sTEAp Shoppe

Now THIS is a cinnamon tea that is not too overpowering! I’ve had a stressful day and needed something comforting. I have my go-to teas, but have been wanting to try this one for a while now. I added a touch of cream and sweetener to this one to give it more of a dessert feel. It is not too earthy, spicy, or sweet. It really does remind me of fresh toasted cinnamon bread! Now that I am feeling a bit more relaxed, I am able to settle down with my text books and complete my assignments.

Steeped up some of this tea to see if it was better with a lower temperature, using my new variable temperature kettle (man, that was the best purchase ever!), and it wasn’t. Still super floral. The second steep was more nutty and a little buttery, but it’s just so overpoweringly floral. I didn’t make it to a third steep, but it might have been even better. Only thing is, I don’t want to have to wait until the third steep to get the best cup of tea!

Pure comfort food…I mean tea! ;)

Due to the demands of the semester, I have been drinking more coffee these days. After an interesting day, I felt like I needed tea to end the night. I still have many teas to get through in my cupboard, but I remembered I still had this sample hanging around. The smell is wonderful with hints of chocolate and smoke. I acutually over-steeped this tea by accident, but it had no effect on the flavor.

This tea reminds me of bonfires in autumn with s’mores! Given the fact that I do not eat flour and sugar, this was wonderful. I might wait to make my next cup when the temperatures drop, as this would be the ideal time to drink this marvelous tea. I am going to purchase a full amount when I need more! :-)

Thank you yet again TastyBrew!

I brewed this one up at the same time that I brewed Jumpy Monkey so that I would have a back up if I didn’t like one. I often do then when trying new teas. I put this one in the larger cup because I predicted that I would like it more, but I actually liked the jumpy monkey more. This isn’t bad, its just so-so. The chocolate tastes a bit off. I’m not sure I can really describe the rest of it. There is a sort of smokiness about it, nothing too offensive though. And it’s just ever so slightly tart. I am happy to finish my cup, but regretting just a little that I chose the bigger one for this tea. Oh well. :)

Sipdown! I recieved this one in a swap and I can’t remember who sent it to me…. But THANK you! It’s absolutely delicious! It’s not your normal green tea and mint. It has a lovely liquorice and mint flavor. The green tea is a bit overpowered but in this blend it’s ok. It works. It’s very uplifting. I really enjoyed this :]

Ah boo, what a let down. I saw all the ingredients in this one and thought “gee, this will be a good strong cup!” And with a name like ‘sunrise sensation’, it had better be.

I used 3.4g in a 14oz mug and steeped for 2 min (recommended time was 1min30sec). Its a coppery puddle of cinnamon flavored water with a tiny squeeze from an orange. It’s not icky or anything, but way to weak for my standards.

Thanks anyway TastyBrew!

I do have some left for another cup. When I’m feeling up to it I will try brewing stronger and longer to see if it makes a difference. However, if I really need to use so much leaf, it probably won’t be cost effective in the long run.

one more thing to note, my tea thermometer said that the water reached 200F today. Either it’s broken or the elevation around here is fickle (quite possible, really).

thanks to TastyBrewwww for the moar teaaaa!
(this is tea tasted number 297. i’m keeping track cuz for the 300th tea i’m opening Laoshan Black and trying it for the first time.)(and it looks like that will be tomorrow morning!)
i’m afraid all this tasting is turning me into a tea snob. like in the bad way. it’s that i catch myself having some weird expectations of what i think a tea should taste like by the scent or ingredients, and then when it doesn’t match my presupposed expectations i get overly judgmental. this is not the tea drinker i want to be!!
naw no
i wanna be open to each sip. and judge it in the moment. and see what i can discern and what speaks to me (i have scarred sinuses and a poor sense of smell but i want to do my very best.)
so when i first tasted this i was all ‘meh’. but why? i really had no reason.
it’s a nice tea. i guess i should just put things in the buy or not buy categories? pass/fail?
this tea is gentle. and pretty tasty. slightly vanilla. but i wouldn’t buy more. just cuz there are other vanilla teas i’ve like more. oh that perpetual vanilla hunt.

