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This is so much better with sugar. It really and properly comes alive. For the record, I’m not usually a person who puts sugar in tea, so for me to do so and then sing praises of the result is a rare thing indeed. I think this cup – 1 tsp of leaf for 3 minutes in boiling water with 1/2 tsp crystal sugar – is better even than the latte I tried first. It’s that good.

It actually properly tastes like liquid strawberry jam now. It’s sweet, fruity, desserty deliciousness.

Win.

149/365

This is the second of Bluebird’s Tea Election candidates, and the one that’s in the lead at the moment. I’m quite surprised to find there are no notes for it here, since it’s apparently a real favourite. More people need to know about Steepster!

I’ve made this one up two ways – but I can only review one at the moment (the other is sitting in my fridge at home). I figured it would be better to try it straight in the first instance, anyway. For this cup, I used 1 tsp of leaf and gave it 3 minutes in water cooled to around 180 degrees. It’s come out a lot milder than I thought it would in terms of flavour – it’s more milk oolong than coconut.

The initial sip has all those delicious creamy, mineral, vegetal milk oolong flavours. The coconut (or what there is of it…) is confined more to the aftertaste, and is more like the suggestion of a flavour than an actual flavour. It’s kinda there, but nearly as much as I’d like/was expecting. That’s not to say I’m not enjoying it, though – it’s actually growing on me with successive sips, partly because it’s so subtle. I can see this being absolutely delicious served cold on a hot day; lightly flavoured and really refreshing. I’m finding that the more I drink, the more the coconut flavour emerges – like it’s building sip by sip.

I’m really intrigued now to try the cold brew that’s sitting in my fridge. I’ve steeped it in coconut milk rather than water, so I know for sure I’ll get coconut this time – what I’m interested to find out is whether the oolong makes much impact on what’s already a big flavour. I guess we’ll see!

This is certainly an interesting one. At the beginning of this note, I would have said that it’ll not get my vote…but now I’m not so sure!

I received a sample teabag of this one with my last Bluebird order, even though I’d ordered a sample pouch as part of the order…It’s free tea, though, so definitely a win. I brought it to work with me for convenience, and because I’m more likely to try a single teabag without additions.

Last time I tried this one, it was as a latte. This time, it’s just tea and water! I actually think I might like it more this way – it’s still deliciously creamy (so it wasn’t all the milk before…), the peach flavour is spot-on, and taken together it does taste kind of like cobbler. I get more of a “peaches and cream” vibe, really, though.

The peach flavour is perhaps a little muted, and that’s my only complaint about this one. It could stand to be stronger, particularly on a black tea base. If you went much over three minutes, I can imagine you’d start to taste the base more than the flavouring. Even so, this one’s made for a strong start to the spring collection. I like that it’s so versatile – I know it works well as a latte and as a plain black tea, but I imagine it might also be delicious with milk and sugar, or even iced/cold brewed. Gotta try that next!

I only have a small amount of this left, so I brought it to work with my today in an effort to finish it up. I have so many teas on the go currently, thanks to my challenge, that I really need all the sipdowns I can get! This should be an easy one.

Last time I tried this one, I made it as a latte. Today’s cup is plain – just 1 tsp of leaf in boiling water. It’s good like this, but perhaps not quite as good as the latte. I can still taste strawberry jam, but something about it seems just a little flat. I’m thinking perhaps it needs some sugar? I’ll probably try that next!

Had one of these at my parent’s yesterday. My mum is starting to drink loose leaf tea, so I gave her a selection from my stash to try out and she’s now placing her own orders with Bluebird. A pleasant side effect is that there’s now something other than bagged black to drink when I go and see them! This is one of my favourites from Bluebird. It always tastes like vanilla frosting, and it’s always reliably consistent and easy to brew up. No finicky tweaking required here! I drank this as I usually do, brewed quite strong with a generous amount of milk. Delicious!

So Bluebird are having a Tea Election, to decide which of 6 limited edition teas will join their permanent line-up. There are a couple on the list that I’ve never tried – and always wanted to – so I’ve placed an order for those. Since the other four are already in my cupboard, I decided to take the opportunity to reacquaint myself with each of them. I was quite pleased to see that two of the contenders are from their recent Dreamtime collection, because I never really understood why they were LE to begin with. I need to sleep all year round!

