Tina S.

I’ve been trying to sip down the teas that I am not in love with, or have little of, in the hopes of getting down to a core collection of fifty teas or so. This has meant a lull in drinking teas I adore, as well as being inspired to log any that I drink. I’ve managed to finish about 30 teas or so, and am rewarding myself with a week of sipping only my favourites, which this is one. I adore all things blueberry, and this tea is packed full of them and their flavour. I love it black, but when you add a dash of sweetener, you actually do get the jam flavour of its name. I still love this tea like mad and am glad its in the permanent collection.

In other news, I’m thinking of starting up a travelling tea box. Would anyone in these parts be interested in playing along?

I love this combination of spices for a chai. I always keep some of this on hand to blend with anything and everything. Its got a great flavour with spice and a dash of sweet. Definitely something I’m going to try tea cooking with now that I’m dabbling in that.

I’ve been craving a simple and easy orange pekoe for iced tea lately, and didn’t feel that I needed to invest in a quality brand since I’m going to be drinking it almost like water. I got a bag of 100 bags for 2.50, so this definitely fit the price point.

Flavour wise, nothing spectacular, but it isn’t bad either. It met my expectations.

Off topic, who else is on Pinterest? I’d love to connect over there :)

Another tea from the Green Teahouse that calls itself a black but is almost entirely rooibos. The caramel here is strong, and strangely not fake tasting. It was lovely to be able to get two steeps out of a rooibos as well, so that the second cup got the full effect of the black pearls. The first cup was almost too caramel, but the second was much more balanced and actually had hints of tea to it. I won’t be refilling on this one, but I could see myself enjoying it in a latte.

Tonight I’d been sitting at the computer too long and decided that making a cup wasn’t going to take long enough. So I decided to try stovetop chai again, this time with my favourite chai tea. Whereas last time it was still runny and slightly burnt, this time it was so thick I couldn’t strain it in even my most lenient strainer. It tasted delicious, rich and creamy and like a dessert in a cup. But I think I may have made it just a little too well . . .

So my Saturday plans for the day were all cancelled, and I was ambitious. I tried doing this one on the stovetop. Little did I know how much of a horror it would be to clean up after letting the pot boil over. Oops.

The tea itself surprised me. I’ve always really liked how this one brewed tastes different to me than what I’d expect from the dry leaf. I get more of the spices and less of the stronger notes. I expected some difference in a stovetop brew but it tasted exactly like it smells dry. Exactly. Still not sure how I feel about that, but for my first stovetop chai attempt it was fairly successful. Cleanup on the other hand . . .

What’s a girl to do when she wakes up at 5am and can’t get back to sleep without ruining her entire sleep schedule? Why make a good solid black tea of course! This was the one I chose and those first sips were exactly what I needed to get through those first moments of “what the hell am I doing up at this hour”. I settled in to read my RSS feeds and . . . forgot about the tea because of a few wtf things going on. This one tepid is . . . not so great. Luckily I’d kept the leaves for a second steep so I’m enjoying that now, sweetened this time with just a drop or two of Irish Cream Agave. Definitely a great way to start a day that started way too early.

I tried this one a few weeks ago and really liked it, so I was eager to brew it up again this morning and sip away. Today’s cups weren’t as lovely, but still were a good solid cuppa. This is a darker oolong, but not so dark as to make it undrinkable to my green-oolong loving soul. There are some really strong roasted notes in the first steep which require me to use sugar to balance them. Second steep though is an amazingly mellow delicious cup to sip on a dark and dreary afternoon like today.

Completely off topic, has anyone here heard of or tried the Canadian company Steeped Tea (http://www.steepedtea.com/)? I’ve been offered a consultant job with them and I’m looking for info from actual tea people before going any further.

Just got home after a few days away and I needed comfort big time, and something fast as well. This tea fit the bill perfectly. Nice and thick and sweet and flavourful, it is the tea version of hot chocolate and exactly the cup I needed to settle back into my life. Now to figure out how my cat-sitter managed to get litter in EVERY place in the house, even the keyboard . . .

