Dustin

Thank you for this sample Mitch! I have been wanting to try it for a while, but didn’t want to buy 2oz without taste testing!

This tea has a strong artificial banana flavor to it and artificial banana flavor is one of my favorites. It has a pretty good mixture of banana and chocolate and tastes good on it’s own, but it tastes even better done up as a latte with some sugar. It really makes the mudslide taste complete. On the last few sips I noticed a nutty taste which was nice. I really like it, but it tastes very similar to The Republic of Tea’s Banana Chocolate rooibos. In my opinion it is just a little better than the RoT, but after finding out more about Teavana’s poor ethics I think I’m going to try avoiding that business in the future.

I got this as a sample from Shelley_Lorraine! Thanks for sharing! I just realized that this will be my first guyusa!

The first few sips bring the word FINAALLYYYYYYYYY to my mind! This is spicey! Like really spicy, not just spicy but really only has a hint of spice to it. This has kick and I like it, but it’s not so intense I can’t drink it. I can pick out some cinnamon and the burn lingers for a minute or so. I’m getting over (I hope) being sick right now and even tho I can’t taste all the flavors, this tea is perfect! I would love to find a chocolate tea with this level of heat!

Sadly tho, I’m learning the hard way that I shouldn’t drink guyusa until I have weaned the baby. The child hasn’t slept all day and won’t go to bed. It’s going to be a long night!

Thank you so much to Mercuryhime for this sample!

This is the first red matcha I have tried. I’m loving that I can drink this late at night and not have to worry about being up all night! I prepared it as a latte with some milk and sugar and oh man it’s good! The cheesecake flavor is nice and creamy and smooth. I’m not able to pick out a rooibos flavor, which I expected. I need (yes, need) to order some of this soon because I can’t stop thinking about it and wishing I had more! Must finish off more teas before making another purchase! We shall see how my will power holds up against the desire for this tea!

This is the first tea I have been able to taste in almost two weeks! I had sinus surgery and just got the packing out that was preventing me from smelling and tasting. I came home and opened up a few of the new teas I got and was able to smell them for the first time! This tea won the sniff test of what I was going to drink first.

When I smell the dry tea, I’m hit by a huge sweet smell that I can imagine being the marshmallow part of the treats. I taste the toasted rice flavor when I sip the tea, but don’t get a sweet flavor translating from that sweet smell. Adding a little sugar really completes the taste, bringing out more of the marshmallow flavor for me. This is a really fun tea! I can see why so many people love it!

Thank you for this tea Shelley_Lorrane!

I didn’t know what to make of this flavor combination, but was intrigued enough to want to try it. I’m not aware of any dish where apples and potatoes cross paths, so it strikes me as a curious marriage. It’s like an odd couple that don’t seem right for each other and you wonder what on earth they are doing together until you spend some time with them and then it dawns on you how strangely perfect of a match they are. I get this tea now. I don’t think it is something I will want to keep stocked in my cupboard, but I get it now.

I can easily pick out the applesauce. It isn’t a fresh apple taste, it’s a cooked apple taste. I think I can taste a touch of cinnamon. I have never had potato pancakes, but I can definitely taste the creamy starchiness of the potatoes. I’m not tasting the green tea base at all and that’s okay. It’s pretty good without sugar, but it’s nice with it too. I could really go either way on the sugar part. Overall I’d rate it as interesting.

Three minutes in boiling water make this black tea bitter. I wish these teas came with brewing instructions on the box or tin so I wouldn’t have to guess. It smells really nice, a chocolate scented tea. The bitter taste is less as it cools, but it is still not smooth. I’ll have to try a lower temperature next time. For some reason instead of dumping my cup and trying again I’m making myself drink it. Penance for ruining a cup of expensive tea? Life is too short for bad cups of tea.

Just got back from a month long trip on the road and three days of driving to get home. It’s good to be home! I arrive with a new arsenal of tea purchased on my trip and find some 52teas waiting for me in my mailbox. Feeling a little road weary, I’m hoping some tea will pick me up and cut through my stuffy nose a little.

I have been reading Tea Sipper’s notes on short steeping 52teas, so I’m going to give that a go. At first I steeped this for 30 seconds, but decided to give it an extra 30 in an attempt to bring out more flavors. I can taste the genmaicha, it’s toasty rice and a little bit of butteriness, but I’m not picking up on much more than that. It’s a nice comforting welcome home, but I’ll have to try it again when my nose clears up.

I got this as a sample with my Butiki order, thanks Butiki!
I can taste a nice base to this tea, but I’m not picking up on the almond. It tastes like the Butiki Plum Pudding to me. I’m guessing the same black tea is used for both, which is tasty, but the flavors other than that are lost on me right now.

I’ll have to revisit this and several other teas again after I have sinus surgery which will hopefully restore my sense of taste.

