Ewa

Got this with my Teas, etc. order on a whim. Well actually my brother picked it out for me, which is really fairly typical. I should probably stop listening to him on these matters because our tastes are vastly divergent. He really likes tea flavored tea, whereas I like nifty flavored tea. Anyway I decided to ignore that and go with this instead of the summer currant which I had originally been going to get because any time I buy something currant flavored I am disappointed and I thought that I would just break that vicious cycle.

This is an interesting tea and, appropriately enough, one I think my brother would like. It reminds me of the Upton Rose Congou in a way, since both base tea and flavor are very mild, although this is much milder than the rose was. There is the faintest of hints of citrus about it, but nothing that really screams grapefruit specifically at me unless I’m concentrating – so, again like the rose congou, this is a good tea if you want something that you won’t necessarily pay too much attention to.

I probably won’t be getting any more of it, but I’m going to recommend it to my brother!

Got this a while back, but I’m kind of surprised that I never wrote anything about it. It is probably because I am a lazy git.

Anyway, last night I was feeling kind of iffy around the tummy yet was also craving something dessert-tastic and turned to this. Handily enough, I have already consumed most of the white chocolate chips in this in previous cups – which is not to say that there weren’t many of them, I am just nearing the end of the pouch. Anyway, so without the prospect of melted white chocolate to add heaviness to the tea, I thought this would be a perfect way to appease my belleh (mint!) while still having a sweeter tea.

I am pleased to report that my efforts were successful, as belleh remained appeased, yay! The tea was also quite good, as I said with the coconut cheesecake honeybush, I really like honeybush as a base for dessert tea and I think it really fit the flavors blended here. I definitely like the mint with it.

I feel a little bad only reviewing this now, because, as I said, all the white chocolate chips are gone at this point so I’m not really reviewing the full experience as it were. From what I can recall though, the white chocolate made it somewhat sweeter and gave it kind of a smoother texture overall. The addition of the mint kept the tea relatively light though, which I liked .

So among the tea orders that I made during my self-imposed 52teas hiatus, was a small order from Upton Teas. I grabbed a big thing of my favorite Earl Grey (from a batch of samples that I ordered….holy shit almost a year ago), which is the Earl Grey Blue Flower, and a couple of samples of stuff that had caught my attention when others had reviewed it, including this. I generally like rose flavored stuff and thought I would like a rose flavored tea to sip when I am feeling hoity toity.

I realize now, of course, that the rose-flavored tea void in my life was meant to be filled by Teas, etc.‘s Rosy Earl Grey. It was definitely not meant to be filled by this tea, although anyone reading this should definitely bear in mind that my reasons for not being too enamored with the tea could easily be someone else’s reasons for liking it. In other words, this isn’t a bad tea, it’s just not a tea that I personally need/want and that has everything to do with my preferences and nothing to do with the tea.

Basically, everything about this tea is subtle. Inasmuch as anything rose flavored can be subtle, so, you definitely know the rose is there but it’s not as obnoxiously fragrant as a rose tea can be. The black tea base is similarly light and blends really well with the rose flavoring, creating a lovely light flavor that is easy to drink absentmindedly. This is not a tea that demands attention; it is content to sit and wait for you to drink it at your leisure. Which is, of course, why I am not overfond of it. I don’t really do subtle (although there is a line of inyourfaceness that I don’t want my teas to cross), and I drink far too much black tea as it is so if I’m gonna be drinking something unassuming and easy to overlook, I may as well give my body a break from the caffeine and just have some water. Not everyone’s philosophy, I am well aware! But that’s how I look at it, which is why I put this firmly in ‘eh’ territory.

On the plus side, this tea is well nigh impossible to oversteep.

OM NOM NOM NOM

Ok, now that that’s out of the way.

Picked this up along with the Blueberry Cream Cheese Danish, so creamy cheese is definitely the theme of this week at Chez Ewa. Which is awesome. Obviously. It is kind of hilarious to me that I picked up the Teas, etc. coconut custard and then a few weeks later managed to get this as well, SO MUCH CAFFEINE FREE CREAMY COCONUT NESS. Hey, I know what I like, or what I might conceivably like despite not actually liking for real (I’ve already discussed my…tumultuous relationship with coconut).

