momo

This really smells like an alcoholic drink. Oh hey, stevia, it’s just you.

I quite like this, so I am glad more is on its way from tigress_al! I almost forgot, so I was going to be very upset with myself that I didn’t try this before ordering from Davids last night. But now it’s okay!

It reminds me of blue raspberry too! And blue raspberry reminds me of when I was in Chicago a few years ago, I was with 3 car friends, and one left to ride in another’s car. So the remaining guy and I decided to go get slurpees, since our conversations had just basically been what food is in Atlanta that isn’t in Chicago and vice versa. We don’t have 7 elevens, so it was clearly what we needed to do to waste time until the others got back. I immediately chose blue raspberry. So blue raspberry always makes me think of riding in an Integra Type R on a nice autumn day, windows down, listening to Kings of Leon.

It’s nice to taste something very, very similar without it being a complete sugar bomb. Despite stevia always coming off as bad alcohol memories to me (why can you not shake these dumb underage errors ever? It’s not nice.) I think it really makes the rosehips and hibiscus in here into a tolerable tartness.

I’m resteeping the leaves as a cold brew overnight.

Thanks for this, Kittenna!

First, a rant. Why are people so full of failure today? We were going to Chipotle for dinner and some stupid teenager nearly hits us and tries to like, turn ahead of us because he completely missed the lane. And then he of course just gave the “I’m an idiot” wave when we really wanted to tell him to learn to drive. And then in Chipotle, they seemed completely inept at everything. The manager we loved is now a hibachi chef so they’ve gone completely downhill.

And then, I just went on Facebook to see my brother post a picture of his girlfriend wearing one of my scarves holding my cat kite. If you’re going to be tacky and touch my things, DON’T POST IT ON FACEBOOK. I called my mom to let her know to tell them to leave my stuff alone and she of course is all like do you want me to tell him to take it off Facebook? Like my problem is that it’s on the internet rather than you know, TOUCHING MY STUFF. Who. Does. That. Just because I don’t live there anymore doesn’t make those things not my belongings.

Tea is NEEDED. Since my order from The Persimmon Tree finally came (expected delivery dates from the post office are apparently also untrustworthy, like your own brother) I wanted to try them out immediately and this seemed like a good start. I ordered a whole tin rather than just a sample.

Since I’m too angry for hot tea, iced tea it is. This smells so good while it’s brewing. Definitely smells like guava with a nice side of strawberry.

The strawberry doesn’t come out so much as you drink it, but it seems to be there for a good bit of sweetness. I love the guava though, I haven’t had anything guava in a long time so this is really good. And I love the depth the ginger adds to it. It gives it a little kick too.

This one is definitely a winner. Glad I didn’t just get a sample because I’d already be ordering the tin by now! And it’s improving my mood, though also being able to get my rant out somewhere that feels like someone made read it and care (read: not Twitter right now because it’s opening ceremonies tweets round 2 and my “problems” are not 40 foot Voldemort or whatever and therefore to be scrolled past).

After thinking my taste buds were way off for some reason, I didn’t want to waste any more good tea on them. But I think now that I’ve had a nap, it’s better. I made this iced to go with lunch. Apparently I just had excellent timing in going to get my mail because all of a sudden there’s thunder. Self high-five!

I really wish this came in loose leaf, because I love it so so much. Granted, it’s really good for a sachet, so it’s not that awful. I don’t think beyond that I have anything new to say. But this is still one of my favorite quick iced teas.

Some days I wake up and my stomach is just not happy with me for whatever reasons a stomach has, which I imagine aren’t very good reasons. I usually just drink whatever tea I’m in the mood for to soothe it, but since TeaEqualsBliss sent me some of this, I figure it is definitely worth a shot to see if maybe specific herbs with good purposes would do an even better job.

The tea is very entertaining while it’s steeping because of the chamomile. It’s fluffy! But the tea doesn’t steep into anything pretty. It looks murky…but it smells pretty good.

I’m confused now that I’m sipping it. It’s really sweet, like coating my throat with sugar is how it feels. This mug was clean, what is going on…can these ingredients really cause this to taste sweet? Like now I am convinced the dishwasher packet stuff didn’t clean off and I am drinking dishwashing soap that tastes really good. So better safe than sorry, I dumped it and made a new cup.

And it is definitely the tea, I guess. I even steeped it shorter and it’s still there. I really like the taste before it’s sweet like that and it really is soothing, but I really didn’t want to trade off a happy stomach for an uncomfortable throat.

Now that it’s cooled a bit I have identified the culprit…the licorice! It still leaves a weird taste to me but I’m also weird and the only licorice I like is salty licorice/salmiakki so when it’s sweet it just throws me off, haha.

I just made an elaborate mixed drink out of this to celebrate finally getting a couple weeks of summer. I just hope I passed International Trade.

