1024 Tasting Notes
First taste of tea #2 in the Monstrositea April box—seeing as I already had an Iron Goddess in the Mr. Earl April box I was feeling a little over IGs, but in the spirit of trying everything in my subscription boxes I busted some of the Tea Leaves variety today.
I blatantly ignored the note that only a few leaves were needed and to be fair, I needed a full teaspoon of leaves to get decent flavour for my tastebuds, but it ended up going much better than expected. Very nice. I’ll try this again soon.
I think this blend is around a year and a half old, but I got a couple of sample sachets in a swap (a REAL LIFE swap!) with my friend the other day and I’ll be darned if I’m going to do a sipdown without actually getting to add the tea to my cupboard and then remove it again.
So the all-caps isn’t just gibberish and stands for Flowery Broken Orange Pekoe Fannings Extra Special. Sure. OK. Googling seems to show it was ranked an 80 (“Very Good: a tea with superior characteristics”) in the US tea championship 2013? Good for it…
It smells like delicious chocolate. Tastes pretty chocolatey for a plain black tea, too! Yum. I think this is what you’d call a single origin tea? Hahaha.
I got sent this as a gift from my beautiful wonderful Loops in Austria, after she came to visit me, because she is selfless and so thoughtful. So it’s already very special to me, before I’ve even tried it.
Tonight I finally did try it though! It’s the start of the proper descent into winter lately, and tonight I rode home in quite biting drizzle and wanted something warm and delicious. This was calling.
I’ve been having a good huff of it once a month and it smells like a delicious pile of glühwein spices. Well, tonight I can confirm that it also tastes like glühwein, without the wine. Yum. So cosy and wintry and I wonder if you could actually make glühwein with it!? Maybe I’ll find out in a few weeks, hmm…
Tea #4 in the Monstrositea April box. I was pleasantly surprised by this one; after reading it was basically just lemon balm and rosemary I wasn’t expecting much. I am starting to learn better than that with these awesome boxes. Maybe next month I won’t be such a doubting Thomas…
Because this was tasty and zingy. Man those two flavours pack a real punch!
Preparation
Yeah… you know what? I’m changing my rating down on this. I’m not as impressed as I must have been previously.
It could be the cold brew talking, though.
No more cold brewing for you, Buttered Rum. I’ll drink the last of my supply warm, and with milk and sugar. But that suits me fine because WINTER IS COMING.
With not a great deal of this precious nostalgia left, I tried tonight with some milk and sugar added to try to reach those really creamy notes. It felt super weird adding milk and sugar to a peppermint tea. I suppose it worked? Ooh that minty oil slick sure is something, and with milk in the mix it’s even more pronounced!
One more cup of this and I’ll be all sipped down :(
Note: does not resteep well :(
More fun note: just paid for my first Butiki order eeeeeee ALL THE BUTIKI let’s not discuss how much money I just spent, I am a responsible adult
Preparation
Reasons I reached for this tonight:
1. Pimple on my nose. Ouch.
2. Caffeine free. I need a decent night’s sleep.
3. Not a lot of this in stock, so sipdown soon.
It’s a mouth full of cinnamon. That’s kind of all I taste. But not in a bad way? Great with some chocolate.
Second steep of today’s leaves just as strong (?). Third steep I think there’s still some flavour in there but I’d really need some of the first and second steeps to compare, and I drank ’em all up already.
Definitely worth one resteep to get the most out of this blend as you can.
P.S. the burger was delicious.
I was expecting the taste of this tea to be a lot more threatening than it actually is, so that’s a boon. To me it’s got quite a bland taste but I suppose there is enough flavour in there from the lemon and rooibos that it has SOMETHING.
I can see how this would serve well as a tea for those in a detox mood! After my weird eating yesterday it’s bringing a mental comfort to me, I suppose. But I’m about to go put a burger on it SO………
Flavors: Lemon Zest, Wood
