Starfevre

This is the one matcha I drink without sugar, it’s too sweet with it. Still, not quite what I wanted.

So I got this tea a million years ago in a trade with ChuckieRoy so thanks!

This tea is really pretty with all the little extra things in it and it has real marshmallows which I’m really not supposed to eat because I’m a vegetarian but I’m making an exception for this tea. Slippery slope that is, but I think it’s okay. Not like I’m going out and gorging on bacon just this once or anything. It smells pretty fantastic too, clearly marshmallow. I did a survey of the other tasting notes for a steeping time for this because 2-5 minutes is really broad and came to the conclusion that most people did 4 minutes or so because at that point the marshmallows would be completely melted. I hope it wasn’t too long.

Nope not too long. Absolutely delicious. I’m with the consensus of the majority, this is a very very nice tea. Wonderful dessert tea. Nice marshmallow, the caramel is kind of subdued but that’s okay. Base is a nice supporting actor but not adding anything in particular. Yum.

Sipdown! I’m just writing this tasting note to say that. I’m not actually drinking the tea, I’m giving it to my coworker. He was surprisingly difficult to boil down to what type of tea he wanted. Or maybe I just have too many choices. It’s probably excessive when asking for a fruity herbal for me to come back with 10 choices. Strawberry? With or without cinnamon?

Sweet and tasty this morning. Smooth and delicious. Drinking it earlier than usual this morning because I actually enjoyed the pot of tea I had earlier so I drank it quite fast. So, earlier matcha. I love matcha so much you have no idea. I have no idea how I lived my life without it previous to this month.

Well, starting the day off with this lovely little sample from Ellyn. It smells simply fantastic, though mostly mango and not really any pomegranate at all. That’s okay, I like mango. The dry tea is certainly FULL of mango pieces, I put my entire sample into the steeper even though it was like 5 tsp because it was so voluminous and I wasn’t sure I was getting enough actual tea in there. So pretty much the perfect amount actually.

I haven’t had many DAVIDsTEAs so I don’t know if this is typical or not, but the taste…almost lives up to the promise of the smell. I’m processing it as kind of a weak brew, not so much in flavour, but in general mouthfeel. Like it’s less than even water. A bit not good. It’s tasty though, I get the slightest bit of tartness from the pomegranate, but it’s mostly just mango. A pretty nice, fruity, black tea.

Last matcha at work today. A bit bland tasting today, probably because I just had a strong tasting tea just before it.

The matcha kinda pooled at the bottom of my latte so the last few swallows were deeeelish.

This is a little something from my first trade with ToiToi from a while ago. I finally got my trades organized yesterday so there will be a little more variety from here until I’m finished with them. I brought a big old bag of trades into work because that’s where I drink most of them. Anyway.

I’m a little bit skeptical of liking this because it is a green tea and I’m not really partial to those. It smells quite interesting, but definitely green. I don’t think I’ve ever had a houjicha before. At least not one identified as such. Also my first Lupicia tea.

Well, it’s certainly toasty. I think that’s the first time I’ve ever said that about a tea. Toasty. It’s an interesting flavour. I’m not picking up much caramel at all, but I did let it cool down to room temperature while I was avoiding drinking it for fear that I wouldn’t like it. I don’t know why I do that. It’s counterproductive. Now I need to drink this cup and the next cup and 2 cups of matcha in the next hour and a half in order to make the vanpool and I’m probably going to have to pee all the way home and that will suck.

Well, it’s morning at work so I must be drinking French Vanilla matcha. I would like it a lot except I keep doing weird things with my mouth today that I can’t seem to stop so that’s distracting me from my tea. Poo.

First off, this smells absolutely fantastic. The honey smell is very prevalent and strong. The smell was really faint when the tea bag was dry, but as soon as I poured water on it, boom, in your face smell. Kind of surprising for a chamomile blend. I have some hopes for something I’ll like from a company that I haven’t been impressed with yet. This tea is from yssah who was kind enough to send me a bunch of Wissotzky teabags.

I think I oversweetened this a bit, since it had honey in it already, but this is pretty decent. Not something I would seek out though, since I find chamomile kind of boring most of the time and prefer to sweeten my teas with rock sugar because of the distinct flavour that honey imparts. Still, for a bagged tea, pretty decent.

Couple of tea bags of this from yssah about a million years ago that I’m finally getting to. I actually took all of my trades out of their bags last night and labeled them by swapper so I can get to them at random rather than go person by person. I think it’ll be faster this way since I won’t be stuck avoiding moving on to the next bag just because I don’t want to try one of the old bag’s teas immediately. Anyway.

