Lupicia

Work – 12:00 PM

First tea of the day due to various logistical issues this morning…

Since drinking a banana black tea last night, I find that I want MOAR BANANA. Happily, banana was one of the two flavors of matcha that I ordered recently. Unhappily, that package doesn’t seem to have actually been transferred to the postal service yet… Sad panda.

Anyway, the tea! This is one of the several chocolate + fruit teas I own from Lupicia. Happily, this flavor is a permanent fixture in their collection, unlike some of the others which were released for Valentine’s Day.

The banana flavor here is nice, I find it to be fairly authentic with perhaps a touch of candy-like-ness (yes, I’m making up words now…). The chocolate is quite faint in my opinion, and it is a cocoa powder-like chocolate flavor. Although we’ve established that I tend to have a difficult time finding chocolate flavor in teas. The base tea is light but a bit malty with hay notes. There’s also a sort of musty flavor going on that makes me wonder about the origin of the black tea here.

Anyway, it’s fairly good. Still not my ideal banana tea though, which I hope to find someday…

The lovely NayLynn sent me a swap package full of awesome-sounding flavored teas, most of which were on my wishlist. Woohoo! This one is the first to try just because it sounds tasty and the whole package smelling like banana made me want some. I’ve had good experiences with Lupicia’s teas so far, and I’m always on the lookout for them in swaps. The leaves of this tea are small and somewhat broken, and there are a few yellow flower petals mixed in with them. Dry scent is sugary banana taffy mixed with a bit of creamy milk chocolate. I brewed a heaping teaspoon of leaf for 3 minutes at 200 degrees.

The brewed aroma is still sweet banana taffy, but now it’s joined by malt. There is still a tad of milk chocolate scent present as well. I tried it plain first and there is a decent amount of banana flavor. Then I added some soy milk and agave and it’s amazing… So much creamy banana, similar to banana pudding. There’s a little bit of chocolate I suppose, but it’s very easy to overlook. Overall, decent plain, super yummy with milk! :D

Today, I feel that autumn is finally here after the hottest summer in my life! I’ve been drinking mostly green tea and oolong tea the whole summer; with the slightly cooler weather today, I decided to have a cup of black and green tea blend… with a little bit of peach (my favourite fruit in summer). :)

This was a nice tea. It had the depth of black tea, the sweetness of green tea, the fragrance of jasmine, and an undercurrent of peach flavour. It made me happy. Though I must say I am a bit disappointed that only peach flavouring rather than real peach was used in making this tea :P

This is a very unique tea. I have never tasted black tea like this before! It has an intense coffee-like, roasty aroma. The liquor also has that characteristic roasty flavour that reminds me of houjicha, but of course it is not as strong. It is malty with a bittersweet finish. It’s certainly not my cup of tea – perhaps it’s an acquired taste – but you’ve go to try it if you wan to expand your palate or call yourself a tea connoisseur :P

Oh, I’m the very first review for this tea. I wanted to try it because it reminded me of a light masala chai. And it is. The scent mildly spiced, and mostly cinnamon. In the flavour, I get more cloves, but the cinnamon is still very present. If I got this, I’d maybe use it in bread.

I tried this when I went by the store over the weekend. It has more of a mango scent. The flavour is sweet and tropical, but still strong towards mango.

Probably better iced, and earlier in the year.

Just a quick note.. I have to get outside and walk while the weather is good.
Almond…
Cookie…
Yummy…
The End!

After having a chocolate covered banana in Orange County, CA, I now have to try banana chocolate tea whenever i see it. This is a very smooth tea. Its lightly flavored, but you can still taste the essence of both flavors. The other versions of this tea have used rooibos and they are good but I’m liking the use of the black tea more. This is a sample in the Pass the stash ttb so I can’t quite get a good smell from this sample but i imagine it would smell good.

This tea should definitely be had as an iced tea. I kept on getting sample tea bags as part of my Lupicia newsletter subscription, and kept on lamenting the fact because as a hot tea it’s nothing special—even a little overpowering in the fruitiness. But! It’s perfect as a lightly sweetened iced tea. I find that adding milk ( have it iced with half a cup of almond milk and a few drops of liquid stevia) and sweetening it a bit really mellows out the flavor. It makes an addictive iced latte. I use the almond milk that’s only 30 calories per 8 oz serving, and stevia is zero calories, so I can have many of these a day (and do!)

Not my favorite. Just an average black tea with very few bells and whistles. Still it hits the spot when you need a black tea hit.

Sipdown! (55 | 259)

Meh, never really warmed up to this one.

I like the concept of honey and fruits, but this has such a weird medicinal flavor to it. Not sure if it’s the honey or what. It almost tastes like it has rooibos in it, but it doesn’t.

Strange tea! Luckily Lupicia has many others that I love, ha ha.

Trying this one as a milk tea this evening.

It’s definitely better, the honey flavor comes through more strongly for me. It’s sort of like a honey-fig-lavender combination. But there is still a weird medicinal quality to it that reminds me of throat lozenges…

What an odd tea this is!

“An Ode to Tea” Alphabet Challenge – N

I was looking through my (physical) cupboard for some milk tea candidates, and realized I hadn’t tried this one from the group order yet. And how perfect for ‘N’ day!

This is a strange one. If I didn’t know better, I would swear it was a rooibos blend, because it has that medicinal taste that I sometimes find with red rooibos. Woody, medicinal, maybe slightly fruity in a fig jam sort of way? I don’t really get honey per se, more of a jammy dried fruit sweetness. I almost taste a hint of lavender as well, but maybe I’m just making that association because of the similarity to Dammann’s Noël en Provence. Okay, now I’m getting a hint of wildflower honey in the aftertaste.

