OMGsrsly

Hrmm. Maybe this is just getting old. Or maybe the water I used was still too hot. I’m not getting much grapefruit from this at all. Just seaweedy spinachy green tea.

It’s good green tea, for sure. It’s just missing the grapefruit.

Today is definitely a caffeine day.

I had some of that Happy Planet smoothie that has Yerba Mate, and now this. After this, probably some breakfast tea. Mmm.

Mostly my asthma is terrible. Allergies are also making things annoying. That means my sleeps aren’t restful and I’m waking up feeling like I’m hungover. I should remember to take some Reactine today! (Ok, did that.)

I do like this one in 50/50 milk/water, to give it that hot chocolate/ovaltine taste. I’ve tossed in a few pieces of Chicory Dickory Dock today, as I’ve found love in After Dark by Steam, which is chicory and chocolate. I won’t go out of my way to get a tonne of this tea, but I do like it and am enjoying what I have, for what it is. Which is a tea that doesn’t work in plain water. :)

Om nom nom.

Oh, this is so so so so good. The chocolate essence is deep dark 90% chocolate flavour. There isn’t so much chicory in here that it’s ridiculously bitter like chicory dickory dock (although that might be the vanilla).

I’ve been enjoying this heated on the stove top in 50/50 water and almond milk. I don’t add sugar to this one. I also only use 1 tsp per giant mug (about 20 oz), and steep for 10 or more minutes. This tea is heavy, so you don’t get a lot. I prefer a longer steep to get all the spicey goodness out, as well as conserve the tea.

It’s OK in water, but since the tea tastes like an amazing mix of ovaltine and coffee substitute with a splash of chai spice, I do prefer it with at least 50% milky stuff.

Made cake. With tea. http://www.shutterbean.com/2012/chocolate-earl-grey-cake/

It’s all I can do to not dig into it right this minute, but I have to save it for tomorrow.

It’s so good, people. So. Good. The extra floral of this earl grey really adds to the cake, but I imagine it’d be excellent with pretty much any tea you favour. Jasmine, chai, vanilla, strawberry, rose…

(I just use milk with lemon or vinegar to sour it, since I’m lazy and don’t always have yogourt. I also use 1 1/2 cups sugar as I prefer my baking less sweet.)

(Also, I really dislike this tea for drinking, unless I’m super careful and do a hot brew then pour it over ice. And add some citrus pieces. Too floral for me.)

Oh, wow. I steeped at about 98C for 3 minutes like I usually do with black teas. The colour is a gorgeous red-brown, and looks like it would be a perfect base for a spiced Thai iced tea recipe.

The tea? Oh geez. Bitter AND astringent. Behind the blech are some lovely malty and floral notes.

I ended up adding a bunch of milk and more honey than I usually do, but I think I’m going to dump this and try brewing with much cooler water for 2 minutes.

Edit: And as I sat here applying for work and eating my stew, the tea is gone. Maybe I don’t dislike it as much as I thought it did? Or maybe I just wasn’t paying attention and would have drank pretty much anything.

I, uhh, “accidentally” got some of this tea today. My goal is to branch out and try more non-flavoured teas.

This doesn’t steep up dark at all. When they say clear, they really mean clear.

I steeped 4 minutes, and IDK that I’m getting a lot of astringency out of it, even though it’s been sitting on my desk for about 3 hours at this point, and is cold. It’s very light and floral, with that darjeeling backbone. If that makes sense.

I do like this tea, and am happy to drink it completely plain (oh yeah. I didn’t add ANYTHING to this mug!). I wouldn’t drink it much in the morning, it feels more like an afternoon tea.

Yet another tea I picked up yesterday. Yeesh.

ShayneBear was right. This is way better cooked in some milk. I did 50/50 soy milk and water, and left it on the stove for about 15 minutes. It’s cinnamon and chocolate – mostly cinnamon, though. I don’t need to add anything else to it because it’s sweet and flavourful enough.

I couldn’t imagine drinking this just steeped in water. So I won’t. I also probably won’t buy any more, because it’s more of a novelty tea for me!

Yeah, another tea I picked up today. The 2/$5 really sucked me in.

Anyways. I really dislike honeydew. I will eat around it in fruit salad, and leave the sad green blocks on my plate or in my bowl. So why did I pick this up? Because apparently when it’s hot I get sucked into all things melon. I even had a slice of watermelon today, when usually I pass. Weird.

The smell is definitely floral, ripe, honeydew melon. Dry it has more scent than when steeped. Tasting it, it’s floral, ripe melon. It’s rather sweet, and reminds me of those melon milk candies I find at the Asian market.