There is just something in this tisane that is not sitting right with me. It’s not the mango. I don’t think it’s the passionfruit. I’m pretty sure it’s not even the hibiscus. But there is something that is just off that I do not like at all. Distinctly unpleasant cup of tea.

Well I love raspberry and I like quince. My grandmother used to make quince jelly from a quince tree in her backyard. We’d have quince jelly instead of cranberry sauce every Thanksgiving and Christmas growing up. My dad still hoards that last jar of it, since my grandma grew too frail a long time ago to make it, and sold that property. I miss her.

Anyway, this tea. Certainly has an interesting smell to it. I’m really not sure if it’s appetizing to me or not. I’m leaning towards not. It’s like the leaves of the quince tree are in there instead of the fruit. Not quite right.

For tasting, this is just okay. I like the fruitiness and the raspberry comes in as a subtle taste to the bang from the quince that really isn’t sitting quite right. Maybe I like it more as a jelly and not so much as a real fruit. I have enough for one cup yet so I might try it with a bit more sugar to see if it makes things even out.

So I’m not quite sure why I bought this white matcha, unflavoured anyway. White tea and I do not have the best of relationships going and this is like super concentrated white tea.

The smell is quite like old grass and hay, like the hay bales we used to have in my backyard when I lived in Massachusetts and my Dad had our yard flattened so we could build a plastic and wood skating rink in the backyard. The hay bales held down the plastic around the edges. Mice also lived in them. Hay is not my favourite thing. Those skating rinks were awesome, pretty big too, like 90′ × 30′ in size. Fun in the winter.

This matcha I made up as a latte with a bit more sugar than normal because I’m kind of afraid to drink it. The smell is very bleh. The taste…isn’t as bad as I thought. Still very much ‘white tea’ and a tad astringent, but I put enough sugar in to compensate I think. It cooled down a lot while I was waffling about drinking it and futzing around on Kickstarter. I don’t know that I like this enough to drink this on its own so I’ll have to have a thought about what I can mix it with to still drink it. Or give it away, I guess. Thoughts?

You can find this matcha here if you so desire and like white tea better than I do: http://www.redleaftea.com/matcha-tea/white-matcha.html

Well, I think I was thirsty since I drank this so fast it was like it was water. Tasty though. Waiting for some of my matcha to warm back up to room temperature so I can try some new ones. Like lime!

Well, I’ve had this before as a matcha latte with a black base, but this is my first time trying it with the classic green base. We also went down a flavour level…pretty arbitrarily actually. I think I might have liked it better with the robust flavouring rather than the distinctive which I have.

The matcha flavour is very much stronger in this one, tasting ‘greener’ than the other, obviously, but a little greener than my other green matchas as well. I don’t know if the chocolate just doesn’t stand up as well to the matcha or what. It’s a little disappointing actually. Although I do want to try it again with a little raspberry matcha blended in too. I would go make it right now except for the blissfully purring old kitty on my lap who’s squinched his eyes closed and is shedding white fur all over my clothes, as always. Something about white kitties, they always seem to have really dense sheddy fur.

Anyway, while disappointing, this isn’t totally bad tasting. I still taste some chocolate, just not as strong as I like, and the matcha taste isn’t bad per se, just I prefer it more to be in the background. I think I’m still not up to drinking straight matcha, though some just arrived at my door today from Tealux. Off to the giant box of untried teas, goes that order. Except for the matcha which will, of course, go in the freezer.

You can find this tea here: http://www.redleaftea.com/matcha-tea/belgium-chocolate-matcha.html

Using the last bit of milk in the house to make this. I’ve been using milk to make cereal instead of tea recently so it disappears too fast. I’ll have to buy more tomorrow after my volunteer shift.

This is tasty, though now I want to try it as a green matcha base because I’m finding that, despite liking black tea better than green, black matcha is not necessarily tastier than green matcha to me for some reason. If I had more milk I’d make a caramel matcha to compare with the caramel green matcha I had earlier this week. Alas.

So I’m trying to drink this pot of tea…that I actually made yesterday and didn’t drink. I’ve reheated this in the microwave twice so far. Hopefully it’s a good enough tea to stand up to this abusive treatment. I certainly liked it the first time I had it, if my tasting note is any indication.

Certainly malty and leathery and an eensy bit smokey (just enough that I can tolerate it, I hate smoke normally). Not cool enough to pick up the sweet potato flavour, I guess. Or possibly it was obliterated by the microwave.

