TeaGschwendner

19. from TTB-A
    Not bad, but there is an odd flavor here that I just can’t pinpoint.

My go-to tea for all occasions. I have to limit myself to two days a week for fear that I’ll lose my taste for other teas! Economical as I use the leaves for two-three steepings. TeaG is the best, (TeaSource buys their TOH from TeaG, or so the story goes.)

I had a bunch of this this, and just finished it. So it was was good. I don’t think I’ll replace it, but it’s as much because I prefer a good Assam to a Keemun, and as far as Keemun goes, I do like this one.

Sipdown, 167. The Traveling Tea Box (A group) is out for delivery today to me, so I need to make some room in my cupboard! Not to mention my swap from Shmiracles, Verdant Reserve Club May edition, and eventual order from Verdant that will get here sometime in May.

Sometimes you just want a tea that tastes like candy, and this is totally one of those teas. I mean, floral, yes, fruity, yes, but it reminds me so much of mango Hi Chews candy! Which is totally yum to me. Is it the most subtly-flavored, nuanced blend? Are the base teas very fine or even really present in the flavor? No, but I find it very tasty nonetheless. Don’t know if I’ll ever buy anymore, but I definitely enjoyed this.

Thanks to ToiToi for this sample. I have had this tea before, though it was being resold under a different name by a different company (like many of TeaGschwendner’s teas). I liked it then, but I wondered if I would like it now, so I asked for a sample.

The answer is yes. Om nom mango. This is really very delicious. I don’t remember it being this fruity, but it is a lovely mango flavor that I like perhaps even better than the mango black tea from thepuriTea. Plus those lovely florals… rose and jasmine just work well together with mango. This is a green/black blend, but picking a middling temp worked out well and I was rewarded with a smooth cup that still had some body. Pleasantly surprised by how much I still like this one.

So I did eventually get some of this, and over time I found I liked it less than my initial rating of 80. It’s good, certainly, but compared to some of the other assams I’ve had lately, it’s more in your face and less nuanced. I’m going back with Tiger from Damn Fine Tea.

A workhorse CTC loose tea with good malty body. Wakes me up and gets me going for busy day: Science Olympiad, gymnastics, being on call and usual demands for my parental attention every 2 minutes. Helps she shake off my sleepiness from staying up too late watching the news. I’m so relieved that my mother and friends are done with the Boston lockdown and that the city can focus on healing.

Always a good morning cup when the kids wake me waaaayyy to early on Sunday!

Had a bit of this before passing the rest along – see previous notes

Ohhhhh…Sullivan! How I love your bold, malty, caffeiny goodness early in the morning when I’ve only had 5 hours of rain-interrupted sleep! You are a reliable Irish workhorse. Thank you!

I had received this in two different swaps, first of all, so I have two people to apologize to because I didn’t write down who sent them to me. Sorry, awesome people!

I brewed this one with a little trepidation. The only other oolong I have tried smelled and tasted like manure. It kind of ruined me for oolong. However, I LOVE hazelnut anything so I thought if I’d like any oolong, this would be the one. And it was!

When brewed, it smelled of yummy hazelnut and vanilla and slightly of hay. I’m OK with hay, when the alternative is manure. It had the smooth taste combination of hazelnut and vanilla, no hay to be found. I enjoyed it very much. As to the future of this one, I’ll happily drink up the oz. I have left, and I might swap for more in the future, but it’s not necessarily one I’d worry about keeping in my cupboard.

I confess, I am a recovering coffee addict. Although I haven’t had a cup of coffee in 3 months, my morning cuppa is still meant to serve a certain purpose that used to be served by coffee. That purpose is to wake me up and be a yummy vehicle for a decent helping of milk and sugar, as this is often my first breakfast of the day. I picked this tea up from TeaHaus yesterday, and it seems to fit the bill. It has a nice malty and warm flavor that holds up to the milk and sugar nicely. Not sure if it is a tea for purists, but it suits my needs very well.

No notes yet.

This reminds me of restaurant iced tea. It’s less gross when it’s cold. And you know how always it’s never actually cold so all the ice you put in there really doesn’t last…that’s what it tastes like warm.

Cold now, it’s just still not very drinkable for me. I just can’t stand how it’s just flat. The lemon just smells fake even though it says it’s lemon oil…it just ugh. Moving on.

This is a nice tea. I’m usually not a chocolate tea fan, but the chocolate and berry flavors are so well balanced, and the base tea robust enough, that I find myself really enjoying this one. I’m glad I grabbed a sample of it from the teabox. This is good stuff!

To better educate myself about this type of tea, the newest type in my tea experience, I am trying every single one I can get! I didn’t want to invest in a whole tin today at Tin Roof Teas, but I did ask if they would make a cold latte for me. Yes! I asked if I could see and sniff the matcha first. She handed me the bowl and I gave it a good sniff. I would say it was a little more buttery than Olive Nation, which is more earthy, but not as fine and buttery vegetal as Kai Matcha, still the best I have tried to date.

I requested two teaspoons of local wildflower honey in it, and it was very nice! I would have no problem buying the 30 gram tin of this for $21 if I needed some matcha. I am hoping, though, that my tin that is on the way from Nuvola will prove as tasty as the sample was. If it is, it is the most economical of the best tasting ones I have tried thus far.

I would love to try the Breakaway Matcha sometime, but $85 for 30 grams won’t fit in my tea budget.

No notes yet.

