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Day 19 of my Steepster homemade advent calendar from Kelmishka! I liked this one a lot! It’s very juicy and tastes like natural fruit rather than candy. I get a lot of orange and lemongrass, with some other citrus that’s probably the grapefruit. This is delightful both hot and cold. I appreciate that this stuck to being a fruit/flower/grass blend rather than trying to add a rooibos base, which I think really would have thrown the balance.

Day 18 of my Steepster homemade advent calendar from Kelmishka, who very adorably wrote “Happy Hanukkah!” inside today’s wrapper! She also sweetly included chocolate gelt in the package to really lean into the holiday! Literally every part of this tea hits my flavor profile happy place. I love maple, pumpkin spice, and hojicha. The maple and pumpkin spice flavors are spot on, and the hojicha is a great base for them. Absolutely love this. Happy Hanukkah to all who celebrate! Am I now off to enjoy all my presents like the perennial child that I am? Yes, yes I am. It’s not the best thing about the holiday, but definitely not the worst!

Day 17 of my Steepster homemade advent calendar from Kelmishka. I followed the instructions on Tadin’s website, but I brewed to the far end of the steeping window and 10 minutes is much too long for my preferences. It just came out really STRONG. It’s so bitter that it actively hurts. I can taste cactus at the tail end of the sip, behind the woody bitterness, but it’s a struggle. Diluting this didn’t really help either, unfortunately. Reserving rating since I think/hope this was user error. If I ever make this again, would definitely err on the side of a short steep.

Day 6 of the Dammann Freres advent calendar. I’m not sure that this is “pancake,” necessarily, but it is delicious. I’m getting a lot of banana and maple over a malty black base. I suspect that Dammann uses the same base in a lot of their flavored black teas that I’ve had so far. It works well in this blend, though! Any folks with this calendar and a better sense of black teas, are they using the same base?

This is Day 7 of DavidsTea’s herbal advent calendar. The dry leaf smells very promisingly like caramel, but the brew doesn’t quite live up to the promise for me. Hot or cold, I don’t taste any pumpkin, and there’s an acidity that throws the whole balance of the tea off. Hot, it smells like butterscotch and tastes like apples, cream, and caramel. If it wasn’t for the acidity, I’d enjoy it. Not quite “pumpkin crème brûlée,” but still tasty. But that acidity really stops it from working. There’s enough leaf in the little jar to make several cups, and all of them had that same problem, so it’s not a question of having screwed up the brew on one cup. This particularly doesn’t work cold, unfortunately. It tastes like apple and butterscotch, which is already a flavor profile that works better hot than cold, but then the acidity gets much stronger and makes the whole thing hard to drink. DT’s butterscotch chai is just a much better take on a similar flavor profile.

Combining Days 5 and 6 of the Kiani advent calendar in this note, since I don’t have enough info to add the tea to the Steepster database.

Day 5 was a couple of reusable teabags. Would love feedback from the room on this – do folks actually use these? I have a few, but have been reluctant to use them. Yes, I’m concerned about the hassle compared to a wide-mouthed metal steeper, but I’m also concerned about flavor cross-contamination no matter how well you wash them. I could repurpose these as potpourri sachets or something maybe?

Day 6 is labeled “Lahijan, Iranian Tea.” Poking around on the website (and observing the tea itself), this appears to be a black tea from the city/region of Lahijan. As an aside, I’ve been following Nazanin/Tea Thought’s Instagram stories re: Iran, and for those who are interested in how regional politics affect tea specifically, an internet search of “Lahijan tea” yields some interesting and informative (and predictably disturbing) results.
I’ve never tried an Iranian/Persian tea before, so I was really excited for this one. Part of the reason that I shelled out for international shipping on this advent calendar is that I expected there to be at least one Iranian tea in it. The smell reminds me of Verdant’s Laoshan Black or Whispering Pine’s Golden Snail, though it’s been a long time since I have had either and I can’t find my tasting notes for them now. But it’s very malty and sweet – I can see why the website describes Lahijan teas as having caramel notes, but to me it smells almost like cocoa. The taste is really different from anything I’ve had before though! Admittedly I don’t have a lot of experience with black teas, so do take that with a grain of salt. Those malty and caramel-cocoa notes are there in the sip, but so is something else I’ve never had in a tea before. It’s almost like the roastiness in a tie guan yin, with an element of earthiness too. It doesn’t taste like dirt, which is to say it doesn’t taste muddled and terrible. As it cools, I think maybe that roastiness + earthiness is translating to a leather note – still tasty but not as interesting as when it was really hot. There’s absolutely no astringency in this. Just a hint of dryness comes in at the end of the sip. Overall, a really interesting tea that I’m glad I got to try. I also bought Kiani’s First Flush 2022 Gilan Harvest sample box, which I’m looking forward to trying after getting through these advent calendars.

Day 14 of the Teeccino advent calendar. This one is better than I expected! While I still prefer the “standard” Teeccino base, this one also has a coffee-like flavor. Whereas that one is more robust and rounded, this one feels more like an old-school cup of black coffee. It’s slightly bitter and acidic, with a distinctly rose floral note. Not something that I would necessarily seek out, but not something that I would turn down in the future either!

Definitely needed a break from work, medical appointments, and honestly advent calendars too, so I carved out some time to meet up with a friend at Te Company recently. The weather was dreary. It made me want something really cozy, which means roasted to my mind. I found this so comforting and perfect for warming up on a cold day. It paired perfectly with one of their daikon buns!

Day 16 of my Steepster homemade advent calendar from Kelmishka! I’ve still been drinking my advents the past couple of days but I needed a break from writing up proper tasting notes. So now I have some catching up to do! Thankfully I took handwritten notes to work off of.

I like the pomegranate and raspberry flavors in here! They’re sweet and juicy. It’s got some hibiscus tartness going too, and a little bit of that same syrupiness that some of the Clipper berry teas have. I’m not sure what causes that! In this case, it’s mild enough to be pleasing rather than off-putting – but it does make me think this is one herbal where I wouldn’t suggest leaving the bag in indefinitely. This would also probably make a good tea soda.

Day 15 of the Teeccino advent calendar. I’m going to have to circle back to day 14 – it’s something more adventurous and I can’t handle that at 6am. I had to get up super early for a medical appointment, so I’m sneaking in a cuppa before I leave. This one has the familiar and tasty Teeccino coffee-like base. I wish the “gingerbread” aspect was stronger though. It’s very faint, like a shadow hanging out in the back of the sip. I liked the candy cane flavor more, as holiday flavors go – that one was stronger and truer to its namesake.