The Tea Merchant

Fun hobby tea, that cannot take itself seriously. It tastes like a combination of mueslie and candyfloss and brews into a beautiful pinky brown colour. The soft fruity candyfloss like flavours first with the roasted almond (mueslie) flavours afterwards. Very pleasant tasting.

Sipdown (199)!

I’m positive this is going to be very short lived since I have four things incoming mail wise, but right now I’m just going to choose to be excited about the fact I’m currently under 200 teas!

I finished the last of VariaTEA’s sample hot at work – the profile was definitely differet from the cold brewed tea pop I had earlier in the week, but the tea wasn’t unrecognizable either. The big thing was that this hot brew was a lot more weighted towards the strawberry notes, and while sweet also had a distinct tartness too. Like slightly underripe strawberries? Definitely from the hibiscus. I would have liked to see more of a cream component in the hot brew, for sure.

All in all I definitely enjoyed this one, but in the grand scheme I anticipate it being pretty forgettable.

Tea Pop!

It’s been so long since I’ve had a tea pop, but my mom has a Soda Stream so I’ve been heavily taking advantage of having the ability to make tea pop again!

This was my first one – I started by cold brewing it, and then instead of making a concentrated batch and mixing that with carbonated water I instead just directly carbonated the cold brew. I know that’s technically not recommended, but I’ve read a lot of reviews/articles about people carbonating non water liquids and after taking some of the recommended precautions I decided the risk was very minimal, and worth taking.

The payoff was great; this was super strongly flavoured with the perfect amount of fix/carbonation. The flavour was pretty solid too; very clearly defined strawberry notes with an interesting creamy undertone. Sometimes I buy Italian Sodas from Cookies by George in the mall I work in, and this tasted almost exactly like their Strawberry flavour. They even do a whipped cream topping on their Italian Sodas, and that’s exactly what the creamy element of this tea tasted like. Sweet and tasty! The only, small, negative was that the aftertaste had a very artificial quality to it. At least it wasn’t a lingering note, though.

Thanks VariaTEA!

Sipdown (217)!

Made this one as an iced tea at work the other night;

The sample came from VariaTEA and I was really excited to see it in her package because I greatly enjoy cranberry teas. This was really enjoyable! I’d call it light to medium bodied, with a strong sweet cranberry flavour and then a mix of both red and green apple notes alongside the cranberry. It’s sweet and tart but not overly so in either regard. A solid tea overall!

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UbQgXeY_zi4&index=4&list=LL1M1wDjmJD4SJr_CwzXAGuQ

Iced sipdown (235)!

Tasted too much of straight hibiscus to be enjoyable. I finished the cup, but only because I shared with coworkers and that meant ultimately not needing to drink a full cup of it myself.

Sorry VariaTEA – I WANT to love this one, but it does not taste like Black Forest Cherry to me at all…

Today’s Cold Brew!

Big thanks to VariaTEA who recently sent me a huge tea parcel with over thirty different teas! That’s plenty to keep me all kinds of entertained for the foreseeable future as well as cull any urges for flavoured tea orders. Also, it puts me over 200 teas which is NOT where I want to be; so all the more reason not to order.

It was a little hard to decide where to start so I just randomly chose a tea for today.

It’s not nearly as tart as I expected it to be given the massive pieces of hibiscus I saw in the dry leaf and intense red/purple liquor that looks like it’s dark and rich enough to stain any piece of clothing I own; even the black clothing. The cherry comes through strongly and clearly and I’m pleased to report it doesn’t taste medicinal at all. Mostly this is just cherry with semi tartness. Given the name I’d expect a bit of flavour diversity: black forest definitely makes me think of the cake which has chocolate in it. This doesn’t.

But for what’s here it IS enjoyable.

Sipdown (315)

The last of this is a whole lotta hibiscus. It’s a sad way to say goodbye though it is time to see this off.

Juicy? Yes. Cherry? Perhaps. But where is the Black Forest?http://sororiteasisters.com/2017/03/15/black-forest-cherry-from-the-tea-merchant/

Having this cold brewed and it’s a generic hobby/red fruit tea. It’s maybe a little more cherry than usual but I just feel like I’ve had it before.

The dry leaf of this smells crazy awesome and mouthwatering. As a teapop, this tastes like slightly sweet cherry and hibiscus. It’s pleasant enough but a little less hibby would have been nice. We’ll see how other prep methods work.

I cold brewed this up and though it is still that sort of generically tart berry and cream tea, the cold brew does make for a slightly creamier/less tart brew.

Had strawberry rhubarb parfait yesterday and this today. This is more fruity whereas strawberry rhubarb is more tart/tangy thanks to the hibby and yogurt. Both good, not great, but still a nice choice for an iced tea.

This smells like strawberry and cream but the ingriedients told me that’s probably not what I’m in for…hibiscus, rosehips, orange peels…not the sweet flavors one would expect in a strawberry cream tea. I made this as a teapop and it’s weird. Carbonated strawberry water, tart though like the fruit that isn’t totally ripe, and a slight cream flavor that is a bit artificial.

Cold brew Sipdown!

This was quite good but I got through a lot of it and given it’s from Africa, I’m not running to get more anytime soon.

So as a little girl I loved Shirley Temples. Then I got lazy and would just put grenadine in sprite and not add the orange juice. Then I stopped drinking it completely when I was trying to make healthy choices. I did start drinking sparkling water though. Then I stopped making healthy choices so I started adding grenadine into the sparkling water. Then healthy choices went completely out the window and I introduced pop back into my diet and what did I add to that pop? Grenadine. Today I wanted something different though. I thought to myself it might be interesting to make a teapop with actual pop in it. So today instead of adding grenadine to sprite, I added sprite to this tea. It was good. Really good. Though maybe a little too much. These days I am finding myself missing that sparkling water. At the end of the day, as good as this was, I don’t know if using sprite over sparkling water is worth the calories as both make tasty drinks.

Note to self: don’t let this steep for 4 days. It won’t end well!

This is the teapop I sipped on earlier while making Butternut Squash soup for tomorrow’s Thanksgiving dinner. It later dawned on me how festive that was so I was entertained. Anyways, this was a lovely fruit tea. It reminded me slightly of Hard Candy though was more fruit than jolly rancher flavored. It definitely had a cranberry tartness and was more subtly flavored than DAVIDs fruit teas tend to be but there also wasn’t any artificial sweeteners in this which makes it that much better.