Teaopia

Getting to the bottom of the barrel with this one. I love smelling it, but I really wonder what tea I’ll put into the tin once I finish this off, since this blend is discontinued. It will have to be something that’s very fruity smelling, since the tin has stored this particular blend for nearly 2 years!

Anyways, the tea. Since I’m close to finishing this off, I’m getting a lot of dust and broken up bits of leaf. This means that the liquor was bitter today (but not unpalatable).

Backlog from this morning. I’ve gone over this tea in previous notes, not much else to say here. It smells lovely, but I won’t be able to get more, and am steadily working towards a sipdown. As I approach the bottom of the container, the leaf is a lot more broken up.

This is one of those teas that I’m really making an effort to sip down and swap away, since it’s discontinued and I need to stop hoarding it.

The more I drink other types of green tea, the less I appreciate this, but my comments about it being a nostalgia tea still stand. I’ve got between 0.5 and 1 ounce of this left (which looks like a lot, since the leaf is so fluffy).

The more teas I try, the more I realize that this tea, which was my real gateway into loose-leaf, is really not as good as it could be. This is a nostalgia tea, really. I’m looking forward to trying much better senchas.

Anyways.

I coldbrewed this overnight and took the teabag out a few hours ago. Now I’ve been sipping it all afternoon with a generous dollop of agave syrup added to cut down on the sencha bitterness. It’s ok, but the fruit flavour doesn’t really pop. I’m gonna try and double-down to get this finished over the next month or so.

I’m moving my rating of this down a few points – while I have a lot of nostalgia about this (now discontinued, even by Teavana) blend, I’ve realized lately that the sencha leaf base could be even better. Drinking it right now to remember the good times when my tongue was much more innocent (and also to finish it off, since I’ve got probably 1.5 oz left, and this leaf is nearing a year old).

It still smells lovely dry, though. Perhaps I can turn it into laundry sachets?

Much to my dismay, Teavana has discontinued this tea, as I can’t find it on their site any longer. This was one of the legacy teas that they incorporated into their lineup when they bought out Teaopia in Canada, and knowing that they’re no longer stocking it makes me super sad (but not surprised – I’ve learned from Steepster’s forums that Teavana has a habit of doing this).

Anyways, this tea still remains one of my favourites. The base green is unassuming, which lets the fruit flavouring come forward a lot. Nice pale liquor with the tartness of berries – it actually smells kind of like strawberry gum!

Since it’s discontinued, I would normally hoard this tea like Smaug. But I just ordered a package of Demain from Nina’s Paris and had it shipped to a relative overwintering in Florida, who should be coming home later on this month. Once I have the two side by side I’ll do a taste comparison. Fingers crossed that Demain will be my new substitute since I won’t be able to get this tea anymore.

This is my favourite tea, hands-down. The smell of the dry leaves is heavenly, and the fruity notes are there when brewed, but not overpowering. The liquor is a pale green/yellow that darkens over time.

As one of Teopia’s most popular tea blends, this blend is still around through Teavana. However, it is not available in stores – Teavana sells it online only.

Tea #11 from Another Traveling Tea Box

So despite the rather unhappy reviews people seem to post for this, I still had to try this one. It just smelled so good. Lol.

Brewed this up and then eyed the rather pink brew in my cup dubiously. But I made it I might as well try it. It smells pretty fruity with a hint of green-ness to it. The first sip is kinda watery/weak and pretty unpleasant actually. It’s kinda tart and has this weird herb-y sort of taste. It’s not a green tea sort of taste, or at least not one I know of. I wish I actually knew what was in this aside from the types of tea and the fruit bits. Then again, I guess it doesn’t matter since I ended up pouring this one out. Even after adding some sugar is didn’t help one bit. Lol.
So this one is a no, despite how tasty it smelled.

Having this tonight with a bit of milk and a spoonful of brown sugar. Very relaxing! I never used to be a rooibos fan but I’ve been liking them more and more lately.

I’m not sure I would have purchased this tea normally, but it was on sale for 75% off when Teavana was staging their take-over so for that price I figured why not? I’ve drunk green chais before, but the addition of the peppermint as well as other herbals (bay leaves and stevia leaves) along with the usual chai suspects intrigued me. It smells nice – like a spicy chai but with cool, minty notes. Unfortunately the brewed tea tends to come across as being rather bitter; I think the addition of the stevia leaf was to try and alleviate this, but it didn’t really work in my opinion. It might also be that the green tea base itself is a bit too harsh. Whatever the reason, I’m afraid this tea doesn’t really do it for me – it’s just as well that I didn’t pay full price.

Tea #8 from Another Traveling Tea Box

I feel like this tea had potential. It smelled super good in the bag, and even the wet leaf smells fruity with a little but of spice. And then I tasted it.

Sigh. Hibiscus.