Anyway, you are all going to think I have gone absolutely insane, but the overriding scent I am getting from this is…wait for it…BUTTER. I know, I know, really? Butter? WTF. But, there you go, that is what I am getting, which is interesting because that was totally how cheesecakes in Japan tasted to me. They do this extremely odd thing with cheesecakes over there that makes them extremely dense and…buttery although not necessarily a nice kind of buttery, most of them were a bit too much for my taste. Cursory google searching tells me that they do indeed put butter in the cream cheese mixture for cheesecakes, but I can’t say for sure whether that is a deviation from Western cheesecakes because it has been ages since I have made cheesecake myself, although further cursory googling leads me to believe that it is. Anyway BUTTER. Perhaps I now just associate butter and cheesecake? That would be weird.

The actual taste of the tea remains buttery, but definitely the nice creamy variety of buttery that I can definitely get behind. There is also a really good balance of coconut-ness/butteryness/vague cheesecakeness/actual tea, that just has me wanting to drink this forever. It tastes like dessert, but it’s not overwhelming like many of the other dessert teas I’ve tried are. I have not yet tried adding cognac yet to see what happens, and I’m not particularly filled with the urge to, although I probably will at some point (FOR SCIENCE). I definitely prefer honeybush as a caffeine free/dessert base to rooibos, although I also find this saddening because I used to like rooibos a lot more until someone on Steepster mentioned the sour wood aftertaste and now it is ALL I TASTE >:-| Oh well, at least honeybush doesn’t have it. And if it does, don’t tell me about it, I am apparently very suggestible :P

PS: I contemplated just writing om nom nom nom and leaving it there, but that would have meant depriving people of my cheesecake related tangents and clearly that would have been Wrong.

PPS: So many highly rated teas over the past few days! AND my first ever 100 (I have a neuroses related to the number re: WHAT IF I FIND SOMETHING BETTER but I have decided to just take that risk and accept that if I find something better 1. that will be pretty awesome and 2. get over it)

So, a while back, I was taking stock of my tea purchasing patterns and had noticed that they had somehow devolved to the point where they could easily be summarized as “just send all my tea money to 52teas,” which, while certainly a sound tea buying strategy that will yield a lot of nifty, delicious tea, meant that I found myself without some of my staples (NEED MOAR EARL GREY). So I consciously tried not to be tempted whenever the weekly notification of a new blend came up. BUT! When I saw that Frank had reblended this AND the coconut cheesecake honeybush, I knew there was no way I could resist. Grabbed both, and a few days later here we are, which is interesting because usually my 52teas orders take a while to arrive (ll have to try this with a bit more leaf next time to see if that strengthens the other tastes.

Edit: Had to go shopping and come back to realize this, but my room now smells like blueberries :D

I got this tea for Christmas from my brother, who has a The Tao of Tea store within walking distance or something ridiculous like that. He’s not a huge fan of really crazy teas (like I am) so he tends a bit more towards the subtle side or even the non-flavored side, but he knows I like neat flavors.

I admit, I was a tad disappointed when I saw what this tea was because I am just not that big of a fan of mango. That is to say the actual fruit, which is probably why my brother doesn’t really know that I’m not a huge fan, because how often do you eat mango fruit as opposed to something mango flavored? This point is important because anyone stalking my tea notes would probably notice that the phrase “now, I do not like X thing that this tea is flavored with normally” comes up surprisingly often. People might start to think that I have some strange masochistic tea drinking streak which they absolutely do not want to hear any more about. This is not the case! The fact is that most of my food dislikes are texture related: nuts are too firm and it annoys me, mangoes are too squishy while also stringy and it creeps me out, cauliflower is just disgusting, oh wait that doesn’t really fit. ANYWAY, I digress. Basically, I am generally unopposed to mango flavoring, which is good because otherwise this would have been a terrible present.

Thankfully it is not. In fact, it is SUPER DELICIOUS. Just the right amount of mango and tea flavor, making it a perfect fruity tea for when I am in the mood for that. Also, it’s gorgeous! I have no idea what the long yellow things are, but they are really aesthetically pleasing along the backdrop of the tea. It’s also one of those nice teas that you can’t oversteep, so making big pots of it is totally viable. I am DEFINITELY making my brother get me more of this when it runs out (unfortunately soooooon, since it requires 2 tsp per cup of tea.)

Man, everyone is so into this tea, I was really excited to be trying it because I am always on the lookout for kickass dessert teas. But…I have to say I’m pretty disappointed by it.

Now, full disclosure here, I do not actually like coconut all that much. I know, however, that in some forms of pastry it becomes quite nice (german chocolate cake y/y?) which is why I tend to give it the benefit of the doubt in tea, especially in dessert-y tea. Sometimes it works out well for me, as in 52teas’ coconut cream pie, and sometimes it does not. Like now.

