Sil

thank you to Scheherazade who let me try some of this in our swap! This one smells like rooibos when it’s in dry form and brewing but once you take a sip of this its full of delicious berry goodness! This is more a red fruit rooibos than blue fruit but overall it’s just a happy fruity goodness time. That is my official stance. and now? now i’m tired. seriously behind in sipdowns but at least i managed a couple today with some steps towards being able to finish a bunch up over the next couple of days..216 and counting, though i think i’m slightly less as i lost track of a few things i suspect.

So i’ve discovered…that i can only drink this if i add sugar, which i generally never do. Without the added sweetness to bring the flavours out, this is a like a very boring, bland, icky cup of average not so exciting black tea. Add a wee bit of sweetner and all the flavours that were hiding, come out to play! much better, but i still dislike having to add sugar. Rating bumped up a wee bit.

sipdown!

I decided to cold brew the last of this one the other night to see how it holds up as a cold brew. Overall? Not a bad brew. It’s still to “tea like” for my other half to appreciate it, but I could certainly enjoy this cup hot or cold in the long run. It’s fruity and not terribly floral, thank god! Greeted a sweetness to it as well that is only enhanced with the addition of a little bit of sugar. I’m Happy I got the chance to try this one out!

I’m not sure how i feel about this one. It’s minty for sure, but not overly vanilla-y. There’s an under taste to this though that is weird. it might be the mint mixing with the puerh and vanilla… not sure.

mmm this is tasty…well that’s what i remember thinking but then i got distracted on my conference calls tonight and forgot to pay more attention to it. I picked this up in my swap with Scheherazade and i still have a bit mroe to have again so better tasting note then i promise!

i received this tea in my swap with Scheherazade and busted it out at work today since i had not a whole lot of time for anything! To be fair i did end up steeping this for like 10+ minutes by accident but i don’t think it suffered for it. This is a pretty sweet tea. I didn’t get a chance to try it with milk, but it’s like eating a piece of chocolate cake. It’s not going to be my favourite tea but it’s pretty decent if you’re looking for that absolutely chocolatey sweet tea!

Backlog from this afternoon. Trying to relax tonight a bit before my calls with China tonight. It’s been a busy week that is soooo nearly over. Still enjoying this one even without much “cream” in it.

Also mixed the last little bit of this with the last little bit of the other tea i’m about to log for some chocolate raspberry goodness!

This tea makes me happy. happy happy happy. I can’t even explain why but it’s so delicious and yummy. it’s like drinking cake.

Edit: This resteeps really nicely too mmmmm

mmmm pulled this one out of the cupboard today since i’m not having my usual matcha smoothie. I wanted a good solid kick you in the face kind of bold tea to get me going. What i really like about this one are the almost smokey notes that are present throughout the sip. It’s nothing like a lapsang souchong but it adds a depth of character to the tea that I can really get behind this morning. mmmmmm

SIPDOWN! on this one because i’m sending the rest out in a swap for someone else to try. This one is sort of like a cross between scottish toffee caramel puerh and a chai with a bit too much clove. It’s not a BAD blend, but it’s not really a great tea either. somewhere in the middle of the road for me.

So needed to end the night with something I knew that I’d like. Not nearly as far along in my sipdowns as I’d like but I have a couple now, just on the edge heh. Standing count tonight is 220 with 4 days to go…still like 10 teas a day but I think I can manage it lol

I’m just so thankful for sample sizes….maybe I’ll celebrate if I can get to 150 by posting in the swap thread to help slim down some of my bigger bags of things. Really excited about the travelling tea box even if it is forever away from now. Hopefully some new teas to try with that and some goodies to share with others.

Today was a good day.

I am beginning to think that tealux (not tealuxe) is a company i can scratch off my list. There haven’t been too many of their teas so far that have blown me out of the water and there is something just slightly “off” about them.

While i don’t get the hatred that IB had for this one, i can understand her dislike. My cup tastes more like blueberries but it’s in the aftertaste not in the initial sip or the aroma. Maybe it’s just the greens that they haven’t quite figured out. Tomorrow i’ll try some of the blacks and see how that goes.

