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After my chocolate tea disappointment of the morning, I thought I’d give another chocolate tea in my cupboard a try.

This tea made my day! YUM YUM YUM!! Absolutely no bitterness. Smooth, subtle, and delightful chocolate flavor. Delicious without any additives, and would make an excellent foamy tea latte :)

My samples from TheCozyLeaf are 2 for 2.

Update: For my second cup, I decided to make a tea latte. It tastes almost like hot chocolate. Wow!!!

On the 8th Day of Christmas…

I steeped this tea for 3 minutes and it is about as bitter as if I’d steeped it for 10. It has a lot of good reviews, so maybe I did something wrong, but I followed the time/water temp of many of the people who really enjoyed it. Strange.

After putting milk and sugar in, it is enjoyable. There is no way I could ever consider drinking it any other way. Sad :(

On a happier note, today is the first day of my VACATION!!!

I found this seller on Etsy and thought I’d give it a shot. She hand blends her teas.

This is a really wonderful tea. The tea is pale in color and smooth in flavor. The earthy oolong is definitely the flavor in the foreground. The lemongrass and hibiscus are mild and in balance with the oolong.

Putting this on my shopping list :)

Update: The more I sip this the more I can taste the sour (in a good way) lemongrass. YUM!

Another winner from Della Terra. I don’t think I’ve had a tea from them that I didn’t like.

This tea has everything I like about chocolate covered cherries and makes it work with the tea :) A wonderful dessert tea and a great way to start my vacation.

I really really want to love this tea because I love cotton candy, but I just don’t. The cotton candy flavor that should be there just isn’t for me. It’s better when I add milk and sugar. Thank you to LiberTEAS for sending me a sample so I could give it another go. I’ll be passing the rest of this on to Kim :)

This is a tea I’ve wanted to try for a while. It was so sweet of LiberTEAS to include it in my Christmas Swap box.

Does anyone else do this? I heat my water while I’m blow drying my hair. Then I pour it over my tea to steep and go back to getting ready. Sometimes I forget my tea. AND then over steep it by 10 minutes. GAH!! That’s what I did this morning with this tea. Bummer. I can tell it’s a great tea, so I look forward to my next brewing. I hope I don’t mess it up again.

After reading the description of this tea, I thought for sure I would hate it. I couldn’t fathom how earl grey would blend with fruit. Beautiful blend of flavors. Now I have to decide if I should buy more. Tough decision.

Re-steeped yesterday mornings tea for work today :) Still delicious. This is going to be a good day!

On the 5th day of Christmas…

I haven’t had a chance to try the 4th day Earl Black yet. Must taste it this afternoon. Kim and I went ahead and had today’s tea this morning.

It was a nice smooth nutmeg/vanilla black tea. I couldn’t really taste pumpkin or cheesecake. Pumpkin pie is a favorite of mine and I was hoping to have a bit of that flavor in it. I can do without cheesecake, so I was happy not to taste it. It is a good flavored black tea, but doesn’t really taste much like its name would suggest.

Received some great news tonight. Felt like celebrating by enjoying a cuppa rooibos while watching the series finale of Gossip Girl.

This was one of the many generous sample I received in my holiday sampler box from Nicole. I LOVE this tea! It doesn’t have the greatest of reviews here on Steepster, but I’d like this to be on my shelf always :)

It is wonderfully honey flavored with a hint of lemon. I like that the honey is the dominant flavor. Honey has always been a favorite of mine. It needs to become the sweetener I use more often with tea. I can barely taste the rooibos, but I think it works as a base. It is calling for a second steeping.

Kim, you need to come over tomorrow night for a cuppa :)

On the 3rd day of Christmas…

Okay, so my friend Kim and I are a day behind. Hoping to catch up this evening with Earl Black.

At first sip, this reminded me of Adagio Teas Lemon Cloud Rooibos. It has a very similar flavor. I can definitely taste the lemongrass. Green tea is not my favorite, but this was enjoyable. The more I sipped it, the more I could taste the grassy flavor of the green tea.

This tea was calling to me this morning from my tea cabinet. I was in the mood for a sweet dessert tea this morning and this did not fail me. A little sugar and milk…brilliant!! This is taking my Monday morning blues away and helping me focus on the work ahead this week.

While shopping at Elaine’s Tea Shoppe in Toledo, I came across this tea and loved the idea of earl grey and jasmine – two of my favorite teas.