Assuming I get to bed on time, I’ll just have this pot and resteep tomorrow but if the last few days are any indication, I might resteep tonight too.

Something minty to end the work day and leave a nice flavour in my mouth for the van ride home. And also not straight tea because that makes me have to pee before we get home and I have a doctor appointment straight after arriving in the parking lot. It will be a squish, but I think I can make it on time. Else I will be late. Oh well. The appointment’s an hour long so being late wouldn’t be the end of the world anyway. If the appointment were yesterday I would have been 20 minutes late because we hit the worst traffic I’ve ever seen on that drive (2 years in). Hopefully there won’t be another accident today.

Anyway, minty as usual. I used a bit less matcha today and it toned down the overpowering mintiness a little so it’s just pleasant rather than pow, although when frothing, it still threw up enough particles to make my eyes water. If you like mint, you’ll love this matcha.

I’m not sure that I qualify to make another discount review for this flavour, although this is my first time trying it with a green base, my other tin of the caramel flavour is the black base. I asked, but I haven’t gotten an answer back yet.

This is smooth and tasty with a distinctive (the concept not the flavouring level although it is in fact distinctive level flavouring) caramel taste to it. Sweet. I’ll have to do a side by side at some point to decide which base I like better of the two.

I think this one is going to be a finicky flavour for me. I added a bit too much matcha again and the faint chemical taste came back. I like this, I really do, but only if I make it correctly and apparently there’s a narrow band to do this. Glad I only got distinctive flavouring level.

I haven’t had a lot of boysenberries or boysenberry flavoured things (I think I might have had some jam blend at some point) so I can’t tell you if this is true to taste, but it is certainly tast_y_ and definitely of the berry family.

This review is for the classic matcha base and robust level of flavouring. After my last mega-batch of matchas were done at distinctive and I had been disappointed in some of them, I decided to up to power level on this next batch (and the one after it, which is already being shipped to me, heh).

This is a good flavoured matcha, but it doesn’t really knock my socks off. I’m rather picky about my berries and if this is what a true boysenberry tastes like, I’m pretty sure it’s one I wouldn’t seek out very often. I remember liking the jam though. Hard not to like jam.

According to wiki, a boysenberry is a cross between a European raspberry (not sure how that differs from a North American one), a common blackberry (yum, almost a weed up here in the Pacific Northwest), and a Loganberry (which I’m also not that familiar with). A loganberry is apparently a hybrid of a different type of blackberry and the same type of raspberry (European). So now we know. I think I like both raspberries and blackberries better separately.

You can find this matcha here: http://www.redleaftea.com/matcha-tea/boysenberry-matcha.html

Started my matcha drinking of the day off with this, as is my wont of late. I sip downed the distinctive flavouring level batch yesterday and brought in my (larger) tin of robust flavouring level matcha. That said, I really do not taste much difference between the two beyond a little extra creaminess. The distinctive ‘vanilla’ flavour just isn’t that improved with this change. Don’t get me wrong, I still like it, but it’s not what I hoped for. Perhaps the next level of flavouring up again next time.

Thanks to yssah for this sample. This may not be a true picture of the tea because I accidentally made it in the mug that still had a bit of french vanilla matcha in it so it’s kinda contaminated, even though I poured it into the correct mug almost immediately. So yeah…not quite a caffeine-free herbal anymore.

That being said, this is really a very apple-y tea. More on the tart side than the sweet side of the apple family. The hibiscus…I think I steeped it for too long, because I wasn’t paying attention and didn’t set a timer and now it’s pretty strong and making this tea taste not very good to me. I think I taste something that must be the roasted chicory root and it’s not sitting too well either. Summary – yuck.

Thanks yssah for sending me these…months ago. I just got around to opening the package and I’ll be working through these. I still have one bag to use later since she sent me 3 and I generally use 2 in my big mug. It’s not quite 16 oz so the tea is pretty strong.

That said, it is VERY strawberry. There’s a little bit of a feel of too much hibiscus, but it’s not too bad. Thankfully I’m not getting any of the cinnamon that the ingredients say is in this because I really don’t like cinnamon on anything but toast (mixed with sugar) and a super sugary cinnamon bun (once in a blue moon…or less often, those happen once a year, don’t they).

For a bagged herbal tea, this is pretty decent. I don’t like it enough to order it because my standards on herbal teas have gotten ridiculously high since I found Steepster and branched out to online companies. Go go gadget Zentealife and Tealux mostly. Anyway, decent tea.