Rachel Sincere

I was afraid to open this and smell it because I thought it might be weird. Brandy spice tea? Am I ever glad I opened it! To me, it smells like eggnog. I love eggnog. When I prepared and drank it, I thought that it was a nice, smooth, spicy tea, but I didn’t taste any brandy. I loved it, though. I wanted another cup right away, which is unusual for me—I usually like to mix it up. Warning, if you have an aversion to licorice/anise, you will likely not enjoy this one.

I’ve been disappointed in some of the mate’s I’ve been trying lately. I have been sticking with roasted mate’s that include chocolate in some form or another. So this particular version was a new experience for me.

I really liked it! It was a creamy, smooth, pure chai taste. I didn’t make it with soymilk but I think it would have to be brewed on the strong side to be made with all milk. Brewed regular with water, it would have taken a little bit of soymilk quite well. I was going to try it that way but I was unsure how long my soymilk had been open in the fridge. :-/

So I’ve been in a Tea Funk. I pretty much had to force myself to make this but I did. And it was delicious as always. And my girlfriend got me a cute little Danish blue infuser mug with a saucer for my birthday so now I have a new go-to mug, and I’d say my tea funk is on the way to being over now.

Thanks to Rachel for this sample! This is my first matcha ever and it is so awesome! I know I mention in most of my tasting notes that I am not an iced tea drinker. But I wish I liked it, because when I want to really get some caffeine in, iced tea is a quicker vehicle for it and much more refreshing.

Well, this isn’t an iced tea exactly, but it’s a refreshing cold tea. Rachel sent the matcha powder to me in a nicely folded aluminum square. I couldn’t help but feel like a drug user unfolding my little aluminum packet of powder. LOL I took a swig from my water bottle to make room, added my typical two packets of Splenda, and dumped all the matcha into the water bottle. I shook it up and said a prayer.

It’s so good! It’s better than any iced tea I’ve ever had! The taste is light, and refreshing, and berry-ish. It makes me happy. I was afraid it would taste like Snapple or Crystal Lite or something but I should never have doubted. Someday I’ll buy my own matcha and I’ll have my own cold caffeine vehicle.

Just wanted to throw in another tasting note, since I had this yesterday and today. It’s a real staple for us. My girlfriend is always asking me to make her some “graveyard.” She’s so spoiled to the point that when I made her some dessert tea that wasn’t as good as Graveyard Mist she dumped it out rather than finish it!

I guess I’m not much of a dessert tea person after all. I really don’t know why this is called White Chocolate Tiramisu, either. It contains coconut, almonds, and cocoa, and is a mix of black and green teas. The tea flavor itself is a little thin. I can taste the coconut, but not much else, although it isn’t substantial enough for this to count as a coconut tea. I really don’t get much almond or chocolate. I thought it was just OK and drank all of my cup, but I’ll probably sample it out to people I swap with, since I have less than an ounce left. :-)

One thing I find that Simpson & Vail is really good at is creating teas with one extra flavoring ingredient and making them delicious (one fine example: their hazelnut tea). This is shown in this coconut blend. When I look at the dry leaf, the coconut is a fresh bright white, and when I drink the tea, I can taste that fresh coconut! It’s delicious. I drink it sweetened with no milk, but I bet it would taste really decadent with some coconut milk in it. This tea is highly fragrant and I recommend that if you purchase it you get it out of the paper bag and into a tin right away before it makes all your other teas smell like coconut. Just a word from the wise. ;-)

I had this last night, and unfortunately I can barely remember what happened five minutes ago, let along a whole 15 hours ago. But I do remember some things about this tea. It was delicious. I did sweeten it, which brought out the sugary creaminess that was layered over the medium bodied black tea flavor. I loved this and will have it again.

This is more like it. I bought a nice fresh four-oz. bag of my favorite version of hazelnut, Simpson & Vail’s. They have never let me down. See my previous tasting note. I was so happy to have my new supply, I practically gulped it down.

This is another mild, coconutty green from Harney & Sons, although it does have its own personality. The main flavor I get here, as you can guess, is coconut, along with a fresh, light, green tea. There is a slight smooth strawberry hitchhiking along with the coconut, but it’s not in the forefront by any means. I do not taste the popped rice. Very pleasant. I’ve had it with sweetener and without. I think it needs sweetener to bring out the flavors, but take that with a grain of “sugar” knowing that I have a major sweet tooth! :-)

OH! And I’m glad I bought it, because they donate half of every sale to the Gay Men’s Health Crisis fight against AIDS. Love Life!

There’s kind of a toasty smell and taste to this tea, along with the orange flavor. I guess I agree with the other tasting notes that the orange flavor is a little bit artificial, but it’s not like Tang or anything. I would rate this tea as an “OK.”

Since I was snapping up all the Graveyard Mist I could afford, and Marshmallow Treat Genmaicha was on offer at the same time, I bought two orders of that as well. I love teas with marshmallow root and was interested in trying the genmaicha with the toasted rice.