Seriously. All I taste is apple and hibscus, with an aftertaste of orange. There’s no tea, no papaya, and certainly no combination of ingrediants creating a ‘wonderful strawberry-peach flavour’. Bummer.

bit.ly/17Viatv

Thanks Aimee P.! I’m not really a fan of plain Earl Grey teas but if it’s an Earl Grey cream I’ll take it! This is nice. Classic flavor with a touch of creaminess. Mmmm :)

Oversteeped again! Not to mention, the leaves themselves have been stored for… two years now, I believe, albeit in good conditions. Please accept my humble apologies, O Gracious Tea Gods.

Just kidding. Creamy Nut Oolong was my first personal loose leaf (outside of Yum Cha and my mom’s stock), and I loved it oh so much. I bought 50g of it from a Teaopia promo coupon and slowly savoured my way though it, but when I found out Teaopia would soon be no more, I went right back and bought another 100g for my stock. This was long before I realized that I cannot go through so much tea within its ideal shelf life, or that they even had shelf lives! Ahh, the fond memories.

Still, even though today’s steep was a bit too strong, there’s nothing I really don’t like about it. It’s rich and smooth, with the caramel nougat doing pretty much all the work but the leaves below are still distinctly there to balance it all out. One of the few “dessert” teas that I enjoy, and great for relaxing. (I avoid over-multisteeping with this one though, because the magic all disappears once the candy melts.)

As I work my way through my dwindling old stock, I pine again for the good Teaopia days.

Tea #19 from Another Traveling Tea Box

I’m at a bit of a loss as to hot to make a good cup of tea out of this. I tried twice, with different temperature water, and I kept getting an extremely bitter cup. I would say that you should probably skip fixing this hot and do a cold steep, it will likely turn out better that way.

had this again. I love it, I’m going to be sad when it’s gone since I won’t be able to buy it again

Rich and deep tea. tastes fruity and does a great job at reducing bloating. didn’t think this would be something I would like, but surprisingly I’m going to be sad when this is gone since there’s no more teaopia

Another from TeaboxB! I had to love this one right? I have some form of S’mores often… either microwaved or just bites of one giant marshmallow with bites of chocolate and bites of graham cracker cereal. Always delicious! I love the pomegranate flowers in this blend… it looks like the closest thing to fire flames in a “fireside” blend. After two teaspoons are steeped for five minutes with almost still boiling water, the marshmallows didn’t really melt… hmm. Marshmallows impervious to boiling water? But the fragrance of the tea itself is lovely and sweet. The cup color isn’t very dark, it’s a light amber… so the flavor shouldn’t be that dark but somehow is… I think it’s the chocolate… malty dark dark chocolate. Maybe the hazelnut also helps there. I thought that since there is white tea here, it might be bitter with such a long steep time and hot temp, but it tastes awesome. I wouldn’t necessarily call this tea S’mores flavored but I’m loving what this DOES taste like! The second steep was not good at all – I steeped for a WHILE – uncountable minutes but the flavor did taste more like white tea this time – oversteeped white tea and oaky. I think I’ll just make the first steep exactly the same next time and not bother with the second. I think I steeped it perfectly. Marshmallows still didn’t melt. First steep: awesome. Second steep: eh, I dumped half of it. I think I’ll keep the other few teaspoons of this one from the teabox since this one is either a hit or miss with most people.

I thought for sure I’d logged all those Teaopia teas I purchased back when they were having their big “We’re-being-taken-over-by-Teavana Sale” but either I was mistaken or Steepster ate the tasting notes. Anyways, I’ll see about remedying that.

The smell when I opened the pouch was very sweet, creamy and fruity to the point of being almost too much. Some other Steepsterites have called it artificial and I can sort of see where they’re coming from. I expected the tea to taste equally as sweet and creamy but unfortunately I was disappointed – I still got the peachy notes particularly as the tea cooled off, but the rest was sadly missing. A bit of a let down all told.

En olor y sabor seco es verdad que es lacteo. En infusión tiene un toque cremoso, suave con toques frutales tropicales… no se, es raro, pero está rico!!!!!! Desde luego para ocasiones especiales.

Sipdown! 136/365!

Well oops. This is the tea I so badly oversteeped the other day that it was horribly astringent and I thought it was Vicky’s Sponge Cake… etc. I thought I’d had it recently but I guess I had not, so I won’t be able to say whether or not this tea was ever decent! However, the fact that a white tea got that astringent suggests to me that this probably wasn’t an amazing tea to begin with, but I’ll likely never know. (I did drink it, though. But the whole time, I was desperately searching for berry/sponge cake flavours, which I found none of. If there was anything else, I was blinded by my search.)

Tried, can’t really recall flavours, but have enough for another cup. Ugh, I suck at this, haha. Anyhow, thanks Indigobloom!