Butiki Teas

Brrr! It is a chilly night here in Albany and I wanted something different tea-wise while I worked on a few things in the home office. I opted for this one it arrived earlier this week and I’ve been itching to try it since Thursday. Milk chocolate sweet – check! Fruity raspberry – double check! This is yummy! I really like that these two flavors really bring out the flavor of the black tea used as a base. The result really is like drinking a raspberry truffle without the guilt! A new Fall favorite.

This is like having Fall in my cup! I love the spices I’m tasting here. I’m really picking up on the nutmeg and something else that is giving this a big creme brulee flavor with just a hint of pumpkin. Let me tell you that hint is amazing. The finish of this tea tastes like a big slice of pumpkin pie goodness. Yum all around!

Between this oolong and the peach oolong, there must be something wrong with my taste buds. I LOVED EVER SO MUCH the strawberry oolong, but these lychee and peach flavourings give me a headache for some reason. The oolong quality is quite good, but it just isn’t working out for me. I have a sample’s worth of both Peach and Lychee Oolong that might need to find a new home.

Actually, I’ll just cold steep what I have left of both and see if that makes it easier to drink. To be continued…

Here’s another backlog while we’re at it.

This one came from Hesper June and is another one of these hugely popular Butiki blends.

Personally I have to say I was a little doubtful as I’m not very fond of white tea these days, and especially not Bai Mu Dan which for me often tastes strongly of courgettes. I like courgettes, but I don’t like my tea to taste like them. It seems like BMD is the standard white tea to flavour, so I’m crossing my fingers and hoping for the best here.

The leaf smelled faintly of chamomille and vaguely of cantaloupe, and after steeping it was primarily a cantaloupe aroma. There was also a sort of thick, viscous smell to it, which I think must be the cream element. Underneath it all there were notes of something kind of spicy which I could only imagine must be the base. Strongly suspect BMD at this point.

First sip only strengthened this supicion. Why hello there mr Courgette! Fancy meeting you here. I thought the base was coming through quite strongly in this one. There were cantaloupe flavour as well, yes, but that was mostly in the aftertaste. I couldn’t seem to locate any cream anywhere.

I was a little disappointed by this one, but I think it’s because I didn’t care for the base tea and it was coming through a little too strongly for me.

I received this sample from Stacy when we met last week and I finally tried it tonight! Which might come back to bite me later tonight when it comes time for bed. But you know what? It was SO worth it!

I made up this cup in my tasting set. I don’t use them enough and really should. Sometimes it is the best tool for the job. So I set the timer for three minutes and let the tea steep. While I waited I sniffed the dry leaf. It smelled a little of maple and I worried that I had left it too close to the Maple Pecan…but then I also picked up some earthy scent to the tea and relaxed a bit.

When the timer went off I was ready for my first sip! But first a sniff of the wet leaf. Now THAT smelled of mushrooms. I was getting excited. I also noted a malty smell to the leaf too. Ok we were getting somewhere. The taste? A mix of malt, earth, and of mushrooms. Yes, mushrooms…amazing! There are a lot of things going on with this tea and they all work together really well.

This tea really came alive with the dark chocolate cocoa roasted almonds I was snacking on. The chocolate from the almonds added a new and interesting dimension to the tea, bringing out a fruity flavor to the tea I hadn’t noticed with my first few sips (before eating the almonds)! Like I said there is a lot going on here.

For the whole review visit: http://thepurrfectcup.com/2012/10/11/review-congou-keemun/

Mmmmmm sip down! This is a really nice malty light Assam. I’m sorry to see it go but I have new teas to look forward to coming from Stacy. I really enjoyed this one, so thank you Stacy!

Almost done drinking this one down, not so much because i’m in a mad rush to do so but because I have so many other delicious teas coming from Stacy. I really like the richness of this tea.

Yay first tea of the morning….have to warm up my taste buds for the samples I received yesterday. Heh. I will miss this tea when it’s gone but I’m really looking forward to the new teas that stacy has so all is good!

