Kittenna

So. Yesterday I went to the doctor for some immunizations, and let me tell you – I am in a world of hurt today. NEVER, I repeat, NEVER get intramuscular injections into both arms on the same day. Because you may very well not be able to do anything with your arms the next day (typing, thankfully, involves mostly only fingers. Lifting up laptop, however? Yeahno. Making tea? Very painful.) Anyways. Sore throat, cough, stuffy nose, headache, AND intense pain at the injection sites, radiating up to my neck, makes for a very, very miserable Kittenna. (Did I mention there were three injection sites? Ohyes. There was another one in there as well.) Of course, I’m into huge crunch time for my thesis right now, and I have to go for my second bridesmaid dress fitting today, so I can’t even take (another) day off.

Anyways. Sipping down this tea in anticipation of receiving an absurd amount of it (flavoured or otherwise) in the nearish future. So for now, I’m down to 797, woo.

ETA: Discovered that I had neglected to remove the other listing for this one too! So, 796. Haha. This is what happens when one’s cupboard is so large.

Interesting – Tea Guys has a blend with the exact same name and list of ingredients. Coincidence? Doubtful, considering that there are crazy things in here like dogwood fruit (though interestingly enough… no sassafras root is listed in the ingredients… sigh…)

Anyhow. Felt like a random new tea this morning that wouldn’t be a sipdown (in case I couldn’t taste it), but would be something interesting. So here we have it. The aroma is rather root beery… and that’s about all I can detect. Same aroma once brewed.

However, the flavour? Is WEEEEIIIRRRDDD. Root beer plus a punch of fruity hibiscus? Whaaat? Bleh, this is not sitting well with me. I like root beer, and the amount of hibby in here is tolerable, but together? This is NOT a combination I would recommend. I’m not entirely certain that I’ll finish my cup of this… Perhaps I’ll leave it until I get home after my meeting (maybe I’ll be able to breathe/taste/smell properly by then?!) and see if it still tastes kind of icky.

Mmm, the tastiest/sweetest of the three honeybush blends I brewed up this morning. It feels kind of muted though, so we will be blaming some of this on the stuffy nose.

So, this one definitely spent a bit too long in a plastic baggie. I’ve now decided that any teas packed in crappy packaging are the only ones I’m allowed to drink for a while. Which means swap samples and teas from Teaopia, etc. Anyways, there’s definitely still banana in here, both in aroma and flavour (which makes me think that there’s even less strawberry in Walter Bishop than I thought, since my tastebuds clearly aren’t completely busted), but the tea tastes kind of stale, which I definitely didn’t notice originally. Ah well, there’s now only about a cup’s worth left, so hopefully I can make short work of it some evening!

Ok… so I should have drank this about an hour ago, because since then, my nose has really stuffed up. It definitely smelled like creamy strawberries earlier, but mostly just smells like honeybush now. And mostly just tastes like honeybush. Sigh. I don’t think the flavouring is particularly strong in here to begin with though, from what I’ve read, so it’s not surprising that I really don’t taste it much at all right now, though. I’m willing to bet that I will still prefer Strawberry Pie HB over this one, but I’m glad to have tried it! I’ll rate this when I’m not sick anymore.

ETA: Got more strawberry when it was cool and had sat for a while. Still tough to tell how much my cold is affecting things though.

Another cold-brew of this one, yum. It was feeling ok on the sore throat until I hit the bottom, where there were some particles that came through the bombilla, and now I keep trying to clear them out of my throat…. bleh.

I hate that I can’t even really do any sipdowns today because I suspect I’m not 100% in the tasting dep’t at the moment, and so it would just be a waste….

Sipdown(s)! (798 – I missed noting down my Black Cherry Matcha sipdown yesterday)

I didn’t have quite enough of either this tea or Pineapple Upside Down Cake for a full travel mug’s worth… so I decided to combine the two! There was a bit more tea than I really needed for a full mug’s worth, but I used it all anyways as Della Terra Teas don’t have strong enough bases that it would cause problems (I was right). The result was pretty decent – caramelly sweet like PUDC, but with the chocolate of Hearts & Roses. I never did taste pineapple or cherry, respectively, when I previously tried each of the teas, so unsurprisingly can’t pick either out here as well.

