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Well I woke up to no Internet. I actually have no Internet, no TV and no home phone. And the service provider cannot come for 7 days. And that’s my fault because I can’t accommodate their schedule and refuse to take an entire day off work to wait all day for them to show up and prolly change a dumb cable or something and be done in 15 minutes. It’s amazing how much of my life revolves around Internet.

Day 5.

The smell of the dry tea is very much like Orangina. Sweet but tangy orange citrus. The brewed tea is woody rooibos with kind of medicinal citrus. There is a bit of a metallic tang. There is a sharp aftertaste.

I am not a huge rooibos fan but this one isn’t terrible.

I typed this out on my cell phone. It was horrible :)

Drinking Day 4 on Dec 4!! Yah for me! I am finally caught up. Ha ha, it only took me one day to get off track.

This is one of my super favs from Dammann. I actually bought a 100g of this tea at the same time I bought the advent calendar. I am glad this one was in the calendar again.

Pastry, cake, almond, sweet candy floral. Moderately bold but smooth black base. Neither the base nor the flavours overshadow the other.

This one is a bit more sweet than I remember but I am ok with that. It still tastes delicious.

Day 3 of advent calendar.

Black licorice water.

That is what this one tasted like. I actually went and looked at my old review and I actually seemed to quite like it last year. This year I am getting mostly black licorice. Every once in a while I wonder if there is caramel or vanilla in the cup but then it turns back to the black licorice. Reminds me of licorice allsorts candies.

I actually didn’t even finish this cup. I am not much of a black licorice fan at all. I will leave my rating as it stands from last year. Weird this one is so different to me this year.

Day 2 of Dammann’s advent calendar. I am behind :(. I kept forgetting to bring each day’s tea to work. In fact I forgot day 2 on day 2, then on day 3 I forgot day 2 and 3. By then tme get home from work it is too late to be drinking caffeinated teas. So today I remebered to bring them and I have 3 teas to drink at work today to catch up. I was so jealous reading the reviews from Cameron B and Dinosara the past few days.

I love this tea. To me it is delicious. It tastes like hubba bubba/bubbilicious bubble gum. I love the sweet orange flavour. It is like candy. The other spices are really light in the background. The black base is fairly light but I find the liquor quite thick. I was quite happy to have this one in the calendar again this year.

This one is again, from Scribbles!

This will be just a quick note. I either did not steep this one long enough or use enough leaf.

The overall taste is good. Malty. Earthy but not is a dirt way, if that makes sense. There is a very nice natural sweetness to the tea. I get hints of roasted potatoes or something like that.

It is just too thin and weak. I will have to adjust and report back.

Edit:
I made another cup with about 2 tsp. This tea is pretty “airy” so I thought I should use a bit more. The flavours stayed the same but it was much more thicker liquor. Even though the mouthfeel was thicker it still tasted a bit thin/weak. Overall still a good tea. Not the best Dian Hong I have had though.

Day 1 of Advent Calendar.

This is one of the teas in the calendar I had not tried before.

On first sniff of the tea sachet it smelled strongly of green tea, maybe a bit bitter with strong artificial strawberry scent.

The brewed tea initially tasted quite bland and thin and my first thought was that I needed to add some sweetener. After the tea sat for a bit in my travel mug it thickened up quite a bit. The green tea base is quite creamy and buttery. Slightly vegetal and astringent in the aftertaste. No need to add sweetener becuase the tea also has transformed into hints of sweet strawberry, albeit artificial strawberry. On every few sips I feel like I get a kick, like the kind you get from tart pineapple. I don’t seem to taste any other fruits but the overall taste is vaguely tropical. I think the cornflowers are what is giving the tea the thick feeling. I anticipated it to have a bit of pastry flavour but I am not getting any of that today.

A decent start to the next 24 days.

I received this one free from Joseph Wesley. Thank you so much Joe!!! It is greatly appreciated.

For the most part I don’t usually like Darjeeling. It seems to always taste like ash or dirt or a mixture of both to me. It doesn’t matter whether it is high or low quality tea. I haven’t been able to figure out why most Darjeelings taste bad to me but every once in a while there is one that I don’t mind. There are a few blends of Darjeeling I do quite like, Red Tailed Hawk from A&D is one of them.

First off, I love Joseph Wesley’s packaging. It came in a cardboard tin, the tea was in a sealed package inside the tin with an additional card with brewing instructions.

The dry leaves are small, dark and uniform in shape and colour. This tea is pretty. The smell of the dry tea is quite sweet. Maybe a sweet floral type scent, floral more like honeysuckle vs rose.

The tea brews up a reddish brown colour. The scent is still the sweet floral. There is also that slight scent of ash that I often get from darjeelings. This tea tastes quite good. It is definitely on the small list of darjeelings I like. The tea is crisp and clean. There is a strong sweetness, and a light honeysuckle type floral flavour.

While the tea is hot, I quite enjoyed it. There was a very slight but pleasant drying on the back of my palate after each sip. I found after it significantly cooled, the pleasant dryness turned into an astringency that I didn’t like. The ash flavour also became more dominate in the cooled tea with a long lingering aftertaste.

I definitely like this tea while it is hot. I am sure I will be able to manage drinking it that way :)

Another sample from the amazingly awesome Scribbles!

On first smell of the dry tea, I get strong vanilla and cake/pastry notes. Which I found odd for a keemun but I am keen to continue.

When the hot water first hit the tea, the smokiness of the keemun wafted up. It was sweet, slightly smokey.

In order, the first flavour notes I got from this tea were: malt, smoke, tobacco. Delicious. There are definitely light undertones of vanilla cake. The smokey flavour was quite light. There was a very natural sweetness to this tea, that complemented the smoke flavour. The tea liquor was thick, it was moderately bold, there was no astringency which was quite nice (and also a surprise).

My all time favourite teas are Assams, but keemuns do come in a close second.

Thank you to the lovely Angel for sending me some oolong samples :)

The dry tea looks like clusters of darker green tea. The scent it a bit cabbage-y. It very much reminds me of a long jing green tea scent.

I have had this tea before, and looking at my review, I feel like this is a totally different tea. To be honest it probably is a different tea as it would be from a different years harvest. I also brewed it differently.

The tea brewed up quite nice. The clusters did not fully unfurl which indicates to me there are many more steeps to come.

This tea is very lightly floral, but there is that nice vegetal flavour similar to the long jing. It is smooth, slightly buttery. I am not getting any astringency that I picked up on the first time I had this tea.

Again, very impressed with Teavivre as usual :)

Another sample from the Awesome Scribbles!

I was looking for just a straight black tea this morning. I couldn’t stomach the thought of a flavoured tea for some reason. No matter, I picked this one.

This tea is interesting. I am getting a lot of earthy tones, slightly mushroom. I immediately wondered if this one was blended with a pu-erh tea, but it doesn’t seem to be. It is thick, bold, malty and slightly sweet, sweet only in the way a black tea could be sweet. Still getting lots of fresh soil, earthy tones. Which is not terrible, just not what I anticipated from this tea. I could imagine how good this te would be with milk, but I went for straight black as I usually do not add any milk or sweeteners to my black teas.

Not my favorite Joseph Wesley tea so far, but it is still good, just not to my taste.