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No matter how I brew this one, I still get banana. Banoffee, specifically.

Why is the rum always gone?

This one was good today, really clean and fresh-tasting. Now I’ve stopped looking for lemon curd, I feel better able to appreciate it for what it is – a pleasant, minerally green oolong.

I’d still love to get lemon from this, but I can live without it.

205/365

Pulled out the second of my green SBTs. In some ways, I’m glad I waited a while before trying them, because I feel like my appreciation of green tea is greater than it used to be. This one got the usual SBT treatment, modified slightly to take into account the green base (cooler water, slightly shorter steep time). I noticed this last time, but they seem to come out almost fluorescent yellow, which is interesting. It’s much brighter than a “normal” green tea colour, but I’ve no idea why. Answers on a postcard.

To taste, I get mostly candy strawberry and just a hint of kiwi. The strawberry is front and centre, the kiwi mostly in the background (and a little more in the aftertaste). It’s super smooth, with no bitterness or astringency from the base. I’m not even sure I’d peg it as a green tea, if I didn’t know. It’s so smooth and delicately sweet that I’d probably think it was just fruit. It’s nice to have the caffeine, though! The strawberry flavour is clear and fruity-juicy, but I’d really like a bit more kiwi. I feel like kiwi isn’t a flavour I see a lot in tea, and yet I can imagine it pairing perfectly with so many things. I feel like the strawberry here would come over a bit less sweet if the kiwi was more prominent, but I like sweet so I’ve no real complaints.

While I know it’s definitely time to drink these up, I’m also sad that they’re disappearing from my cupboard. SBT are a big part of my tea history, and mostly what got me drinking iced tea in the first place. It’s going to be fine, but it’s not going to be the same.

204/365

I really need a kick this morning! I think I got about 5 hours sleep last night, for a variety of reasons, and so at the moment I’m quite, quite dead. I was bright eyed and bushy tailed at 2am, when I really should have been asleep; I guess that’s what you get for sleeping late on a Sunday! I also watched the latest episode of The Handmaid’s Tale until around 11.00pm, which I’ve learned isn’t the kind of thing you want buzzing around your brain when you’re trying to drift off. Something fluffier would likely have been preferable.

Anyway, this tea parcel came as a sample with my latest Bird & Blend order. I’ve had it before, a long, long time ago, but I don’t really remember all that much about it. According to the wrapper, it’s a blend of yerba mate, lemon (grass, peel & verbena) and ginger. I gave it the recommended 4 minutes in boiling water.

I’m not usually a fan of ginger, but it comes off quite delicate here; a background spiciness, and a hint of flavour, but really no more than that. The lemon is fresh and clean tasting, very bright and refreshing. I wouldn’t exactly say it’s entirely candy-like, but it’s more sweet than it is sour. It reminds me a bit of those candied lemon pieces you can use as cake sprinkles – the ones that are shaped like slices of lemon?

The base is interesting. I thought with a four minute brew time it might be a fairly prominent part of the flavour, but it’s actually not. It’s green rather than roasted, so that perhaps has something to do with it, and there’s also not a hugely significant amount in my scoop – it seems to be mostly lemongrass. There’s the tiniest hint of underlying earthiness if you really concentrate, but I mostly taste lemon with a background hint of ginger. I like it a lot more than I thought I would!

I’m still not feeling entirely awake, but I’m hoping this’ll help at least a little over the next few hours. It might be an early night for me this evening, if I’m still awake past lunch time!

203/365

This came as a free sample with my first order from Vahdam Teas. I say first order, but I have shopped with them previously when they were still Golden Tips Tea. That was many moons ago! What I’d forgotten is that their shipping is so fast! It struck me as rather ironic that an order from India arrived faster than an order from inside the UK, but there you go. Can’t fault their customer service, so far.

I like the level of information on their packaging, which includes all the usual things (name, ingredients, brewing guidelines), but also the month of picking (in this case, October 2017), and the grade of tea (FTGFOP1). I feel like they’re things I rarely come across, but I like knowing. I think it adds a little something to the experience.

As EG goes, this one is pretty good. It’s not too heavy on the bergamot, which is a bonus, just delicately citrussy. It’s sweeter than I’m used to finding; smooth and mellow rather than harsh and biting. The black tea is the real star here, though, being sweetly malty with the tiniest background hint of spice. This could be a good EG for EG haters, I think!

Today’s cup was straight and black, but I really want to try this as a London Fog. On the list of things to try it goes!

202/365

I stayed with my parents for a couple of days this weekend, so this one came from my mum’s tea stash (small at the moment, but we’re getting there!) She isn’t a chili fan, so she was never going to drink this one. It’s an interesting combination – primarily strawberry (very sweet and candy-like), that segues into fiery chili heat. There’s hibi in here, but I actually don’t mind it for once since it tones down the sweetness a little and seems to help bridge the gap between two flavours that I’d otherwise find opposed. I don’t really have a lot more to say about this one, given that it’s a pretty straightforward fruit blend. The two flavours that are supposed to be there are there, and they work better together than I thought they might. I’d probably not repurchase at the moment, but come winter it might be a more appealing prospect. I guess we’ll see!

201/365

Second SBT of the season! I’m hoping I can get through my remaining sachets this year, because they’ve been sitting around in my cupboard long enough. It’ll be a sad day when they’re finally all gone, though. This is the first SBT I’ve tried with a green base, so I’m interested to see how that works out. I let the water cool to around 170 degrees before adding the bag, and left it for around 2 minutes before diluting it with water for its overnight in the fridge. I didn’t top it up to quite two litres this time, since I felt it might get a bit too washed out, so I stopped at around 1.5.