OH CRAP. NOW i know what it’s like to have too many teas to try!
swaps from TastyBrew, Shadowfall, Dinosara, Shelley_Lorraine have done me in.
with whatshesaid, Sil, Scheherazade, and CHAroma swaps still to come!
what have i done!?!?! hahahaha
it’s craziness. it’s chaos. teasanity! and VERY FUN!
but - i NEED a SYSTEM. i feel like i should apologize to Scheherazade and CHAroma for being such a disorganized swap partner this time around. i’ve lost complete track of what teas i have and what teas i am craving and what tea is still en route or in process.
i’m really new to the swapping and i kinda dove in headfirst with a flourish. as i usually do with everything.
i’m not a half measure type of person.
How do you guys do it?!
How do you make sure you don’t get swaps of things you already have?
Or have already tasted?
and how the hell do you decide from a mountain of tea what to drink next?!?!? haha
these are the funnest problems to have.

yesterday as i had a mountain of little tea swap samples spread out in front of me in the kitchen my boyfriend was like, “do you have a whole world of online friends that i don’t even know about?”, like it had just occurred to him that the tea comes from people (giving and thoughtful and passionate people), and i was like “duh ya”.

this tea. it’s nice. i like it. but it’s not super exciting.
i followed the steeping directions pretty closely. it is vanilla but not really enough. and the tea base isn’t thrilling either. it’s a middle tea. but this is the 296th unique tea i’ve tasted! all thanks to swapping. and this one specifically thanks to TastyBrew.

Thank you TastyBrew! After much deliberation, I decided to try this one first from the samples that you sent to me.

This is a very rare sort of tea that actually tastes better than it smells. It smells like caramel-apple-cardboard-style. I was prepared to be disappointed.

It’s quite tasty, but doesn’t taste like a caramel apple to me. It does taste sweet, and it tastes like assam, but I’m not exactly picking up individual flavors beyond that. I much prefer underachieving dessert flavor than over anyway. This makes for a good biscuit-dunking tea. I have teas that I drink alone and teas that I reserve for my most favorite Biscoff biscuits.

This is definitely a tea that I’d like to have around, but I don’t know yet if it will become a regular.

the mystery swap tea box i got from TastyBrew came with a note. it said the box contained “teas i don’t love as well as some of my favorites”. so The Game Is Afoot!!

actually, i realized that i have already cheated cuz i’m a big peek-er. and i looked up tastybrew’s opinion already. haha oh wellz

fact is, i love lapsang blends.
i really do. cuz lapsang seems like a tea that wouldn’t be blended with anything well and it’s always a surprise.
i also read a lot of sherlock fan-fic. and last night i stayed up till 4am in the morning getting half way through a really long story. and lapsang is always sherlock.
but i digress.

the vanilla and coco nibs are mild, but i can get a hint of the vanilla. i would have never thought of a vanilla added to lapsang but i now realize it’s OBVIOUSLY a great idea and i will hope to find a really good one someday.
i do think this tea itself is pretty mild. and i brewed it according to instructions. but next time i will probably try brewing it longer. (that is, when i brew my last cup. cuz i already drank 3 cups of this hah)

My son had itty bitty little tubes put it in his ears this morning. Not a big deal at all but required him to go under anasthesia. I chose this tea for my hospital day because 1) it’s delicious 2) can be resteeped a bujillion times. I simply threw some in my travel mug that has a strainer and then filled it over and over with the hot water from the pump and dumped it into my little paper cup. Worked perfectly. As did his procedure. Just waiting for the groggy little man to be awake enough for us to head home and eat popsicles all day!

I bought a lot of sample sized teas from sTEAp Shoppe, but have finally gotten around to trying some of them! This particular tea is good. There is a smokey dimension to it, though it is overall light in flavor. The chocolate stands out, but given the name, I was really hoping for a stronger tea. Maybe I need to increase the amount of tea for the steep? I’ll try it again to see if it helps. If I can find the right tea/water ratio, I might buy the full size!

I was wicked excited to try this one, and it was ok, but I got this sticky aftertaste that I just didn’t love. I’m sure it’s just sugar from the caramel but it felt artificial and left the taste in my mouth for a while. However, in terms of the flavors being accurate, they definitely are. The apple was a classic granny smith apple taste, which personally is my favorite kind of apple to dip in caramel.

It does kind of feel like I’m at the country fair, which I appreciate, and I can definitely imagine enjoying this more in the fall. OOOH or as a latte in the fall!! Awesome. doing it.