I made a cup of this today and forgot, leaving it next to the computer. I came back an hour later and found it was half gone . . . my cat apparently loved it! And this one doesn’t even have catnip in it!

Finished this one up tonight in an attempt to get rid of all the little bags/tins I have with one or two cups left. This was a lovely tea, but I think I’m going to pass on restocking it for now. Even if I take out the mass amounts of matcha I have, I still have a lot of tea to sip down!

First, DaisyChubb is evil for introducing me to Drawception and giving me a new way to suddenly lose five hours of my life. (Seriously, I was up till 3am playing and reading games.)

But the tea, that’s why you’re all here. I first tried this in store and there found it lovely. It was light and lovely, with a hint of tartness and natural strawberry notes. The colour was a pale pink and while there was a sweetness to the cup, it was more along the lines of that in an actual strawberry. Really liking the sample, I got 20g and happily brought it home.

Like I always do in a first steep, I followed the “instructions” on the bag, doing a 5 min brew at about 96C. It gave me a cup of strawberry tartness, and was almost red in colour. I’m not sure if my cup perhaps had an over-abundance of hibiscus in my scoop or what, but next time I’m definitely doing a shorter steep. Brewer beware!

First let me say I like this much more than I did Mom’s Apple Pie. That one just tasted like apple juice to me. I love apples so I’m always excited when Davids tries another apple flavour, even if the ingredients scare me like this one did. I’m not a fan of pistachios or florals so I definitely greeted the tea with trepidation.

I was glad that I didn’t taste any floral notes. But I do wonder if that’s because the tea is almost all nuts and apple pieces. I don’t know if I even had a single leaf in my cup.

The flavour itself was light with definite apple notes. It wasn’t my favourite apple tea, but it didn’t suck. It isn’t a restock for me, which is sad since I’m almost out of my Baked Apple. I’ll hold out hope that it returns from the dead!

What a perplexing tea! The ingredients list looks like someone’s grocery list rather than a tea, which led me to even more confusion when I was getting it. It does smell lovely dry, although even there there was something . . . not off but it wasn’t calling to me either.

I steeped it at home and sipped hot and while I can safely say I didn’t dislike it, I also feel confident saying I didn’t love it either. I also have no idea how to describe its flavour other than sweet and complex. I finished my cup but it wasn’t memorable other than my confusion as to what exactly I was tasting. Even after two cups I still can’t figure out if I can safely say I like it. So odd. Not rating it because I honestly can’t give it a number, but its somewhere between 60 and 75.

Unlike many other fans, I’m a new sipper to this one and was excited since I know it was a front runner in the back from the dead contest last year (speaking of, anyone know if they’re doing that again this year? It was great!)

Anyways, I used half of my 10g sample of this in a perfect mug. Since it was an herbal with no hibiscus in it, I treated it similar to forever nuts and just let the stuff sit while I puttered around for a while. I guess it was about 10-15 minutes of a steep but have no clue for sure.

The flavour was lovely, and I can definitely see how it deserves its name. It is definitely a sweet tea, however, so if you aren’t a fan of naturally sweet flavours you may want to steer away from this one. Since I love sweets, and am trying to cut them out of my diet, this tea is definitely one I’ll be getting more of. I just wish it didn’t take so much to make a good cup since it is heavy.

This poor tea sat on my counter for a week before I finally got to try it. I try to drink my mates in the morning to wake myself up, but I prefer my chocolate teas later in the day. It left me not quite ever craving it or willing to risk the mate.

Finally one day my sleep schedule got all messed up and I was waking up at about 2 in the afternoon one day. It was the perfect time for this one, and I brewed it eagerly.