Thanks to Barbara for this sample!
Brewed, this tea smells like the filling of a warm peach pie. The smell is similar to the taste with a little more of a floral aspect to it. A little bit of sugar really rounds out the taste and takes it from floral to full juicy peach! The aftertaste is spot on! The green tea base is hidden in the back and hard to pick out over the peach. I really want to try this tea with cream, but I’m hesitant to disrupt something that is already so good. And my intuition was right! Cream really didn’t add to it and actually takes away from the juiciness of this tea. Second steep was pretty good too! I’m normally not a fan of peach teas (maybe because of association with cheap blacks with overdone synthetic peach), but I’m finding this one quite delicious.

Just read the description and saw it had melon in it too! I’ll have to see if I can pick out the flavor in my next cup! These The O Dor teas have interesting flavor combinations that I’m not picking out before I read what is in them. I’m not as good at identifying tastes as I thought, but it’s fun to try!

The directions say to steep this tea for 2-2.5 minutes. I did 2 minutes for my first steep and boy was I disappointed! It was a little bitter and tasted nothing like cookies. I added milk like it suggests and sugar, but it didn’t help. For my second steeping I did 2 minutes again, added a little sugar and it was a whole different tea! It was very cookie dough like and the black tea base wasn’t over powering or bitter. It seemed pretty creamy on it’s own to me. I did just over 2 minutes for the third steep and it wasn’t quite as delicious as the second steeping. Next time I think I will do the first steep for 1 minute instead of the initial 2.

No notes yet.

No notes yet.

This was one of my picks for Nina’s samples. I tried the other two quickly, but saved this one until now. I don’t remember what the description of it was, so it will be interesting to see what I detect. I think I’m smelling a little chocolate in the tea when dry. Not getting much while it’s brewing, but my nose is a bit stuffy. First thing I taste is orange. Strong orange, but not puckering, overpowering or bitter. Adding a little sugar makes each sip juicy and taste like the chocolate oranges that you smack to break up. This tea is balanced well. The black base is almost undetectable leaving the chocolate orange to take the lead. On it’s own, it’s really good, but when compared to the other two Nina’s teas I tried, it is my least favorite.

My sister and I went tea shopping in San Francisco. Our last stop was the Aroma tea shop. The other tea shops we stopped at in Chinatown had only a few flavored teas which was a bit of a let down, but then we stepped into Aroma which had a ton of flavored teas. I chose a coconut green tea and as the gal was weighing it out she offered us a tasting of another tea. She peeked into a few gaiwans she had on the counter with wet leaves in them, choose one and poured. I sipped and at first it seemed plain and run of the mill. Then on the back part of the sip, the magic happened! A wave of sweet licorice and herbs washed over my mouth getting more powerful on the aftertaste and lingered a while. I was a little floored! The gal said it didn’t have any sweetener, it was all the licorice root that added the sweetness. Then she told me it was $39/4oz! It is good for up to six steepings and our tasting was the fourth. I must have sat staring at the wall of tea for a minute or so holding onto the last shred of my willpower before I caved and bought two ounces. On the way back to my car, I could still taste that tea and wanted more.

At home I’m discovering that to get it as strong as it was made at the shop, I have to use more tea than I am accustomed to. The gal at the shop said to use a tablespoon worth! The smell of the tea also reminds me of a medicinal chinese shop and I have always been fascinated with those stores. It’s that mixture of dried ginseng, ginger, licorice root and a bunch of other herbs. This tea is so strange and I like it! I’ll have to play around with it some more to get it to taste like the sample.

Thank you Barbara for sending me this sample!
It’s fruity, it’s floral, it’s something I can’t quite put my finger on. The smell of this tea brewed didn’t really stand out as anything unique, but the taste has much more depth to it. At first I thought I was tasting peaches, but now as I taste a slight perfume like freshness on the sides of my tongue, I’m thinking roses. Not the overdone synthetic perfume rose flavor, but a true fresh rose petal flavor. The more sips I take, the stronger it tastes. My mouth feels a little dry after each sip with inviting me to drink more.

Now I’m reading the description of the tea to see what the flavors were… fig and lotus! Fig?! I mistook fig for roses? Now that I know what that flavor was, I can clearly taste how it is fresh fig off the tree, reminding me of how much of my childhood I spent up a fig tree. It amuses me that fig and rose have similar taste qualities, something I had never linked in my head before and I wonder how well they would pair.

This tea is really well rounded and has a rich quality to the taste that I enjoyed to the last sip. I’m intrigued by the unique ingredients, but I think I need to have another cup before I give it a rating.

A big thank you to teapot1 for sending me this tea! I am really enjoying it!
This tea smells like cloves and toasted rice. Never thought to put the two together, but it seems to work! For most of the cup the flavors of chai vs. genmaicha is pretty even, but as I get to the bottom, the cardamom and clove start to dominate and the rice is less noticeable. I hesitate to add milk for fear of ruining something that is already quite nice, but I’ll have to give it a go one of these cups.
What a strange and beautiful creature this tea is!

