Steep City Teas

I love this tea! I’m sipping this, with a sore tummy, after each sip going “ugggbblllelecccggg” with tummy pains. Really good tea though – nice sweet white and coconut with a lovely floral! This tea and Blushing Geisha, are my ultimate favs from Steep City so far!

I’ve been eating so many of the strawberries I got from the strawberry festival, that I think my body has had enough. Doesn’t help I ate lunch today and yesterday of just only huge amounts of strawberry. And all my snacks were strawberries.

Time to admit defeat and freeze the rest of the strawberries.

Seems like I keep drinking this tea! I still have quite a bit left too, 2oz of white tea from Steep City is quite a bit of tea!

I was feeling kinda icky – sore from jiujitsu (arm pit muscles hurt!), funny stomach pains and tired out. Hoping the ginger in this will soothe everything – so far so good. Getting lots of orangey flavor in this run, must of been that big chunk of orange I found in the tea!

Now resuming to waiting for the mail guy. He has my tea order.

Droool, Blushing Geisha always makes a solid iced tea – fruity, sweet and floral! YUM! Sad thing is I can see the bottom of the bag now, I might need to order more when I get around to another Steep City order. I’m fearing that order – it will be huge.

Thanks Sil! I’ll admit that I only wanted to try this tea because of the name. Vanilla Sky just sounds pretty :] The flavor is ok but it’s not the best vanilla tea I’ve had. It has a nice smooth, sweet vanilla flavor. It’s sweeter than other vanilla teas I’ve noticed. Glad I got to try this one. Thanks again Sil!

This is decent, but certainly not my new favourite vanilla tea. I’m mostly tasting the vanilla in the aftertaste not the actual sip. Kinda disappointing since Steep City Teas are usually really pretty good.

And work is horrible and I’m going to die of boredom.

Uggg, it was sooo hot here last night! I barely slept! It looks like it is going to be another really hot day today too!

You know what is really weird? I’ve lived in Long Beach for just over a year. Before moving here, I visited a couple times a year. During all this time, I have not been to a beach here. Blows my family/friends’ minds! I’m more of a museum and farmers market person. Feels like a good beach day today though!

So, I was hoping this tea would be refreshingly cool and ease some tummy funkyness. I steeped up some of this Ginger Zinger, to hopefully help out. Mmmm, very refreshing peachy orange with ginger for pep! Nice and cooling too, as I finished my lukewarm cup. Yum!

I had some good tilapia for dinner – cooked it with butter, fresh lemon, garlic and tarragon. I felt having this tea afterward would match!

Ehhh, the peach flavor in this delicious tea doesn’t compliment my dinner, but still good tea!

Full review later today on http://sororiteasisters.com/ but here are snippets:

Cinnamon Apple Crunch from Steep City Teas is a nice departure from the norm. It has a light summer time apple flavor with just a light enough floral undertone to make you feel like laying back in the green summer grass and catching some rays!

While this could surely be a lovely holiday time drink, with its apple pie flavor and sweetness, I actually prefer it more in the summer as an iced tea. The sencha base adds a wonderful buttery flavor and mouthfeel which absolutely support the flavors in this blend. I feel that it adds to that “crunch” flavor. It reminds me of that crumble on top of an apple strudel.

Sexy sexy chai! The combination of the romantic, soothing floral and spice in this is totally fab!

What impressed me the most in this blend was the lavender. Steep City just added enough to give you a nice smooth talking calming effect without making the blend tasting like soap (or lotion, whatever one would associate lavender with).

Full review on my blog, the Oolong Owl http://oolongowl.wordpress.com/2013/05/07/sexy-chai-from-steep-city-teas-tea-review/

I enjoyed this blend, although it wasn’t at all what I was expecting. I thought I’d get mostly orange and oolong flavors, but in reality the dominant notes were definitely ginger followed by hibiscus, with citrus as a fairly distant third. The oolong base hardly came through – but it’s quite possible I underleafed my cup, and that could have a lot to do with it. I didn’t notice any berry flavors, but then those are often overwhelmed by hibiscus. This tasted more like a tisane than a tea, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Ginger + hibiscus isn’t a combination I’ve tasted before, but I thought it worked quite nicely. Thanks to Steep City Teas for the sample!

Gah, just one serving left after this one! Where’d all the tea go?

Candy tea, yay! Spent most the day sewing on owl feet and working on the tea blog. Now making artichokes for dinner, which I can’t stand. I hate preparing them and while I find they taste good, I dislike the effort required to eat them. Also a pain as it’s 31c / 90F outside, so the house is hot and hanging out next the artichokes boiling away sucks. Having Yaya Strawberry iced to keep cool.