When I drank this tea, I recognized the flavor right away. First of all because of the toasty rice flavor, and secondly because I sweetened it, it tasted exactly like Super Golden Crisp cereal to me. I am not a huge fan of Super Golden Crisp cereal, but I kind of like this tea. I might trade away the unopened bag because it feels wrong to hang onto two bags of something that I only kind of like, though, especially since the supply was so limited.

Are you kidding me with this? Hot Lips? I got this in a swap from Awkward Soul (thank you!) and I waited until I was in just the right mood to try it because I was expecting it to blow my socks off.

I’m one of those people who orders everything “mild” from the Chinese and Thai menus. I’m a WUSS. And the only thing I could think of when I drank this tea was that old garbage bag commercial, “Wimpy, wimpy, wimpy!” I barely even got any cinnamon flavor at all! Here I was nervous about those chilis or whatever, and I couldn’t even taste the cinnamon. Huh. Maybe all that Hot Cinnamon Sunset that I used to drink from Harney & Sons really toughened me up.

Second tasting note on this. I still really like it. I have discovered that I am a Sencha fan, which is a good thing because as Awkward Soul noted, so many green tea blends use it as a base. Awkward Soul gave me a pretty generous sample of this so I should get at least two if not three more cups out of it! Thanks again!

Gosh darn it all to heck, I wrote this long tasting note and the Steepster Gremlins ate it.

So this is the last of my sample from Awkward Soul. Thanks!

I was called away from my tea and came back 45 minutes later and drank it really cold. I don’t like iced tea but I found this to be really, really enjoyable. I’m conflicted. I bought one of those iced tea makers once and hated the result. Maybe I do like iced tea but I just don’t know how to make it? Maybe I’m just scarred from my mom’s Lipton sun tea? I need some tea counseling.

I actually really liked this one. I had a cold when drinking it but I could taste the fresh cherries and whatever gives it that “black forest cake” feel. Nice tea background too; I’m getting pickier and pickier about that.

I can’t be all poetic about the flavor, because I had a cold when I tried this tea. But it’s a keeper. To me, it was just a good solid black tea. Kind of like the Chinese Folgers of the tea world. I’m keeping it to drink straight and also to mix with other teas to stretch them out or if they have too much flavoring.

All I can tell you about my impressions of this tea is that it smelled just like asparagus to me, and it tasted like sweet asparagus when I drank it. I imagine if I hadn’t sweetened it, it would have had an entirely different flavor profile (unsweetened asparagus) but I don’t really think I’ll be experimenting. This will go on the swap list.

Gosh I really like this tea. I had it last night while watching the Presidential debates. It has such a nice sweet creamy lemon flavor to it. I’m glad I got this one. This is a 2nd tasting note.

OK, second time around I had to admit that I didn’t like this as much as I thought. I was trying too hard to like it because everyone on Steepster said how great it was and I thought I was missing something. But, well, it’s just OK to me, to be honest. Onto the swap list she goes!

I have been looking for a deep, rich, hazelnut tea ever since I ran out of my last stash of it, thinking maybe I could find something even better. Alas, this was not it. It was tasty, sure—I definitely got the flavor of the hazelnut and the cocoa nibs as I sipped. But I was missing the richness that I was looking for. I thought maybe the mate’ wasn’t roasted, but it is. Maybe I’m just used to black tea with my hazelnut rather than mate’. I do love my mate’s and it probably isn’t fair to compare this to a black tea, so I will say that it really is a tasty and healthful beverage and you could do a lot worse. I’ll be sipping it while I continue my search…

Oh, I don’t know, it was OK. It tasted like an herbal tisane to me, and I like my tea to have a tea flavor in it somewhere. I had put two Splenda in there and still got a tartness from it—and you can probably guess from how much Splenda I use that I am not really a fan of sour/tart. It wasn’t horrible or anything, but I have so many amazing teas in my cupboard that this one would probably go on my trade list. Probably great for some people, especially sweetened and iced. Just not my style.

I didn’t have the highest hopes for this one. I mostly bought it for my partner. She likes citrusy, fruity teas, and when I smelled this one, I knew it was for her. When I got home I noticed it had raspberry and citrus in it, and I had just traded away a tea with the same ingredients which was too tart for me, even with sweetener. Oh, great, I thought.

Well, this was a pleasant surprise! As I sip the tea, I taste the raspberry; at the end I get a tiny bite from the citrus, but not too tart. I should admit that I always sweeten my teas. There is a complexity to this blend. It doesn’t taste like raspberry Koolaid. It would be delicious iced. Recommended!

Well, I can taste the maple in this blend, but there is also a malty undertone to it that wasn’t to my taste. I finished the cup, because it was just fine, but I have so many teas I love that this one will probably be swapped or gifted to someone else to enjoy.