Awkward Soul

This tea smells amazing and mouth watering – the fruityness appears to be a fruit salady mix. The black base is okay and the smokey caramel is pretty back burner.

Sweetened, this tea is much better – the caramel and fruit comes out more. Cooled, even better. I’d try this as an iced tea!

My full picture review here http://oolongowl.wordpress.com/2013/01/15/fantasy-by-lupicia-tea-review/

Okay. I’m nuts about this tea. Cough medicine never hits my stomach well, so I just wanted a nice, buttery sweet tea this morning. Didn’t take me long to pull out my bag of Dragon Feelers! Doh, I should of ordered more on my last Butiki order, I’m running a little low.

And since I’m still sick, I’m in a wacky mood. I did a blog review for this tea, and had some fun on photoshop. http://oolongowl.wordpress.com/2013/01/14/dragon-feelers-by-butiki-teas-tea-review/
would you drink little steeped dragons (if they weren’t hurt in the process)?

Woot, got the blog going, muhahahahha! If you wanna see pictures with this review, check out http://oolongowl.wordpress.com/2013/01/13/white-christmas-by-lupicia-tea-review/

FYI, this tea I’m reviewing is in bagged form, flavor might vary in loose leaf.

DRY LEAF: Smells kinda fruity. Huh? I guess I feel as if this tea should be minty. You know, like Stash’s “White Christmas”? I loved that tea until I had loose leaf tea.

STEEPED: 2 minutes over boiling water. Annoyingly, the package did not have English instructions, so I guessed the steep time. I was off my 30 seconds, oh well, I don’t want oversteeped black tea. White Christmas smells very fruity.

TASTE: Apricot! Very much like apricot and it is the first thing I taste! The apricot here is pretty natural tasting and well done, mixed with a little sweet and creamy taste. The black tea here is light and more present end of sip. No bitterness or dryness in this tea. Good clean black tea flavor too.

COMMENTS: The apricot flavoring is VERY well done here. Actually, this has to be the best apricot tea I’ve had so far. It’s not bitter and weird-dried-apricoty-sulfur taste. This tea is great on its own, Lupicia suggests using milk, but I probably won’t try this tea with milk as I think that it would take away the apricot flavor.

If you want to try a good apricot tea, give this one a shot! Even if you aren’t into black tea, this one is quite light – so it could be enjoyed by non-black tea drinkers. I could be convinced to purchase some of this, but I more so will be on the lookout for other Lupicia apricot teas. Lupicia does fruity teas VERY well and one could never have enough fruity teas.

Okay, the trick to this tea is a 1 minute steep at 175, with a slice of lemon.

The flavor is lighter, but less chance for icky baggy mulchy green taste. The floral here is nice and the lemon slice adds freshness. OHH YEAH. I went with this tea because I’m lazy. Me + bagged tea = lazy times.

Once I’m done – I GET THE NICE TIN! Prettttty tin (once I remove the safeway label)! Crap, hate when I buy teas just for the freaking tin!

Sigh, gave in. My family has been pestering me. I’m starting a tea blog. I was worried on time constraints, but I figured out a style. See how it goes, still working on the design. I’ll post more once its up.

sipdown of Oh Canada

I will miss you Oh Canada and your strong maple flavor! I made the last of my tea as a latte with honey. Super maple!
Oh, I ran out of honey and asked my husband to buy some. He came home with 5lb container of it!

Hello again grapefruit green! Let’s try you with honey!

So I have bronchitis. Yay! bleh. Explain why I’m still sick and me getting over this is taking awhile. However, happy that it’s not messing my taste buds – that last sinus infection made everything taste bitter. Worst that has happened is I cough into my tea cup, ew.

I should be eating more honey, so I slide some in this tea. Honey and Grapefruit, for me, taste great. The honey here turned off the grapefruit zing, making this tea a mellow grapefruit. Pretty good, but I prefer this unsweetened for the zing that makes this tea unmistakably grapefruity.

back to coughing

This tea came in my happy bag – this bag is full of happy!

FYI, this is the bagged version.

DRY: DROOOOL! Creamy sweet peachyness! Like smelling those japanese peach gummies, yum yum! I spent awhile smelling this tea. The packaging is very pretty – I felt kinda bad opening the box.