How am I the first to review a YUNNAN tea from Steep City? Yunnans are so good! Steep City is so good! The dry leaves smell peppery, but they also have a fragrance that reminds me of pizza for some reason! I love the gold and brown mix of color in the leaves. After a four minute steep, I get a malty, chocolatey, slightly peppery, sweet, honey, slightly molasses like, DELICIOUS cup. I love the complexity of all the notes, how you can pick out all of those yummy notes. It tastes a bit light and a bit dark at the same time, if that makes sense. It’s like the honey notes match the gold leaves of the tea! Yunnan teas are one of my favorite types, and this one definitely proves why. I’d call this the ‘Yunnan flavor profile’. It’s a nice example of Yunnan for beginners, or for those who already love Yunnan that want another good one. The second steep was just as delicious and I probably should have went for a third. This is the sixth tea I’ve tried from them and I can say I would definitely order full ounces of all six of them. If these six are any indication, you can’t really go wrong with Steepcityteas.com!

Oh, this is exactly the tea I was hoping this was! This blend features a delicious buttery sencha with the perfect apple… and some cinnamon! The apple pieces floated in my basket infuser and took up the entire top of the basket, so I’d say there are a ton of apples here! Apple blends are usually wrong for me, but this one is just authentic, genuine apples. No weird flavor added. I absolutely love the idea of the buttery sencha with the apples because it tastes like an apple dumpling or apple pastry. It’s just perfect. But the only thing I might change is add a dab more of sweet cinnamon. Probably the best apple tea I’ve tried and one of the best green tea blends I’ve tried. This is going on the MUST BUY list when my tea stash is reduced. These samples were a great idea from Steep City because they are all delicious blends. I wouldn’t even need samples before buying full ounces of their other blends.. I trust how tasty they are now!

Sample package label:
“Earl Grey de la Cream
Time: 3 minutes / Temp: 212*”

Thanks to David Palmerola founder of Steep City for the additional recommended brewing instructions: “Usually 1 tsp per 8 oz, but I like my teas stronger so maybe a bit more on the bold teas… Especially EG!”

Introduction: Steep City’s recently released Earl Grey de la Cream is the first EG Cream I’m aware of that uses vanilla beans (as opposed to just flavoring). It also uses an Assam/Ceylon blend. Most EG teas have a 100% Shi Lankan (Ceylon) base. Having the addition of an Assam black tea, was another significant reason for wanting to sample this EG tea. Our current EG has a Ceylon base and I can’t get past the astringency. My wife also loves EG.

This tea has a strong vanilla fragrance. Neither my wife nor I could smell the classic oil of bergamot fragrance.

April 18: 1 rounded to heaping tsp. / 8-oz. / 212*F / 3 min / No sweeteners, milk, or cream added

I brewed a cup of Earl Grey de la Crème for my wife – a life-long EG Lover. She noted a strong vanilla flavor, no discernible lemony oil of Bergamot flavor, and another flavor that she could not identify that detracted from the taste of this EG. She then looked at the Steep City website and specifically wanted to know about the vanilla and bergamot flavors.

My first impression of this tea (based only on a few stolen sips) was that it was full-bodied & very, very smooth w/o any bitterness or astringency – well done! The addition of vanilla beans was a great idea! However, as an EG tea, my wife was correct that the vanilla completely overshadowed the EG flavor.

Afterwards, I sent an e-mail to David asking about the vanilla and bergamot flavors. David told us that they use natural oil of Bergamot. “On the cream side, we are using natural flavors with some artificial flavors combined with the natural vanilla beans.”

April 21: 2.5 tsps. (All that remained in the sample) / 16-oz. / 212*F / 3 min. / No sweeteners, milk, or cream added (A cup for each of us)

3-min Infusion: A strong vanilla flavor, no discernible oil of Bergamot flavor, light- to medium-bodied, with zero hint of tartness, bitterness or astringency.
4-min: Improving
5-min: A strong vanilla flavor, no discernible oil of Bergamot flavor, strong hints of cinnamon, medium-bodied, with zero hint of tartness, bitterness or astringency.

In my experience, the tartness of citrus bergamia is a common characteristic of most Earl Grey tea. The addition of vanilla & vanilla beans definitely smoothed out the tartness.

In retrospect, as far as the full-bodied flavor on 4/18 and medium-bodied flavor on 4/21: I probably should have only brewed one cup with the remaining tea sample.

Impression: This tea is for creamy vanilla lovers.

For those who prefer a classic lemony Oil of Bergamot fragrance & flavor:
“It’s complicated.” The additional natural ingredients that give this Earl Grey its rich creamy vanilla taste are much stronger than the classic Oil of Bergamot EG flavor. Achieving just the right balance must be quite a challenge as the number of ingredients increases.

