Compass Teas

Backlog:

Thank you TeaEqualsBliss for sending me some of this tea! I love watermelon so I was confident I’d like this.

This tea greatly benefits from a few minutes of cool time after it’s been brewed. When served piping hot from the teapot hot … the watermelon flavor is a bit muted, but, once it cools slightly (still hot, just not piping hot), the flavor shines through nicely. This makes an EXCELLENT iced tea.

Here’s my full-length review: http://sororiteasisters.com/2013/03/18/watermelon-black-tea-from-compass-teas/

Backlog:

Yum! This is a tea that benefits from a few moments cooling time … to allow the flavors to develop. The coconut flavors are prominent, with a nice nutty undertone that doesn’t necessarily scream out to me that it’s a macadamia nut flavor but, it’s still quite a nice, warm, nutty flavor. The bake-y quality of the black tea lends a cookie-ish note to the cup and ties it all together. It’s really tasty.

Here’s my full-length review: http://sororiteasisters.com/2013/03/08/coconut-macaroon-black-tea-blend-from-compass-teas/

Alright – this is a sipdown to start getting me back in the right direction. I’ll be down to 80 teas after this.

As another bonus, this was a seasonal tea so I can’t buy more. Even though when I went on the website to check for sure it was out of stock, I found a watermelon black tea. WATERMELON. BLACK. I’ve only just this year realized I can eat watermelon. Up until now I have been unable to stomach it..it used to taste absolutely foul. Cantaloupe still tastes that way – one bite and it’s like this rancid bomb explodes all over my tongue. So gross.

Anyway, so I had this hot with milk and sugar and am currently enjoying the balance of marshmallow and black tea in my cup. I’m bummed though – I started making this before i pulled up my last tasting note and I had wanted to try blending with the Laoshan chocolate genmaicha. Grrr. That really would have been awesome. Ah well. I guess I’ll just have to hold out until the winter when it comes back and give it a try then! (And put a note somewhere so I can remember to do it for real!)

Hmm.. liked this better when I thought I oversteeped it, actually… maybe I underleafed this time? I did one level tsp. per cup. This has a wonderful balance between bergamot and vanilla in smell and taste, though – my favorite of all the earl grey cream teas I’ve tried so far.

Hmm.. liked this better when I thought I oversteeped it, actually… maybe I underleafed this time? I did one level tsp. per cup. This has a wonderful balance between bergamot and vanilla in smell and taste, though – my favorite of all the earl grey cream teas I’ve tried so far.And I just ordered enough to teas to break my “75 teas or less” rule. Sigh. I’ll be at 81, when my new Upton and 52teas order comes in. So…guess that means I need to do six sipdowns by the end of the week? Better start now!

Sipdown! (275) this was a tasty enough tea but not one i think i ever need to restock. Nice to cross off another tea from my list!

oh god. this is gross. just. no. no strawberry, no lemonade…no good taste in here.

Okay. Iced…not so much.

I made a gallon of this (took a leap of faith, whoops!) in my usual iced method (30 g. leaf and 1 minute 45 second steep since it was astringent at 2 minutes when hot) and something about that cherry just turned medicinal once cold.

It’s only really noticeable if you’re not eating anything else with it, so I’ve been making sure to have it with meals, but still…I wish that the cherry flavor that came through when it was hot would be the same as when it was iced.

Eh. Still looking for a good cherry black, then…

Sipdown! (276) Yes..that’s 2 higher than yesterday but i found a couple of teas i hadn’t logged in my cupboard and since my verdant cups arrive today, so did the sample that i tucked into that order to get free shipping lol.

I still like the taste of this one. Vanilla and cinnamon…this is a really smooth blend.

This was a backlog from a few days ago.

Okay, 2 minutes really made a strong, bordering on astringent, brew!

It seemed to get less astringent as it cooled, and the cherry and black tea went really well together.. reminded me of a maraschino cherry taste, which was pretty good. I like fruity teas when they are iced so I gave that a try today too – my next note will be on that version!

This is a fantastic earl grey cream.