STEEPED: Creamy and butter green tea scent, pale yellow green.

TASTE: Very creamy, wow! Actually kinda tastes like good fresh matcha, like my Kaimatcha, but on the creamy end. Upfront, creamyness that coats the lips and tongue, with crisp, buttery, sweet green. I don’t notice the peach flavor right away – however there is a light juicy peach aftertaste. No bitterness. As the tea cools, more peachy, but still kinda light on peach, heavy on creamy. The tea reminds me of those Campino yogurt creamy hard candies, but not as sweet and fruity.

COMMENTS: ooh this is tasty! I wish I had this loose leaf! 10 tea bags won’t last me long anyways! This would be perfect if there was more peach taste, but I love the flavor of the creamy green.
I’d recommend giving this tea a shot if you like creamy teas or matcha lattes.

ICED TEA MODE!

I found out I have bronchitis. Ewww. I woke up not feeling any better despite my amazing husband driving out in the middle of the night to buy me cough syrup so I’d stop coughing. I’m happy to suffer, really, unless he was tired of being kept up all night again from my coughing. Of course, the syrup helps a little, but I still feel awful and chest clogged.

With that said, more teas! Especially ones like this that I can doctor with honey and lemon. Green Pomegranate? Very good iced with lemon slices and honey. Like wow, the pomegranate comes out nicely. It’s not tart. Very fresh. The green tea is nice here too – this is way better than hot as hot it’s pretty light and the fruit is low key.

Annnd this is the last of my sample. My eyeing Persimmon Tree for another order in the future, but gah at the shipping costs! They aren’t even far from me and $7 is a little steep for a small order.

Someone got this for me as a wedding present. I didn’t use it until my DavidsTea Steeper needed some serious cleaning and is MIA.

I’m gonna compare the ingenuiTEA to the Steeper

ingenuiTEA
narrower design – not for wide mugs compared to the Steeper, so you’ll have to reach under and press the drain trigger and hope to not get splashed with hot tea.
The narrow design makes it impossible to reach into the pot, if you are they type like me that likes to fish out fruit bits to sample.

Holds less than the Steeper. This puppy does 16oz as per website. It doesn’t actually make 16oz of tea, more like max output of 14 or 15ish of steeped tea. Empty, poured to the brim it’s 16oz, but if there is say 2 or 3t of tea in it, it takes up volume plus you don’t really want to fill it to the brim and risk a mess. Bit of a shock for me, as I was trying to make 16oz and ran out of room – I’m so used to an 18oz Steeper, and having some breathing room.

I do like the handle on the ingenuiTEA more, it’s easier to grab and more comfortable. The inside mechanics are the same as I can tell.

Overall – I like my Steeper more for the bigger size and wider design. I’ll end up using the ingenuiTEA for backup, travel or office use.

I had to get this tea, it sounds so crazy to me that I needed to try it. potato bits?

DRY: lots of fun potato cubes in this tea – I want to eat! Smells like appley. Bit annoying to measure the tea, the leaves are resisting my teaspoon. No, you must be steeped into tasty tea!

STEEPED: Warm, light spice, apple smell. THOSE WHITE CUBES ARE MINE! OOMMNOMNOMNOMM potato! The apple bits are nice and sweet. Very pale yellow colour. This tea had no chance for being a resteep since I ate all the fun bits.

TASTE: Mmmm, applesauce tea? I’ve had this tea’s base, Huangshan Mao Feng, and it’s very good, juicy buttery corn and refreshing – works very well with the apple and potato.
The slightly spiced apple flavor is all natural. The potato is interesting, it kinda adds a flavor of texture – does that make sense? It doesn’t physically add chunkyness, but adds an interesting depth of savory light potato flavor. Overall, the flavoring is light, but juicy.

COMMENTS: POTATO CHUNKS SO CUTE! I wanna draw little faces ^ _ ^ on them, lol! This tea is really fun, unique and interesting to me. Though, you gotta be into light flavoring.

