Sil

SIPDOWN! Thank you again ysaurella This is a tasty tea that i quite enjoy even with the floral notes present throughout the blend. I’m ever so glad i got the chance to enjoy a few cups of this :)

SIPDOWN!

This isn’t a bad tea from Harney, especially after the not so cranberry oolong that i had earlier. It’s not my favourite for sure, but it’s a good black, fruity sort of tea that does in fact remind me of autumn flavours. The hibiscus isn’t too strong for me so that’s nice.

SIPDOWN! 299 baggies of tea on the wall…299 baggies of tea!

Kittenna graciously allowed me to have a taste of this one! The initial aroma of this one before brewing is totally grape juice! Like whelch’s grape juice that i haven’t had since i was a little one. Sadly, the taste of this one is also kind of a weak grape juicey tea. It sort of reminds me of the after taste of a merlot…but not much. Overall not a bad tea, but this one might be one that would be better brewed cold. Still, happy to have tried it!

Edit: for a better version, try the vintage tea works version imo

I tried to cold brew this tea first because i’m still not sure what possessed me to order it. I blame kittenna! I’m pretty sad at how few cranberries were in our bag that we shared…maybe 7? So this is kind of a sad little tea that doesn’t love me. I’m pretty sure i’ll enjoy it more as a hot brew but as a cold brew? well, let’s just say that i didn’t finish drinking it. Nope. Not at all. blech.

Ok this tea? doesn’t taste like pineapple…it’s like stuffing my face full of cake. It even smells like yellow butter cake. I wish there was a bit more pineapple to the taste but overall, I can totally forgive that this tea also isn’t quite what it’s supposed to be because OH.MY.GOD. Cake! without any stupid sprinkles or other nonesense that della terra and david’s tea typically add to their teas. Just ohmygodcanieatthispleasecake!

soooo this tea confuses me. It’s got cinnamon in it and popcorn. In a maple tea that’s supposed to be like when “canadians” pour maple syrup into the snow and eat it after rolling it onto a stick.

This tea? tastes NOTHING LIKE THAT. This tea actually reminds me of one of simpson and vails tea, though i can’t for the life of me remember which, though i’m leaning towards the applecinnamon coffee cake one that i’ve tried,,or was it the cinnamon chocolate brownie. Either way? Not really maple syrup. It’s a relatively decent enough tea but it loses points for not being the maple treat that I wanted it to be (not that i wanted it to be like della terra’s maple tea…that was liquid maple syrup).

also a backlog ‘cause i had this today as well. deeeeeelicious! though not my favourite and i likely won’t re-order.

woot woot! quick backlog. had this in the morning..forgot to log it… system exploded, two days in a row of this crap. meetings last night…meetings tonight… going home and having more damnit!

hmmmm…so far, not overly impressed with this tea. I’m wondering if i brewed it a little funny or it just really needs sugar to reach it’s happy spot.

I for sure get a chocolatey, cake kind of taste from this, but there isn’t a lot of strawberry in this one. I’m wondering if this needs sugar to bring that out. Or maybe i have a strawberry tea i can blend this with to get more strawberry + cake. I have enough to give it another whirl (more than 1 if i don’t brew it in my giant mugs lol), so the rating might be modified once i get a chance to play a little more.

mmmmm figured that i should take a bit of time to also have a few of my new teas that aren’t sipdowns right away, but that will be in 2-3 tea logs. Today i opted for this one as my “straight” tea even though it’s a blend. :) I do have to say that the rice in this one totally made me think of maggots…something about the shape and colour of them that threw me off when i spotted them.

soooo with that in mind hahahaha, this tea tastes like laoshan black…and genmaicha. I do like how it’s like laoshan blackgen maicha yeah…that’s how it tastes. Overall i really like this, but i also kind of feel like i prefer each from verdant more on their own. The sum of all of it’s parts is NOT greater that the individual pieces.

The first half of this is laoshan black’s malty, chocolatey goodness and then it blends nicely for a short instance in my mouth with the genmaicha and then in the after taste i’m mostly left with genmaicha.