Pineapple upside down cake is the inspiration, but I had no cherries. I brewed Tropicalia at double strength and let it steep for about 20 minutes.

In a shaker, I added lots of ice, a bit too much cake flavored vodka, a cup of Tropicalia, and a splash of coconut milk. Shook it all up, strained it into a glass, and topped it with coconut rum.

It’s a bit too strong, I think I’d add less cake vodka or I’d get something cherry flavored for topping it off. But it is definitely what I need right now.

I really want to order two of the perfect mugs but I want free shipping, and I have so much DT stuff right now that I can’t reach it. What a weird problem to have.

This tea is so cool. I had no idea there was Azorean tea!

This tastes really good. I have to imagine that being grown on one island in the middle of the ocean, nearly a thousand miles away from any continent makes for good growing. It’s light, but it’s still got this sweet, tart taste to it, like apples almost.

It’s also a bit floral, or something perfume-like, but not in any sort of overwhelming fashion. It’s very nice to drink right now while I pretend to study but am actually learning more about Azores. It is an international trade final, so it fits in there somehow.

Thanks for sending me plenty of this, TeaEqualsBliss!

However Adagio flavors their teas, I am really not a fan of it. I was hoping a custom blend would taste far better, but it’s only marginal.

The flavors are just flavoring. And it doesn’t taste all that good to me. It’s too strong, even after I poured it into a glass of ice.

If it wasn’t for that, this would be really enjoyable. In the midst of a sip, when it’s more the honeybush/rooibos I taste, I really like it. But prior to that and in the aftertaste, it’s too much flavoring. Thank you TeaEqualsBliss for the sample of your blend, but it’s not your doing, it’s Adagio. Adagio and my tastebuds rarely get along.

Okay when I got to the page for this…Razzle Dazzle from Chicago got stuck in my head.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YW3MIixEps4

Raspberries and blackberries are my favorite berries so I love this tea. It tastes like ripe, crushed berries were poured through my tea before I drank it…if only I had the berries. Nothing artificial about the flavors, just the taste of summer berries.

I got some awesome blackberries a couple weeks ago but I was donating them to some bears so I only got to eat one. I love saying that because it sounds absolutely ridiculous and actually I have no idea what animals got to eat them..but I hope it was the bears. If I had some of them to go with this tea, I would be in fruit heaven right now.

I added a bit of agave to the first cup just to see if it made any difference, but I liked it more just the way it was. It tastes more like candy if it’s sweetened though, which may be a positive depending on your tastes.

I love love love the black tea base in these bags so much. Even though this is only the third one I’ve tried so far (I have all the rest of the flavored ones so far, I just ordered radioactiviTEA though), it really is perfect. It goes with every flavor beautifully in a delicious balance.

I got so excited about studying my notes I almost forgot about this tea. This is so true to its flavors without me even adding anything to it. I have enough for another two cups, so I may have to try it sweetened in the future. I imagine it brings out the berry even more.

The strawberry is stronger than the chocolate, and just slightly sweet, which makes me think it could be pushed a little more. It seems like the chocolate also plays into the black tea. Not bad at all.

For some reason, I was completely freaking out before I made this tea. And somehow when I walked back to my bedroom with it, I felt completely okay about just jumping into my notes. I love you, tea.

Thanks for some of this one, Ian, wherever you have gone!

I am easily persuaded by postings of recipes.

Okay for a second can I just gush about where I live? It gets a lot of flack for outsourcing basically everything (ie garbage/recycling pickup is not done by the city so residents contract a private company to do it, 911 operations is shared with another city). Yesterday, one of the red lights was out on my street, so I downloaded an app the city has to report it and now I have learned it keeps me notified of all the steps along the way to it being fixed. It almost makes me want to stop using Atlanta as my location for everything. Almost.

Okay, recipe. http://www.flickr.com/photos/davidstea/7166379689/in/set-72157629044618825/ This sounded good right about now, so I decided to make it. Except it turns out coconut milk (at least the kind in a carton for milk replacement purposes) does not froth very well. It’s just sort of like, yay let’s make giant bubbles! And that’s about it.

It’s still really good in here. I used more milk than necessary and probably more chocolate syrup than necessary to make chocolate milk, but right now I just really needed chocolate. Someone in my building really likes loud music and I can hear it so perhaps my need to make this recipe was assisted by the need to make more noise by frothing milk…you didn’t hear it from me.

I pretty much had a falling out with this tea because it just wasn’t tasting as good anymore to me hot. But oh man I am loving it this way. Despite what probably sounds like my best efforts to just make chocolate milk with a bit of tea in it, the tea is definitely present. I guess that’s the good part about the puerh, I’m pretty sure if this was a plain old black tea, I would have made chocolate milk. And the orange flavor is still discernable.