Anyway, it’s fine. There’s less honey than I would expect from the description, but I do get the dried fruit part and the flowers. Certainly not a favorite!

Another Lupicia sample from mj! I love how vague the description is for this tea – “honey-preserved fruits”. Well, sounds lovely to me, so let’s do it! Dry, it’s a mixture of small to medium-sized black tea leaves and yellow flower petals that I assume are there for visual interest only. The dry scent is extremely sweet and honeyed, and I’m unsure whether I could pick out a specific type of fruit – it has more of a general candied fruit smell. Okay, so I made a bit of a boo-boo with the steeping… I set my electric kettle to 200 degrees, and I didn’t notice until I was pouring the water that there wasn’t quite enough for an 8 ounce cup… So I had to add a little bit of room temperature water, bringing the temperature down a bit. I had planned to steep for 3 minutes, but I let it go an extra 30 seconds because of this.

I think this came out a tad weaker than it would have had I not messed up the water temperature, but still tasty! It doesn’t have much of an aroma, perhaps a vague sweetness. The dried fruit flavor is also vague, but delicious, and it goes perfectly with the honey. If I had to take a guess, I’d say perhaps dried figs? And maybe a touch of dried stonefruit? There’s also definitely a touch of vanilla to me, although it’s not listed as a flavor here.

So, long story short, this came out quite tasty despite my shortcomings (doh). I’m sure it’ll be even better next time, when I steep it correctly! :P

Sipdown! (5 | 135)

Finishing this one off as a milk tea!

This is a well-loved tea from Lupicia, but it’s just never been one of my favorites for some reason. But when I was thinking of which flavored teas to try for milk tea, CTC came to mind, and then this tea. I used about 4 teaspoons of tea in 4 ounces of hot water and then added 8 ounces of milk and some sweetener.

Glorious nutty cookie milk tea! The cookie flavor totally comes through, along with the chestnut-like nuts and a bit of caramel. Yum! What a lovely way to send off a rather old tea.

Home – 12:30 PM

This tea has a rather good reputation. Unfortunately, I always find that, for me, it doesn’t live up to the hype.

The base tea is brisk and a tad astringent, likely due to the CTC leaves included in it. The flavor is not a light, buttery cookie like one might expect. It’s darker, more caramelized. Perhaps akin to a dark, snappy ginger cookie without the spice. There is caramelized, almost burnt sugar with a hint of almond.

I think perhaps this would be greatly improved by a dash of milk, to counteract the drying quality and bring out the almond notes. Unfortunately, I never add milk or sugar to tea.

I think I’ll put this in the re-homing box, not because I don’t enjoy it, but because it seems rather a waste to not enjoy it completely.

Sipdown!

Boychik was kind enough to send me a sample so that I could give this one a second try (I wasn’t too impressed with it the first time). I must say, I am finding it much more cookie-ish this time around. I added about half of a teaspoon of light brown sugar, and it has some nice dark burnt sugar and caramel notes, as well as a light butter cookie flavor. Not bad, but still not a repurchase for me.

This sample came from mj. This is one of the Lupicia teas that I was most interested in, so I’m very happy that I was able to get it in a swap! It’s in sachet form, and it looks to be about a teaspoon of leaf in there. The leaves themselves are small and dark, and there are little chunks of something mixed in (apparently almonds). Dry scent is very sweet and caramel-y with vanilla. I steeped mine for 3 minutes at 200 degrees.

Brewed, it smells like oatmeal cookies (no raisins) with caramel in them. Honestly… I’m not too impressed with this one, and that makes me really sad. I’m not getting a lot of flavoring here, just a mediocre black base with a bit of astringency. I tried adding a bit of sugar and milk, and it helped it taste like a cookie a little more, but I’m not big into teas that I have to add things to in order to enjoy them. This one is a letdown for me. :(

Tried in the store because it smelled so good. The scent was sweet, and tropical. It smelled nicely the pineapple, with hints of coconut, and some floral from the oolong. There was a light and fruity flavour. I have liked their flavoured oolongs a lot, but it seems I always try them in the wrong season. This one would be better earlier in the year.

This reminded me a bit of the Milk Caramel (which I got this time). It has a nice sweet, nutty scent. The flavour is a stronger chestnut, and I taste the green base a little. Overall, an interesting flavour that would good for Autumn.

From the Pass the Stash TTB

I’m a lil obsessed with Lupicia right now after visiting their store in San Francisco. Which was awesome. Such a lovely store. So one I spotted this one I knew it was the first one I wanted to try. And it doesn’t disappoint. Green tea can be very hard to get right but I must have steeped this for the perfect amount of time because the grassy notes are gorgeous on my tongue. That sounds weird… It was good hot but I’m also enjoying it slughtly chilled at the moment.

I really wanted to like this one, but I just can’t. It has a weird and off-putting chemical aroma, and while that note’s much subdued in the flavor it’s not entirely absent. Otherwise, I’m mostly getting what seems to be a slightly smoky base (or maybe that’s the whiskey flavoring?). I don’t get sweet potato, or much in the way of sweetness. In fact, I’ve had unflavored teas that tasted way more like sweet potato than this one does. It could be that I’ve let this sample sit too long, but whatever the reason this one isn’t doing it for me at all. Thanks to Dustin for letting me sample it, since I would’ve been pretty disappointed if I’d ordered a whole bag!

Like drinking tea with a banana laffy taffy in your mouth. I don’t pickup on the chocolate, ok by me cause I don’t like a lot of chocolate teas.