Cameron B. select Send Message

Sipping on this one this afternoon as I nibble on crackers and cubes of parmesan. I needed a little caffeine pick-me-up after doing some shopping and food prep for dinner tonight. I brought home a bottle of light agave nectar from the store – it was on sale and I was curious how it would compare to sugar. I don’t seem to notice much of a difference but it seemed like I had to use more to get the same level of sweetness.

As a general question, what types of sweetener do you guys use? I’ve seen that brown rock sugar sold on several tea sites, is it worth using?

Looking forward to your responses! <3

After having that lovely latte with Bouquet of Flowers earlier, I decided I needed another one! Yeah, I’m kind of a fatty… What of it? :P I selected Troika because of its orangeyness, which I thought would pair really well with cream and vanilla.

Followed the same method as I did for the first one. I used 6 ounces of strong brewed tea plus 2 tablespoons each of milk and half-and-half (which comes out to 2 ounces). Heated and frothed the milk while the tea was brewing, but this time I added a little splash of vanilla extract along with the sugar. This came out quite tasty, sort of a creamsicley version of a London Fog. I actually really love the flavor of the vanilla extract – it’s a very natural vanilla flavor that reminds me of vanilla beans. Will definitely make this again and I can’t wait to try this method with St. Petersburg for a spiced version! :D

Made this one into a lovely London Fog this morning. I used almost two teaspoons of tea instead of my usual heaping teaspoon and it came out perfect. I also used half whole milk and half half-and-half (lol) because I find that when I use pure half-and-half, the cream note can kind of overpower everything. Warmed the milk and frothed it up a bit with a whisk before adding it, then added a couple teaspoons of sugar. I think a real London Fog is supposed to have vanilla syrup, but I don’t have that lying around. :P Delicious! I love that light floral note in this!

Did a cold steep for six hours on this one. It came out a light and slightly murky yellowish green. As I expected, it pretty much just tastes like licorice root with maybe a tiny bit of cinnamon/orange/vanilla if you really look for it. Still doesn’t taste at all like green tea (or any tea). However, I find that I don’t quite hate licorice root as much when it’s cold, so I did drink this one as opposed to dumping it. Meh.

So this is my second jasmine pearl tea (the first being free sample from Yezi). I wish I could taste them both side-by-side, but without that option, I think I like this one a little better. The little pearls are tightly rolled and about a quarter inch in diameter. The smell of the dry tea is amazing – such a strong and sweet jasmine aroma. It smells like actual flowers, not like a perfume, which is a very good sign. The directions say to use a tablespoon (!) of tea per 8 ounces of water, so this is what I did. I think in the future I could definitely get away with using less per cup.

The brewed tea smells very jasminey, though definitely not as strongly as the dry (thank goodness). I can also catch a hint of a sweet, vegetal green tea behind the jasmine. I really enjoy the taste of this tea. The jasmine flavor is prominent and it’s definitely the star, but I can also taste the sweet and mellow green tea base. It came out a tiny bit bitter for me, but I think using less tea or maybe a tiny bit shorter steep would eliminate this. The aftertaste is very floral. I found this was delicious with just half a teaspoon of sugar – it seemed to round out the jasmine flavor.

This was another one of the teas that I put in to cold brew earlier. I didn’t necessarily think it would be good chilled, I’m just determined to try everything cold. May I just say… NEVER AGAIN! This is almost comically horrible, in a way that I almost burst out laughing when I took a sip. It’s just bitter on top of bitter with an aftertaste of roses. I don’t know, maybe florals just aren’t good for cold brewing.

Ew. Yuck. Blegh.

I put four teas in the fridge to cold steep this morning, and this was one of them. I have to say, I’m very impressed with this iced. It came out a slightly murky pale green with a brown tinge. I added some syrup and it tastes remarkably similar to ginger ale, but without the carbonation. I think I actually prefer it without the bubbles! The ginger tastes lingers in a pleasant way and the lemon is very mild and lovely. I could see myself drinking this chilled regularly. I guess I know what’s going to happen to the rest of that tin! :)

My last cup of this, aww… My sample from Yezi was big enough for two cups since this is such a fluffball tea. Since I think I neglected to say last time, the dry leaf is amazingly creamy smelling with notes of honey and sweet hay. I can’t wait to to try a creamy flavored bai mudan (I’m looking at you, Cantaloupe & Cream!). This time I elected to add a little more than half a teaspoon of honey because I felt it would go beautifully. And it did! Om nom nom. Creamy and hay-like with just a touch of honey taste on the back of the tongue. So far, white tea kind of reminds me of a milder version of honeybush.

I am determined to like this tea as much as everyone else seems to! For some reason I can’t seem to find the red fruit flavor that is apparently there but hiding from me. So I decided that this time I would try adding some dried cranberries (just happened to have some on hand). So I added about a tablespoon or so of them to a pyrex cup with my water and microwaved it until the water was up to temperature, then poured it over the tea and let it steep.

Smelling the brew, there was a definite tart fruitiness with vanilla and bergamot in the background. And it was quite tasty! Lots of yummy cranberry flavor. Next time I’ll use slightly fewer cranberries- maybe 2 teaspoons instead of 3. I could still taste the vanilla and bergamot notes but I feel like the cranberry overpowered them just a bit. This also might work a teensy bit better with a sweeter dried fruit like a strawberry or sweet cherry. Yay experiments! :D

Trying this lovely tea with milk and sugar this morning. I wanted it to be really creamy and latte-y so I brewed it up with 6 ounces of water instead of 8 and added those 2 ounces back in as whole milk mixed with sugar. Yum! I could stand for the tea to be a little stronger, so I may try adding extra tea in addition to reducing the water the next time I have this. Or I might try making it as a boychik chai and steeping it in simmering milk… Hm…