I must have like 15g left and at this point I’m not sure if I will buy it again, but I’ll enjoy it while I have it.

The other tea Utopia sent me. I haven’t had peppermint tea in FOREVER, and when I did, it was bagged. This is strong stuff if you haven’t had it in ages. As soon as you take a sip, it’s sinus clearing strong.

I love the taste of real mint, because it has that green herb taste behind the great and powerful minty flavor. But it gets to be too much. So I iced the rest, and it really cuts down on the sort of burn of peppermint power when cold, and I think it brings out the herbal flavor more.

And my stomach had ended up feeling upset after lunch, and this definitely fixed everything up. Yay, peppermint!

Utopia sent me a couple teas to review on my blog and since I’m supposed to be studying for finals, it made more sense to drink and write about tea, clearly.

This is the first straight Ceylon I’ve ever had, and I’m enjoying it. It’s nice and smooth, with honey notes to it. Definitely no need for any sort of sweetener, at least for me!

I also iced some of it, which I think I like even better. Ceylon does make a fantastic iced tea, after all. 4 ounces of this is $9 so it’s definitely an inexpensive option for iced tea.

Ooh, is the 30 second steep the secret to actually tasting white tea in these blends? Though this one seems like it doesn’t rely on the fruit for everything so that’s nice.

I steeped it for 30 seconds first and drank it hot. I love the taste of bai mu dan and blueberry. Sweet and subtle.

Then I decided to resteep for 4 1/2 minutes to make iced tea. It definitely did not turn into blueberry juice, yay! The slightly floral, sweet, and hay-like flavors of the white tea taste so good with the aftertaste of blueberries.

I added a little agave to the iced tea and it brings the blueberry flavor at the end out even more. I am DEFINITELY going to have to get more of this.

Thanks for the sample, Kittenna!

I’ve been holding on to this, afraid to try it. Finally I got the courage to tonight, only to be disappointed.

I’m not getting anything. I added maple syrup and salt and it didn’t help at all. I mean, now it tastes more like maple but I wanted the bacon alongside it!

I guess I have to steep it longer? I went with about 4 min, 15 seconds. It’s not even smoky to me. Oddly more than anything, it tastes like chocolate. It definitely smells like breakfast, though. I’ll have to play around with it again.

I wanted to get orange matcha to mix it with the cola matcha. I don’t know if many of you are familiar with Spezi, a mix of cola and orange soda popular in Germany…I love it so much, but I hate drinking soda.

First I figured though I should try it the orange matcha on its own. It just took me forever, since I ordered it so it’d come just in time for my weekend vacation last week. I tried it immediately, but only drank one sip while in the midst of packing, so I had nothing really to say about it.

I’m not typically a fan of orange flavored stuff. I’d take a blood orange over your usual orange every time. I don’t like orange flavored candy very much, and that’s of course what this tastes like. Orange flavored candy.

I added agave and milk to it to try to see if maybe then I could transform it into sort of a “creamsicle” taste but it just tastes like smoother candy. While it’s not my favorite, I can definitely drink it. Because in the end, orange candy, while not preferable, is always edible.

Tomorrow’s test: a mix with the cola matcha for spezi matcha!

I can also see this being really good as the matcha in a smoothie. I picked up a bag of frozen mixed berries yesterday for smoothies and out of all my matchas so far, this one is definitely the winner to go in there.

Thanks, TeaEqualsBliss!

Since second flushes are pretty much my most favorite black tea ever, I definitely enjoy this. It’s not the best one I’ve ever had, but Darjeelings are like pizza. Even the average ones are super tasty. This one somewhat lacks the good, strong muscatel flavors I like in second flushes, but it has nice astringency. It seems far more savory than others I’ve had.

I prefer others, but I wouldn’t turn this one down. I bet it would be a great iced tea, so I’ll have to try that too.

Green rooibos is seriously a totally different animal from the red stuff. I wouldn’t cold steep red rooibos on its own if my life depended on it. Green rooibos on the other hand, this makes for an amazing drink!

I bought this to mix with a Teavana tea that needed much more rooibos, but ended up blending it with another so I’ve been too scared to try it on its own. It came up in my randomizer, however, so I figured I’d cold steep a pitcher.

It wasn’t stored in a way it could get a flavor from anything else, so I guess this is just how green rooibos is! There’s honey, it’s a bit fruity, it’s just really good, and there’s no medicinal taste to it. It’s just a bit grassy tasting, as would be expected from its color.

I won’t have any problem finishing off this pitcher (or the rest of my 2oz for that matter)!

I like this randomizer. I kept telling myself to drink this before Kittenna and I swapped again, and I didn’t. But then the number came up, and voila, drinking it! So I have finally tried everything from our first swap, yay! (Thank you again!)

