Culinary Teas

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This one weirdly enough tastes better to be when I (by my typical brewing ways) underleafed it. (1.5 tsp to 15 oz water). It was more vanilla-y and the creamy was slightly diminished but still present. Huh.

I’m in the wrong season for this tea, but that’s okay. It’s gloomy and rainy and I wish I were still in bed. So it’s essentially an autumn day.

The smell here invokes images of colorful trees and gusty winds, with rain puddles for jumping in, corn mazes and hay rides. It just screams autumn.

The flavor is exactly what I was hoping for, though! I wish the Culinary Teas Vanilla Cream I had earlier was more like this with the loud, bold flavors and a slight milkiness from the cream aspect. There’s a touch of pumpkin pie spice, but no overwhelming clove or cinnamon flavors, which I appreciate. The pumpkin is pumpkin-y, but more of a pumpkin pancake kind of pumpkin than pumpkin pie though.

A little bit of sweetener brings out a more roasty pumpkin flavor, that I enjoy a bit more than unsweetened. I would imagine a splash of milk would bring out the creaminess more, too. (Latte anyone?)

Overall, this is another really lovely gloomy day kind of cup that encourages blankets, something to cuddle, and books.

The cream flavor is really nice. It doesn’t have a nice milky mouthfeel like I was hoping, though. I was also looking for a more vanilla bean flavor in the vanilla, so that’s a bit of a let down; but what is there is decent. The black base is so-so too. It’s on par with mixing Adagio’s Cream and Vanilla with a far less fickle base, but it’s nothing special.

This tea tastes similar to ‘Sunrise Sensation from STeap teas in that it is a weak cinnamon-flavored brew. The tea base is extremely weak and the only flavor that really stands out is cinnamon. The cinnamon in this one is slightly stronger than the other though. It really isn’t much of a pumpkin-spice tea.

Thank you for sending me such a generous sample TastyBrew, but I think I’m going to let this one move on in a future swap.

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So I didn’t do so well with 52teas Caramel Pumpkin Cheesecake, so I pulled out another pumpkin tea from the wonder sample box that JackieT sent me.

Sorry I like this one even less, all I get is clove. Way too much clove for my taste, it just overwhelms everything else. There could be pumpkin in there somewhere, but too spicy, not balanced for my tastes.

Thanks for the sample Jackie.

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This is a pleasant tea, but, as others have said, it’s not what it thinks it is. I get a nice caramel taste, although not very strong, but I really have to stretch my imagination to get anything close to either cheesecake or cherry, either in aroma or taste. Still, I’m enjoying drinking it. (Thanks, Starfevre.)

I added sugar and skim milk.

Another one ordered for me and sent up north from Tastybrew, yay!

Drinking it now. It’s more flavourful than the S&V English Toffee I had yesterday… Still not SUPER caramelly. It doesn’t have the burnt toffee taste I thought I didn’t like, but I’m wondering if maybe that taste would still be preferable because at least it’s A taste.

Hm. I don’t know yet, I probably won’t be sad when this is all gone though.

This tea loose smelled like overly sweetened pink bubblegum… I think they were going for a honeydew melon, and missed just slightly.

Sadly, the smell was the best thing about this tea. It doesn’t taste like plain tea, but doesn’t necessarily have a flavor, either. It tastes mostly of bitterness and liquid sugar. I had high hopes for this one, but sadly don’t see myself finishing the packet.

I enjoy this tea hot, usually… Sadly, for me, it doesn’t translate well to iced. Chilling the tea made the hint of cherry almost disappear, and the tea got a little bitter. A shame… The high rating is only for a hot cuppa.

Ok there’s a bit of tea in the package but this is a sipdown anyway, the rest of it can go to the garden and make my plants happy.

And hey this is my 1100th note! I haven’t been drinking a lot of tea lately because I just feel like MEH. But the rest of this week nothing is going on so I’ll probably just sit and drink tea. Except during hockey. Tea has turned to booze during those hours. It’s the only way to survive.

So this is from TeaEqualsBliss a bit back, it looks to be an older tea so I don’t mind only getting one cup out of it. Unlike other stuff in the box this has been in, it is a pretty sturdy bag.

It’s nothing special. It’s pretty sweet, bit of honey flavor to it, but there’s not much else there. It doesn’t have the qualities I really love about Yunnan teas but I think this might be a product of age. Still, not bad, but it’s just slightly flat.

This tea is great, provided that you don’t oversteep…

The dry mix smells of apricots, and it mouth-watering. When brewed, the apricot flavor is pretty subtle… Its mostly like peach flavored… specifically, the dark part in the center of the peach right against the pit. When lightly brewed, the bitterness of the black tea tastes tangy with the peach flavor… Great for iced!

