52teas

Backlog:

I like the cotton candy flavoring with the honeybush base. I’m not getting a strong ‘nutty’ or earthy flavor from the honeybush, just that lightly sweet, honeyed flavor and that melds nicely with the candy floss flavor. It tastes like fluffy, sweet cotton candy. A pitcher full of yum.

This is a festive-looking blend with candy corn mixed in. It’s probably more appropriate to drink it around Halloween, but there are no rules about when to try a tea! The aroma of both the dry blend and brewed tea has that caramel-like sweetness that does remind me of candy corn. The tea base is quite good, and comes through as clean and a little malty. Actually, thinking back on it, I tasted the tea base first, and then the other flavors as it cooled more. These include a strong mellow sweetness that is distinctly honey-like, as well as marshmallow root, which I think I’ve finally tasted enough times to be able to identify. I’m not a big fan of honey-flavored teas in general, but that’s just me. I can see that it’s quite the authentic candy corn experience! Thanks to beelicious for the sample :)

Picked this one up from KallieBoo! from her stash sale recently. I’m not really getting the banana flavor but more of the caramel honey bush. Its decent and sweet with a hint of fruity notes as it cools. Its good and I’d definitely drink it again. Just not the banana flavor I was hoping for.

Backlog:

One of the reasons that I love 52Teas so much is that the idea behind it allows for some very creative blends. Where else are you going to find a tea company create a blend like this? That’s why I want to keep 52Teas alive and buy it from Frank so that I can keep creating unique tea flavors.

Regarding this tea – there’s a lot going on! This tea definitely benefits from a cooling period. When it’s still piping hot, the flavors are a bit muddled and it’s difficult to really taste any of them distinctly, but after allowing it to cool a while, the flavors become more focused. I was actually surprised that I could taste all the flavors: pumpkin, apple, banana and a freshly baked cake type of flavor. I wish I tasted more of the baked cake-y flavor, but the pumpkin, apple and banana do come through nicely.

The black tea base is also pleasant. I didn’t notice any bitterness or astringency. Overall, not my favorite from 52Teas but it was definitely tasty and it delivered what it promised.

So I think that this was tea 10 from the 12 Teas of Christmas box. The label just said ‘peppermint patty’, but I can’t find that in the system and the one I have definitely has coconut in it – there are huge shavings in the dry leaf.

Dry, the tea smells coconutty and minty and is quite strong. This mutes quite a bit after brewing, and the malty base takes over with the coconut and mint taking a back seat. The taste is very similar – a strong, malty base with a fair amount of astringency (will try steeping below boiling next time), with a mild minty flavour. After adding a sweetener and a little milk, the base mutes and doesn’t hide the flavours as much. It’s actually pretty nice. Creamy mint in the sip, with a nice coconut aftertaste. Still, I get no chocolate. That’s not specific to this tea, though. I hardly ever get chocolate in tea, so don’t hold it against it.

I’ll finish my sample, but don’t think I’d buy more if it was available.

I enjoyed drinking this- it is hearty and a bit sweet, but to me lacks the sparkling quality of champagne. I think it would have been more present in a lighter base tea but I enjoyed this nonetheless.

Backlog:

Of the various apple teas that 52Teas/SBT offered this past autumn season (and into the winter season) this was by far my favorite. As I sipped on it, it tasted like an Apple Crisp.

The apple and the Oolong used in the base of this tea are really a good match. The Darjeeling Oolong has a natural “crispness” to it that works well of the crisp apple notes. There’s a hint of warm spice and a touch of brown sugar to this too.

This tea gets a big YUM from me. I liked this one a lot.

Backlog:

A tasty iced tea. I like that it’s sweet without being cloying.

While I would sip casually, this isn’t an obvious apple flavored tea. When I focus on the sip, I pick up on the apple notes, but as I sip casually, the apple doesn’t reach out and grab me.

That said, it’s really good and kept me sipping, not because I was looking for the apple but because I was really enjoying what I was tasting. The black tea seems to taste a bit smoother with the apple. It’s sweet but not too sweet and it has an invigorating quality without being bitter, astringent or too aggressive in flavor.

It’s a really nice iced tea.

Oh wait! This was actually the first cup of the day, but I drank it down so fast, I forgot about it.

Good root beer fragrance and flavour, with a touch of creaminess and a hint of fruit from the base. I still prefer DAVIDs, but this is really tasty, and would probably be great with milk and sugar.

Backlog:

I don’t want to jinx anything, but I may just get caught up soon. I’m getting ever so much closer. OH joy! It will be weird for me when I’m not writing tasting notes for other people’s teas anymore. But it will be a good weird. It will also be weird reading what other people think about my teas again. Again … a good weird (at least I hope so!)