This tea smells SUPER over the top amaretto-y. It still holds a ton of that scent when brewed and the taste is pretty strong too. I’m not a fan of it plain, but it’s pretty yummy with a bit of sugar. I tried one cup with sugar and cream which was quite delicious as well. No other words to describe it except yup, amaretto! Unfortunately, this tea gives you all it’s got on the first steeping. The second steeping is just a shadow of it’s former self, which knocks it down a couple points in my book these days. The second steeping has a faint paper taste to it too. Oh, and word to the wise… those almonds mixed in with the tea are not for consumption. Imagine putting 1/4tsp of almond extract in your mouth and that is pretty much what they taste like. Very bitter!.

Aside from the unpleasant almond chewing experience and the fact that it is good for only one cup, I did enjoy it and will be buying it again.

Eh. This tea smelled nice dry, but I’m not getting much flavor at all. A little bit of green, a little bit of vanilla and absolutely no wow. Adding sugar just made it sweeter and did nothing to bring out any flavor. Pity.

Dry, this tea definitely smells like rich honeydew. It is a smell that carries over when brewed, but it exchanges some of the richness for juiciness. The honeydew flavor is strong when the tea is hot, but mellows out letting the sencha come through as it cools with the honeydew hanging on for the aftertaste as if I just had a bite of melon. I love sugar in my tea and adding it did perk up the flavors a little, but somehow didn’t do much to make the tea better.

I’m not quite sure how I feel about this tea overall. It is well done and the flavors are good, but it’s not knocking me off my feet. Maybe in time…

When I got a whiff of this tea dry in the store, I was greeted by a deep smell of caramel with something salty, almost like dried seaweed. When brewed, it took a few sips and a little sugar to taste much. It has a deep caramel flavor that is strangely subtle. It reminds me of the tea I’m used to getting in Japanese restaurants but with a touch of caramel. Not sure how to describe the base of the tea other than that comparison. The caramel hangs on and lingers after each sip. If I could get used to drinking tea with more subtle flavors, I’m sure I’d love this, but as it stands I’m still a fan of bold bossy flavors. I’ll give it some time to grow on me.

No notes yet.

When I open this bag, it smells like the same slightly carmel-y lemongrass base as the lemon chiffon, but with a sharp lime scent that practically makes my mouth water! The creamy taste mellows out the lime, but it doesn’t take away all of it’s tart kick. I have tried it hot and cold, with sugar, with and without milk. It’s delicious any way I make it. The lime taste really does linger after each sip and I have been going through the bag quickly. I took a chance with ordering a full 2oz before trying it and I’m glad I did because I’m really enjoying the crap out of this tea!

I decided to get a little adventurous. I put a teaspoon worth of tea, half cup of rum and a tablespoon of sugar in a jar and left it overnight in the fridge. I tried it the next day and it tasted good, but SUPER strong. So I tried mixing it with some lime flavored soda water and it absolutely killed it. I still had some of the rum-sugar-tea mix left and decided to marinate a slab of ahi tuna in it (about 5 minutes on each side since I was in a hurry). I then pan seared the tuna, pouring half the rum in when searing it on each side. It was a little on the sweet side and a lot on the delicious side with the lime complementing the fish well! I think I might try it with shrimp next time and also try using a smoother rum to begin with. Or maybe I’ll try it on a rum cake! I bet that would be crazy good!

No notes yet.

Dry, this tea smells fruity, but I can’t put my finger on which fruit. While steeping, there is a green fruity rose scent rising from my cup. The first few sips had a bitter twinge which made me question if the three minutes I had steeped it for was too long, but that turned into a short burst of tartness. I just re-read the tea description – apples! Apples and roses, that makes the tartness make sense! It’s like you are biting into an apple and you get that bit of tartness of the skin before the sweet flavor hits you! Adding a little sugar brings out the sweetness of the apples and mellows out that tart burst. The rose seems to mix in the middle of the sip and remains on the end after the apple fades out, although the taste lingering after each sip is pretty balanced between the two. My mouth feels a little dry after, the same feeling I get when I eat rose petals. I’m impressed how this tea is able to taste so much like ripe apples, yet not taste like apple juice. It is as if I just bit into the most juicy floral apple ever. Towards the end of my cup, when the tea has cooled, I’m getting more rose in the beginning of each sip. I steeped a second time for four minutes and put a teaspoon of sugar in this time. The flavor was really amped up! Third steeping at five minutes is a little weaker, but still has a surprising amount of flavor. Fourth steeping at six minutes still has a decent amount of flavor and a bit of that apple tartness! This tea just keeps going!

Like the other Nina’s teas I have tried, this one also has rich bold flavors that last through multiple steepings. If you are a fan of apple flavored tea, this one is a must try!