I can only assume that my problem with this is that it is just too coconutty. I don’t know, I’m getting this odd sort of spicy aftertaste, I’m not really sure what’s going on, but I am not that enamored with it. Props to Teas, etc. for being able to give it a really coconutty texture though. Impressive.

I will tell you a secret though: pouring a bit of cognac in? smooths it right out, VERY tasty. Certain parties, * coughmybrothercough * have gone on record as saying that if you have to pour alcohol into it to make it good that means it’s not worth the effort, but I can tell you right now that it doesn’t actually work for EVERYTHING.

For the record, I do not pour cognac in everything just to see what will happen.

Just most things.

So, I went into Teavana because I needed more diy tea bags, and, since I was there, I had to buy tea. I mean, I couldn’t not, right? It was RIGHT THERE. I told the attendant that I really liked almond biscotti but I wanted something non-caffeinated and after going through basically their entire stock of increasingly ridiculously named dessert-y teas, settled on this.

Most of the teavana blends are kind of terrifying to look at since they appear to have more stuff than tea, and this is a slightly less egregious example of that. That is, it definitely has a ton of Stuff in, but at least I can see the tea, which is more than I can say for one of the oolongs I tried, which seriously looked like it contains eggs or something? Ok, probably not eggs, but I definitely didn’t see any actual tea.

As far as the taste goes, I’m gonna have to say that this is actually too sweet, almost over sugared. I don’t really sweeten my tea unless I am making chai on the stovetop, so having it come pre-sweetened is somewhat jarring. Also, I feel that the fruit overshadows the other tastes a bit, and I definitely am not getting the honeybush at all. I like the almond biscotti because it’s got a bit of subtlety about it, I’ll probably just stick to that and look elsewhere for my decaf dessert tea in the future.

That said, it’s not BAD by any stretch of the imagination, just a bit…too much.

Edit: I realized that my comment about the subtlety of almond biscotti might be somewhat misleading. This is still me we’re talking about, so it’s not THAT subtle, just…more subtle than this.

Time for my quarterly return to Steepster! I actually had a revelation earlier this week that one of the reasons that I don’t come by here often is because the dashboard takes forever to load these days. I hit the steepster link, go off to do something else while it loads, proceed to completely forget about it and finish off whatever tea I was drinking in the meantime.

In any case, we’ll see how long this return lasts. Probably until I finish my current research paper which I am at this moment procrastinating on while writing this note. I think I’ll probably stick to only logging new teas as I try them rather than logging all the tea I drink unless I get a strongly different impression from it than previously.

In any case, I’ve been wanting to try this tea for a while, since I loooove earl grey the best. Even more than the crazy ass teas from 52teas. Although I love those too, of course, just NOT AS MUCH :P Anyway, I was really wary of it, but I know Rabs loves it, so I had always been planning to try some. Sadly, my finances have not been great of late. Yay for being at a public university in California! Motto: We Have No Money.

I finally got a bit of a break when mum sent me a check for Valentine’s day with instructions to buy tasty chocolates for myself because she was busy. I think that we all know that “tasty chocolates” is a universal code for “nifty tea and possibly some posh beer.” So I grabbed several Teas,etc. teas. Including this and coconut custard, which I had also been coveting for a while.

Now, this is a black and green (and bunch of other stuff) blend, which has historically been problematic, but I tend to get around this problem through the highly scientific method of treating it like a black tea and selectively forgetting that the green tea is there. I recommend this method for anyone as chronically lazy as me.

Now then, to the tea itself. This is, to put it frankly, AMAZING. I can’t believe that it has all that stuff going on in there (jasmine and earl grey and rose, oh my!) and yet it all manages to come together somehow without anything becoming too overpowering. That’s right, I am getting the rose and the jasmine and the earl grey in basically equal amounts! I am freaking out here guys. I am going to have to keep this on hand ALL THE TIME, I am not even lying. As with other “augmented” earl greys though, I don’t really see this as a substitute for normal earl grey, which I need in the mornings to function. However, I really love having this throughout the day, or making a big pot of it, since the different flavors mean I won’t get tired of it even if I’m drinking it for several hours.

tl;dr version: A++ would drink/buy again!

Addendum: I think my other reason for slacking off on Steepster is my chronic inability to write short tasting notes. WHY IS THIS SO LONG.

