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Drinking this up, is it a sip down if we don’t know if we have more in the giant box of tea in my living room and I have no intention go looking for it? This tea bag came in my catalogue a while ago and traveled with me to Mass.

This is actually really quite pleasant. I would drink this again absolutely. I don’t pick up much of the tea base but the fruit flavours are lovely, sweet and tart in equal measures. It perhaps tastes a bit medicinal in the after aftertaste but I’m someone who likes cherry cough drops so I’m okay with that. Would like to try again with the correct water to teabag ratio because I was just guessing with this one. Perhaps in the future.

My first impression of the dry leaf is that it is extremely smelly. Smells like traditional Xmas but I don’t actually like traditional Xmas smells so there’s that. Very smelly. If I liked it I might say aromatic, but I don’t.

Well now that it has cooled down a bit, I don’t hate it. It finishes with cinnamon which I am not a fan of but it is not overwhelming. The bergamot is strong enough to turn my mother off when she took a sip. It kind of tastes like stale crackers with an aftertaste of spice to me. Not very appealing since my last experience with stale crackers involved a meal worm in it. Yesterday. So this is 0 for 3 for this Verdant box for me. Hopefully January will be better.

I need to fix this tea entry when I get back to having a real computer.

This is a really deep intense rich black tea out of Kenya. Apparently a Chinese hybrid varietal. Very interesting. I gentled it down a bit with milk and sugar and it is really quite pleasant. I’ll start heating water up for the second steep in a minute but the first was very very nice. Ever since I discovered Justea, I have found a fondness for nice Kenyan teas. Also any of my friends living in Vancouver BC should PM me, speaking of Justea.

ETA: 2nd steep was good but the 3rd was really weak. A two steep tea for me.

Trying this out since it came in my club. It smells very spicy and the back of my throat is already protesting the dry smell. It seems exactly like the teas that I hate very much. Waiting for the water to heat up.

Have to close this note to look at the ingredients to see what it is that I’m smelling besides ginger. The Verdant website doesn’t show it.

Edit: I don’t know where my previous edit went. Boo. I think the spice is sasparilla because I can’t recognize it and I’m not familiar with that one. It is very spicy. I’m hoping the sugar I put in wil gentle this blend.

First steep was 2ish minutes. The blend is sweet but the ginger and yabao itself put a shudder down my spine and there is an unpleasant pricking at the back of my throat from one of the spices. Warming sensation from more than just the warm water. Trying to drink this quickly because I do not like.

Thinking I won’t go for any more steeps due to the headache onset almost immediately after I started drinking. Not the tea for me.

I really think I am not experienced enough in the various green tea flavours, being a green tea newbie for the most part, to really fully appreciate this tea. It smells very robustly green and vegetal, although I could not tell you what plant. It smells like a strange combination of edamame and spinach to me but I have no idea what nori smells like so it could be that too. Not so much grass.

I managed with the tools I have to steep this in approximately 175 degree temp as stated by the really unrefined meat thermometer my mom got me for this purpose. Best I could get on short notice from a pretty rural Massachusetts grocery store, really, and I broke her crappy gravity infuser the first day so I was grateful for the teabags that came with this. The tea ball she has is not a very fine mesh.

First steep: definitely a deep and rich cup, nothing simple about this. Picking up some grass now, especially in the aftertaste. I can sort of taste the nuttiness in the cup but nothing specifically hazelnut.

I am super craving something sweet so I am debating whether to go to the next steep now or make a detour. I have about 3 more tea hours this afternoon to play with.

Second steep: the vegetal smell is weaker and the grass is much brighter this steep. I drank this one warmer and I definitely get ‘chewy’ this time around. There is more taste up front and it matches the aftertaste better and soy beans is what I am getting. I like this steep better than the first.

Steeped this at lower than the suggested parameters because I’m stuck with just a stovetop kettle at my parent’s place and the meat thermometer said this was at 180 when I tested it at the beginning of the steep.

This is altogether way too smokey for my tastes. I can’t pick up much beyond that. I’ll likely not try a second steep because of it so I will have the second pouch available for trading when I get home. I did not bring it with me. Glad I did not serve this to my mother as I’m pretty sure she would hate it. I wish I could pick up the sour cherry and caramel notes as they sound delicious.

Since I can’t do scroll bars on the iPad, which is what I have when I travel so my parameters were 2 teaspoons in the big mug with boiling water and 3 minutes steep time. I also made a cup for my mother and she likes it a lot.

It smells really nice. I don’t remember drinking it the last time although I obviously did since I have a tasting note from a year ago but a year ago I would have just been starting out at steepster. I think my tastes have changed since then. So let’s see.

This definitely tastes like caramel. Enough so that it wish it were thicker so that I could chew on it. Not much aftertaste at all besides what I burp up because drinking from my mom’s oddly shaped mugs tends to involve a lot of slurping. A little drying after the fact. It still smells so nice. I’m not going to change the rating because without the tea of the month sample pack I would not have ordered this again and I stand by that statement. Still, a nice sweet little interlude to an otherwise not very good day.

First steep was very nice though my bitterness conversation earlier made me paranoid and I over sugared it. I’ll try better next steep. It’s very chocolatey and it tasted malty to me and I definitely can taste the sweet potato.

2nd steep was also very tasty but I couldn’t pick up much to differentiate from the first steep. I like this tea a lot.

I usually hate tea with cinnamon in it but I put in 2 full spoonfuls of sugar to make it not awful so this is not awful. I can’t say I like it very much but I will give it that it is tolerable which is more than I can say for most cinnamon teas. The fennel is very strong as well and the mint is faintly present, also briefly in the aftertaste.

My mother said it tasted like cinnamon gum to her but my cup was steeped and sugared to my taste and not hers. I have more of a sweet tooth.

I have seen reviews that say the second steeping is stronger cinnamon so I might skip that. If I don’t, I’ll come back and edit.

Tried this this midnight. It was generously included with my order so thanks guys.

Can’t say I love it though. I’m not a huge fan of ‘tropical’ black teas because they all taste very similar to me and it’s just not a flavour I particularly enjoy but this one was as good as any and better than some because the base tea didn’t act up at all and ruin the blend so that is something. A lot of flecks escaped my tea ball though so that was a bit disappointing.