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I was distracted while drinking this by a good book. It wasn’t awful.

What am I doing wrong with these iced teas??

I cold steeped this for about 8 hours in the correct amount of water and it tastes like alcohol to me. The supposed flavours don’t transfer at all. Smells like alcohol too. Going to have to pour the whole thing out.

Not rating because I don’t know if it’s user error or not but I don’t have any more of this.

Every single one of these ingredients looks delicious so it is no surprise that I’m really enjoying this sample from the tea of the month club from della terra. I only have 1 month left of it, I think, so I’ll have to decide if I want to continue with the subscription when I have so very many other teas.

I thought I was making Eight Candles until I didn’t see any marshmallows in the leaves. (Shh, my guilty pleasure, I don’t eat marshmallows any other way).

This is pepperminty and vanilla-y and chocolatey and delicious and completely perfect for staying up all night because you can’t sleep because you drank too much tea staying up until 2am waiting for a phone call from a friend that needed a ride home from the ER. Thankfully I live close to her house and the hospital so the transit time is not long. 20 minutes gone and the new kitten was all alarmed at my absence and would not let me pee in peace. Hazards of kittens.

I’ve started a little game with myself to do chores in that if I lack the energy to do 20 minutes at a time or something, I assign minutes to certain chores (2 minutes per package opening/put away/box disposed of),(one minute per cat’s claws trimmed), etc. in order to make those 20 minutes. It is 3am and I have done 4 minutes worth so far by that scale. It is interesting.

Felt like this again. First cup was rushed. Tasted great though, but I had to drink it quickly because a sip in, I got a note asking for help to drive a local friend to the ER. So I gulped the rest down while waiting for her address instructions. My Breville used the keep-warm function so the second cup was still acceptably warm but I fear that I’m going to have to reheat my 3rd cup. Ah well, it was for a good cause.

And it looks like I’m going to be up very late drinking tea because I’m waiting for a phone call to bring her back to her house and who knows how long that will take. Depending, I might just stay up all night, though that will make my therapy appointment tomorrow interesting.

Drinking a bit of this tonight. If you call 3 cups worth a bit. Which I do since it’s one pot of my Breville (about 800ml).

It’s very sweet, with my normal amount of sugar added, sweeter than most would be. The plum aspects are very faint and it mostly just tastes like white tea to me, which is also subtle. I do pick up something other than just the white tea, but I don’t know what else is in here or what ‘natural flavourings’ means in this case. I don’t hate it but I don’t love it either.

I found the kitten’s new hiding place. It’s on the back corner of the broken futon bed in the room I was keeping him separated from the other cats. It still has his litterbox and dried food (wet food is up on the kitchen counter to keep the obese cat from it) so he’s comfortable. I wonder if I should put a cat bed there.

Well this is a delightful tea indeed. I think I have another bag around somewhere in the room of boxes but I bought another one because I wanted some of the sugar plum and some kittea for the new kitten. He’s a handful but I haven’t seen him high on catnip yet. (He’s 8 months so it’s safe).

I forgot I was using the smaller mugs today so I over-sugared but the sweetness does it well, though I will do less for the next cup. The genmaicha is just the right flavour of toasty and the razzleberry is delicious. I am impressed, Frank. Truly I am.

What is this? A seasonal tea that I don’t actually hate? Will wonders never cease?

Really, this doesn’t come across as pumpkin to me at all but it’s named seasonally so it counts! The ingredients confuse me and I was a little hesitant because of the rooibos and melon but I went looking for a holiday tea without ginger or cinnamon or cloves and such and Mahamosa certainly delivered.

I brewed up basically my whole sample in the Breville and only after I poured it into my cup did I realize I had no milk. So first cup, no milk, just sugar. Tastes super sweet (which I like). Sweeter than a tea ordinarily would with the amount of sugar that I added. I think it is the melon. And it is super surprising that I even like the melon because I ordinarily don’t like any kind of melon at all, although I will tolerate watermelon. It doesn’t sit on my most-hated melon list though, that belongs to cantaloupe.

I don’t even like rooibos all that much and I can hardly taste it at all in here, it’s so far in the background of flavours. As I let my tongue still after the aftertaste has lingered a while I get sort of a rooibos-y feel but that’s it.

Now I need to get my fat ass off the couch and evict the adorable kitties out of my lap (15 year age difference and they are cuddling like no tomorrow) and go to the store because I’ve been away for a week and a half and the cat sitter cleaned my fridge and there is now nothing in it at all beyond some apple sauce and chocolate soy milk and maple syrup. Seriously, that’s all that I have. And some weird weird soda from I don’t know when. But anyway, yes milk.

And I keep hearing about tea soda being made so I’m going to buy some soda water too just to try it out because I am damn curious.

Tea obsession back into full swing. I missed ye.

Let’s put this in the right category this time.

This originally mediocre tea is definitively not improved by altitude. It cools too quickly on the steep and I only had cream available on the aircraft and not milk and I’ve heard that tastebuds are funny that high so I don’t know exactly what was wrong but it was all wrong. But it was something to drink so I drank it and it’s resteep because it was a 6+ hour plane ride and I needed to stay hydrated and I was tired of water. C’est la vie.

So I was trapped in an airplane for more than 6 hours (all flying time, gotta love cross-country trips, coast to coast) and this was offered up under the tea selections. Since they had no hot chocolate and I was thirsty for something that was not water, I gave it a try.

First time I’ve flown first class on my own dime so I was trying to appreciate the super service. Seriously, I’m thinking of calling the airline to commend one of the flight attendants. I got a really nice real ceramic mug and a short juice glass to put the bag in afterward.

I steeped this tea for the 5 minutes that the package stated and it tasted very very tart. I didn’t taste any ginger or licorice root but there was orange flavour and definitely hibiscus all over this. I added a couple of sugars to try to tone down the hibiscus (seriously, how much sugar is in one of those sugar packets, can’t be a teaspoon) and it was marginally better. Added some sweetness obviously and the orange flavour came through more as well as the lemongrass which I do not approve of in this brew at all.

Second steep at 7 minutes was very lightly flavoured orange water that was not worth the steep but I had to try. Drank it anyway. Gotta stay hydrated on an airplane!

Late at night, just called the New Year. I have an early flight so I just decided to stay up and drink tea.

My second tea of the new year, this came in the first steepster select package. I could not get the temp exact in a regular kettle so this poured at 180 degrees F according to the repurposed meat thermometer. Hey, we use what we got.

This smells very oolong and quite floral. I’m fairly new to oolongs in general so this note might be a bit uninspired. Still pretty much in the ‘it tastes like a green oolong’ phase of oolongs.

This is a bit roasty and a little bit cloying from the flower, I suppose lilac. It’s quite interesting. I added a bit of sugar to bring out the flavour for me and I’m drinking it quite hot for me. Cooled down a bit brings out more of the oolong for me though there is still a bit of lilac aftertaste. If further steeps are better or worse I will edit.