52teas

Orangey and bakey… this one is pretty good :) Looks like I wasn’t particularly fond of this the first time I tried it, but I also steeped it for a mind-blowing 4.5 minutes compared to the 2 I used this time. I don’t particularly taste strawberry, but it tastes an awful lot like the (chocolate) orange scones my mom made a little while ago. And a bit reminiscent of Butiki’s Two Friends, at least in terms of the orange flavouring. Glad I have a cup’s worth left (well… maybe I’d rather a sipdown, but at least it’s a tasty cup that remains).

Quickly, a note before I dash home!

Mostly smells and tastes like orange peel. I am not really getting any strawberry, or scone. A bit of astringency; clearly I oversteeped (thought so). I’ll re-evaluate when it cools, but I don’t think I’m terribly fond of this one.

Thank you LiberTEAS for this sample :)

ETA: Second steep this morning is funky. Into the garbage it goes.

OMG!!!! I get it!!! For the first time EVER, I taste the “bakery/pastery” or in this case pancake in a tea. I feel like I just had an major tea tasting breakthrough. This tastes like pancakes and maple syrup. (Maybe this is a good time to mention that I don’t really like pancakes).
Anyway, the maple part of this is really good, subtle not in your face. Nice. Pancakes aside, I still like this. It’s one of the better maple teas I’ve had.

Thank you JackieT for sending me this sample.

Made this one iced, double strength tea, then cooled in fridge until cold. I added a bit of 2% milk and then mixed half and half with Perrier. It is pretty good. Tastes almost like a cherry cola float, or a brown cow. Will probably drink the rest of this tea like this. Not sure the calorie count but I am assuming this is better than an actual cherry vanilla cola float. I also feel a Paralyzer coming on. Mmmmm.

As part of my tea fun series, I made this one and 52 teas Butterbeer as iced cubes. A long time ago my sister got me these silicon ice cube trays from IKEA in the shapes of crosses and arrows. I never use them because they are so hard to get the ice cubes out of. But I thought for fun, I should use them for my tea cubes.

I planned to make the tea cubes and then put them in soda water. I brewed both teas double strength and froze them in ice cubes after they cooled. I also added some sugar while the teas were hot.

I mixed a full cup of ice cubes, one each of butterbeer and cherry vanilla cola, in a half cup of soda water.

It didn’t turn out as expected. The tea cubes took forever to melt, so I couldn’t really drink my fancy drinks while they were cold. Initially all I could taste was straight soda water, which is not too delicious. I think it would have been better just to make tea popsicles or mix the cold tea with the soda water. Essentially each tea just tasted like the respective tea, but with a bit of carbonation, most of the carbonation had dissipated by the time the cubes melted. It was still good, just had to wait forever to drink it. I guess I took the long way around this time.

I love pop flavoured things. But for some reason I have a hard time drinking carbonation, it just doesn’t go down my esophagus well. So I often do not choose to drink pop, or I will “press” it by adding water.

This dry tea smells exactly like those sour cola gummy candies. Mmmm. I bought this to make iced or cold, but I wanted to try it hot as well. Without sweetener it tasted quite flat. Not flat as in flat carbonation, but the taste was flat – if that makes sense. I added some rock sugar and that made the taste more dynamic. You can taste cola, sour cherry, and slight vanilla. It does have a taste of flat soda. To me it doesn’t taste like there is even much black tea in it. There were also full sized cherries mixed in with the tea, which is a bonus.

As I find with most 52 teas blends, the taste becomes stronger and more distinct as it cools.

Look forward to making this one iced.

Day 5 of the 52 teas 12 days of Christmas.

I have had a whole package of this one before. It is not too bad. I think in comparison to the pancake breakfast, the pancake breakfast if better. But this one is still quite a good blend.

I brought this to work today. I normally add some rock sugar to this when drinking it at home but forgot to bring some to work today. I have some maple candies at work so I thought I would try adding one of those to the tea to see if it would add some sweet maple syrup taste. It did not dissolve very good and left a melted sticky mess on the bottom of my cup, but it did add some sweetness.

Today this tea tastes quite bread-y and egg-y. There is a sweetness from the maple candy. There is definitely a cinnamon and icing sugar taste. I have never had that egg taste before so I am wondering if the maple candy brought that out. This is still good, even if the flavour profile is a bit different today.

I’ve been waiting to try this one all week. Finally had some time to brew it up and really appreciate the taste. I was very impressed with Pancake Breakfast, so I jumped at the chance to get this one.

