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This is Day 4 of the Plum Deluxe 2022 herbal advent calendar. It has a cute punny name, which is endearing. The smell is dead on for chestnut – very seasonal! The chestnut flavor is likewise on point, and it works well with the woody rooibos base. It actually reminds me a lot of GABA brown rice, in a good way. I would definitely recommend this for someone who likes chestnuts. It’s not a flavor I necessarily seek out for myself, though, so I’m fine with just having a sample size. 

ETA: My partner walked into the room asking whether I had brewed up a maple tea because that’s what the chestnut smell reminds him of, which gave me the idea to add a little bit of maple syrup to the brew! Canadians in the room, you probably could have told me this, but maple syrup makes everything delicious and this is no exception. I am much much happier with this cup now that the maple is balancing out the chestnuttiness. I tried using vanilla agave as a sweetener in the previous cup and it just didn’t yield the same kind of results – the flavors didn’t meld as seamlessly. Saved!

Dammann Freres 2022 advent calendar Day 5. Now we’re talking! I absolutely adore marzipan, and the dry leaf of this smells like marzipan. Brewed up, I can taste the cherry and almond. It’s not marzipan, but it is cozy. Plus I got a good second steep out of it, with the flavors still pretty much the same. Apparently this is supposed to taste like gingerbread, but I’m really not getting that. Between this and the flocons d’épices blend yesterday, I’m starting to conclude that either I can’t make out Dammann’s gingerbread flavoring very well or the flavoring is relatively faint. Which is a bit of a shame because I love actual gingerbread, but better to learn it with samples than entire bags/boxes of a blend.

Dammann Freres 2022 advent calendar Day 4. Ok. So. I understand that this is meant to be a gingerbread cookie-type tea. And perhaps that is the experience that others took away from this tea, in which case yay, I’m glad you enjoyed it! But I oversteeped by literally 45 seconds and ended up with something that tastes like one of those oranges with cloves stuck in it. And the thing is, the dry leaf smelled like that too, so I’m not sure how much of this was just about the oversteeping. I offered it to my partner, who rarely likes tea but does enjoy black tea from time to time, and he literally said that all he could taste was cigarettes because the clove was so heavy. Best case scenario is that the lesson here is to be very strict about steeping parameters with Dammann Freres teas, and this tea in particular!

This is Day 5 & 17 of the Clipper advent calendar. It tastes like orange and lemon fruit slices, which works better cold than hot. The sweetness is a little cloying when the tea is hot, but much less so as it cools. Definitely would favor this one as an iced tea.

Day 2 of the Teeccino advent calendar is definitely unexpected. I wouldn’t have thought to combine fruity flavors – especially sunny ones like mango and lemon – with carob, barley, and chicory. The mango and lemon aren’t hypothetical, either. They’re very present in the aroma as soon as you open the wrapper and once you brew it up. The flavor combo actually works better than I thought it would. I keep expecting it to be awful, and then it’s somehow just… not. All of the flavors are there: mango, lemon balm, chicory, carob, and it all kind of just melds together in happy harmony. The mango and chicory really linger, too. This was a really pleasant surprise!

ETA: I looked at everyone else’s notes right before posting this and seem to be the only one so far to have gotten distinct mango and lemon balm notes here. Truly I have no explanation!

Day 4 & 16 of the Clipper advent calendar is Hibiscus & Raspberry. It’s not on their website and doesn’t have a Steepster page, so I’m going with a random steepings post.

In looking at the name of this tea, I involuntarily said – out loud, to an empty room – “well, that’s a choice.” This is a combo that seems intentionally designed to be very sweet and very tart. The initial sips remind me a bit of those little hard candies shaped like flowers. Unfortunately, it very quickly turns too far into sweet and syrupy land, without nearly as much tartness as you would expect. I ended up turning it into a tea soda, which is definitely the way to go with this one. Overall, not my fave, but not for the reasons I expected!

Yay, my Teeccino advent calendar is here! I ordered it during the Black Friday sale so it just arrived. (Oh no, I’ll have to double up a few days, how sad for me!) The calendar is super cute. The only thing I’m not a fan of is that you can immediately see what all 24 teas are, so I took each teabag out and flipped it around. Yes, technically you can still tell what tea it is from the back of the bag, but only if you read really closely – it’s not written in big giant inescapable letters.

Day 1 is Maple Pecan. It smells so wonderfully of maple that I felt compelled to make this as an oat milk latte. So good. Chicory, carob, and maple are definitely the big flavors here. I haven’t had a Teeccino in ages, and I know some folks on here write about some of their blends tasting similar, but I have had other chicory blends and the maple flavor sets this one apart for me. It’s a strong start, and I’m looking forward to finding out how the rest of the calendar stacks up!

This is Day 3 of the Plum Deluxe 2022 herbal advent calendar. I’m feeling particularly sore today, so I was happy to see a ginger tea. I was even happier to realize that the ginger in here is genuinely good quality. It has that specific ginger zing you can only get from proper ginger, down to the slight burning-in-a-good-way on your lips. That ginger heat is complemented by sweetness from the apple in the blend. I got a delicious second steep out of it, too. I steeped for a really long time, though, so the flavor was very heavy on the ginger with only a little bit of gentle sweetness on the back end. Which is fine by me because I like ginger, but maybe not the best representation of everything this blend can do. I made the whole packet in a giant mug so I don’t have any left to play with, but I’d happily play around with this one some more in the future to see if I can tease out the other flavors. That delightful ginger really sells me.

After getting off to a rocky start with a blend I didn’t love for Day 1, the Plum Deluxe 2022 herbal advent calendar redeems itself with an utterly delicious blend for Day 2. The dry leaf and brewed tea smell exactly like a caramel snickerdoodle. I went for a 10-minute steep, just to get as much flavor as I could out of it (and having learned my lesson from Day 1). It worked really well. Drunk straight, the sweet caramel, hint of cinnamon, and cookie flavor are absolutely on point. As an oat milk latte, this is downright decadent. Would happily add this to a future order.

Dammann Freres 2022 advent calendar Day 3. Just assume I’m brewing all of these in my little teapot and drinking them from my delightful, perfect teacup (it’s this one and I’m obsessed with it: https://www.neimanmarcus.com/p/juliska-country-estate-flint-teacup-prod193440738?utm_=). I enjoy the fruitiness of this one, both hot and cold, but it’s a little weird on a black tea base. I think I would have preferred this flavoring on a green tea base. The black tea isn’t astringent or tannic, but it’s still heavy in a way that green teas aren’t, and it weighs down the fruit flavor. The major flavors are peach and strawberry; I really have to work to find the cherry notes. Given another chance, I might try cold brewing this one to see what happens.