I think I enjoyed this more than some of the other tasters of this tea here on Steepster. That’s based solely on the numeric rating that I saw as I scrolled down while I was waiting for this page to load. I thought this was rather yummy.

I think I liked that I could really taste the black tea prominently. It tastes rich and there’s a touch of malt to it and the black tea melds nicely with these flavors. The toffee maybe brings out the malt a little bit. There is some astringency to this but it’s not an overpowering presence of astringency.

More chocolate would be good here. Not a surprise comment from me, right? The toffee is sweet and buttery.

It’s tasty.

Backlog:

I can’t say that I’ve ever had a strawberry pina colada. I’m not big on alcoholic drinks. I think the last time I had alcohol is that I took a sip of the champagne my hubby bought a couple of weeks ago. Before that, it had been at least three months since I took a sip of his beer. In the last 12 months, this sipping has maybe resulted in at most, an ounce of ingested alcohol.

Yeah, so … you get the idea. I don’t drink … well, I drink tea. That’s my booze. I’m a teaholic.

Anyway, the strawberry here is a strong flavor, as is the coconut and pineapple. The rum is a very, very subtle note but it’s detectable. It makes a tasty flavor combination for this iced tea. I enjoyed it.

Backlog:

Very tasty. The notes of lemonade are the strongest flavors, with strawberry accenting the lemonade and adding some nice sweetness to the tart lemon notes. The honeybush is sort of off in the background, adding a soft, nutty flavor but not a strong one.

Very refreshing.

Backlog:

I don’t usually get all that excited over honeybush (or rooibos blends) but I got excited about this blend because I love Maple, I love vanilla and I thought that the nutty flavors of honeybush would work well with these flavors.

This is the perfect late night ‘snack’ when you’re looking to cut out the extra calories and fat that late night snacking presents but you still want something sweet.

I really like this tea!

I tend to compare my black teas to something like my Twinings Irish Breakfast, or an English breakfast tea. This isn’t anything like those teas. It is very smooth and mild. I love those websites that tell you the tea has notes of this or that…I must have an unsophisticated palate because I don’t taste any of that. I can tell you that it tastes sweet (and yes, I do sweeten my teas because I like them that way, and I might as well drink them how I like them, eh?). I don’t know what the flavor is that was added (there are organic flavors in here, but I couldn’t tell you which ones).

Pick number 7. This one had a creamy scent to the dry leaves. I accidentally over-brewed this one(for a total of about 12 minutes, oops). Brewed it still had that creamy smell but was mostly just a rich tea. I tried a few sips of this without adding stevia, all I could taste was a strong but delicious tea. After adding stevia I thought it was pretty good, creamy and sweet. Then I forgot I had it sitting in my cup(oops again), this turned out to be a pleasant surprise as this tea was quite good cool. Next time I will try brewing it for the proper amount of time.

Pick number 8. It was really odd but this one smelled like banana laffy taffy when dry. That’s okay though I like banana laffy taffy. Once steeped the tea looses any hint of banana scent and is more weak apple cider smelling.
The taste however is all brandy and tea, which I think was due to the fact I only ended up with one apple chunk in my steeper. It looses the brandy flavor as it cools though.
Don’t think I would get this one again. Though since I still have some, next time I will try with a little stevia and see if that is better.

I’m actually pretty surprised at the number of people who didn’t know that kiwi cheesecake was a thing – it’s actually semi-common here.

The smell of the tea is absolutely mouth-watering and I could spend all day sniffing it, lol. An oolong base was a good choice for this tea as it give the tea just the right amount of sweetness. I can taste the kiwi, though it tastes more like the dried kiwi I’ve occasionally eaten as a snack than the fresh fruit. The creamy cheesecake note is there but it could stand to be a bit stronger. Still it’s a really nice flavoured oolong, and I’m not sure why it’s as slow to sell as it seems to be because this blend is TASTY.

Day 9 from the 12 Teas of Christmas 2014.

This is heavy on the clove and cardamom. A little too heavy for my liking. The pumpkin flavour is very natural, but it has a taste I would identify as ‘raw’, if that makes any sense. I prefer a sweeter, more ‘cooked’ pumpkin flavour, but that’s just personal. I bought this in my last 52teas order before I opened the sample from the box, so it will be interesting to see how the reblend compares to the original. I will write up a more detailed note next time I drink this, but I can’t really remember much more about it for now. I enjoyed it, but I prefer the pumpkin chai from DAVIDs.

Backlog:

A really tasty iced tea. I also enjoyed the 52teas version. I like the way the honeybush works with the flavors because that soft honey note really adds a pleasant dimension to the flavors of pineapple, coconut and that hint of rum. There’s just the slightest note of nutty flavor and the delightful honey note that really works with the flavors.

Very refreshing.