It is smooth, as the name suggests, with a good balance of bergamot and vanilla. It was also pretty flexible on the steep time, too…I forgot about it and it went for 3:45 instead of 2-3 minutes as recommended. (Not a huge overage, but some teas really don’t let you get away with even that!)

This is one of the best of it’s kind, that’s for sure.

No. Just, no. This isn’t for me.
Maybe it’s the green rooibos? There’s some notes running underneath that I don’t like at all.

Last sipdown for the day. I call this a successful Sipdown Saturday!

Thanks joonsusanna! another tea that she was looking to get rid of that i scooped up. Truth be told, apparently my taste buds are off because i’m not getting the orange that everyone else has. Now, i’ve had 52 teas cinnamon roll honeybush blend thingy that i LOOOOVEEEED the first time i had it and then stopped loving it a little while after that. If i was looking for a cinnamon bun tea, i’d be going for the steap shoppe’s cinnamon swirl bread. however, in a honeybush, this tastes closer to a cinnamon bun than 52 teas, which has a whole lot of cinnamon with some more cinnamon. this one is a smoother, less cinnamon and more bun version.

Let’s not talk about how i’m back over 300 teas lol. Thank you joonsusanna for this one! I’ve wanted to try compass teas for a while now, and when she was getting rid of a bunch of her teas, cavocorax and i were blessed with her willingness to send us a bunch of them for the two of us to share! I’m so used to steeping my rooibos for 7+ mins. Compass recommends 3-4 minutes for this one, but i think i’ll try much longer with the rest of my sample. At 3.5 mins this is a creamy sort of rooibos but i wouldn’t call it irish cream just yet. I hope that with a longer steep, more of the flavour will come out a bit :) For those that don’t like rooibos too much, so far this does have that rooibos taste, so likely not a first choice for anyone curious if this is a rooibos-y rooibos lol it is.

I’ve been averaging six hours sleep a night so I really should go to bed, but I’m 92% done my book (the last Wheel of Time) and I just don’t want to! :O Guess that means I’m not good at being an adult? I might regret this when I wake up at 8-9, but that’s what strong tea is for, amirite?

I didn’t realise that Compass had loose-leaf tea. Thanks to JoonSusanna for the rooibos samples. I’m getting a bit of cream and caramel, and lots of rooibos, but not in a bad way. This is pretty enjoyable actually, and it does remind me a bit of Irish Cream!

I like having a lot of variety for caffeine-free teas, so maybe I’ll grab a bunch once I drink up all my current samples! I’m pretty excited to try the Cola rooibos, but I’ll save that for an afternoon.

Backlog:

I was kind of surprised by the stemmy-ness of this tea when I first opened the package. Usually I find one or two stems in a tea … it’s to be expected, although generally, the more stems, the lesser the quality (Generally speaking of course). However, after closer inspection of the ingredient list … it actually says “Camellia Sinensis Stems” … it’s supposed to be stemmy!

There is a nice roasty note to this tea. I found that the tea tasted better when it is allowed to cool for a few minutes. When served piping hot, the flavors were kind of … obscured. But after a few minutes (about five) the flavors began to pop! Ah… there’s the butterscotch! Buttery, caramel-ish, and absolutely YUM!

Sweet, but not cloyingly so. (I like butterscotch, but I find that it can be a tad cloying to me … I didn’t get that with this tea). The tea base is the strongest flavor of this cup, and perhaps that’s why the butterscotch did not become an overwhelmingly sweet thing for me. The tea is robust and rich … A really tasty dessert tea.

Thank you TeaEqualsBliss for sending me some of this tea. It’s really good. I was surprised to find that it’s no longer on the Compass Teas Website … I guess it’s either out of stock or it’s been discontinued. It’s a tasty tea, though.

It has a really nice Hazelnut flavor, and the black tea base is rich and bold! It would be a great first thing in the morning tea to help shake the sleepeez but, it is also nice as an afternoon pick me up. I’ve become quite a night owl lately, so, this is … my afternoon. Yes. 11:06 pm. Hey … it’s still AFTER noon.