It’s, uhh, not my favourite. Mostly because I don’t like what it’s flavoured as. If it was cantaloupe, I’d be all over it. The background flavours work really well together with the melon. That being said, I will happily drink this one up. It’s another tea that will be excellent at work, as all it requires is hot water. I’ve already transferred most of the tea into iron-shut tea bags, ready to bring with me tomorrow. I won’t buy more, though. Why did it have to be honeydew?

I was sniffing the new teas today, and caved and decided to get some of this one. It smells of delicious tropical fruits. Cherries, berries, the blackberry leaves, and yes some passionfruit. It reminds me of Black Cherry Berry from Celestial Seasonings, just more tropical.

The brew is fairly light, but is very fragrant. It tastes pretty much how it smells, and is quite sweet. I won’t be adding sugar to this one unless the hibiscus makes it super tart as it cools.

I can definitely pick out the blackberry leaves, possibly due to how many herbal teas I’ve had in my life. The flavour they lend is amazing, so I don’t mind.

Yeah, as it cools it’s definitely the fruity herbal tea of my childhood taste that’s coming out. I might end up getting more of this, just for nostalgia sake.

ETA: 2nd steep of 7 minutes works too! Yay!

Since this was on sale at my local DavidsTea, I picked up a couple packets. I think I need to go get more. MOAR TEA! That’ll be a nice walk tomorrow (3k each way!).

ahem

I got a scoop of tea in a bag in my mug at the store, and have refilled it about 5 times now. Using boiling water is almost too much, as the few white tea leaves do give off a lot of bitter. However, the fruit and coconut are so freaking sweet, it’s almost a nice counter point. This is an excellent work tea for me as all I need is boiling water. I have no idea what this tastes like. Coconut and berries? Kinda. Nuts and sweet fruit? That’s probably more like it. It seems vague to me, but also quite tasty.

Yes, the top of the water gets a little oily from the coconut chunks, but it’s manageable in my glass mug and cuppow lid (Make sure you tighten it a lot or it will leak!). The flavouring is quite in your face, but once the berries wake up (2nd steep) I really like it a lot. I’ll probably use the iron-shut poly bags I have for this tea, so I can get full use of it. The paper bag broke part way through the day, so I’ve been straining random chunks out with my teeth. Heh. Not my favourite.

Sip down!!

Threw this into my travel mug on my 30 minute at-home break between temping and my normal part time job.

It’s alright. Strawberry, lemon, sweet, no caffeine. I’m not sure I’ll get it again, since it’s so expensive for what you get, but it was good while it lasted!

Brought this one with me to make my brother try. This time I rinsed for ~10 seconds, then did a 30 second steep for my mug and a 45 second steep for his mug. His mug smelled so much fruitier than mine! So cool how the tea changes in later steeps.

I left him half of what I had left. I still have enough for 2 smaller mugs of several steeps.

Thanks so much, Heather! We both quite like this tea. I’m going to have to put it, or something similar, on my to buy list. :)

Brought some of this with me on the drive over to my brother’s. I love ginger and lemon together, and if steeped 2 minutes at a cooler temperature the green tea base isn’t too bad.

I need to try this one iced.

Goes well with chocolate-coconut macaroons. Or “chocolate chews”. Whatever you call them, this.. uhh.. lunch of mine is delicious.

Compared this to Oats ‘n’ Honey this morning. I like this one more better.

http://steepster.com/OMGsrsly/posts/174048

I need more information about these teas! I’m starting to want to track locations and types, to see if I can figure out why I prefer certain teas.

Anyways. I have a whole pile of this for my mom, so I thought I’d try it for her today since it’s Mother’s Day. :D See if I can figure out why she likes this one more than the Hathikuli Estate Assam. Because I don’t get it.

Comparing to the Hathikuli, this tea has smaller leaves, some in pieces. There are less golden tips. The smell is stronger and earthier. The colour of the brewed tea is darker and redder. It’s strong and fairly thick, a chocolatey and malty, a little bitter, and verges on being quite astringent. This is a morning tea for sure. Hathikuli Estate Assam is an afternoon tea in comparison.

I much prefer an Irish or English breakfast tea in the mornings, as they seem to be blended with things that tone down the astringency and bitterness while still delivering a tea with huge morning impact.

I don’t get why my mom prefers Oats and Honey – she goes on about how she seems to prefer floral teas, and doesn’t like earthiness. So I’m confused. Maybe we’re just identifying flavours differently? IDK. It makes it really hard to pick and choose teas that she would like.