Do not think that thought I have been seduced by the amazing power of strawberry zabaglione and spiced apple chai that I do not love you anymore, Earl Grey. You are still my favorite!

I continue to like this extra lemony Earl Grey but I have been pining a bit for a more traditional one lately. Unfortunately, since the volume of tea in my cupboard is currently still quite daunting, I can’t really justify ordering more. This definitely confirms that I like this in addition to, rather than instead of Earl Grey.

Teapot tea for the day. Ivan has a little stand that you can put a tea light in and it will keep your tea nice and warm for a couple of hours. This appeals to both my laziness and my utter wussiness when it comes to being cold.

On consideration, I find that this lacks the character that I recall from the GM coconut pouchong. That may be memory playing silly buggers with me though, I don’t know. One day I will get the GM stuff again and know for sure. In the meantime, this is still a perfectly acceptable substitute.

Manfully resisted the urge to just make another cup of spiced apple chai – don’t want to overexpose myself and start to hate it.

I do really like this tea, but sometimes it makes me miss the more bold maltiness of Golden Monkey. mmmm, golden monkey.

So hard to just not drink this all the time!

ILU SPICED APPLE CHAI

This was my teapot tea for the day because as we all know I do not learn from experience. Oh hay the green did not actually let me sleep last night? Clearly that was a FLUKE we should try it again and see if the experiment is repeatable except that we will use a completely different green because it is not like we are invoking scientific principles in order to justify our behavior. Also why are we using the royal we? I don’t know.

Good lord I am so glad that Liberteas is down in the other reviews section saying she also got bubble gum from this because that is the overwhelming scent that I get as well. Sadly, I do not like bubble gum – the taste is too sugary and artificial for me most of the time and I feel it encourages the habit of not chewing with your mouth closed which is just gross. Fortunately, the taste for me, is much more complicated than just bubble gum. There is an initial point of bubblegum, it’s true, but then it resolves itself into this fascinating mixture of flavors that I really enjoy trying to tease out. The jasmine here is very subtle but definitely there if you look for it and I actually quite enjoy trying to pinpoint it within each sip. The base tea is also quite subtle allowing the flavors to really interact with each other. And it is an interaction, not a mixture, I think, they almost seem to be in conversation with each other. It’s neat!

I really like this tea in my teapot because I don’t mind having several cups of it in a row, since the taste is so complex.

I have totally been rationing this because it is just soooo good. I can’t even give it a coherent review because I never really stop to analyze the taste. As soon as I start drinking, I finish it because SO YUM. The cream is probably the most prominent I’ve ever tasted and the strawberries just go with it so well!

So this was my pot of tea for the day (and night, obviously), in the hopes that when I would inevitably be too lazy to make myself different tea in the evening/at night, the fact that this is green would actually allow me to get some sleep. Yeah, not happening I can tell you that right now. I tend to overbrew all of my tea and this is no exception (I know it’s wrong, I can’t help it! I have the tastebuds of…something with not very discerning tastebuds!)

I freely admit, I know jack all about green teas so I have no idea what to expect from this tea, except that it smells DELICIOUS. (Oh lord I just tried to ctrl-s save this entry. TOO MANY PAPERS JESUS JUMPING ON A POGO STICK) A friend got it for me as a christmas present operating under the “this smells kind of nice” system of choosing tea. It is, in fact, very nice, one of those kind of sugary green teas, but without being too overwhelming about it. Does it taste as good as it smells? Well, no. But! Green tea philistine here, remember! And it does keep smelling great once brewed so I am satisfied.

BEWARE I LIVE

So, this quarter? Not so fun. Not even really so much my courseload as the fact that I just randomly fell into a funk some time in September and never really got out of it. If it helps, I have been neglecting everything! Not just Steepster. That doesn’t help, does it? Well, it helps ME. I am trying to be better though! Or I will. As soon as I stop avoiding finishing my last paper. Which updating my tealog is helping me do. /innocent whistling.

Neglecting my tealog has not made me neglect buying tea though, so I at least have not been suffering on that front. I have been making a lot of pots of tea, but this morning I decided I needed some apple chai. This could have something to do with the fact that I finally finished the big tub o’thai chai I got yonks ago and was able to finally order a bunch of apple chai with a clear conscience and it got here yesterday. (What is up with that by the way? I ordered it on THURSDAY, that is a turnaround time of ONE DAY how does that even work? Has UPS just started employing robots for MAXIMUM EFFIECIENCY?)

