Utopia Tea

I finally tried this tea again with a lower brewing time and temperature. The vanilla really shines with these changes and there is less of a white chocolate taste. The green tea does impart a little bit more creaminess. A nice vanilla tea with a long lingering aftertaste. Upping the rating a little.

Thanks for this one TastyBrew! Ooohh this is a lovely tea. A nice and smooth black base with creamy vanilla. This is one of the better vanilla teas I’ve had. It’s very strong in vanilla and it is sooo creamy. Mmmmm :)

Thanks TasyBrew! I love the pieces of popcorn in this tea. So cute :) the aroma of this tea is so sweet and buttery. The flavor is buttery, salty, and creamy with caramel flavors. I’m surprised I liked this tea. I’m not a fan of actual caramel popcorn. Mmmmm thanks again!!

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I had an awful experience with the caramel popcorn tea from utopia tea so my hopes weren’t high for this one. Luckily, this is actually pretty tasty. Definitely has a ‘fake-y’ flavor to it, but that doesn’t ruin it. The second steep is actually my favorite as most of the fake flavor has washed away and a subtle cinnamon almond snickerdoodle flavor remains. I think I may reorder this!

This smells delicious and wonderful this.. uhh.. morning.

Yeah, my sleeping schedule is completely out of whack. And surprise!! Tomorrow I’m working at 7am! Should be interesting. I need to plan my teas, so I don’t get sucked into drinking coffee.

This is a delicious dessert tea to celebrate Real Work. By Real Work I mean work I don’t do sitting around my house in my PJs.

Sadly, I think I understeeped or under leafed it. The tea isn’t coming through so well, although the chocolate, toffee and hazelnut are.

A good cup to absentmindedly drink as I organize for tomorrow. Thanks, CrowKettle!

okay team tea. get ready for lots of little cups of tea today. and little notes for each.
though i will probably cut them all kinda short. lots to do lots to do!
plus i stayed up until 1:30am reading fan fic. again.

thank you TastyBrew for this tasty brew.
it smelled way stronger than it tasted. which i’m happy about. cuz the scent is STRRRRONG but the cup is very pleasantly balanced and mellow!
goes great with my vegan chocolate fudge. yes fudge for breakfast. i know i know.

ps. i accidentally let the remains of my cup cool off, and i can see this tea would make a really really delicious iced tea. nothing added. (i think i know what i’m doing with the rest of my sample!)

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I just received a sample of this in the mail the other day and had to try it out immediately because the combination of ingredients intrigued me. This was exactly what I needed for a 7 hour car trip with my toddler.

I like that this isn’t your typical end of the day herbal tea, the licorice is a really nice twist. I was surprised just how sweet this was on its own although after checking out the ingredient list I saw that it contained stevia. That in combination with the vanilla bean and coconut provides more than enough sweetness. The chamomile, licorice, and vanilla bean stood out the most and I thought they worked surprisingly well together.

I did notice a somewhat creamy taste, possibly from the coconut, in addition to a subtle apple flavor. I do think the strong taste from the licorice covered the taste of many of the other ingredients, I really had trouble picking out the lemongrass, but that wasn’t really a problem for me since I like blends with licorice. Overall this was a really nice blend, but I would definitely skip it if you don’t like licorice.

Well the good thing about just drinking peppermint tea because I can taste it is: SIPDOWN! I still have over 800 teas…lawd.

I’m going to switch back over to spearmint now. I have to say that I like spearmint a lot better. No matter how short I steep, I get that peppermint burn from it. Spearmint for some reason I can better control how I steep. I’d love to have had this cold one last time but I woke up around 3am coughing uncontrollably so hot drinks sound great right now. Even though it’s on its way to being 80 outside.

I used up the last of the 1/2 oz bag I had and didn’t really measure, but made sure not to steep more than about 3 minutes. It’s thankfully not as strong as it was last night when I know I made sure to only steep it for about 4 minutes.

And of course it tastes like mint. Nostril clearing mint.

ooh by the way I finally got go to see my garden yesterday, after almost a week. I started an album now: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.4985004551900.1073741828.1503090120&type=1
I really need to take care of the stuff on my patio a bit better now, oddly though the cucumber plants in the garden plot are way smaller than the ones at home. I almost want to switch them out haha. I’m getting sad everything else on the patio is very slow, I would love to use fresh spearmint for some tea too.

When I first opened the packaged I got the overwhelm craving for chocolate covered strawberries. This tea smells just like the big juicy ones my husband buys me for valentines day.

Overall I thought this was a really unique blend and probably something I wouldn’t have thought to order myself. It was a nice surprise finding it included with my order. I find that I don’t tend to like chocolate in my tea (I’m a real snob when it comes to the quality of chocolate) so this one surprised me with how much I enjoyed it. I really think the Indian black tea and Saffron are a great pairing, I really like the combination. Once steeped you can still taste the chocolate and saffron although the strawberry didn’t come through as much as I expected. I did notice it a lot more once this cooled to room temperature.