Had a rough morning – am I ever going to be not sick? Looks like another day sitting out of jiu jitsu. I could probably go, but I don’t think anyone would partner with me, as I’ll cough and slime all over them. Ah well. Enjoy tea and study korean!

DRY: smelled like spices to me, reminding me of christmas

STEEPED: nice ambery colour tea. I might of messed up this steeping. I went to add the dry leaf to my Steeper and last nights Lupicia orzo incident left my Steeper in need of super scrub down cleaning. So I had to dig out my ingenuiTEA.. then I didn’t know how high to pour the water too, so I had to use a measuring cup, so the water temp is probably too low. Bleh!

TASTE: Surprisingly not spicey like the smell! Nilgiri frost oolong is tha bomb – its kinda almost a black and full of body, but lighter and crisp – I’m happy this was used instead of a black. First off, I taste the citrus used here, almost a bit of smokey rum and slightly creamy. Actually a good level of sweetness and I don’t think this needs sugar at all.
Really nice aftertaste of the warm spices (very slight) and I get a bit of plum in there. I find this tea very easy to drink and the more I drink, the better it gets as the plum comes out more.

resteep: more of that juicy, smokey oolong. Not much in citrus or spice taste but some silkyness. Still good! I’d buy this resteep too, lol!

COMMENTS: This came out a little light for me and I wanted more custard taste, but the whole tea grew on me fast. This tea just screams out “steep a pot worth and share with the family”. The base is really nice, the spices are great and the plum sweetness as the tea cools is very nice! However, it might of been my steeping failure, see how it comes out next time.

I snagged this tea while at Lupicia. Was nice as they had samples and it was easy to sniff each tea before buying.

DRY: Smells very roasted and sweet. The tea is in small chunks with lumps of dried strawberries. I actually was intending to get the Strawberry Orzo, but this one smelled better as it had caramel and strawberry scent!

The packaging is a “limited package” which turned out to be a bag around their typical package. Kinda wasteful and I rather not of had the extra bag around it, as I’m just gonna lose or toss it. The package also did not have english steeping instructions, so I had to look those up.

STEEPED: WHOA, this looks like coffee! Pitch black with a hint of brown. Smells dark roasted and rich.
FYI, this was a PITA to get out of my Steeper – the fine chunks of this tea clogged up the filter, pouring the tea very slowly. Next time, I’d go for a tea bag or steep in a tea pot with filter. Probably want a good filter though.
Upon closer inspection, small bits got through the Steeper filter, but one can only see it at the dregs.

TASTE: AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! UUGGGG! YUCKYUCK! Bitter, strong roasted, malty barley flavor. Not actual coffee flavor, but this tea is on the same level of strong, roasted bitter flavor. Bit of sweetness at the end like honey and caramel. Aftertaste of coffee and strawberry.

With rock sugar: same bitter taste, but sweeter. Pour out!!! Maybe I went too heavy on the tea?

Doctored heavy with milk and honey: becomes a weird grey brown colour instead of a typical light brown coffee colour. Okay – this is good. Or am I saying that because this is drinkable? Hmmmm. It’s creamy, with a berry taste. Bit of roasted caramel and chocolate essence. Actually pretty good caramel flavor. Okay – this is good!

COMMENTS: WARNING! IF YOU HATE COFFEE RUN FROM THIS TEA or be willing to have something only as lattes or doctored with milk and sweetener!
Straight up, this is awful stuff, says this tea drinker. Seriously. I’ve utterly disliked only a few teas (Adagio’s “Toasted Sesame” of bitter death and DavidsTea’s “All the Raj” of vinegar) and this would be up there. I’d say like a 35 or 45 rating.
With milk and honey, actually pretty good. I’d have it again and finish the bag. I’d put that at a 80 or 85. I’m just gonna put the tea rating in the middle.

I’d love to show this tea to my coffee drinking friends. Actually, this might the tea they are looking for. No caffeine, tastes good (I’d drink this over coffee), interesting and delicious blend of flavors. This has got to be the closet coffee tea experience I’ve had.

more grapefruit tea! Mmmmm! I got this tea in my Happy bag.

DRY: Grapefruit, almost like those gummy grapefruit slices. I love those!
STEEPED: Bright yellow colour, faint tart citrus scent. The yellow colour is here kinda scary, never seen tea this yellow and bright.