So, you know how sometimes you have a thing and then you finish it off and then you do not have it for a long time, which makes you sad because you thought it was really good and want to have it again, and then you DO get to have it again but you have built it up so much in your mind that it can never measure up and you are totally disappointed and vow never to drink tea again? (Also, you know how sometimes you write really long runon sentences and get killed by English professors in the night? Well, I don’t but if I keep this sort of thing up, I WILL) Anyway, for once, that did not happen! Spiced apple chai is still as delicious as I remember it being, yay! I really think that the apple comes out a lot in this blend and that the balance of apple and spice is just right. AND, I only thought of this now, but this is really the perfect time to be drinking something called spiced apple chai, isn’t it? Very festive. Or it will be very festive when I FINISH THIS PAPER. (God I hate critical summaries)

Hopefully, this marks the start of regular tealog updating for me again. Especially since e-mails from Steepster have started coming in again (ILU STEEPSTER SELECT) and will thus remind me to update. I have also ordered the 52teas 12 teas of Christmas thingy and 1. am TOTALLY INAPPROPRIATELY EXCITED TO BEGIN* and 2. will thus have plenty of subject material to write about.

*Unfortunately I have to wait a bit longer than expected to start since I bought it to take to the family Christmas trip thing, which doesn’t start until…the 20th? So I’m going to be off by…like a week. (DON’T HURT ME FRANK I’M SORRY)

And now. Paper.

Cloudy day. Giant pot of Russian Caravan.

You know you are jealous!

This is the first Russian Caravan that I’ve tried, although it is not my first time having it, I’ve just been busy. Ugh school. Ugh masters thesis. Ugh life. It’s very nice, not as smoky as I thought it would be, but since I don’t have a basis for comparison, I have no idea if what I thought is what a Russian caravan is supposed to taste like. If that makes any sense. Still! I like it. Great afternoon tea.

In other news, have managed to break my teapot’s lid. Yes, the same teapot for which I already had to go out and buy a replacement lid for. Which turned out to be the lid of a little Vaguely Asian™ tea cup. I am now using the saucer from the same cup as a replacement lid. When that inevitably breaks because I am clumsy liek woah, I will probably attempt to use the cup as a lid, because dammit I am getting my money’s worth!

OMG GUYS

DO YOU KNOW WHAT THIS TASTES LIKE?

LIKE THOSE ICE CREAM BARS.
(You know the strawberry shortcake ones? with the layers? and the like, delicious crackly bits on the outside?)

ANYWAY IT IS AMAZING.

So I was feeling tea ennui earlier this week and decided to go grab a bunch of 1 oz samples from the tea shop I have a gift certificate to. (I can’t help it! I just LOVE samples…) The chais they had that were actually labeled as such were somewhat disappointing, as they had NO CARDAMON and that is just unacceptable to me, but I saw this instead and decided to grab it, despite the fact that it smelled kind of like seaweed. That scent has since faded so I’m just going to chalk it up to the container they were storing it in…

This tea is cardamon city. I am serious, I swear a good half of the ounce I got is composed of little green cardamon pods. It is, in fact, verging on the excessive.

On the other hand, it tastes really nice – like a very mild chai. It’s definitely got cinnamon in it as well. And doubtless some other spices, but they are somehow all mellow so that this is good both with milk and without. Made myself a giant pot and have been drinking it all day.

Realized I hadn’t had this in a while today so I brewed it up. Think I’m gonna grab some condensed milk this weekend and make 52teas’ latte mix thing. Just got the craving for it as soon as I started drinking the tea.

It is really hard to cut my caffeine intake when I just love black tea best :(

Stupid California weather has finally stopped being so stupid hot that the thought of drinking tea causes me to pass out from heat stroke. Yay!

This is good, because I SO did not get enough sleep last night and REALLY need my black tea fix. Mmmm, delicious lemony tea.

The main problem with the whole orange/matcha thing is the fact that since I moved, I now have a 40 minute bus ride to school. This means I have to wake up earlier. Which ACTUALLY means that I wake up 20 minutes before I need to leave the house and rush around trying to get ready and forget things and spaz out. What that means for my morning drink is that I am usually drinking it VERY soon after having brushed my teeth. (I could drink it before, but then what would I drink on my way to the bus?)

This is not optimal. Clearly the solution is to stop brushing my teeth.

Continue to drink matcha and orange juice in the mornings – think I’ve got the proportions right because it is not unpalatable.

I still worry about scurvy though.

What do you think would happen if I mixed matcha with emergenC?