52teas

It’s Friday! Who needs pizza and beer when you can have pizza and TEA!

I can really taste the black pepper today! Perfect with polenta & veg and tomato sauce for lunch.

This tea makes eating leftover pasta for lunch much more exciting!

2 “perfect teaspoons” in ~12oz freshly boiled water.

1st steep – Steeped about 10 min. then used to poach a chicken breast (also added salt, pepper, and Smoky Black T-dust)

2nd steep – still flavorful, although maybe muted a bit, but also more balanced. Got more tomato and black pepper. Good to know this one can handle longer times/resteeps!

Ok, I finally found an evening when I was in the right mood, and eating the right food, to try this one.

Brewed for 3 min but it looked too light so I added 1 more. Looks the same. A lovely red-orange that I would associate more with rooibos than black tea.

the smell is sweet, tea-like, with a hint of spice and pepper. it doesn’t scream “I’m a liquid pizza” like I thought it would, which is good I guess. I made a sundried tomato, italian sausage, zucchini and mozzarella frittata for dinner, and then the lightbulb went on over my head and told me it was finally time to try this tea.

The taste is a similar blend of sweet, smoky, and spicy that complements the italian seasoning and black pepper on my meal. I think I like it. Funny, but my favorite 52teas blend is still the maple bacon black. And my favorite tea of 2011 was Carnival by Sanctuary T, which also has spicy and almost savory notes due to the cumin, coriander, and peppercorns in it. My tastes buds are full of surprises. Or maybe they just like surprises?

Vegan!
Great flavor. This is what Genmaicha should always taste like. Love the real marshmallow root. This is sweet, smooth with a hint of vanilla. Yum

First, allow me to apologise for the power-spam! Because we were travelling to England for Christmas, I did not drink these teas on the actually appointed days, but some days in advance. I could have posted some of them before leaving, but for the sake keeping things easy (for me), I opted not to split them up in the middle like that. Also, that would have involved a certain risk of me having accidentally posted the wrong tea way too early and spoiled everybody unintentionally.

What a very Christmas-y flavour! (In Denmark, Santa’s favourite food is rice porridge with cinnamon-sugar and a lump of butter on top. Is milk and cookies his steady diet in America, or is that just a delivery rounds snack? Do inform, please.) It’s now nearly ten days since I actually had this, and am just now typing up my notes in preparation for posting, so you’ll have to excuse me if it’s a bit list-ish and dull to read.

The dry leaf struck me as mostly cocoa-y, but vaguely cookie-y, but there was a funny side note of something weirdly wood-y. After steeping, I got more cookie from it, but I couldn’t find the milk. I wondered if this would actually have benefitted from having been served with a little milk in, but it was too late then, as I had already got rid of the last milk in the fridge in preparation for travelling.

This next bit is a bit dodgy. I took my notes in some sort of weird impromptu wannabe shorthand, and erm… if I want to use shorthand, I should try to develop it a bit more systematically. I am however deciphering to the best of my abilities. (Utilising some of my more acceptable handwriting would help a lot too!)

Anyway, if I’m understeanding myself correctly here, I found the flavour to be quite cookie-like and faintly chocolate-y as well as somewhat nutty, which ties in nicely with it being a cookie. However, if I tried to get too deep into the flavour and really pick it apart, everything I found seemed like something one might naturally encounter in a good quality black, especially a Chinese one. This makes it seem rather more like an enhanced black rather than an actually flavoured one.

This impression wanes somewhat as the cup cools a bit more, because this is where the milk is finally coming out to play. It feels a bit like drinking a milk oolong, only instead of oolong it’s a black. Quite weird, really.

I liked this tea and found it rather enjoyable, although I didn’t really feel like it was getting the whole milk and cookies flavouring all the way across. The idea was certainly there, but I didn’t find it to be obvious, really.

I’m not putting a numerical rating on this one, because I didn’t jot down a scale area when I actually had it, and I’m not sure trying to deduce one based only on partly illegible notes and a vague memory is really a very good idea.

Since I had the David’s Teas 24 Days of Tea, I decided to drink my 52Teas 12 teas of Christmas during the traditional 12 days of Christmas. And I started a day late. Oops. Yesterday was rough, with having to be at work at 7 a.m. And then after I got home, I didn’t want to have a caffeinated tea to get in the way of sleep later. So I decided to hold off until today.