The smell of the dry tea, has that slight rubbing alcohol smell that some of 52 teas have. But I can smell cinnamon and sugar as well.

The brewed tea tastes like cinnamon and dark brown sugar. It definitely gets better as it cools. As it gets cooler there is more of a pastry/bread type flavour, with cinnamon and the dark brown sugar. On my second cup I added a few pieces of rock sugar. The rock sugar brought out more of a syrup type taste. It also made the second cup of tea taste a lot thicker and creamier. I thought this tea tasted best when it was at a luke-warm temperature. Overall, I tasted cinnamon, dark brown sugar, light bread flavour, all on top of a black tea base. There is a light butter syrup flavour in the aftertaste.

I think I prefer pancake breakfast, but this one was also delicious.

Tea pop seems to be all the rage right now (or so Davids tells me) and while I’ve been doing this for a long long time (adding carbonation to iced tea…and gin…so I guess they came up with not adding gin….) it has inspired me to do it more. This was my first of two tea pops today (the other is steeping as we speak.

STEP ONE, I could brewed this mofo over night in my takaya pitcher. STEP 2, I put it in my travel mug.

SIDE NOTE: So I love love love the leak proof mug davids has come out with this summer, but frigola I have had the worst luck with them. My first one split in the bottom for no reason, so I returned it, and as I was walking out with a new one I saw it had a scratch on it!!! So I had to go back again, and felt like a complete B. Then my dog knocked #3 over when it was on the ground and it cracked. So I have on tumbler #4………. luckily davids has a great return policy and if they ever change it I will cry.

Anyways on to step THREE! Add ice. Step FOUR add club soda that has been sitting around for almost two weeks but is still kinda carbonated. STEP FIVE MARSHMALLOW STRAWBERRY TROPICAL MAGIC TIMES!!!! I honestly was not impressed when I first had this one but DAMN something happened today and it was oh so delightful.

I decided that David’s Birthday Cake needed some berry flavour, so I added this. It smells so nice like strawberry. The flavour is creamy berry. Goes very well with the other tea, it’s like having strawberry milkshake cake.

Sip down this morning – had enough for one big mug of this.

I was too lazy to get up and add milk and sugar, so while this is brisk it actually has a great cinnamony flavor and chewy, bready texture.

This wasn’t one of my favorite teas from 52teas, but once I got the parameters right it was definitely one of the more accurate. And it’s a nice cozy cup to have on this VERY cold day.

Today’s cup has no milk or sugar in it and is surprisingly sweet and decadent on its own. I mostly taste cinnamon and bread and smell syrup, but it puts itself together and really is very accurate taste wise.

The mouthfeel is rich and there is no bitterness whatsoever. I have enough left for one more cup and am pleasantly surprised by how well it has held up to time – this pouch is well over a year old but if anything tastes BETTER than when I got it!

GAH. I have dropped off the face of the earth with these tea reviews it feels like.

Had this several days ago for breakfast only because it seemed the best idea of meh choices. I’m not super fond of this, honestly. But it did smell kind like the kind of sweetened custard that is what french toast reminds me of, so I went for it.

At a not quite boiling temperature I think it tastes slightly more accurate to what its supposed to be. Good choice for breakfast, though I think I’ll always prefer the pancake breakfast blend a bit more. Which is good, since I have a lot more of that one.

Hmm.. speaking of pancake breakfast, maybe I should make that one for breakfast today…

My whole body hurts. I did a 4 hour cave tour yesterday and a 5.5 mile hike the day before that. I got so muddy my jeans turned into khakis and I had to pressure wash them before doing laundry. Good thing I don’t work until tomorrow, because OW.

Before I left to go underground though I had a quick cup of this. The dry leaf smell REALLY nailed french toast yesterday, it was sweet and bready so I decided to have some with cinnamon toast. I added milk and sugar to 10 oz. of water at the below parameters.

SUCCESS! I don’t know if enough time has passed that everything has just finally blended itself together, or if I finally just nailed the right ratio of leaf to steep time, but THIS cup tasted like french toast with just a hint of powdered sugar. I got the toasty bread flavor!!!

It really hit the spot yesterday, for whatever reason. Now I’m just hoping I’ll be able to duplicate it!

I picked this over the banana pudding from 52teas (my other contender for breakfast this morning) only because it really started smelling like cinnamon toast. This one has never quite realized the dream of tasting like french toast to me, but I’ve got at least half the pouch left so I’ll keep trying.