Either way, pretty enjoyable! I wouldn’t pick up Hearts & Roses again (Love in a Cup was better), but I’d probably pick up Pineapple Upside Down Cake, possibly for blending. I like having “sweet” teas to tote along with me :)

Well, I tried to sip this one down, but no such luck. I ended up making a travel mug’s worth of this one, mixed in a ratio of 3:1 with Super Ginger. The result was ok, and I dosed it well with honey and drank much of it up. The remaining bit that I discovered in my mug a few hours later had kind of a funky smell to it, though, so I just dumped it. Honestly, if I’m going to have ginger/lemon/honey tea for a sick day…. I’m just going to heat up some hot water, squeeze in some lemon, pour in some honey, and if available, dunk in some ginger slices. No need for a tea that has honeybush and other ingredients in it. (Over the past couple days, I’ve had a few cups of honey/lemon/water… quite tasty.) The exception may be a tea that contains licorice and/other other medicinal-type ingredients, which I think I may endeavour to find today, being that my throat still hurts.

Mmmm, also in the travel mug. I found this to be quite soothing on my throat yesterday evening, which was good. Hopefully another couple infusions of it today.

Yeeaaaah, so even though I’m now a cup away from a sipdown on this one, it will be a fake sipdown, since I ended up caving and buying another 50g pouch from DT, since this one is so good and probably will never ever return. I still think it’s way overpriced for what it is, but… it’s so tasty!

Oh yes, so… speaking of, you know, too many teas and such. I fixed a couple tea things in my spreadsheet and have come up with an unofficial count of teas in my cupboard, so that I can keep track of my sipdowns (you know, since everyone else is doing it!)

drumroll

There are currently approximately 801 (ahahahahaha) teas in my cupboard, which includes both swaps and full-sized teas (and in some cases, multiple iterations of the same tea, but from different people, or bought at different times). I do say approximately because I don’t have the time to double check everything, and also, I never did count up all the teas in my box from LiberTEAS, so I just called that 50 samples. My numbers will be subject to change as I sip things down and discover they were not initially counted, but oh well! Maybe I can get to 500 sometime soon…?

Brewed this one up for a travel mug yesterday. It tasted pretty good, but I think I’ll save the rest of this one for evenings. I was just craving it like crazy and really wanted to have a cup of it yesterday! I did give the leaves a second infusion pretty much immediately, however, and drank that long before I got to the infusion sitting in my travel mug. So delicious.

(Also, I way oversteeped the first infusion… gave it like 3.5 minutes or something, when I intended 2. It’s fine of course, though.)

I suppose this could be called a sipdown… I stole the last of my roommate’s pouch as… I’m sick again! Wooo. Less than two weeks after nursing a sore throat for 4 days, I have one again. Sigh. At least I don’t feel overall terrible, but sore throats are seriously the worst.

Anyways, this tea. Didn’t smell too bad (I was expecting it to be much worse), and surprisingly didn’t taste terrible (and the licorice was pretty mild, not sure I even could taste it), but there was something off about the flavour that I couldn’t place, and didn’t like. It wasn’t objectionable enough that I couldn’t finish the cup, and if I noticed that it helped I would certainly drink it again, but would never choose this as a cup of tea to enjoy. I don’t honestly know if it helped my throat a great deal; I followed it up with other sick-tea mixtures, so it’s tough to tell. I might pick up some Cold 911 (if that’s still around) to try if this thing doesn’t let up…

Yeah, this definitely remains a favourite for lugging around places in a travel mug. I’m not even honestly sure that I ever taste pumpkin pie anymore, but it’s desserty enough that it’s usually the first to go, even if I bring along 5 mugs! The chocolatey flavour just stands up very well to the mug :)

Brewed this up for a travel mug as well. I remember to be cautious with the infusion time, as last time I think it ended up rather bitter, but for whatever reason, I don’t think I particularly like this one hot/warm. Room temp though? The white chocolate really comes out and it’s pretty tasty!

