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Waaah, I was washing one of my tea sets today and dropped a teacup. It chipped and I had to toss it. I didn’t have any emotional attachment to it, it wasn’t particularly expensive or anything, but it was pretty and I’m a little mad at myself for having broken it.

Anyway, Day 20 of the Plum Deluxe herbal tea advent calendar is called Raspberry Warmer Herbal! It’s not on their website anymore and I already tossed the packet, so I can’t make a page for it. This one is tasty though! It tastes like sweet juicy raspberry. I particularly enjoyed it iced and finished it off very quickly.

Day 19 of the Plum Deluxe herbal tea advent calendar. I tried this hot. I tried it brewed long and strong, and per instructions. I tried several cups of it. All were extremely unpleasant, I assume because of the horsetail. I’ve never tried it before and don’t particularly care to again! I finally found a way to at least make it drinkable – brew according to steeping instructions and then let cool until it’s iced tea. That seems to mellow the horrible horsetail flavor. The lavender in this is pleasant enough, I just can’t quite get past the other, hard-to-describe flavor. It’s not quite bitterness or tartness… I can’t describe it, it’s more like a sensation than a flavor really. I don’t know that everyone would have the same reaction. This might be some personal quirk. 

This is a sipdown for Ashmanra’s sipdown challenge, International Irish Whiskey Day. I don’t have any whiskey-flavored teas, so I went for a loosely alcohol-themed one. This one is definitely better iced than hot, but even iced it’s just… ok. Not terrible, I get some coconut and pineapple flavor, but something about it just doesn’t quite click. Unfortunately I didn’t take good notes while drinking so I can’t be more specific than that, and will also therefore refrain from giving it a score. But, to borrow a GeekSteep phrase, this won’t be a restock/resteep for me.

Finally did a sipdown of Red Leaf Tea’s French Vanilla Matcha. It’s years old, but I’ve been saving a bit of it in the freezer to enjoy judiciously because I loved it so much. This was one of the rare flavored matchas that tasted like its namesake and didn’t have sugar in it to carry the flavor. I’ll drink the sugared ones, but it’s not a formulation that I love. The flavor has faded a bit with age, so this last cup (made as a latte) was very umami-forward with the french vanilla flavor coming in at the end of the sip.

Our freezer broke, so I have to make a concerted effort to drink through the matchas I had in there. The fridge will only keep them fresh for so much longer, alas.

Day 11 of the Kiani advent calendar. The instructions say to mix with heated milk, but after how things went with the dragonfruit matcha, I decided to use water instead for fear that the milk would overpower the flavor of the tea. Although the tea is described as floral, I’m getting more of a hay flavor with some sweetness. As it cools, the floral comes out a little bit, reminiscent of chrysanthemum flowers. I’ve never had a powdered white tea before, so I don’t really have a metric against which to measure this except loose leaf white tea. On that scale, it’s neither the best nor the worst white tea I’ve ever had. But I’m also not sure that it’s the right frame of comparison…

ETA: This is my 900th tasting note!

Day 9 of the Kiani advent calendar. I brewed this up gong fu style in a pretty floral ceramic gaiwan I’ve been wanting to test drive. I didn’t count the number of steeps but it was somewhere in the 5-10 range. Somehow it was never as strong as I wanted it to be, even when I used less water and longer steep times later on. Mostly I got a malty, bready flavor at the front of the sip and a lingering cinnamon note. Earlier steeps had a caramel sweetness that mostly faded away in later steeps (though I got some honey in the final steep, which I made using very little water and brewing for 5 minutes). This is another one of those times where I just wish I had a little more leaf to really get to know the tea and decide how I feel about it – I suspect it’s a pretty tasty brew if you can get the parameters right and get it not feeling quite so thin.

Day 10 is a black Kiani tea canister. It’s not airtight so I wouldn’t actually use it to store my loose teas, but I deconstructed it and put it to use. The lid is made of wood, very cute, and about the right size, so I repurposed it as a coaster. The container itself is now holding some little tea samples.

Day 24 of the DavidsTea herbal advent calendar, and a bit of a disappointing note to end on. I feel like I’ve had this one before and never been a big fan of it. I’m just getting generic red berry, nut, and… coconut? hibiscus? It just feels like a random assortment of ingredients and it doesn’t work for me, unfortunately.

I’m glad I did this advent calendar, but I don’t think I would do it again. There were a few real treasures and sleeper hits – Sleepy Lychee, Valerian Nights, and North Star come to mind – but for the most part it feels like a lot of these blends either hit middle-of-the-road territory for me or were things that just don’t justify ordering a whole advent calendar (I’ll always love a peppermint tea but it’s not enough to get me to buy an entire sampler). Super pretty packaging though, and I’m a big fan of the little tins!

Day 23 of the DavidsTea herbal advent calendar. This smells amazing. Sweet creamy caramel with a nice baked note. Unfortunately, that doesn’t quite translate into the flavor. The caramel is here, and it’s great. I think it’s the same as in the salted caramel oolong, which I really enjoy. But there’s also a strong apple flavor, and a sweetener I can’t quite place but don’t like – stevia maybe? Yup, just looked at the ingredients and the first ingredient is apple and there is indeed stevia in this. Doesn’t seem to have the same caramel bits/flavoring as the salted caramel oolong though, I must have just read that into it because the flavors are so similar. And nothing remotely cookie-like or giving me a baked vibe. I’m glad I got to try this but don’t feel any need to drink more of it.

Apparently I had one sachet of this 5 years ago and all I got from it flavor-wise was berry and stevia, leading me to give it a 45 rating. I don’t know if the formulation changed or my palate did (or both). Bumping up a few points because of the nice caramel flavor.

Day 22 of the DavidsTea herbal advent calendar. Because of the valerian, it took me a while to get around to this one – both because I don’t like the taste of valerian and because I could only have it at bedtime. But it’s not at all what I expected! I can’t taste the valerian at all. Rather, it tastes like creamy caramel apple – somehow light and airy, though the flavors aren’t weak or faint. Just a pleasant surprise all around.

Day 21 of the DavidsTea herbal advent calendar. I am not a huge fan of this one. I guess the name is because of the butterfly pea flower making it purplish-blue? It is that pretty color, and if I recall correctly this was initially released a few years ago when butterfly pea flower was very trendy. Which is fine and fun. But the flavor is a little eh. First off, it varies depending on what pieces from the blend you can actually get into the steeper. So the first time I made this, I got a strong berry flavor. But the second time, because I didn’t get a berry into the steeper, the brew tasted more of coconut than berry. The result is that it doesn’t feel super balanced or particularly interesting, more just gimmicky. It’s ok enough that I’ll finish off the little sample, but I have no desire to ever drink it again.