From CrowKettle. :)

I’m not too sure about this one. It smells like a nice spiced tea, not that I’m really getting ‘pumpkin’ or ‘cheesecake’ out of it. There is definitely caramel.

Based on some other peoples comments about 52teas, I used cooler water (cooled 5 mins in the kettle!), and only steeped 3 minutes. Which seems to have been too long or too hot.

I do like the caramelly spicy flavour, but the base isn’t my favourite. Thanks for giving me such a huge sample to play with, CrowKettle. I do appreciate it, and will enjoy what I have even though I wouldn’t buy this tea.

Ooh! Pleasantly surprised here. I cold steeped overnight, then heated it up in the microwave to enjoy warm.

WAY better than hot steeped. At least for me!

I did get this tea because I’ve seen a couple people be really enthusiastic about ordering it, so I know there are people out there who love it. Just not me. Good thing ShayneBear wants to try some, because getting through the 50g on my own would be a bit of a chore.

I apparently lost this tea in the midst of my many small packages. For someone who has 95 teas, a lot of them sure are in small amounts. I should work at finishing some!

Anyways, I’ve only had a couple puerhs before. Golden Phoenix from Silk Road, which is… nothing like this, and Naked Pu-erh from Tealux, which I like in small doses and with a little sugar to counteract the puerh-ness of it. Yeah, IDK.

I didn’t know what this one would be like at all, but I’m trying to try more teas that I wouldn’t normally go for, which is why I asked Heather for this one at the swap/meetup. Thanks, Heather! This tea seems weird, but I’m glad I’m getting to try it. Now if only I could psych myself up to take the first sip! The smell is intimidating.

Ooh. That is good! It’s more like Silk Road’s Golden Phoenix without the cinnamon and citrus. There’s dirt, there’s tea, there’s a lot of deep complex flavours. This one doesn’t need sugar added for me to drink it. I’ll have to note I need to do a comparison of the Naked Pu-erh and this one, to see if I can pinpoint the differences.

I’m gonna pour this in my travel mug and bring it to work with me. This isn’t going to be an every day tea, but now I want to try more puerhs. Success!

(1.5 tsp in almost 16 oz water. IDK that I’d want to use as much tea as they suggest. This is plenty strong for me.)

Oh wow this is a strong tea.

I think I like the English Breakfast my mom got be a bit better. And the Irish Breakfast from Steam.

Ahh well. This is still a good pick me up in the.. technically it’s still morning. :)

Having some of this due to an impending migraine and general lack of energy.

I’ve been sipping on it for a while, just took a mouthful and went, “OMG! Is that CHOCOLATE?!?!” So yeah, apparently there are chocolate notes in this tea.

2 tsp per 16 oz, with a little honey and soy creamer, as usual. Delicious plain, too, but I like stuff in my teas!

Feeling blah today. I fell yesterday and hurt my neck again. Instead of going to campus like I said I would, I’ve been sitting here working on a bunch of different CVs. Whee.

For my second drink today I used this tea, frozen, in a pumpkin frappa-whatsit. It’s really good. The coconut and spices work really well with pumpkin.

I have had this tea for a couple weeks now (at least!) and I despaired at getting it to be drinkable. The black base as well as the flavour oils are designed to give a tart, pithy grapefruit taste. Blech. I don’t like pith at all, so after trying a multitude of different methods of hot brewing it, I tossed some leaves into some cold water and put it in the fridge.

4 hours: Delicate, sweet grapefruit and black tea. Very light colour.
12 hours: Stronger sweet grapefruit and black tea with some pithy bitterness. Still a very light colour.

I enjoy it best at 4 hours, but 12 hours is still lovely with nothing added to it. Tastes like there’s white grapefruit juice added to the tea!

I’m glad I can enjoy this one cold, but wow. Hot really doesn’t work for me at all.

Apparently I have some of this tea at home! I was trying to dig something out of my friends cupboard I hadn’t had before, or at least not that frequently. Oh well.

I’m having this iced with honey today. Brewed double strength (1 tsp per 6-8oz water-that-cooled-5-mins) and poured it over ice, then added ice till the cup was full. I think I ended up with about 16 oz, but I’m not sure.

I added 1/2 tsp honey to it while it was brewing, which was too much. I do like honey with lemongrassy teas, though! Just maybe a lot less next time. A hint of honey rather than it being a prominent flavour.

This tea is so good. I love it iced so much. I hope I can replicate the tastiness at home later, once I’ve finished my laundry!