Ninavampi said it best, without additions, Milk and Cookies tastes like a vaguely chocolately generic black tea, slightly harsh. I want to like it, I want it to be out of this world and cookie-like, but I dislike sweetened tea. In any form. With any amount of sugar. So I just can’t go there. My mental block is too strong. But to get the best out of many of their teas, you have to have milk and/or sugar. So after my brief crush on them, here I am. It smells delicious though. At least I have that.

This is another honeybush sample sent to me by the delightful Jenn!

I have a wee bit of dry, scratchy throat going on and wanted something hot and soothing but caffeine free. I don’t eat a lot of raspberry anything, but I do like raspberry filled Godiva chocolates, so I thought I would give this a go.

I steeped for five minutes. I think in future I would go a bit longer. The aroma is very berry-ish and somehow reminded me of Marco Polo. The taste is very fruity, partly from the honeybush base and partly the flavoring. I am really thinking “candy” now. I wanted it to be a bit stronger so I added a little less than a teaspoon of sugar to my 22 ounce pot. This is definitely warm and soothing. Somehow, I am not getting the cream cheese. I wonder if milk would bring that out more? But overall, a very good honeybush tisane! Thank you, Jenn!

I had the last of my first pouch of this tea today (from the 12 days of Christmas sampler). I liked it a little bit more… but not enough to ever want it again. It does taste exactly like pop corn, and I think that this is the reason that I can barely drink it. My brain keeps getting in the way and my tummy is doing summersaults and asking me why I keep drinking this bizarre thing that I keep feeling like should be chewing and added salt to…

So… I actually have a second 12 days of Christmas set from 52teas (long story… But I am very happy to have a second of most of the teas!). And I am more than willing to ship off the unopened sample of this tea to someone who hasn’t tried it yet! I don’t need anything in return, just keep posting reviews, reading makes me smile! : )

If you are interested, post a reply to this tasting note or go ahead and PM me. It will go to the first person to get in touch with me who hasn’t tried it yet.

Backlogging from the first day of Christmas of 52teas…

So, after a few incredibly stressful days of trying to make sure my dog and the new puppy played nice, came the time to open my first of the 12 Christmas teas! I was a wreck, a bundle of nerves, stress and worries making sure that the doggy situation would work out OK for my Sencha and new little Mona.

I was really excited when I saw that it was buttered popcorn. I had always been really curious about this blend. I love kettle corn, and figured that sweetened it must taste just like it!

When I first opened it and sniffed it, I had no idea what it was. It smelled sweet and almost fruity. I am glad to see that I am not the only one who got this from this tea. When I finally looked at the label it suddenly smelled just like popcorn! Interesting indeed.

While I brewed it, the smell continued to be popcorn. I was excited to try it! So, first sip, no sweetener, very popcorn. It tasted just like unsalted movie theater popcorn, or rather it tasted like movie theaters smell! My boyfriend works in the administrative department of a movie theater so this smell is very familiar to me. I liked it, not loved it.

Then I sweetened it. Surely enough, it resembled Kettle Corn. Strangely, this wasn’t a good thing for me. It was this that made me realize that popcorn is definitely meant to be eaten, not drunk. I believe that it is the saltiness factor of popcorn that makes this not a good tea flavor for me.

To sum it up, this really does taste like popcorn, but I don’t like flavors that should be salty (in my opinion) in my tea. Many people really like it, and I can understand why! I am really happy I got to try it, but I will definitely not be ordering it! It was a fun little adventure! : )

I always wake up craving tea; less often craving a specific flavor. But CHOCOMATE was imprinted on the inside of my eyelids today. Needed a strong and obvious chocolate fix and this is the only tea that will do it speedily and efficiently.

Interestingly, I added 3 teaspoons of coconut milk, thinking I’d come up with a sort of latte thing, and it didn’t do much to affect the flavor either way.

I’m blaming my morning craving for this one on the weather—signs of spring more and more prominent. And when one sees “pregnant” daffodil buds in the front yard, don’t you just automatically think of Easter? And when you think of Easter, don’t you get a hankering for malted candy eggs? And when malted candy eggs are not under your roof—-this is an excellent substitute.

This, plus a chocolate chip cookie, was my breakfast. A clue to what kind of day I anticipate? :)

Definitely one of my favorite chocolate teas. Ever.