Day got away from me. It want to curl up in the bed and go to sleep. Today sucked. Tea was great.

mmmmm this is a tasty bold tea for this morning. Lots of work to do today and this is going to help. I do enjoy this tea quite a bit. I love that there is no astringency in this tea even when over brewed. This tea is malty and bold but there are also hints of sweet as it slides down my throat. Looking forward to trying a few of the other blacks that Stacy’s got going on :)

wheeeeee! Moar tea! I’m not too sure why I’m so happy today but it’s a good day. One more day to prepare for my client meeting on friday and then it’s the weekend! Which of course will be full of testing and other work related things but it’ll be the weekend! And I can get groceries and spend the rest of the weekend drinking tea at home while i work.

Maybe if i get lucky I can get in one of the games we picked up in the pas 2 weeks that I haven’t had a chance to open yet sigh

mmm I still enjoy this tea. I made this in the morning and thanks to my wonderful travel mug it’s still warm after having my other tea this morning. THIS is the kind of flavour i was hoping for from the other tea this morning. I love that this tea has a rich taste that doesn’t just turn into orange pekkoe or yellow water. heh Also hoping to snag an order from stacy this weekend i think it was to try the other assam that was accidentally shipped to them whee! mmmmmm tea!

mmmmm morning tea. This goes especially well with pumpkin spice ghiradelli chocolate. I’m sooo happy it’s friday! I get the weekend to sleep in and readjust to being back.

Mmmmm! I purchased this tea when it was on sale, wanting to be able to compare Stacy’s Assam with another Assam that I have. Im not sure why I hadn’t opened it until today but I’m certainly glad that I did. I think I actually may prefer this one to the other black tea from Butiki that I’ve tried. This tea is bold while also being smooth and satisfying. There are malty tones in this tea, but not as strong as say, loashan black from verdant. This tea is a nice easy wake up in the morning. I love my black teas and this is no exception. While not a knock your socks off HELLO OMG WAKE UP TEA! It is a smooth, black tea with no atringency. Nice work stacy!

Sipdown, 119. Cold brew.

As much as this tea seems like it should make a good iced tea, I think I prefer it hot. Iced the smoky, earthy, tobacco-y notes of the guranse base really come to the forefront. I’m not the biggest fan of the base on this one, so it’s not optimal for me. That being said, this was still quite tasty and I drank up the whole bottle without a problem, so it couldn’t have been too bad, haha. If I ever pick up more of this I will probably stick with hot tea!

Back to reality. Last week was pretty much all traveling/vacation, even though we got back home on Thursday. Then yesterday I had an entire day of orientation for my new job… and only some mid-day iced tea to sustain me. At least it was decently tasty iced tea. But now I’m back at my desk, if only for the rest of the week. Saturday I’m off to Barcelona for a week-long scientific conference! I’m excited but I will be ready to be done with traveling by the time it is over.

Anyway, I’ve been away from my kettle and water filter for a while, and I wanted to make sure there wasn’t going to be anything weird going on with it. I wanted a tasty tea, but a tea that I had enough of that I wouldn’t be super disappointed if it got a bit messed up. This one seemed to work. Luckily my kettle and water are fine, and this is very tasty. Taking the rest of it home to cold brew… I don’t know why I didn’t think of that before, but as this tea is an homage to a tamarind soda it would make sense cold!

Just sent off a dissertation chapter, and I now I get to celebrate by… starting to write another chapter. It’s always so hard to be motivated right at this moment.

This one is tasty today, but it’s a bit harsh on the tongue. There is a slight bitterness that I haven’t gotten before; maybe I slightly overleafed my cup of this. Still nicely tamarind-y, and the base tea is really reminding me of all the misc stuff you get besides the pulp when you eat tamarinds (strings, seed coverings, etc), kind of earthy. Indian/Nepalese teas have never been my favorite, but this one I do enjoy.

First off, woohoo the weird aftertaste that was in my mouth for the last two days seem to be pretty much gone. Looking forward to Verdant teas tomorrow!