(side note: I hadn’t smelled the banana pudding black tea in a awhile and it knocked me off my feet with how puddingy and bananay it was. Maybe I’ll drink that later today…)

Today – 1.5-2 tsp. of leaf to 8 oz water, 2 oz. milk and 1 tsp. of sugar. Steeped for around 4 minutes. The result?

Whoever said it tastes like the Pumpkin caramel cheesecake, yes. That is this cup. I loved that tea but that was not what I wanted this morning. No bread notes, just heavy on cinnamon and a caramel flavor, which I’m guessing is intended to be syrup. You are so close, tea! Just get me some toasty bread flavor!

Alright french toast. We meet again. Prepped with sugar and milk at the below parameters.

I get bread now – like the egg soaked bread you make french toast with. Egg-bread and spices. French toast without the syrup/powdered sugar – which I could probably fix if I added some maple syrup – I just can’t seem to wrap my brain around putting that in tea. Does not compute. So it looks like between this and pancake breakfast, the pancake breakfast wins out on its ability to taste like syrup.

As far as accuracy, though, I have no complaints – I just should have know I’d prefer the pancakes since as a rule they’re my first choice for breakfast anyway. :)

ugh – so behind on my tasting notes!

I had this yesterday prepped at the parameters I normally use for Frank’s black teas. It was slightly better this time – I think because I added some milk and that brought out the eggy bready notes. I need to get up the courage to use maple syrup instead of sugar and I think that will get it the rest of the way….and I bet it will be at least as good as Pancake Breakfast then!

This is a backlog from a few days ago.

I steeped this at a much lower temperature than I usually would at the recommendation of others. For some reason this stripped it of all flavor but the spices. The boyfriend smelled it and said “when did you get a new chai blend?” And he’s right. It tastes like chai. Which was all well and good, but I wanted french toast, dangit!

Alright – back to the drawing board…

Hmmm…

I steeped this at the below parameters, about 1.5 tsp. to 10 oz. water. No milk on hand, but I did add sugar.

This smelled like bananas + maple, and then I got cinnamon, but nothing that overtly screamed french toast/bread.

The steeped tea was pretty much just notes of maple syrup and cinnamon. It took me awhile with pancake breakfast to get the right flavors out of it, though, so maybe this will be the same way? It wasn’t bad, just not quite french toast, yet.

I wouldn’t have thought to combine cucumber and mango but boy does it work! This clever pairing is supported by a wonderful Shou Mei base that adds a strong but smooth profile to the blend. Both the cucumber and mango notes are definitely apparent but the mango is at the forefront with the cucumber lingering at the end to entwine all the layers. This tea is absolutely outstanding both warm and over ice – but I give the edge to warm brewed. All in all, if you are looking for a nice refreshing blend for the summer is this one tea you will want to check out!

This tea has a fantastic blueberry flavor paired with a good solid astringent malty black tea. I really enjoy all the blueberry teas from 52Teas because the flavoring is so authentic and doesn’t have an artificial flavor or aftertaste. The aftertaste of this tea is clean with a sort of malty blueberry flavor. I remember this having more marshmallow flavor back when I first bought it, but now that seems to have disappeared. The blueberry flavor has remained really good though. So, this is more of just a plain good blueberry tea now.

I brewed the tea hot with 195°F water for 4 minutes and put the tea in the refrigerator overnight to chill. I am drinking it chilled.

I had no steeping parameters and it tastes a little weak using 1 perfect scoop, 4 minutes and near boiling water. I couldn’t find any info on the website. Why? Although it is fun to get cheeky with the description of the tea perhaps the powers that be should also bother to give some sort of steeping suggestions. After all, you are catering to the new tea drinker perhaps more so than the experienced one. End of rant.

Having said all that the tea itself is tasty. I’m sitting here drinking it instead of getting ready for work tasty. If I find enough 52teas appealing to me I could place an order and then yes, I would include this. Although, I don’t know how I feel about the “once it’s gone, it’s gone so don’t fall in love” part.

Thank you Sil for this sample!

After enjoying Marshmallow Treat Genmaicha, I had pretty high hopes for this tea. This was definitely a disappointment. The smell of the tea in the pouch is a bit off-putting. I don’t know what it is. Maybe the lapsang or the chocolate flavoring? Once outside of the pouch, it smells more like a toasty genmaicha but it still has a strange, syrupy aroma.

I expected the taste would be like a chocolatey version of Marshmallow Treat. It tastes pretty weird. There were some pleasant notes from the genmaicha base, but they were hidden beneath a strange flavor that did not remind me of marshmallow nor of chocolate. This is definitely not a tea for me.

Thanks for sharing, CrowKettle!