It is enjoyable. I don’t want to rate it just yet. I feel like I need to have another shot at it to truly know how I feel.

On the 2nd day of Christmas…

This was surprisingly enjoyable. I have to admit that at first smell, I thought for sure I would not like this. I’m not a fan of bananas and that is the main scent of the honeybush.

It tastes much like Juicy Fruit bubble gum.

I’m really enjoying these daily teas and sharing them with a great friend. Looking forward to finding what tomorrow holds.

I love when I find a tea I can enjoy without any additions. Smooth, creamy toffee with the rich, dark, earthy pu-erh – perfect blend of flavors. Each sip promises that this will be a staple on my tea shelf. WOW!!!

Picked this up at Elane’s Tea Shoppe in Toledo. So glad I did. What a delightful way to begin my day :)

So glad Steepster is working again this afternoon. Wrote this in the morning:

YAY! The 12 days before Christmas is finally here which means…52Teas 12 Days of Christmas!!!

Did you know that the actual 12 days of Christmas are the 12 days after Christmas that lead to Epiphany? It’s the day we celebrate the arrival of the wise men as well as the baptism of Jesus. Pretty cool.

But anywho, the tea for Day 1 is Cotton Candy black tea :) Cotton Candy is my favorite fair food and can’t get enough of it. My family did Thanksgiving at Golden Coral this year and they now have cotton candy. Sadly, they didn’t make much of it. I joked (maybe) that my whole dinner was going to be cotton candy. This definitely tastes like cotton candy. I added sugar because cotton candy is spun sugar :) YUM! Taking some to my friend Kim this morning. Sharing this tea was my Christmas gift for her. She’s on Steepster now! She’s a beautiful writer so I can’t wait to see what she has to say about the teas she tastes.

I felt like making a foamy tea latte and decided to go with my newest addition. I’m surprised to taste cinnamon since it wasn’t listed in the ingredients and I’m a little disappointed not to taste more ginger. It seems like when cinnamon is in tea it overpowers every other flavor, so maybe that’s what’s happened. It has a nice creamy vanilla smoothness with it. I’m not going to rate this until I have it again. I want to give it a second chance to impress me :)

This was the sample tea today at the Komfort Tea Spot in Defiance. This was only my second time at this particular establishment.

The tea has a very nice gingerbread flavor. At first, I didn’t recognize that it was rooibos :) It was sweet on its own. I nearly bought some, but the store sales start at 2 ounces and I wasn’t sure I wanted that much of it. I may change my mind later and wish I had bought some.

The plan today was to try to go the entire day without tea. I’ve been feeling fuzzy brained lately and wondered if it had to do with tea consumption. Then the mailman delivered a package of tea I ordered from Della Terra. Each of the teas were calling to me…so I gave in.

This tea was nearly everything I had hoped for. The dry tea smells heavenly and could be a potpourri to scent your house (if you wanted to waste it). The first flavor I tasted was a strong cinnamon. Kind of like a red hot. But quickly the other flavors come out – vanilla and ginger. YUM! The more I sip it the more I enjoy the smooth flavor of the vanilla.

Now the question is, can I resist the urge to make a second cup?!?

Just made a foamy tea latte with this delicious tea. This is definitely my favorite dessert tea. PLEASE Della Terra keep this as a regular! I don’t think the 4 ounces I’ve purchased will last long enough and I’m too broke to buy more right now :)

While looking through my samples this morning, I decided to blend a couple. I wanted a chocolate-y coconut-y blend. I took my Coconut Oolong from Zen Tea and blended it with Teajo’s Dark Chocolate Dream. If I blend these two in the future I will use a bit more Dark Chocolate Dream. It is a nice smooth cup of coconut tea with just the lightest hint of dark chocolate :) Dessert for breakfast. YUM!

FINALLY a good tea for the evening. After 2 bad choices, I decided to go back and try this one again. I followed Nicole and Shang Tea’s advice and steeped for 1 minute. It made a huge difference. I love how delicate the flavors are in white teas. This one is smooth and light. Floral teas like this are soooo yummy! I could see this being a staple on my shelf :)

I’m weeding out my tea right now and trying to drink my way through my samples and choose the favorites that I want to keep as a staple tea. I decided to go for a sample Nicole sent me. I made a pot of this tea and wanted to like it. How could a black tea with coconut go wrong? There was something off with the flavor and I couldn’t stomach it.