Suggestion: For those like my wife who love the classic EG fragrance & flavor, Steep City may wish to consider refining the balance between the vanilla beans / vanilla flavoring and the Oil of Bergamot so that these two key ingredients can be qually appreciated & enjoyed. Another consideration might be to eliminate the artificial vanilla flavor.

Thanks to David Palmerola founder of Steep City for providing this free sample.

thank you Steep City for the samples! I love the logo and the packaging for the 2-3 teaspoon samples. Also… the teas are really good. This sounded like a lovely spring/summer blend. After a three minute steep, there is equal parts lavender and lemon. It’s seems to me like lemon verbena but I didn’t see the verbena actually in the list of ingredients. I didn’t see much lavender in the blend, but it’s a nice balance of flavor. The tea I had the other day only had a few pieces of lavender floating the infuser, but the flavor was amazing! Hibiscus is listed, but it isn’t a problem. I don’t taste any! The oolong is kind of hidden in the flavors until the second steep, but the flavor is nice. Lemony lavender! This blend is very bright and refreshing. It really IS lavish. It was a nice sunny day for a cup or two of this one.

This tea was okay, but it didn’t really grab me. Overall, I found it a little bland. Not enough mango flavour or aroma. To me, mangoes sometimes have a kind of punky taste/smell that doesn’t appeal to me — and the mango that I could detect in this tea had that.

I opted to try this one cold before hot since i had a suspicion this would be a much more enjoyable cold brew. I totally didn’t register that this had hibiscus in it. So i’ll give steep city total props for that! This isn’t a tart hibiscus brew that so often happens when i cold brew blends with hibiscus in them. This is somewhere between mango and peach but as a cold brew i quite like it. Holding off rating it until i get a chance to also try it hot but it’s about an 80 at the moment.

I’m enjoying this tea. The coconut flavor is quite strong and surprisingly authentic, and the mouthfeel is rich and creamy. I almost feel like I’m drinking coconut milk – or light coconut milk, at least. I can’t really taste the tea base, and I’m not getting any pineapple notes – I didn’t notice any chunks of fruit in my sample either. Thanks to Steep City Teas for this sample!

Having this iced!

Argggg! I made a nice big tea tumbler of Agua di Jamaica iced, set it on my desk in front of me, then forgot about it when I was knitting. I’m trying to design a market bag knitting pattern and having some issues with cast on stuff.

So, my drink got kinda watery from the melted ice once I realized there’s a nice cold tea in front of me. Really nice berry flavor with a citrus aftertaste! Yum!

I had high hopes for this one, but the flavoring is too sweet and artificial for me. The aroma and flavor are both heavy on the strawberry candy notes. I’m not noticing any papaya, but then I often find papaya too heavy on sweetness and too light on any other flavor. This tea is very sweet, so it could well be that the papaya’s contributing to that. The green base doesn’t really come through.

This is my least favorite of the Steep City samples I’ve tried so far. I tend to prefer my fruity teas lighter/less sweet/more natural, and this blend’s just not to my taste.

Sipdown! Thanks to Sil for this one.

I’m pretty ambivalent about this tea. A 2.5 minute infusion was great for the base, which I’m quite enjoying, but there’s not enough mango flavour for me. On the other hand, what mango I am tasting is much more along the lines of how I’d like it to taste, as opposed to the floral messes some blenders seem to make mango into (there is a difference between yucky floral and fruity floral!! I know mangos are quite sweetly aromatic, but that does not mean that they are flowery!)

Anyhow, with more mango flavour, I think this one could be great. Might be one to try another sample of while visiting Sil for a tea date :D (Unless she sips down that one before I make it there! So much sipping down!)

Today is my husband and I’s first wedding anniversary! We had our civil ceremony a year ago, though our family wedding event was 6 months ago. (I had a fiance visa, so we had to get married in 90 days, so we couldn’t plan the wedding that quick).

So, of what teas I have time to drink today, I will drink my favorites! This one! So I tried it at 175f instead of 212f – i can taste the green tea more, the tart is less, and less fruityness. The colour of the cup is an orange. Overall, a lighter flavor.

Hmmm, it’s a toss up, but I think I like 212F more. Maybe I’ll try a temp in the middle!

Off to.. I dunno what we are doing yet. The weather is pretty grey looking so picnics and garden tours might be out.

Found a winner! This is definitely nutty, but not in an overwhelming way. Kind of like nuts and honey or something. Really enjoying this sample from Alphakitty. I’ll have to add Steep City to my list of places to order from!

Update: Okay, the more I drink this tea the more I like it. I think it’s earned a spot in my permanent tea collection.

That said, I REALLY want to cold brew this, but each time I try results are lackluster. (That goes for this AND every other tea I’ve tried cold brewing.) I can make a killer sun tea but the cold brewing method is eluding me. Grr. #firstworldproblems