bf looks at me in horror when I chug glasses of it, but hey, more for me! Saint Isaac is like grapefruit juice with some tea thrown in—you get the base which is pretty strong, bright, and brisk, but the beginning and end of the sip are grapefruit all the way. I am in total tea-love with this, and there’s enough left in my sample to try it a few different ways still. I think this will be delicious iced!

EDIT: Apparently by trying it iced later I meant right now! It’s actually not quite as good iced and loses some of that graprefuity goodness, but it’s still tasty. In the future though I’ll brew this hot.

The awesome Azzrian sent me a sample of this when she saw it was on my shopping list (which is more like a “tasting list”). I love cucumber and I love mint, but this has mixed reviews so I wanted to try it out first. Now I have the chance!

This definitely sounds like a tea that’s best iced, so I cold brewed some last night. I’ve been experimenting with smaller cold brews recently, since I usually do huge pitchers but that requires a lot of tea. So I just made a big glass of this: 1 teaspoon loose-leaf, filtered water and a little simple syrup (since I like my iced teas sweet) and let it sit for 12 hours. I was worried it would be weak since it wasn’t a great tea to water ratio, but it came out fine! Crisp, refreshing, with strong mint notes and a hint of cucumber. I’d like more “POW” cucumber flavor, but that seems to be pretty hard to capture in tea-form. I have enough of my sample left for another cup, so I think I’ll just add some cucumber slices!

There’s also some subtle blueberry, which is nice but also weird since this isn’t “Cucumber Mint Blueberry” tea. It does add some nice sweetness, but it’s as prominent as the cucumber which throws me a bit. I don’t think it’s really a stand-out blend, but I do like all the flavors so I might consider buying this just for cooling down over the summer.