With that in mind, Lazy Boy seemed the most obvious place to start. I wasn’t over keen on it the first time I tried it; the lavender and coconut combination seemed like an odd one to me. I’m thinking that perhaps I got an over-large share of lavender last time, however, because tonight’s cup is quite a different experience. I made it up as a latte again, just like last time, using coconut milk, 1 tsp honey, and 1/2 tsp vanilla essence as a base. I gave 2 tsp of tea 4 minutes in boiling water before adding it to the milk.

The coconut milk really helped to amplify the coconut flavour from the tea, with just a light hint of lavender lurking in the background. The rooibos remained tame, adding just a touch of background nuttiness. Safe to say, I enjoyed this cup significantly more than my last, and so I’m revising my rating a little to take account of that. I don’t think I did anything particularly different this time, so I can only attribute the difference to a variation in the ratio of ingredients in my scoops of tea. Maybe my bag needs a good shake…

I don’t think this one’s going to get my vote, but I’m going to reserve judgement until I’ve tried the others. Stranger things may have happened!

148/365

This one’s been languishing, probably because I generally prefer flavoured matcha. I did my best with this one, though, and made it up as a latte using coconut milk. I took the ratio from T2’s website, and used 100ml water and 250ml milk. Honey is recommended, but I didn’t add any because I generally find coconut milk to be sweet enough on its own.

It’s a pretty good combination. I whisked the matcha really thoroughly, and at first it seemed like it combined well and easily. It was a different story once I added the milk, though – there were clumps, and naturally they settled pretty quickly. That also seemed to be true of the non-clumpy powder, so it needed constant stirring to stay combined in any real sense of the word. Not ideal. Perhaps the powder is just old, or perhaps it just didn’t work as well as it might have with the plant-based milk. I don’t think that’s it, though. Maybe I just didn’t whisk it enough, even though I felt like I had. I was tired, after all.

It tasted good, anyway. The coconut milk was the main flavour, and made a very creamy latte. The sweetness mostly drowned out the matcha, except for a mild, lightly vegetal savoury flavour every so often (mostly when I came across a clump…) If my object had been to taste the matcha, then this combination would have failed. It wasn’t, though, so I count it a success. Coconut milk is my new favourite, after all! Not with this matcha, though.

147/365

Possibly I’ve left this one too long, but I’m not really getting anything in the way of berry. Either that, or I maybe haven’t used enough leaf – it’s hard to judge, because there are loads of very long leaf stems. It’s impossible to measure with a spoon! It was amusing to watch it try and climb out of my infuser as it unfurled, though. Very spider-like!

Mostly, I get a sweet floral flavour – most reminiscent of honeysuckle and orchid. There’s a bit of wet rock/mineral, as I’d expect from a green oolong, and a sort of nectar-like background note. I suppose if I concentrate hard I could say there’s a whisper of blueberry. It becomes a little more apparent as it cools, but it’s very nebulous and really no more than a hint.

I’d have liked a bit more in the way of berry flavour, and possibly I need to tweak things a bit to find it. Still, delicious.

146/365

I’ve been feeling so sluggish and tired these last few days, I pretty much had to drink some matcha. It usually perks me up a little bit, at least. I’m trying to overcome my aversion to cold matcha/matcha without milk, and so I decided to kill two birds with one stone and make this up as a matcha lemonade.

It’s a Bluebird recipe, using 1/2 tsp lemon matcha, 1/2 tsp lemon juice, and 1 tsp honey, topped off with lemonade. It’s pretty good – lemony, for sure! The fresh lemon helps, I think; I’m not sure a lot of the flavour is really coming from the matcha, but perhaps some of it is. Mostly, I’m just grateful that it stays in the background, apart from the odd flash of vegetal flavour here and there.

I feel cleaner and a little more energised after drinking this. It’s very bright and refreshing, and I can see myself drinking it a lot more come summer.

Tried this one straight yesterday, and it’s actually more similar to the flavour of the latte than I was expecting. The resemblance to watery hot chocolate was perhaps a little more obvious without the milk and vanilla/honey additions, but the marshmallow came through more clearly (always a bonus!), adding a creamy sweetness in addition to the (thin-ish) milk chocolate flavour. I found the resemblance to cocoa pops a little lacking, perhaps because there was no milk. While it’s fine like this, it’s far better as a latte.