I’m really glad i was able to try this. I also wonder in part if this is due to the new laoshan black batch, which some have claimed isn’t quite up to the same level as older batches. We’ll see, as i haven’t yet had the new batch. :)

Oh man. I really thought i’d broken my steepster when this tasting note didn’t want to open for like 3 mins. Good thing i’m incredibly distracted at the moment haha. This is technically my second time drinking this, though when the girls were over all i had time to do was add that i’d had it with no actual rating or tasting note.

kittenna was nice enough to leave me back a small sample so that i could have some more at my leisure and that time is NOW! mostly so that I can get to 298 teas so when my two teas show up tomorrow i stay under 300 (and yes Dinosara, i’m totally going to drink all of those tea bags tomorrow so they won’t be hanging over my head….all 100 of them! heh)

Anyway..i digress. So this tea. i am IN.LOVE. with the applesauce going on here…as in the apple, and cinnamon. SOOOOOOOO good. It’s like someone took the applesauce from the fridge and liquified it even more. The apple is in a great balance with the cinnamon.

That being said…potato? uh…well there are chunks of potato…but the flavour isn’t really there. not that i want it to be because i am loving this apple cinnamon.

So apparently all this tea is making me soooo sleepy. I can’t sleep yet since i’m still on call but man, i could sleep. So it looks like i’m going through phases tonight…some caramel teas…then the pumpkin one, which was kind of like apples…so here i am now. SIPDOWN!

haha thanks to Kittenna for this one. This tea smells like some other tea that i can’t place. It’s like a creamy-ish kind of generic rooibos smell.

The taste? It’s apple…and cinnamon and rooibos? I really wish i could place what this tea is reminding me of, and…. holy distracted tasting note batman. Mostly…this is REAAAAALLLLLYYYY reminding me of another tea that I can’t seem to figure out and it’s distracting me to the point of not being able to articulate my thoughts on this one… plus? tired Sil + on call with technology = say whaaaaa?

SIPDOWN! Love it when i can get two cup samples into a single mug because my giant mugs at home hold twice the liquid as normal people lol. Back down to 300 teas! (until tomorrow when my david’s tea order arrives).

This is a strange tea….pretty tasty, but strange. It smells like spicy, pumpkin-y ness… but when you sip it, it reminds me of apple? spice. I can see why Teasipper said cantaloupe, though I’m not feeling that specifically. Subtracting a few rating points off this because it’s somewhere in between pumpkin and apple spice, but it’s still a tea that i’d drink again for sure.

Must. have. one. more. sipdown. tonight. Oh man… good thing i’ve got conference calls tonight because i need at least one more tonight to get myself back down to 300 tonight after my swaps arrived (i’m ignoring the fact that i also received some bagged teas that need to go into my cupboard and i say NO!).

Anyway…SIPDOWN! Thank you Nina’s paris for this sample…my last of the bunch that were sent to me.

Edit: So about the tea… I quite enjoy the caramel mixing with the fruity taste. I prefer it just a little more than je t’aime because of the fruitiness, though if i wanted a straight up caramel tea i’d stick with the other one. This reminds me of one of the other teas that i purchased from Damman Frere’s but i’ll have to give it some thought before i say which one it is.

Overall, the black base is present in this one along with the caramel notes AND the fruity notes. The vanilla is also present, though less so imo than the caramel.

Sipdown! (sample)

Thank you to Nina’s Paris for another wonderful sample! This is a tasty tasty cup of tea! It reminds me quite a bit of creme caramel from della terra, only with a stronger base and a better flavour to it. The scent of the tea is a little off but the liquid delicious makes up for that. I’d be willing to pick this up again for sure. LOoking forward to trying grand amour as well given how nice this one is!

