American Tea Room
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Mmmmm saved this for the last day. Since I knew it would be a bit of alazyday. Tomorrow, it’s up early to walk the beach and say goodbye to the dolphins, turtles, herons, kingfishers and other assorted sea creatures before hitting the ocean museum and possibly savannah before the airport. Then it’s a long travel home, with a 3.5 hour layover in atlanta… Which is at least big enough to be entertaining :) this is a tasty cup of comfort thisafternoon.
Also I HATE ios7. Grrrrrr autocorrects.
everyone is trying my brioche…and that’s ok ’cause i like to share..but now i feel like hoarding since it took me so long to be able to get it in stock with a sale lol. i think next time i pick up 4oz lol
incendiare…i can send some your way to try first. Tastybrew was super generous to me and i’m happy to pay it forward lol
Nono, you don’t really have to! I was going to order last time but couldn’t figure out what else to order, and wasn’t sure if the samples of other stuff are really worth $4, so I got frustrated and walked away haha. But if you truly think this tea is that great, I’ll seriously take the plunge and make an order sometime.
so i ordered samples the other day with my order just because i had a little extra cash..from the way some of them are working out you’ll get about 5-6 normal people cups worth in the samples
I’ve been hoarding my sample from tastybrew but now that my order has arrived with my tea mule, i can finally start drinking this one again! I still love this quite a bit (possibly even more than cinnamon swirl…) so that makes me happy since i picked up 2oz of it heh
SIPDOWN! thank you again tastybrew for this one. I’m sad to see this one go but it’s on my list to order again for that occasion when i want a delicious tasty bread delicious tea. It reminds me of one of the S7V teas that i’ve had…i think? There’s something familiar about it in any case. :)
You’re the second nice person to offer, but I’m a terrible person to give things to because I’m too busy to ever pay it backward or forward.
Ill send some your way Terri once I place an order. My tea mule is happy to run things across the border for me lol
tastybrew…me too me too! mostly just because i’m annoyed at my other halfs work…we were supposed to go away next week and they made him work after telling him he wouldn’t have to…so i’m buying tea damnit!
Sil – buying tea always sounds like a perfectly rational thing to do, especially under those circumstances. I mean, you would have spent money if you took the trip, right? Why not spend it on tea, since you’re staying home…
Tastybrew: I have tried to Steve Smiths, #49 & #55. I’d love to try others if you have any, as those 2 were AWESOME! And of course, I’d be more than happy to trade anything you like that’s in my cupboard.
I’ll try to edit and update this more later but i just wanted to track that i DID try this today. Thanks to tastybrew for sending some my way. I got home and i’m apparently sick as i’ve spent the last 4 hours in bed and don’t want to drink any tea. :( but this is good. delicious and i’m glad i have more + the resteeps once i get better. ugh.
Edit: Resteeped this today and it was still delicious. Soooo tempted to pick up a full 2oz of this with the sale.
apparently it’s going around and seems to last a day of just sleeping, feeling icky. weird. my other half says it’s going around his work too.
whatshesaid….no :( sorry to get your hopes up. I was just going to try and order through my tea mule. No idea what shipping would be for ME to ship it from here to there for you, but if you wanted to see if it was worth it, i could add it to my order and send it your way or something… I’m sure we could figure something out.
Starting the day with chocolate tea? Yes, just yes.
This was part of my sample order from American Tea Room, and the first (!!) rooibos I ever drank.
The dry smell was terrific! A strong chocolate smell, with a bit of an earthy hint. Sweet.
Steeped for 5 minutes.
The smell after I finished brewing was even better than the dry smell. Rich but not sweet.
You can definitely taste the chocolate in this, and the rooibos isn’t overpowering, but just sort of adds to the chocolateness.
Good for starters of rooibos (like me, lol)
Likey likey.
Preparation
when cold steeped with ATR Yunnan Gold, 5/5 (see my bio for more info on my new pared down scale) and probably the best cold tea I’ve ever had
Cold steeped this with a touch of ATR’s Yunnan Gold (I know, how extravagant…I just didn’t care for it hot though, and it was a sample size so I didn’t have much left) for 4 days (! not on purpose, just forgot about it in the back of the fridge…). It is incredible. Super refreshing and light, crisp feeling, yet smooth, rounded, with deep complex floral (true-floral, not perfume-floral) flavor I feel like hot water destroyed (or maybe intensified to the point it became perfume-floral…looking back on my previous note I apparently thought it was so floral as to signal “inedible” to my brain). Using time instead of heat seems to allow the floral element to develop complexity and nuance without becoming sledgehammer-heavy and thus one-note. Maybe that Upton guy who swore by cold steeping black teas for 4 days was onto something, especially with good Chinese tea. A gorgeous bright gold hue, beautiful in my new Duralex Picardie tumblers. So good I might order both again—teas I wasn’t much excited about hot—just for icing on days I really deserve something awesome, ha.
G’ah, the more I drink this the more my certainty grows that this is the best iced tea I’ve ever had, and one of the best teas period. Nuts how much steeping method can change one’s perception!
Preparation
It sounds like I need to start cold brewing black teas for four days… I haven’t tried black iced teas yet since I figured they would get bitter…
I’d never cold steeped at all until finding this community…I’m a total convert. Easier/more straightforward than other “hot water and dilution” methods (though it requires patience waiting :) and from what board discussion consensus has taught me, less chance to making a bitter brew when it comes to black teas (counterintuitively, at least counterintuitively for me anyway, people seem to think black tea is very hard to oversteep cold while greens and others have a much shorter more precise window before bitterness sets in…interesting!).
As a heads up, I had the rest of it a day later and it was a smidge more bitter. But anything from 2-4 days with black teas seems delicious, based on my limited experience.