Also travel-mugged, and drank sweetened. Delicious!

Another travel mug tea from yesterday. The lack of astringency means that I don’t hate this tea or anything, but it’s certainly not my favourite. I cannot WAIT for my teas to come in from Stacy… I’m getting nearly 5 oz. of the regular PTA in either straight or flavoured form. Sooooooo awesome…

Replenished my stash of this one with help from Sil, and decided to make up a travel mug of it yesterday. Tasty, although I don’t think I like this one cooled as much as others.

Sipdown! Thanks for letting me sample this one, Sil – and those little containers are perfect!

Anyhow, I made up quite the concoction yesterday morning with this matcha. I had about 1.5tsp of it from Sil, so whisked that into some hot milk, and took a sniff… delicious! I was thinking about just making a regular milk latte with it at first (since I don’t have any plain almond milk at the moment)… until I remembered that I had dark chocolate almond milk. Sooooo I made a chocolate black cherry latte. Only problem? 1.5tsp of matcha wasn’t really enough, IMO… so I whisked up another 1-2tsp of cheesecake matcha, plus some caramel matcha (I think… I might have just used cheesecake), and added it in. It certainly looked interesting, swirling dark green matcha liquid into dark brown chocolate almond milk, but it tasted fabulous. Sadly, I forgot to drink most of it, and it ended up being forgetten at my boyfriend’s place… thankfully in the fridge, so I guess I’ll drink it before/after heading to church tomorrow. Yum!

Sipdown! Drinking the old version today, courtesy of momo.

Unfortunately this has definitely lost a fair bit of flavour, so I’m having difficulty picking up too much chocolate, and am mostly getting honeybush. Still, it’s way better than the re-blend… :(

Fairly tasty chocolate mint tea, pretty much like mint hot chocolate. Yummers. The mint, however, covers up some of the chocolate goodness, so it’s not as obviously a better chocolate flavour than… chocolate flavour in other mint chocolate blends, so I’d be torn as to whether I’d want something like this when I could have a more easily obtainable mint chocolate rooibos. That said, there is definitely no funky rooibos flavour, which is a plus. I suppose, however, that this may not be caffeine-free, since chocolate does contain caffeine?

Thanks for letting me sample this one as well, Indigobloom!

Sipdown! Thanks to Indigobloom for a sample bag of this tea.

I found that it was not noticeably different from the regular cacao tea, though I didn’t brew them up side by side to really compare. Therefore, it tasted pretty much like hot-chocolate flavoured water. Tasty. I wouldn’t bother with purchasing the vanilla flavour myself though, just would stick with the plain.

Quick notes, falling asleep. Smelled a bit funky coming out of the bag, but it’s pretty good! Definite pineapple, nice and tart and true flavour; the cilantro isn’t overly obvious but present. Very tasty, though I probably won’t want more than my half ounce baggie.

ETA: Eek, I don’t know what happened, but when I re-steeped this one (admittedly a couple days later), it smelled way too much like roasted meat for me to even take a sip. Had to dump it out. I won’t hold it against the tea, as it was more than likely the fault of my crappy brewing habits, but… be warned!!

Sipdown! Yum! I like this. I’m getting candy strawberry flavour, which I like, and it’s quite lovely. I could be convinced that there’s papaya in here too. The green base is pretty nondescript here, adding flavour in the background but nothing overly “green” – and no astringency!

Thanks for the sample, Sil!

ETA: Re-steep was pretty weak, even in half the water. Probably wouldn’t bother with it unless I was desperate.

Smells a lot like Black Currant Bai Mu Dan, but tastes way better, IMO. Fruitier and with more body. I’m enjoying this one, although had it occurred to me that it would taste so much like Black Currant BMD, I wouldn’t have picked it up.

ETA: Re-steep was ok, although I only had a bit before forgetting it in on the dining room table for about 36 hours…