I don’t usually have Butiki teas at home with me, but I brought them home this weekend so I could do some photography sessions. I decided to have a pot of this one because a juicy tart aftertaste would go well with it, but it turns out that I needn’t have worried. This was very nice, with that tamarind tang, and a decent amount of earthiness and almost a savory note from the black tea. This is definitely a unique tea, and a tasty one!

This tea comes to me from my swap with Rachel Sincere. Thanks!

I love tamarind, in pretty much any form. Sweet, sour, earthy… it’s one of my favorite flavors. I always wanted to try this tea when it became available because of that fact, so I jumped on the chance to get some in a swap. I’ve read through the tasting notes and see that most people recommend it with a little sugar, but I don’t have any so I won’t be using it. I’ve never had Guranse black tea before, so I am interested to try it as well.

From the dry leaf I get an aroma that reminds me of the spicy tamarind candies you can find in foreign grocers sometimes. Basically thick tamarind paste, covered in coarse sugar, often mixed with a bit of cayenne for spice. Those also tend to have an earthy smell to them, which I pick up here a lot. I get the sour fruitiness, and what reminds me of a little spice.

Steeped, the tea smells black and fruity in a tart way. I am really enjoying this tea. It is blended in such a way that it really accentuates the black tea, which happens to work very well with the sweet-sour tamarind flavor. There isn’t a true sourness here, but perhaps the idea of it? Whatever it is, it works. I definitely pick up the smoky tabacco notes in the base tea, and again they somehow really fit with the tamarind. Normally I wouldn’t be really into a tea with smoky notes, but this one is working for me. It’s definitely subtle flavoring, and I’m sure it is brought out by sugar, but I’m not sure that it needs it. I like it that way.

This just reminds me that I really need to put in an order to Butiki one of these days.

Liberteas Thanks for this one! I don’t know why it’s taken me so long to try it!

I did over infuse this but it’s still sturdy and satisfying! It’s flavor is a combo of un-sweet wood and has a drier type taste and after-taste to it. There is astringency to it but it works well, here! There is a slight bitterness, too, but again, it seems to all work well with the over-all flavor!

Different but GOOD.

I’m another person that is unfamiliar with Tamarind so unfortunately I have nothing to compare this with.

Whilst raw this tea has no particular fragrance and the leaves are a mixture of brown and red which is perfect for autumn. Whilst brewed it retains a lovely dark brown colour.

Without sugar:
Alright this tastes like a strong black tea with oodles of natural sweetness and a touch of sourness and bitterness. I’m guessing the sugar would mask the sourness and bitterness a little bit. There is a touch of vanilla which helps to smooth out the fizzy sourness.

With sweetener:
Still a lovely and strong black tea but with more sweetness and more vanilla. It would seem that the sweetener truly does bring out some of the flavours. Now there is also a dark taste, very similar to dark cocoa.

Definitely a unique tasting blend, while not being my favourite from Butiki it’s still wonderful as something different. Very glad I ordered this.

These dark leaves have a full body brew, with a smoky citrus taste. Pure smoothness, that is bright with no bitterness – only a good astringency towards the end of the sip, that turns slightly sweet.

While this is a nice gentle tea, it doesn’t so much taste like pear to me. I’m thinking that it might have been contaminated by the grapefruit tea that came with it, but I’m not 100% sure. It’s still a lovely calm quiet tea but isn’t quite the pear I was looking for. I’ll have to get Stacy to send me another sample sometime with an order that doesn’t have grapefruit lol

I could have swore that I had already used up this sample, but there it was tonight in my sample basket. Wow, this really reminds me of a Pumpkin Spice Latte, but better because of the creme brulee aspect. The base is smooth with very little astringency and the spice and pumpkin are in perfect harmony. I’ve had other pumpkin teas that should have been called spice teas, but the pumpkin in this tea is clearly the star. I’m a sucker for anything and everything pumpkin this time of the year so I’m pretty glad this got lost in my sample basket until tonight.

This is super good, but then, everything I’ve had from Butiki has been good. Okay, I’m sold – onto my shopping list this goes.