So i figured that i should try another of my Steep City teas, since i had a disappointment with the Vanilla Sky. Id been sort of putting it off because i was a little afraid that I’d be stuck with another 2oz of something i didn’t like BUT today i made myself try one! haha

I’m glad i did :) While this isn’t my absolute favourite tea, i really think this will be nice in the summer. There is for sure a strawberry taste to it and i love the chunks of papaya? in it :) My other half says it smells and tastes like swedish fish. I’m not sure i agree but it is a sweet fruity tea :)

Sipdown! (sample to quote Indigobloom) And it’s a good thing too since apparently two of my swaps arrive tonight AND there’s a third one in the mail already AND uh three more to come eventually. So i suspect that tonight i’ll be back over 300 again sigh

What to say about this? I want more! I suspect that unless the cacao tea sample that i have kicking around is more delicious than this, THIS is the chocolate “in a hot chocolate kind of way” tea that I’d keep in my cupboard. It’s creamy and chococlatey and delicious! I didn’t add any milk to it and it still tasted like a delicious cup of hot chocolate. I’m impressed!

SIPDOWN! This was a lovely tea to have been lucky enough to receive from ysaurella Merci encore madam! I love the sweet delicious caramel. I am still torn by all the lovely teas that she sent as to which was my favourite.

I have been a certified slacker today. I blame work. System issues today have got me shackled to my desk. It’s a little sad too because I brought a bunch of one cup samples with me today to try and get through some of my black teas earlier in the day. Aiming for 275 by the end of the weekend, though that’s not likely to happen given that I’m not just focusing on samples.

I’m still really enjoying this tea, though I’m waffling between picking it up again as an order or passing and keeping it in my back pocket of teas that I enjoy but don’t need to keep around all of the time.

SIPDOWN! 300 teas successfully achieved….150 to go. holy crap. and i just ordered 2 more…Also, I hope the ladies will forgive me not remembering and thanking whomever gave me each of my teas. I’m pretty sure this one was kittenna though.

Sipping this i get rooibos…and something that reminds me of the way that peanut butter and chocolate mix together in a peanut butter cup. I wouldn’t say this is peanut butter cup though. Tasty enough but lack of points for not being what it is trying to be. Still i’m happy to cross another 52 blend off my list!

mmmmmm… ok so Raritea found me a David’s Tea that i really like. This is better than the 52 teas honeybush that i tried earlier. This is especially delicious in contrast to the sweet vanilla orange that i recently had. I can see drinking this one over the summer for sure! Also this would be fantastic as a slushie. It’s the perfect blend of lemon, lime and a touch of creaminess.

Sipdown…and i’m SOOO SAD! I wish I’d accosted Indigobloom for more than a cup of this one. I don’t have the same issue with Lapacho that the girls do – for me it’s just another honeybush.rooibosy whatever leaf thingy dingy :) (yes technical term)

This smells heavenly and steeps to a delicious creamy orange brew. On a random side note, this would probably make some seriously kick ass tea infused vodka for my next experiment. This really is an orange creamsicle in liquid form, just a little less sweet, making it PERFECT.

Honestly…i’m just going to go see if i can eek out a bit more from my leaves….i hope. please. YUM!

Thank you again to Nina’s Paris! I picked this one because I had contemplated getting the same tea by betjeman and Barton but hadn’t. Since quatre fruits rouges seems to be one of those teas that a lot of Parisienne shops have, now was as good a time as any to try it.

I’m sad to say that I’m pretty sure I lost track of time and steeped this for too long. As a result its a bit of a bitter cup BUT if I focus on the taste beyond the bitterness I can tell that this would be a tasty cup of tea, well suited for my tastes. It really is red fruit tea instead of being that weird artificial “berry” taste that is present in a lot of teas. The base is quite nice as well, though, as I said I steeped it too long. Even the red liquor of the cup is pretty.

Thank you again Nina’s tea!

I was afraid to try this hot, so i opted for a cold brew on this one instead because of the scent. It turns out, cold brew was not the way to go on this one. It was bitter and perfumey and citrusy. I had a couple sips and then had to say no. Into the share pile it goes as I’m fairly confident that even hot i won’t enjoy this much. Thanks to Ysaurella though for the chance to try a new tea! :)