Cavocorax

Thanks Sil for the sample!

I tried it side by side with Bluebird’s Terry’s Tea to see which was the best chocolate orange tea. The answer: Not this one.

I steeped it for 3 minutes and the result was very bitter. Each sip left a tacky aftertaste, and it felt like my teeth were coated in… something? Not pleasant. It was simliar to that feeling you get when you eat super cheap chocolate and it’s waxy.

After the first few sips it got a bit better, but not enough for me to bother finishing the cup. Guess I’m not the only one indifferent to this one, so no hard feelings!

My samples came in! I ended up resteeping this 5 times today! That’s a record. I wasn’t sure how much to use but I took a perfect teaspoon and a 12 oz tumbler. I steeped it for 30 seconds, 40, 50, one minute, and two minutes.

It was really good. I think honey was the strongest note, but I noticed each steeping favored different flavors. I’ll have to pick some up!

After sleeping it for 30s, I’m not sure I’d want to try it at 3 minutes+; that might just be crazy strong

Thanks whatshesaid for the sample!

This tastes like actual coconut flakes, but like whatshesaid (ahem) said, it’s also a bit soapy too. Odd! Also, not my thing. This makes me want to drink some Pom Tango instead!

I agree – Coconut Oolong is probably the best use of coconut in a tea!

…sipdown!

I bought this one on impulse, along with Terry’s Orange. No regrets so far. I needed another rooibos because my sleepy-time tin had room in it! And we can’t have that! I want 20-30 types of non-caffeinated tea to choose from in the evenings so I don’t get bored!

It’s actually a little tart like real rhubarb! It’s very good. And I don’t really get custard but it does seem to be creamy, much like the mint chocolate that I’m sipping away from in my other Timolino, so I’m happy.

I’m not really sure what calendula is though, but I’ve seen that Bluebird used this in a few teas. I wonder if it’s related to marigold petals?

Sipdown!

I’m not too sure what to say about this. It’s a mint chocolate rooibos? (i.e., it tastes like mint, chocolate and rooibos in that order!)

I think this is a bit creamier than other ones that I’ve tried, and it’s very delicious and sweet without being overpowering.

Not sure what happened today but I only filled my 4 timolino’s worth of tea, and two of those were of this tea. Just a slow day for sipping I guess.

I made the first cup around 9 AM, and I’m sipping on the last of it now. It’s really tasty, but this resteep is a bit weak. Next time I’ll steep it longer – I forgot to add an extra minute.

Uh-oh. My cupboard is suddenly up around 115 teas now! I went outside looking for my $5 Verdant sampler and found my order from Bluebird Tea (my last since I joined the ordering hiatus group) and two packs of swaps!

I’m not really that upset though. :P I have high hopes for the Bluebird teas (Rhubarb & Custard rooibos, and Terry’s Orange), and the rest are smallish samples!

I didn’t expect to get 3 more samples from Bluebird with my order though. This is one of them, which is fantastic because when I saw they had a sale on for 15%, I nearly bought this just to give it a try. (The coupon was invalid by the time I saw it which is probably for the best. Now I can wait until I’m under 100 teas, and make sure I like it.).

Surprise? I like it!

The tea is very subtle but I can taste the Ceylon, bananas and more creaminess. I was worried that maybe I’d contaminated this sample with the Creme de la Creme Oolong I’d just finished (in the same cup), but I’m on the second cup now and it’s still creamy.

I’m so used to banana and chocolate, but this is really nice as it is. And it tastes like REAL banana. I want MOAR. #someday

ETA: I bumped the rating up a bit more because I wish I had more in my cupboad. I hope I left the leaves on the counter so I can try to resteep it… Too bad Bluebird didn’t have a distribution office in Canada for cheap shipping. Hey… too bad that imaginary person wasn’t me! :P

Fancy!

I had this today, and even managed to re-steep it! (Which I should do more often I know!) Based on the flavour categories, I’d say that this is… scratch that. It’s all butter. Just soft, melty butter. And cream. Did I just pay a ton of money for buttery cream tea?

Now I understand the fuss about milk oolongs. I wouldn’t want to drink this all the time, but it’s a good one for special moments. Maybe I should have bought more than 1oz, but it was $8. Now that I know it’s good maybe I’ll snap it up during a sale! And I’ll try and resteep it at least one more time before I go to bed.

Wow though. Five minutes after my last sip, and I can still taste butter… <3 What if I drank this while I ate popcorn?

I drank a tumbler of this today and it was only at the end that I realised that Yunnan leaves are what are in Dragon Pearls. So if I’m ever unable to restock from Zen Tea, then I can just keep drinking this tasty tea.

Guys – I like Yunnan! :P #TeaNoobMomemnts

I made two timolino’s of tea 2 hours ago and have slowly been working my way through them. I knew the other one was DTT’s Malt Shop, but forgot what this was for a bit. Woo! It’s Tiger Eye.

I liked it, and now it’s a sipdown…

Stacy suggested narrowing a tea down to different categories to see what you can taste. I thought I’d try that here as this one seems a little complex.

These were the categories: vegetal, marine, nutty, sweet, fruity, floral, earthy, spicy, sweet, other.

I’d say that this tea is sweet, fruity and earthy with a bunch of other in there as well. Muscatel? Hmmm. It smells sweet and fruity, and that translates into a nice light taste, but one that’s balanced by the earthy notes too. It makes me think of forests. Can you drink a forest?

This tea used to be named David’s Darjeeling – I guess this isn’t a full darjeeling like I thought, but I really enjoy this one. I forgot how much I like it, and need to rotate it into my morning blacks a little more often!

I’ve been averaging six hours sleep a night so I really should go to bed, but I’m 92% done my book (the last Wheel of Time) and I just don’t want to! :O Guess that means I’m not good at being an adult? I might regret this when I wake up at 8-9, but that’s what strong tea is for, amirite?