I don’t think this tea needs to be sweetened, I find that added any sort of sweetener (i tried several) tends to mask some of the more subtle flavors.

The name of this tea is French Vanilla Bean but what it actually reminds me is of good white chocolate (which is a good thing, I like white chocolate). It brews to a clear copper colour and the liquor smells of cocoa butter, mixed with a buttery warm vanilla with a hint of baked almond and coconut over sweet potatoe finished with a soft floral hint.

This tea has a medium body tea base which is sweet and slightly fruity with a touch of mild bitterness dissipating into a mix of cocoa butter and vanilla. I think that for me the coconut and almond seem to be working together to make the flavour that reminds me of cocoa butter as this tea does not taste like coconut and is not strongly nutty. The vanilla in this tea is a little bit heavier and warmer than other vanilla teas i’ve had with a faint aftertaste of vanilla and yam. As the tea cools it becomes less bitter, and bright red fruit tones appear in the base tea. A warm vanilla with floral hints and an intensifying sweetness lingers in the mouth for quite sometime after drinking. The tea is not astringent, but I think I will reduce the brewing temperature and time the next time to see if I can bring out more of the creaminess and sweetness often present in green tea. Very nice.

I try to avoid caffeine in the mornings, but some days you just need it to get going and today was just one of those days for me. I just got a sample of Utopia’s Irish Breakfast tea in the mail and knew that should do perfectly for me and lucky me it was just enough for my travel mug.

I can’t really remember the last time I had Irish Breakfast, it isn’t among my regular teas, but I knew it was a good strong blend and this didn’t disappoint. This was strong with a bit of a bite to it, yet not bitter at all. This is one of those teas that is perfect for a dreary morning like today and it is great with a splash of milk and honey. This also resteeps well, I iced my second steep down for later when it starts to warm up.

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ok, wow… i was not expecting to need to dump this one out, but it was extremely bitter. The kind of bitter that no amount of sugar or additional water is going to cure.

I really think there is a packaging mistake here. My package states 1 tablespoon for 4-5 minutes and the website states 1 teaspoon for 3-5 minutes. I went with 1 tablespoon for 4 minutes @ 210 degrees.

I should have followed my gut when I saw the 1 tablespoon and reduced it, but no, i forged on ahead and followed the instructions on the package. Keep this in mind if you’ve got this one and I’ll post a real tasting note once I hear back from Utopia. I sent them an email to see what the directions are suppose to be.

Update:
Utopia responded quickly to help me out with my problem, there was indeed a mistake on my package. I see many orders in my future, I love it when companies have such awesome customer service, Jason emailed me at 8:20pm (well after normal business hours).

When you first open the package it smells overwhelmingly like almond extract, which for me isn’t a bad thing, I use almond extract in most of my baking because I really love it. This does taste like almond cookies and it amazes me that you can blend a tea to taste so closely to the Chinese almond cookies I love. This was exactly what I needed yesterday to help curb my sweet tooth, it really hit the spot.

Hot this was a little bitter, but that dissipated once the tea cooled. This is a tea you’ll want to keep an eye on because if you over steep it it will get really bitter fast. If you find yourself with a bitter cup of this tea just add a little water, toss it in the fridge to cool, add a hint of sugar and it mellows right out. I wasn’t paying attention to my timer last night and let one of my cups go for nearly 8 minutes. Whoops! I ended up drinking my over steeped cup with breakfast and it turned out just fine with the adjustments.

I really liked this one cold with a hint of sugar I think that the sugar made the flavors pop just a little bit more. This is another one that won’t be an every day drinker, but will go great with Chinese food or for an after dinner treat. I’ve been trying to cut back on sugar so dessert teas are a great way for me to get a little something sweet without all the sugar of an actual dessert.

Now I can’t wait to try some more teas from Utopia. Good thing they sent me samples with my order because I’m officially cut off from ordering any more tea this month.

I ordered this when Utopia tea had their free tea promotion and was not disappointed with the sheer quantity of free tea I received. This is the first tea I tried and the one I was most excited for.

The only thing I can really say is, dishsoap. I’m drinking hot dishsoap. And the dishsoap flavor is SOOOOOO strong. I thought maybe I had some soap remaining in my cup or something so I dumped it. Rinsed a bunch, sniffed my cup to make sure there was no more dishsoap in there and made some more.

DISHSOAP!

This tea is really quite bad. I’m sorry. It pains me to say that as I like to help small business, but there’s something wrong with this tea. Maybe my batch got tainted by something. I hope so, cause I can’t imagine anyone tasting this and thinking, yes, I’ll sell it. And dumb, over eager me bought 2 bags of it.

I felt spoiled just reading this list of ingredients! Toffee, chocolate, hazelnut! yum yum. This is such an amazingly sweet cup. The first sips were a bit weird for some reason, but then is smoothed out to such a delicious flavor. I think the toffee, chocolate, and hazelnut were equally represented, even though there were plenty of huge toffee pieces in the infuser. Maybe that is why there were less black tea leaves in the infuser. I wish I had tasted the black tea better, since I had a lovely ceylon from Utopia a while ago, so I know they have amazing black teas. But the flavors here are worth it! thanks so much, Crow Kettle!