TASTE: Good balance of the green flavor, with a good natural grapefruit flavoring. This grapefruit flavor is right out ruby red grapefruit, slightly sweet. The aftertaste is a zingy tart and kinda bitter grapefruit flavor.

Comparison: Butiki’s Grapefruit Dragon
GD (heh, GD, G Dragon.. oh no! More kpop references! LOL LOL LOL http://youtu.be/t3ULhmadHkg) is white grapefruit. I found GD to be more natural grapefruity and a better zing to it.
Lupicia’s grapefruit green is a red grapefruit flavor, more sweet and a gentler zing. GG’s green base isn’t as good, I think.
Own both? probably not unless you love grapefruit. Overall, I’d get the Butiki one, but if you love ruby red grapefruit, I’d go for Lupicia.

I need to try this grapefruit tea iced! I bet with some honey it be very good! Honey and grapefruit work great together. Back to studying.

I’ve been drinking icky grapefruit juice for a few days. The juice tastes bitter and weird, like I’m drinking a glass of ground up white rind and dry citrus flesh. I really wanted to just have this tea, but I wanted to save it for when I can enjoy it more rather than chug it to stop me from coughing.

And yum! So good and natural tasting – just like a fresh grapefruit. Wish I drank this instead! At least I figure my cold hasn’t messed my taste buds, everything tastes how it should taste, yay! Back to memorizing korean hangul.

I forgot I had a whole bunch of open Persimmon Tree samples I never finished! They were all in a small tin that got jammed in the back. This tea I had 2 of! I should really finish all these samples.

My MIL thought the vanilla here was kinda weird. For this run, I made it iced with 2 sliced cuties oranges on the bottom with a little honey. Pretty good, it’s like nice sweet orange juice with vanilla curbing all tart. I dunno, I find the vanilla adds interest.

Hello again, my little nommmy evil lemon skin wearing kitten friend. We meet again!

I’m still sick, maybe worse. Might of been from lack of sleep as roommates were watching “Best of WWE RAW” or something and were cheering and screaming. Umm what?

Actually, the steep time here made this batch really marshmallowy, little citrus and not bitter. Pretty good!

I received this tea as a wedding gift – I never buy these kinds of teas.

So, I’m sick, AGAIN. This time I lost my voice! I think California hates me. My first “winter” here I’ve been sick almost nonstop. All my years in Canada, I wasn’t sick much. Most of the times I was sick from a. food poisoning. b. grass allergies c. winter death cold the entire office catches and I’m usually the last person to catch it.

So, I’m drinking this tea. Echinacea. Aren’t I supposed to drink this before I get sick? I dunno. Sad, as I have lots more Lupicia Happy bag teas to try and a Butiki order! I’ve been chugging stuff with honey all day and I’m tired of all the calories. Tea time!

TASTE: I’m not sure what Echinacea tastes like. I’ve had them in pill form. Might of had it in other teas before as a side ingredient. This tea is all echinacea. Tastes woody and leafy – like it’s a windy Vancouver fall day and a juicy leaf flies into your mouth with a bit of thick stem on the end and you get all BLLAAGGGHHHHHHHHHH spitting it out, then your umbrella flips inside out. End of sip it goes watery. Little medicinal flavor, in a more natural herby way. It is very clean tasting and kinda juicy.

COMMENTS: So, this tea is just not me. Probably not gonna finish the pot and switch back to throat burning grapefruit juice of pain. I’m not gonna rate this tea even. But hey Steepster – now you know theres a straight up echinacea tea. Someone out there is bound to love this stuff! The Loose Teas – Cafe and Gifts does have an interesting line up.

mmmm, I haven’t had this one in awhile, as I’ve been unable to open the tin!

The tin of this got dented a bit during my move. Usually, when I want this tea, I’ll try to open it briefly, give up and move onto another tea as I have lots of options. insane tea stash ftw!
This morning I tried really hard to open it and it took a couple minutes. It was sealed pretty good as the scent of this tea hit me hard with the strawberry, spicy and tart.