A really tasty tea. I hope they bring this one back.

This tea has the most amazingly wonderfully delicious aroma. It came in the mail today and I grabbed it as we were leaving so I couldn’t brew it up right away. So instead my excitement grew and grew to try it.

At least it smells good. But the tea is not great. I’m hoping I can coax a better flavor out of this by experimenting with temps and times. I let about half my cup cool completely while I was making dinner and it actually kind of tasted like caramel corn and genmaicha. I resteeped my leaves and the second round had kind of an old butter flavor. Bleh.

I really want to like this. It has so much potential and I love flavored genmaichas. And seriously, it smells amazing.

Tried this again, brewing it for 5 minutes straight this time. Smells great! Just like a ginger snap. Tastes lovely, too, though still not like a cookie. I tried it with 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla agave. Still tasty, still doesn’t taste like a cookie. Just tastes like ginger and vanilla. I still have enough of the sample to make another two cups (not counting resteeps), so I’ll try it with proper sugar next time.

Thanks to JoonSusanna for sending this along. I love ginger snap cookies, so I was really excited about this tea. Ultimately, I think it’s pretty good, but doesn’t quite taste like ginger snaps.

The dry leaf smells like a very gingery cookie. Brewed, it still smells like a gingery cookie (in a good way!). The package says to steep for 2-4 minutes. I initially steeped for 2.5, but it came out kind of weak. It tasted like a good rooibos. I couldn’t make out any ginger though. So I steeped for another 2 minutes and it was better. Didn’t taste as thin and the ginger flavor came out more. Another minute of steeping and it was much, much better. The rooibos and ginger work together nicely. Still doesn’t taste like a cookie, but very nice. So 5-6 minutes is a good steeping time. I will say that this tea has a nice gingery aftertaste, exactly like a ginger snap.

This resteeps pretty well. I got distracted and ended up leaving the leaves in for 8 minutes. It actually worked out nicely! Super tasty. I will definitely be drinking this again. Will try it with sweetener next time, as suggested.

I think I have enough leaf for one more cup after this, and then it looks like its gone from the Compass Teas website. Makes sense, I guess, as even the name is seasonal. Well, I take that back – it’s present in sample size quantities, but I can’t see myself placing an order consisting of like, 3 sample size bags and that’s it.

It’s quite a shame, because this is a great marshmallow tea. It’s not toasted marshmallow, which would probably be the only thing I’d add to this blend – but it is equal parts marshmallow and black tea. The base reminds me of my beloved East Frisian blend, only it’s as if someone treated it like a hot chocolate and put a marshmallow on top. With milk and sugar (not a lot of either, and not necessary at that) I am absolutely in heaven.

I wish there was a way to add a toasted flavor without burny/smoke flavoring. I can’t do the lapsang. Maybe some toasted rice from a genmaicha? Or maybe… my LAOSHAN BLACK CHOCOLATE GENMAICHA. OMG. I think all of the lightbulbs in the world just went off inside my head – that is a blend that will be happening the next (last?!) time I make this tea.

If it’s good I may just find a way to place an order of only sample sizes. The things I’ll do for my tastebuds. :)

Finished this off with another cold brew that I drank along with some delicious Greek food. This is a very good tropical tea, and I definitely want more.

I prefer macarons over macaroons, to the point I have an irrational hatred for macaroons for when people spell macarons like macaroons.

But I do like coconut. A lot.

So this was okay at first without sugar. It smells really nutty. But what I think must be the base tea is giving it this smoky aftertaste. It’s not offputting enough for me to dump the cup, but it just really doesn’t match the sweet cookie thing this tea has going on otherwise. I added milk and sugar and it makes it more tolerable, as does letting it cool off a bit more.

I added way more sugar than I usually do, which makes this tea taste like I’m having dessert for breakfast.

Thanks, JoonSusanna!

Started my day with at least 3 cups of this one today!
I’m a little behind logging, sorry!

See other tasting notes on this one!