Smells wonderful dry, and I like that the citrus is of the rich, dessert-y type, not the bracing astringent fruit sort—more like one of those chocolate oranges you smash open than morning marmalade. Like others, I only smell sweet orange when it’s dry, no smoke, and when brewed the smoke emerges and the orange recedes a bit (still definitely there though!). It is not as sweet as you might imagine, which I also appreciate; if I want it sweeter at times I can do that myself.
Preparation
This tea smells AMAZING dry, like they didn’t skimp on the saffron at all (which is pretty awesome considering how very expensive decent saffron is!). Whoo boy. Brewed it mellows a lot and tastes almost vegetal more than sweetly spiced, which is tasty in its own right but somehow a little disappointing after that whammy of a first impression dry. Really good, don’t get me wrong, but not as dessert-y as I was expecting. It’s funny, it was sort of the opposite phases of expectations—>dry aroma—>brewed experience from my encounter with ATR’s Toasted Fig. Now that my expectations will be more aligned with final results, I’m sure I’ll enjoy both thoroughly.
Smells like brandy (or actually, a bit like vanilla-y bourbon, with some oak char going on) and toasted hazelnuts to me. Very nutty and “roasty” upon first dry sniff through the entire cup. Disappointed I couldn’t detect any fig at first, but it came up gently upon my second cup (sitting on a warmer) as something jammy but not astringent like other (say, berry or citrus) fruits, more that swollen sticky Christmas pudding sort of thing, dates and whatnot. It takes patience but it’s very nice indeed when it does finally show up, goes lovely with the pervasive roasted nut aroma.
This tea actually tastes much better without any milk or sugar.
For this kind of caffeinated tea, you know the ones, those heavy dessert-y rich ones, it’s better than most I’ve tried so far. I like it more than similar sweet nutty rich offerings from David’s for example. Not one of my all-time favorites or a pantry essential, but I’d happily order and drink it again.
Update: for some reason this gets better after a cup or two (and it’s not a re-steep, just from a large pot kept warm on an electric burner). It’s grown on me. It’s not as amazing smelling as Tangier dry out of the bag, but it tastes better in the cup over time.
Preparation
I’m a huge fan of genmaicha. It was the first tea that brought my fiance over to the dark side, and this just adds one more level to that awesome. It’s so toasty and just a little frothy. I still keep regular genmaicha on hand, but I usually turn to this first. The matcha adds a fantastic layer of flavor depth and makes it an actually green green tea.
Preparation
Sipdown!
I think I’d like to reorder. But I’m going to hold off reordering this until at least summer, when it’s nice and warm out. It’s good and I always enjoy it when I have it, but I almost need to be in a particular mood to enjoy it.
Preparation
While I know I don’t necessarily care for this cold steeped (it gets a little overwhelmingly perfumed), I steeped with my usual parameters and let this chill today.
It’s actually incredibly good and a completely different experience to drinking this hot. Still very floral, but balanced and tempered with the white peony, which is almost juicy tasting. It’s almost like there’s pear or light apple in here, that just explodes with juicy freshness in my mouth.
In other news, it’s supposed to get above freezing next week for the first time since Christmas, and that is ridiculously exciting. If Fiance breaks out shorts though, I might disown him.
Preparation
I never thought 60 degrees and sun would feel so good!
So today’s cold steeping experiment was…weird?
This tea actually crosses the line into too flowery this way! I didn’t think it could be done. It lost the delicate balance between florals and white tea and WHAM right in the perfume. A little sugar coaxed back out the white tea and made the roses seem almost…juicy and fruity. A little weird on the palette, but definitely grew on me! So, sure, I’d do it again, but definitely have some sugar handy!
Preparation
One of the few non-fruity rose teas I’ve had. It’s like drinking a cup of immersive rose therapy with dusky, vegetal accents from the bai mu dan. I was pleasantly surprised the white tea held its own here! It drinks like a special occasion tea to me though because the floral taste isn’t something I see myself wanting every day (but definitely paired with a box of chocolates!)
Preparation
Thanks TastyBrew for sending some of this my way!
I have wanted to try a black coconut tea since falling head over heels for Davidstea’s Coconut Oolong, but I’m not sure why.
I brewed this this morning and as soon as I smelled the dry leaves I was a bit put off, because it was doing the same rancid coconut thing that my sample of 52Teas Coconut Cream Pie did. I gave it a shot though, and if I looked past that it did taste very coconutty, but also kind of bitter and soapy too.
I decided not to do a resteep, and made some Coconut Oolong instead MUCH better!!! Going to stop looking now because I’ve already got my winner. I just hope that my Coconut Oolong doesn’t go all putrid on me one day, because I plan to seriously stock up before it is gone for good. I wanted to compare the two and the oolong isn’t bitter or rancid or soapy at all, just smooth and sweet and creamy and amazing. I’m drooling. The Coconut Oolong hijacked my tea note!
Glad to have tried the So Coconut and glad I can stop the search to focus in my next tea goal…. The perfect Caramel (non rooibos) tea!!
Coconut blacks without that rancid aroma/flavour are actually pretty decent. However, I’ve also had enough bad experiences that I’m kind of put off, myself. Perhaps one day if you’re in a tea store and they have one to smell, and it doesn’t smell off, you might be willing to give it another shot! :)
I have a Je T’aime sample waiting at home! Yay!
And I am not opposed to trying more but will no longer actively seek out coconut black teas :) Also you just made me realize the rancid coconut is probably why the rest of me Buttered Rum from Davidstea smells like cat pee :(
This was my breakfast tea today….yum, but tomorrow I will go with something stronger and less flavoured :)