This cup seems more on the rhubarby tart side – it’s not awful tart but just enough for me to enjoy. The strawberry here is very good and natural tasting. Yum! Hope this tea doesn’t disappear off DT’s online site.

Drinking the last of this tasty mango rooibos. Always feel I need to do a kind of moment of silence when I’m drinking the last of good tea.

Weirdly, when I was at the Lupicia store this tea was called “King and I”. Unless I was mixed up and they have another durian tea. I dunno.

Enjoying a nice big pot of this, laughing at the memories of this christmas – I took a tumbler of this tea over for christmas eve dinner and terrorized everyone. I thought this tea smells tasty fruity yummy, everyone else was “uggg durian!” FOOOLS!

Something I did notice with this tea – the scent likes to linger in teaware despite rinsing. It stuck in my Steeper and my tumbler – I had to soapy water and baking soda scrub to get the smell out. I didn’t do that for my tumbler and it made my next tea taste like durian.

Good Morning! I received this tea in my Lupicia happy bag. Uggg I’m in pain all over, holiday break from jiu jitsu and returning after the break = painful. I hurt all over and feel tired. Feels great to be back, though annoyed I couldn’t finish a choke on a guy as he got saved by the bell!

STEEPED: classic dark amber brown black tea look.

TASTE: English breakfasty tasting, though I find this one (compared to other bags of English breakfast I’ve had) very clean tasting. No bitterness or dryness.

Admittedly, I don’t drink this kind of tea very much and it’s something I don’t buy for myself, so other than it tasting pretty clean and not bitter, not sure how this stacks up against others. Though I think this tea not bad.

Going back to ice packs and heating pads.

ARG, my tea stash went out of control recently and I’m out of nice tins again. I got 3 big ugly cookie tins that I need to modpodge pretty with crazy pink christmas paper, which I’m going to do once I’m done this tea! I believe I got this tea in a trade with Rachel Sincere, ty! This tea is in a bag.

STEEPED: Very pale yellow tea – sweetless coconutty mellow smell.

TASTE: Okay, this is interesting in flavor. First off, very light in flavor. What I do get is creamy mouth coconut and buttery coconut fleshy taste up front. The flavor is close to real coconut. Light green flavor, barely there. Aftertaste of a little lemongrass. Not really getting the ginger. Overall I find this tea kinda savory as it is not sweet at all.

COMMENTS: I’d love to have this tea with some curry or thai food – that would be yummy! I think this tea could chill out a mouth burning with spicy food! However, it seems too light of a tea for me to enjoy whenever I want. Next time I’ll try a longer steeping and hopefully the ginger and green comes out more. In the end, I do enjoy the fun pairing with coconut and lemongrass.

ICED LATTE!

I had the craving for earl grey after insanely chewy, filling and cheesy mochi pizza (that turned out really messy to make). Decided to give this tea a shot from my Lupicia Happy bag!

Double strength, poured over ice and soymilk with a little agave. Wish I had honey but I’m out. Overall, pretty good. The earl grey flavor is both citrusy and bergamont. The rooibos as a latte is not strong – good for me who isn’t into red rooibos taste. I probably should do a tasting not as a latte, but this is pretty solid and would do it again! Wish this was a little more bergamont in flavor.

Snagged this tea in my Lupicia Happy bag, Fukubukuro, along with 8 other teas. I’m making mochi tonight – pizza mochi in fact http://youtu.be/e59erF1YiFA but that’ll be later in the night, too late for me to have matchy tea, so I can’t pair the pizza with my tea, boo!

STEEPED: Pale spring green. Obviously matcha in this, but the colour is a good green, like I busted out some of my good matcha and not the lower quality browny matcha.

TASTE: Rice toastyness, light green tea flavor, bit of sweetness. Very fresh tasting at first sip, little bitterness at the end. I did a 45 second steep, might try 30 seconds next time.

COMMENTS: Pretty good genmaicha. I like the pairing of the matcha in this tea. I’m not a genmaicha expert, I’ve had two similar teas, one bagged and another I got from the LA farmers market. This one is much better, less bitter and actually sweet! Right now, I actually don’t have any matcha genmaicha and have been adding my own matcha to some regular genmaicha – this one does better than my tea experiments.