Well this tea has redeemed my faith in tealux by a little, though not much. i actually thought i liked this tea quite a bit until it sat for a little while. I think they did a disservice to this tea by adding the mint in the quantity they did. This was a brilliant execution of a lime mojito, until it sat for a bit and the mint overpowered everything. I think i want to try this chilled to see if that helps to balance out the flavours a bit more.

Mint? check. Chocolate? yeah, no so much. If there was even a hint of chocolate i’d be trying this again but right now it’s just an average boring cup of mint tea. So, i’m going to pass this off to another, to see if they can make it work for them!

thank you Scheherazade for this sample. Jury is still out on this one but man did the aroma of this steeped tea blow me away. Talk about apple crumble in a cup. What i’m not sold on is the weakness of the tea, which may just be my steeping times or the leaf, so i’m not going to hold it against the tea just yet. I have more left to try this again with, so we shall see! Either way happy to try it :)

SIPDOWN! and the best kind of sipdown. Having one last cup of this so i could compare it to the buckwheat tea i picked up in china, and then the rest is off to tastybrew in a swap :) I do still quite like this one, though it’s a different beast than the buckwheat one. This one is closer to watered down coffee and is lacking the sweetness that the buckwheat one has that i prefer…though this certainly isn’t bitter.

I figured that i’d better have this myself before the entire world got to try it. The funniest thing about this tea is that it was a last minute purchase from the grocery store because i thought it would be something different to try. I wasn’t really hoping for good, just a novel-tea drink that people could try in swaps and that i could bring back for the girls.

Turns out? this isn’t half bad. My other half was in agreement that it kinda smells like a pretzel…or really dense bread that you can get. When he tasted it, he likened it to ovaltine. Now, i haven’t had ovaltine in AGES…so i’ve got zero recollection on that one but his taste buds are also pretty strange. It has almost a sweetness to it that’s pretty decent. I have NO idea if there’s caffeine in this or not – i’m guessing possibly not? Either way, this is pretty decent. I think i prefer this one to Orzo – honey from lupicia (which i tried to compare against this one). it’s much lighter in taste..or something not sure. WEIRD! but good lol

SIPDOWN!

Gotta keep on keepin’ on. Della order arrived, but may not get put into my cupboard if only because it’s a shared order so I may hold off on opening them up so they stay fresher longer until we are able to make plans to get together.

I am really liking this tea as a tasty alternative to loose leaf at work.

Dropping the rating on this a little. I think there are other caramel teas that i prefer more. Not that this one is bad, but i’m discovering that there’s something about the base tea with kumi that i seem to not enjoy as much as others.

SIPDOWN! Thanks to the Amoda tea box I was finally able to try one of the vintage teaworks teas and i’ve been hording it ever since. SINCE i need to reduce my expanding cupboard, i figured tonight would be a good night to have the last of this. It’s a rainy miserable evening outside, but the house is filled with delicious, delicious sausage smells and i can sit here, sipping my “wine,” in my comfy clothes while outside the world is grey and dark and cold.

SIPDOWN!

So i tried this again and overleafed it a little to see if that helped with the flavour. I’m happy to say that it did, so this seems to be a tea where a little more leaf is a good thing. What i like about this one is that it’s a more natural tasting caramel than say your della terra teas, however it is a much weaker taste in my opinion as well. That being said, i’m ever so glad to have tried it. Thank you so much Scheherazade for the swap!

SIPDOWN!

And i have to say, i added a bit of extra leaf to this one today and man there are the chestnuts! totally nutty delicious in my travel mug today while i got busy at work. I am really digging this one :) Thank you so much ysaurella for sharing!

More of this in smoothie form today! Also had a mini sipdown of my friends french vanilla matcha though i still have an unopened bag in my cupboard. Sooo much matcha to go through.

Holy moley i’m behind with tea notes today. This is a sipdown! Which i so need given all the new teas that arrived today. I feel like at this point i really should just order more of this. However, I think i’ll try and wait until i get my sample of the new batch of laoshan black from mecuryhime to see if i can pick up more of that safely too. I need to try this one brewed gonfu style, but so far from a western brew perspective i still really like this one.