I opened this package today! It smelled so good dry! Malt and cocoa are two things I love in life. The leaves were twisted and dark brown. Since I haven’t been brewing teas for long periods of time, the liquor was a bit scent-less to me. When I drank it, it tasted like good Assam. I detected maltiness, slight fruity notes, and some cocoa notes as well. It was still strong, so I added sugar and skim milk to it. Delicious and easier to drink with the additives, which I usually like to use when I’m drinking assam teas. I imagine that this would be a good base for blending teas or making chai.

I keep telling myself I am going to make this over the stove-top, but I haven’t been able to! I have been so busy with work. Anyway, I had this before going to work yesterday. :) Delicious! I love the ginger bits in here.

This tea is pretty incredible… First off, it smells amazing! More like dried apricot and dark sugar than plum, but still mouth-wateringly good. Some teas skimp on dried fruit, but I got a piece in every spoonful!

When brewed, this tasted like sugarplum, with the slightest bit of cinnamon… The tea base wasn’t too strong, and went well with the tartness of the plum. A definite re-order!

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Has a musty (but not bad) aroma dry, and brewing it’s very much like wet grass and soil. Brews up a dark but relatively bright red, pretty. The vegetal scent recedes after brewing, which I admit I found a relief. As it cools it mellows and becomes quite smooth. I like it a lot once it settles. It does retain a grassy herbal flavor but it’s light and enjoyable, floating gently over the black tea flavor. It’s funny, I thought based on initial smell there’d be no way I’d like this as much as Hooghly Holler but I was wrong. Very refreshing. I’d drink it again!

Dry the leaves smell wonderful, so fresh and floral and fragrant. Pretty too, with different colored dried bits. Brews up a dark brown. Freshly brewed it smells of vanilla and flowers, really lovely. Rather sweet right off the bat. It tastes relatively gentle, especially as it cools, but that fits the feminine vibe of it. Feels like the equivalent of strolling around a French-y girly garden full of flowers.

Dry this smells like a refreshingly tart underripe melon. Interesting just how different it is from Butiki’s Cantaloupe and Cream while still resembling melon.

Brewed, this seemed odd at first, not resembling melon in smell or taste anymore. There’s some tannin and that bit of bitterness most Culinary Tea blends have if you aren’t very mindful of steeping briefly (I may start brewing them all at a slightly lower temperature and see what happens). But as it cooled down a little the melon came back, and the whole thing turned a little more luscious and silky. Not bad. I don’t think I’d brew this hot very often given the deluxe silkiness and creaminess of Butiki’s but I’m definitely going to save this to ice (which is recommended right on the website). It really does have an authentic melon flavor coupled very tidily with the taste of black tea, making it an ideal midday iced tea choice. Bet it’d go great with summer meals.

If it wasn’t for the “this screams iced tea” possibilities, I’d rate this significantly lower, but really, it’s for sure one of the better CT blends I’ve tried all around. It’s an interesting combination of sweetly refreshing real-fruity with pick-me-up brisk generic black tea flavor, and unusual in that there’s more flavor in the swallow than the settled nose (how often can you say a flavored tea tastes better than it smells?!).

I love this tea! This time I had milk, and I drank this happily! The spices are great and authentic. I love it!

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Really digging how floral and sweet perfume-y, not just grape-y, the dry leaves smell, indeed like a lovely chilled wine. Brewing and in the cup the sweet floral quality turns a bit musky in a good way, continuing the perfume element. Impressed and pleased this isn’t more astringent.

Funny enough, I seem to have a conditioned mental block to drinking more than a cup of this in one sitting—I guess I inevitably connect it to drinking a lot of wine really fast, and how my body doesn’t like the idea of that.

It’s a shame this isn’t less caffeinated, because it’d be a lovely way to have a nightcap sort of relaxation beverage without, you know, the icky dehydration and mouthfeel when you wake up the next morning. Unfortunately, I’m not familiar with any herbal/tisane wine “teas”—New Mexico Tea Company’s, Joy’s Teaspoon’s, and Red Leaf Tea’s all have tea leaf bases as well. I do reckon it would be refreshing iced in hot weather and possibly blended with other flavors, sort of like a wine tea summer spritzer “cocktail” thing, which might be good for a party on the patio in that it’d pick you up (instead of make you sleepy, which wine does to me) and be less dehydrating.

Now I’m wondering if it’d make a good partner with certain foods. Hm…