From CrowKettle (I swear I’m randomly grabbing teas from my sample box!).

Bitter nut note, indeed. However, there is some toffee flavour, and the chocolate flavouring is actually good in this tea! Yay! In my mind, it does need milk and a little sugar to offset the bitter nut (My first thought was that something was wrong with the hazelnut in my brew basket, but maybe not.). The tea base is nice and a little toasty which goes well with the idea of toasted nuts and toffee. Not necessarily one I’d rush out to buy, but I do like it and I appreciate the opportunity to try it!

I’ll have to try it as a latte once I get more almond milk.

(Edit. It smells strongly of toffee once it significantly cools, but it doesn’t taste strongly of toffee. Huh.)

thanks so much, Azzrian for including a sample of this in that generous package I’m still amazed that you sent a while back. :D This was EXACTLY the tea I was looking for this morning. At this point, I assume ceylon is much different than this: brisker and more straightforward. But this one seem to have all of the elements that the best black teas have. The leaves smelled like a sunny late summer field of dry grass and the first sips tasted of it too. Then there is a lovely malty chocolatiness to it. And even a bit of smoke, which I love. I almost had a russian caravan this morning… but since it is rare (I’m the only one to write a tasting note for it!) I’m really only going to reach for that caravan when I am most craving it. This tea had a very complex and lovely flavor. A bit bread like. No astringency at all. I really like this one! I’d consider buying some if I’m in need of a nice black tea!

Utopia Tea threw this one in as a sample and I’m glad they did because the aroma alone is amazing (for me)! It’s red fruity with a backdrop of spice. Dried and sweetened strawberries seem to blend with ginger and spice just as well as any self-respecting peach or pear taste, it seems.

The flavour is pleasantly surprising in that I can taste the creamy white base. Flavoured tea is not too appealing as of late, and I’m grateful for that presence. There’s a toasty strawberry jam pastry note that lingers as an aftertaste, although the fruitiness isn’t as present during the main sip as the dry leaf smell had me believe. Pepper and freshening ginger are subtly present in the corners, but I’ve a hard time discerning where one ends and the other begins.

The Utopia teas I received consist of some very interesting ingredient combinations, which I think I may need some time to warm up to. This one, however, I like right away. Strawberries are some of my least favourite berries too… Maybe it’s the sweet fruit jam, or the prickly zest of the spices, or the smoothness in mid sip- it’s definitely not the drying, puckering sensation it leaves in my mouth. Once I empty out my cupboards I’ll pick up a tiny amount of this.

Backlog from last night: I received this as a free sample from Utopia Tea. Thank you! I’ve never had anything labelled “decaffeinated” before. I feel… all grown up, like I’ve progressed to the next extremity of “caffeine” consumption! ;)

The aroma of the dry leaf reminds me of those pineapple flavoured Koala’s March I used to gobble up as a child when visiting the Hawaiian Islands; airy cookie, candied pineapple filling… Not until this very moment did I realize my ambition to never be without a good pineapple tea, macadamia nuts, and Koala March cookies. I need to get cracking on that!

The actual taste of this one is very similar to the smell. It’s watery, floral, and is heavy with sugary fruit near the end of the sip. The green tea is pretty subdued. It’s not terribly exciting but it’s relaxing in a pinch.

Nutella tea. Fleshy hazelnuts and vanilla toffee. So much flavorful sweetness. So much. This is smooth except for a bitter nut note. I bet this would rock my socks off as a latte. It already tastes like a flavoured coffee creamer.

Unlike the rose mango from Utopia Tea, which I’m saving for iced summer sessions, I feel this one would be better suited for the autumn and early winter seasons. It would’ve been useful to keep my chocolate cravings in check when I was gifted all those Purdy boxes. Still feeling the ramifications for that two months later..

Only complaints are this may be a little too rich for me and the tea base itself is not overly noticeable.

Sometimes I rush into things without thinking. I just wish for once I could write something or get the words right the first time around without making a silly fool of myself. I need to remind myself to take it slow- that includes tea.

Backlog from yesterday: this is the iced batch and I think I can say I enjoyed it more. It really tastes like the smell of crisp yellow roses. It’s delicious, it calls up old memories of going to beautiful gardens (Butchart), but I don’t know if I enjoy this all too much. The candied fruit finish starts where the floral roses end, creating a bitter tangy sweetness that makes me pause. That fruitiness is not wholly like sweet mango, although that can be surmised up from it. There’s cutting, nippy lemon, and maybe even some tart pineapple too.

It’s still disappointing on the mango front but it sure delivers with roses. Floral yellow fans shouldn’t be disappointed. What a strange, intriguing tea. Also, I’m getting more green than any other tea base.

Mother’s reaction: “I don’t like it, but it’s nice” (huh?), and “it’s very delicate.”