When I pulled the infuser out I was very glad to have used the one I have which is best at capturing floating debris. The cocoa powder does make this one messy, although nowhere near as bad as say, Southern Belle. The tea is delicious, and I drank it without adding any sugar or milk. Next time I think I’ll add milk just to round out the flavour a bit and lose that dash of watered down aspect (its a tea, I can’t expect it to be thick like milk, right?). The flavour is definitely that of cocoa powder, spiced up. I can see myself getting this one in the winter more so than summer, as it is the perfect tea for skating parties and coming in after tobogganing. Definitely a great Canadian December tea!

Oh yum. This is a staple in my collection but one that I often overlook because I keep it in a seperate area to the bulk of my collection. When I do grab it though, especially on mornings where I need a kick, it is like a bear hug from a good friend who I’ve known forever. Comforting and uplifting and just delicious.

Continuing my trend of reviewing my backlog at 4am when I have insomnia! I finally dived into my sample of this one today after losing it at the back of the basket for a little while. Pineapple is not a favourite fruit of mine, be it in spears, cubes, or on pizza (SHUDDER!). But sometimes teas change things into marvelousness, and so the oolong had to be tried.

And I am really glad I did. This was a lovely mellow tea with pineapple notes but they didn’t override the tea. The first cup was much more pineappley but second steep was perfect for a non-lover like me. I’m really looking forward to seeing how this one will blend with some of my other oolongs, especially other fruit flavours. I think it’ll be a great tea to highlight others!

I have a feeling that what is supposed to be the main star of this tea is what is going to make me not buy it again. I really enjoyed the spice mix of the chai, cinnamon is always a winner with me (my favourite chai tea is the Cinnamon Rooibos Chai at David’s), but it couldn’t compensate for the other ingredients. At first I thought what bothered me was the stevia, since the tea had that fake sweetness to it that tends to turn my stomach. Imagine my surprise when I tried the straight guayusa and found out that was part of the problem here. Sadly guayusa isn’t for me, so neither is this chai. On the bright side it has made me fall in love with mate after re-visiting them.

I went into this one with trepidation, having so far very bad luck with any of the teas David has done with “brittle pieces”. Dry the scent doesn’t match what I have ever had as a toasted marshmallow, but really, how much of a scent does one have other than burnt sugar?

First sips I was . . . mixed. It didn’t suck, so I sipped on, adding a half teaspoon of sugar. This brought out a few flavours but still it wasn’t my toasted marshmallow. It was more as if the marshmallow’d been cooked in an oven with spices rather than open a fire. It was missing that smokey amazing goodness which was the whole reason I’d roast marshmallows in the first place. I’m the queen of doing them so they’re just ever so lightly brown and are soooo delicious and no burnt taste to be found, just smoke.

I’m still on the search for my summer marshmallow tea. I have the custom adagio mix here still, which has the smoke but not the sweet, so I may try them together to see what that gives me. Maybe my marshmallow dreams still can come true?

I didn’t expect to like any of the new teas in this collection, and dang am I being proven wrong. This is why I always get some to try, just in case. This is a lovely fruit tea! I think I prefer this to any of the orange greens I’ve had, the mate just seems to blend better with the fruit flavours. I drank my cup unsweetened and didn’t even mind since there is a natural sweetness that comes from the fruit chunks.

If you’re a fan of any citrus type teas, especially whites or greens, I really recommend trying this one. As for the energy boost, I’m drinking this at ten at night so we’ll see how I feel in a couple hours :D

Got this one in store today on ice. I love it, but that isn’t the review I’m going to post today. I was in the store with my friend and her three year old son, who I let try my tea. (Like a three year old wouldn’t be fascinated by a cup of green murky stuff, right?) His review can be summed up in three words. “Yum. More please.” I think I’m creating another addict. :D

Ran out of this one yesterday as I’ve been using it for cold steeped iced. Adding a little lemon juice and you have a delicious tea that is pretty much universally liked. Classic, tasty, and one to be restocked!

After four cups, I’ve decided there is no way possible for me to brew this and actually enjoy it. There are notes there I adore for the apple, but I can’t seem to get the brew right. Still on the search for a perfect apple tea I guess.