I didn’t realise that Compass had loose-leaf tea. Thanks to JoonSusanna for the rooibos samples. I’m getting a bit of cream and caramel, and lots of rooibos, but not in a bad way. This is pretty enjoyable actually, and it does remind me a bit of Irish Cream!

I like having a lot of variety for caffeine-free teas, so maybe I’ll grab a bunch once I drink up all my current samples! I’m pretty excited to try the Cola rooibos, but I’ll save that for an afternoon.

Still a pretty good Assam. Not as good as the Damn Fine Tea from A&D, but good. :) I won’t have any difficulty drinking this one down.

So I’ve decided that Butiki’s Taiwanese Assam is my favourite. Now I want to compare A&D’s Tiger Assam to Zen Tea’s Assam Mangalam Second Flush.

I wanted to write detailed descriptions but the baby is teething and tired, and she keeps wanting to “play” with my grumpy fat cat (see profile pic) and I’m trying to prevent either side from getting hurt so it’s distracting. Timing is everything and I picked a bad time for this.

So in summary, I think the Tiger Assam is preferable. Although I said I expected it to be stronger in my other post, it does taste stronger than the Zen Assam, while being slightly less astringent – both good things. Zen’s Assam is still good though – I’ll drink it on days where I don’t need quite as much kick.

Also, I don’t think I should drink either of these teas on an empty stomach. Yikes. My belly and my head are complaining!

Yessssssss. Did you know I like licorice? If you like licorice, you might like this tea. Oh, and I guess there’s cinnamon and fennel and orange in here too but mostly it’s just sweet sweet licorice.

I feel relaxed after drinking this, but I also feel like I should go and brush my teeth again too. Is it magic-stress relief tea? I don’t know, but at least I have a better idea of what kind of herbals I enjoy!

Thanks ozli for getting me into this tea. It’s pretty great, and it resteeps well too! I still have an unopened 1 oz bag of this to sip through!

Don’t have time for a full review but this was good and now it’s gone. Too bad I couldn’t get it to taste more like dream cheese, but the blueberry was nice.

I keep forgetting how good this tea is, and my roommate has about 6 oz of it just waiting to be sipped. I love how it’s smokey but not as hit-you-in-the-face strong as a lapsang souchong. I think I might even prefer this to lapsang souchong as I’m more likely to be in the mood for this than extreme tea.

I’m liking this a bit more this time around. It smells malty, grassy, and very much like honey. The base reminds me a bit of an Assam – maybe because of the sweetness is comparable to the fruity notes, or maybe I just have Assam’s on the brain.

When I sip it I get a lot of grass. Honeyed grass. The rest is hard to describe but one reviewer mentions muscatel and yes, I get that too. Not too much thankfully!

If you would have told me a year ago that I would drink “honeyed grass” and think it was excellent I probably would have raised an eyebrow at you. And then I would have thought you were a weirdo because that’s a random thing to say to someone. But I’m surprised. I really do like this one.

Oooh, thank you CrowKettle! I have a few matcha samples to try out and I decided to start here! I took about half a tablespoon of matcha and mixed with 2oz hot water, then added ice, 5oz of milk and I shook it like crazy.

The result? This is pretty good. And different. And strong. I can definitely taste the matcha, and the creaminess. Did I get the proportions right? I don’t know. I do know this was easy to make and quite tasty so I think that that’s the important thing here.

Oooh! CrowKettle sent me a sample of this! (thank you!) After seeing how quickly it was snapped up when it was reblended, I felt I needed to get my hands on it!

I love the smell. It’s like vanilla blueberries. When I taste it, I lose the vanilla notes but I get a nice bit of creaminess. It’s not quite as creamy as I had hoped for though. I’ve had fruity teas that were so friuty that it felt like I was eating actual berries. DT’s Pom Tango does this. This tea does not. I’m still really happy I was able to try this though! You never know with the 52Teas blends. It makes me nervous knowing they are limited time only…

Hee! I’m just craving this tea every day now. Looks like I’ll be out of it next week at the rate I’m going. I placed another order with Bluebird last week, but that was for the Rhubarb Custard and the Terry’s Chocolate. Should have added this one too, but I’m not sure I’d even tried this at that point. :P (Too impulsive)

I’m just enjoying my tea while I share lunch with the baby. She’s eating ham, avocado, cheerios and fancy cheese, and I keep snacking on the pieces she doesn’t want. Win win! I wish I’d realized how tasty avocados were years ago!

Oh yeah, I did it! Once I saw the free shipping I realized this would probably be my only chance to order from AD&D and so I picked this tin on impulse.

It’s such a pretty tin too!

Happily the tea is also very nice. To be honest I expected it to be a bit bolder from the description but it’s not SUPER bold. It’s quite strong but drinkable with a slight astringency at the end of the sip. There are a few fruity notes in there too, which I associate with Assam tea.

This is very good. I think I prefer Butiki’s Taiwanese Assam, but this is a close second! (It really dries out the mouth though!)

That’s the end of this – sipdown!

Della Terra threw this in as a free sample which is great because I was curious about it, but not really willing to actually buy it. It’s so sweet and tart!

When I first sipped it I immediately thought of wine, which is odd for a “kid’s” tea. Then I got hit with the hibiscus backlash. Yowza!

All in all, it’s an interesting experiment, but it’s not for me. Della Terra can make some great blends, but this isn’t one of them…

(Oooh – I’m at about 85 teas in my cupboard. I’m hit by a sudden impulse to buy a billion samples from Teavivre or Upton but that’s irresponsible and also, I’m afraid to. Seriously – when you’ve got 20 types of Assam to choose from how do you know what to buy? I might just do it randomly if I do it).