Ok I am going to need a larger amount of this ASAP. I got 3 tsp in a swap with TastyBrew who has the cutest little bags for swapping. I don’t remember smelling the dry leaves because I was too excited to taste it. So once brewed, this smells precisely like a freshly baked slice of cinnamon raisin bread with buttered spread on it.

Every Christmas, my uncle/Godfather hands out these loaves of bread to the people closest to him, it’s the thing we anticipate most about the holiday in my family. It’s a huge loaf of cinnamon swirl bread with the thickest, fullest swirls of cinnamon you can imagine. It makes the greatest tea accompaniment and the BEST french toast. We call it “Joe Bread” because my uncle’s name is Joe. This tea could not smell more spot on like Joe bread.

I think I will not only need a large amount of this for myself, but special bags for every member of my family as well. The flavory is sweet, doughy, rich, and smooth. Such a treat!

Drinking this tea this morning after having a bunch of less-than-stellar teas as of late. This one never disappoints. You can make it at home in your proper steeping equipment or at work in the microwave. Still tastes like delicious buttered cinnamon swirl bread. It’s so thick, it really feels like liquid breakfast. Yum. :)

backlog as i’ve been mia for a few

sipdown! on this one and i’m sad to see it go. I’ll be picking up more of it since this is not only a tasty delicious cup of goodness but it resteeps incredibly well. Hard to beat that!

SIPDOWN! (243)
Oh man… this IS delicious. I made a cup of this to drink while i had my meeting with china tonight and sadly i didn’t get a chance to drink most of it hot. However i have to say this really does have that caramel, chocolatey taste. This is on the order list for my upcoming order from the steap shoppe.

dear tastybrew ZOMG! Yeah i’m still loving this. I resteeped the crap out of the little cup that i had a few days ago…. and then needed to have more today. Oh yes..you will be mine. all mine!

Out of milk so I picked out a tea I normally drink without milk. I have been using a digital meat thermometer which I think is much more accurate than the old-fashioned dial thermometer. Also using a timer on my cell phone (One of the few features on my cheap $8 tracfone). This tea is much better if you get the temp and time more exact than guessing at it. I am drinking this tea straight, no sugar at all, and am really enjoying it. Either the tea improved as it sat in the tin, my tastebuds have developed in the past 3 months, or the exactness of the brewing. Maybe it’s a combination of all three. Really nice blend of fruit/citrus/berry and tea.

Thank you tastybrew Seriously..i just need to quit now. I mean when i first started out drinking dessert teas, i thought 52 teas cinnamon roll honeybush was like oh man! it’s a cinnamon roll..fast forward a few months, i for sure don’t love it as much as i once did and now there’s this tea.

This is a cinnamon roll, minus the overly sickly sweet taste that comes from the icing…which is perfect from me because what the puerh DOES bring, is the delicious bread aspect to this tea.

i’m only on my second re-steep of this but it still hasn’t lost any of it’s punch. It’s like WHAM! EAT ME! i mean..drink…drink…but holy moley. Yeah there will be more of this in my cupboard. And the brioche that i had a couple days ago from american tea room? Yeah…this one will be in my cupboard first. Not that there isn’t room for both but this one needs to come home now.

Thank you so much tastybrew

Backlog:

One of sTEAp Shoppe’s “Simply Teas” offerings, and I like it a lot! It’s a really rich and delicious Yunnan, with lots of gold tips. Sweet, notes of spice, earth, caramel. It’s a fantastic “rugged” tea … very, very good.

Here is my full-length review: http://sororiteasisters.com/2013/02/15/flecks-of-gold-black-tea-from-steap-shoppe/

Thank you tastybrew for a sample of this one.

I’m sorry to say that I totally ended up drinking this and got to the bottom of the cup without really paying attention to what i was drinking. Not that it was bad, but we were watching a show and I guess i was involved with it :) I have a bit more that I’ll use to make a proper tasting note but this was a pretty good tea – though the specifics escape me :)

Made a pot of this to share with my Mom. Used the smaller cups so there’s an extra cup for one of us.

I like the vanilla. It’s nicely strong and bold and it’s a very pleasant taste. I do not like so much the Ceylon base and my mother agreed when I talked to her. There’s just something not quite right with this combination. This ranks around the middle of the pack for vanilla black teas. This would have been much much better had the Steap Shoppe chosen an Assam or something for their base. Then I would buy again. In this instance, not going to.