When I first tasted this after steeping, I was wondering what on earth it was even supposed to taste like, because all I got was green tea. A little agave later, I guess that’s mango finally making an appearance.

I get a peach taste too, even though I guess it’s not really an ingredient. Definitely do not steep this for 3 minutes despite it saying 3-4 minutes. There’s a slight bitterness at the end from the 3 minute steep, which is pretty sad given it’s hardly flavored.

If I wanted mango, I’d go for Mango Madness. In fact, I think I will mix what’s left of this sample in with a bit of it just to see.

I’m using a number randomizer to pick teas to drink out of the ones I haven’t tried yet. Of course it picked one I just got but I’m not going to argue with it, I will drink. Strawberry lemonade naturally makes sense cold, and I had just enough ice cubes to make myself a glass. I steeped 2 tsp in 4 oz of water until it was as red as a strawberry.

First impression: WAY tart. I added some agave to it, and it was still somewhat tart but bearable. Then I watered it down just a little bit more, and now it’s like drinking a juicy strawberry. I cannot believe how much it tastes like a strawberry. It has a lemon aftertaste too, staying true to its name, but I am loving the strawberry flavor.

I’m so glad that the hibiscus was brought under control for my taste buds that easily. I wish the same could be said for other teas! Not getting much rooibos flavor at all, so it seems kind of like it would take away from the flavors if it was here.

Thanks, Kittenna!

I’ve always been curious about these tea/coffee blends I see. I drink coffee sometimes; I am most definitely not a coffee or tea person. Obviously, I prefer tea but I won’t turn my nose up at coffee.

I have a friend who works for a coffee roastery and it bothers me when he tries to polarize it because I’m here like give me either as long as they taste good to me!

This one I am not sure about. I want to love this but the caramel flavor is reminding me of coffee out of a rest area vending machine. There is just something weird about the way it smells. Fake fake fake and cheap. I added milk and agave hoping it might make it taste better, but it hardly helped…so I dumped it.

If it wasn’t for that, this would be so good.

Thanks, Will Work For Tea!

I made this sort of like a soda. I steeped a tablespoon of tea in what I guess was 6 oz of water (of course, I came up with this idea after putting my measuring cup in the dishwasher and turning it on), steeped it for 4 1/2 minutes, then poured it over ice. Added agave and seltzer water, and it’s pretty spot on for a root beer float, minus the texture of having ice cream melted in it.

The vanilla and white chocolate definitely give it that float taste, but it’s not super creamy. I guess if you really were looking for that, you could add a little ice cream. I like it the way it is though.

It could use a bit more spices to me for a root beer, because to me the only flat taste to it is that it’s just cinnamon and then some vague flavors that might be root beer. The only root beer I will drink is made by Abita. If you haven’t tried it, you MUST. It’s just so sugary I try not to drink it but hey, at least it’s made of natural sugar that isn’t from corn so that’s a plus.

It’s pretty good, but honestly I’d rather just drink that one. I’ll definitely finish this bag though. If there was less cinnamon and more of the other spices and herbs that go into root beer, it’d be soooo much better.

This is pretty good, a nice tropical flavored oolong. But I think the kombucha powder is making my throat itch. I’ve never had this happen before with anything, and given that’s the only ingredient in here I’ve never had before, it could be it.

Oh well, it’s not that horrible (so far at least, if you don’t hear from me again I was wrong) so I will definitely drink up all I have. I definitely want to try it iced.

I was expecting it to be a bit more tart given what I know about kombucha, but it’s not. Still, it has a nice flavor.

Thank you, Kittenna!

This is so tasty, wow! I am now intrigued about trying it steeped for only half a minute. It’s really good after four though.

It smells exactly as it should, fruity, tart, and like cinnamony baked goods. And then it tastes like this too! The hibiscus makes it a bit too tart for my liking, but I’m also too tired to get up and get myself sugar. And F1 qualifying is about to start and I have to watch it on my laptop. Poor boyfriend’s TV got fried in one of the many storms last week.

As usual with flavored whites from DavidsTea, the tea is hardly detectable underneath all the fruit. As much as I’d love to get more of this in the future, the price is just too much. But ugh it really tastes like a crumble in a cup.

Thanks, Kittenna!

I love iced mint green tea. While this one isn’t a Moroccan mint, the typical one I’d go for, it’s really good. I wouldn’t have thought jasmine and mint would work together.

This is nice and refreshing, really cooling. The mint isn’t overbearing and you can taste the gunpowder. There’s a slightly smoky, green tea behind the mint. The jasmine brings out some floral flavors too. There’s white tea in here also but I don’t taste it at all. The leaves are pretty chopped and it’d be hard to taste them over a gunpowder green anyway.

This makes a nice, quick iced tea. Thanks, TeaEqualsBliss!