As it happens, it’s turned out pretty perfect. I was a little worried about the green base (I always am more worried about green teas, for some reason…perhaps because I used to hate them?) but in this case I needn’t have been. It’s smooth and unobtrusive, with no bitterness or astringency, and it works well with the flavouring when it does poke out, so no real complaints.

Fridge cold, the taste is a little muted. It’s deliciously creamy, but I don’t get much in the way of peach. The creaminess has a dairy quality about it, rich and lactic, rather than being the kind of sweet creaminess you’d get from vanilla. I hope that distinction makes sense! It’s as if I’d added actual single cream to the jug, which I haven’t, but hopefully you get the picture!

The peach emerges more as the initial chill wears off. Initially, it’s a slightly under-ripe kind of flavour – muted, and a little flat. As it warms, it becomes a fuller, riper, fruitier peach flavour, but thankfully very natural tasting.

I’m enjoying this one. It strikes a nice balance between peach and cream flavours, and it all sits well on the green base. It sounds like the kind of flavour that could be over-sweet and cloying, but it avoids that and ends up tasting dessert-like but not overdone.

I’m sad this one is no longer with us.

200/365

It feels good to reach 200 today, although it’s hard to believe I’m more than halfway with my challenge! Where has the time gone? Today’s tea is another tea lemonade, this time made with Bluebird’s Mojitea. It’s a tea I’ve tried many times before, but never as anything more interesting than a hot tea as far as I recall. Maybe I iced it a couple of times? Memory fails me. Anyway, I hope it’s going to work as a lemonade. I’ve only tried fruit tea up to now, and the base of this one is a green, but it feels like it should work, in flavour terms at least.

In practice, it’s actually pretty good. It comes across a little less sweet than the fruit teas I’ve tried in lemonade previously, and I think the green tea base helps with that. It’s very fresh and clean tasting, and a nice change of pace from yesterday’s super-sweet Eton Mess. The mint seems to come over really well, better than it does when brewed conventionally, and it seems crisper. When mint is hot, I sometimes find that takes on a kind of “muddy” flavour – none of that here. The lime is fairly well defined also, although perhaps a little more muted than I expected it to be.

On the whole, I’m pleased with this one. The flavours are clear and sharp, and the green tea base adds a touch of savoury that tones down the lemonade a little and helps to round out the flavour. It’s far less one dimensional this way, and tastes more like an actual mojito than it ever has before (and it wasn’t bad to begin with…) This is another Bluebird classic I’m happy to keep around!

I used up the last of my current stash of this one by making a jug of iced tea – 4 tsp of leaf in 400ml of boiling water for 5 minutes, poured over ice and diluted 50:50 with lemonade. I made a bigger quantity than usual because my Dad came round for dinner, and he loves this stuff. So do I, come to that! I have a feeling Bluebird might have tweaked their recipe for this one over the last year or so, because it’s a lot better than I remember it being back when I first tried it – less hibi, more strawberry, more candy-like, less sourness. As fruit teas go, it’s really rather excellent. I’ve consistently increased my rating of this one over time, and today I’m increasing it again – from 85 to 95. I really think it’s almost perfect. Last time I drank this, I cold brewed it in lemonade, and I was convinced today’s iced tea would taste flatter and more like the hibi-heavy blend I remember. Not so, surprisingly. It’s not quite as stunning as it is when it spends hours in lemonade, but it’s seriously good, and just perfect on a humid, muggy evening. I’m sad to see this one leave my cupboard, but I know it’ll be back before too long. This is one I want to keep around.

As a side note, I should probably point out that it’s particularly hot in my flat this evening because I have all the windows closed. I don’t live too far from where I work – about a 15 minute walk, and right before I left work for home this evening a genuine (genuinely fucking huge) hornet flew in to the office. This thing was massive, like the size of a small horse for sure – or at least, that’s how it appeared to my terrified brain. In reality, it was probably no more than 3 inches, but still. Compared to the normal wasps and bees we have around here, that’s massive. It was eventually convinced to leave by braver souls than me, but now I know that thing’s around here somewhere, and I don’t want to find it sitting in my living room. So, the windows will stay shut until I get over my paranoia. No matter how hot it gets. Where there’s one hornet there are bound to be more, right? And they’re living round here. Yelp!

199/365

I bought some more lemonade last night, so the first thing I did (of course) was cold brew this in it. Obviously. This is the second tea I’ve tried from Bird & Blend’s new summer collection, and the one I was looking forward to most. Eton Mess is a delightful thing at the best of times, but in tea form? Yes, please! In lemonade, with all that extra sugar? YES, PLEASE!

I used 4 tsp of leaf in 750ml lemonade, and left it overnight in the fridge. This blend contains liquorice root, which made me rather sad initially, but it’s somehow less obvious in combination with lemonade. An added bonus, if ever there was one! In terms of taste, I mainly get strawberry. It’s the same kind of strawberry that’s in their Strawberry Lemonade, so if you’re familiar with that blend you know basically what this tastes like. The difference here is the creaminess, which is captures the flavour of meringue perfectly even though there’s no actual meringue in the blend as far as I can see. I’d even go so far as to say that the liquorice root helps it along a bit, since it adds an intense hit of sweetness that really helps to capture the essence of meringue as a flavour.

Basically, this one is sweet, creamy candy-like strawberry. It’s totally delicious, and does well to replicate the flavour of Eton Mess – if I were being really picky, I’d maybe say that it’s a bit heavy on the strawberry and a bit light on the meringue, but that’s partly personal preference. It’s still a perfect summer blend, however you look at it.