Got another sample of this from a trade with ToiToi. I should really keep track of what I’m requesting so I don’t get stuff twice like this. At any rate, I had a lot of bitterness the last time I made this so on some advice, I’m trying this with a cooler temperature this time. Hopefully that will help with the bitterness and astringency I got last time.

I sipped before I stirred and this isn’t too bad unsweetened, but I prefer it sweetened slightly. I’m also eating oatmeal right now, with brown sugar and cranberries, so that’s pretty sweet and will be affecting how the tea tastes, hopefully not for the worse. I didn’t get more than 45 minutes of sleep last night so I need the energy from food. Usually I skip breakfast.

This is still slightly bitter, as I continue to drink this, but it’s now working with the tea rather than against it. Still has a super awesome aftertaste. If I had more to try again, I think I’d try with a shorter steep time as well. Bumping the rating up a couple of points.

Got this in a trade from Alphakitty. Perfect amount for a pot at work to end the day.

The aftertaste on this tea, after I take a sip and put the mug down again, is lovely. Tangy strawberries and rich chocolate lingering on my palate. Unfortunately I don’t like the upfront sip all that much. Even with sweetener and milk it tastes slightly bitter to me. I guess this is one to drink fast for me and then enjoy the aftermath. Perhaps I steeped it badly, this is the first tea I’ve had from this company so I was just making a guess based on where I normally steep black teas. Perhaps 2 minutes would have been better. Or possibly 195F?

Pleasant, but nothing special. I didn’t think it tasted much like eggnog at all – more like a mild, creamy vanilla. The rooibos is prominent but not too terribly tabacco-y.

The company calls this a “bold jasmine handiwork.” I don’t think “bold” fits. The jasmine is noticeable, but the green tea flavour is strong and dominates it. I really love jasmine, and want jasmine teas to be pretty strongly floral. This tea is very green, and although the jasmine is clearly present, it’s not a satisfactorily significant element. The last jasmine I drank before trying this was Kusmi’s, and I think that was way better.

There’s nothing unpleasant about this tea, and it smells and tastes pleasant, but for those looking for an assertive jasmine taste, this tea isn’t so good. I’d recommend it for something like a worn out Sunday afternoon cup of tea, when I’d wanted more of a hot, strongly blossom-y morning cup.

I thought this was pretty good. There’s one slight problem with it—a problem shared by many earl greys I’ve tried with the exception of Lipton’s Imperial Earl Grey and some British one I haven’t logged yet—something about the floral element of it tastes too lavender-y to me. In the German version I’ve got in the pantry, I’ve found it to be a much bigger problem than it was in the case of this tea. The bergamot in this case blended right in with the tea base, and there was no bitterness. Lipton’s Imperial Earl Grey doesn’t taste like lavender or ever have that peppery element I’ve experienced in some bergamot-containing teas, and I still think it is my favourite earl grey, but I’d probably put this one second. It’s kind of weak, though. It’s a bit like the second steeping of the Lipton. Longer steeping could change that, but I didn’t want to get bitterness, so I heeded the recommended few minutes. Good with sweetener and no milk.

Not as good as my holy grail chai, but pretty good! Dominant ginger and cinnamon notes, and a smell of gingerbread. Great with soy milk and sweetener. Sad I only got a single pack og this now, because it’s really quite enjoyable. The spices aren’t particular spicy or dominating, so if that’s what you’d like, I’d suggest you look elsewhere, but if you want a smooth chai, I’d recommend this. It might be better steeped with more than the recommended amount of tea for a stronger flavour, but it’s really good, and unlike the Celestial Seasonings chai, it doesn’t have that heavy vanilla that makes it seem inauthentic.

Overall, this is a good quality, easy-to-drink chai for people who are keen on ginger and cinnamon as the key players of the flavour, and who are perhaps not looking for a dessert-y experience heavy on vanilla.

This is the first tea I’ve tried from this brand. I was optimistic, because the brand’s tea selection is comprehensive and the staff were lovely. I’m not very impressed with this one, though. For some reason, the smell reminds me a little bit of rubber gloves, and the taste just hasn’t got it. Lemon myrtle can be great, but I think mixing it with vanilla is a bad idea (although I actually didn’t taste any distinct vanilla not in this tea at all, and it was more like a weak tea base with some myrtle chucked in.) Lemon myrtle really needs more of the grassy, green flavour to set it off, and white tea doesn’t have enough of that leafy flavour to work effectively with it. It just tastes kind of wrong here. Sweetening didn’t improve the flavour, either. The tea base seemed kind of forgettable, and the precise lemon flavour that came from the combination of the lemon myrtle and the flavouring just made me think back to Kusmi Detox, which is deplorable. I’d drink this tea if there was nothing else, and it’s not so bad as to be a disgrace to tea, but I really didn’t enjoy it, and because I let it oversteep a bit and it got ridiculously bitter, I just gave up and threw it out. This tea’s flavour was ultimately disappointing to me, but with more attentive steeping (the package said only two minutes), others might find it tasty. It did leave a nice flavour in my mouth that reminded me a little of jasmine tea.

I think this is the last straw in terms of my ignoring brewing instructions. I don’t think it’s what ruined the flavour, because not only did I try some of the tea before it had been steeped too long, it smelled weird from the beginning. Even so, I probably would have put up with the mediocre flavour were it not for the extreme bitterness this tea took on. I don’t think I’ve ever tasted a tea that’s become so bitter, and I don’t think I ever want to do so again.