momo

Ugh I seriously lost 2-3 cups worth of loose leaf tea today by stupid accidents. The worst part being one cup worth was Main Squeeze and I REALLY liked it and now I have none. I also spilled milk all over myself right before having to leave for two classes of exams. I didn’t even finish the exam in the first class, I maybe got 65% through it. So when the second exam is just 58 multiple choice questions, I breezed through it in maybe 20 minutes and the lab instructor’s like are you sure you answered them all. Yes I’m sure. I’m also sure I only got 3 wrong MAX on that one, because the one redeeming quality of bombing a heavy math, all short answer test is knowing you can’t possibly go wrong on a multiple choice test after it.

Also I was drinking this tea while I briefly studied for that one.

This is so freakin’ awesome. I think the steaming gives it a Darjeeling-ish quality. So intriguing. It’s a bit fruity/citrusy but it’s still got that Fujian black honey/nutty/roasty qualities.

I’m sure there are people who absolutely hate this tea’s name since really there is nothing Gyokuro about this beyond it being steamed, but I’m sure it sells tea. I for one find it too tasty to care about that.

I only got about half an ounce and it’s really pricey for a black for me so I will stick with what I have and save this one for special occasions like when I really need a good pick me up!

Thankfully this is rooibos because I completely forgot it was steeping!

Beforehand, I smelled the lemon lime cream tart tea and this one, I definitely like the cream tart one more because of the lemon. That addition is just toooooo good.

This isn’t bad though. I thought maybe with my way too long steep it would have been heavy on the cream too but it really wasn’t. Also I don’t really like the lime flavor too much. It actually tastes too much like lemon to me. I suppose the really long steep may not have helped.

I was expecting this to be really tart so I’m glad it isn’t. But I’ll have to pay attention next time and see if I like it better.

Ok last time I had this, I cold brewed it. This time around, I had it hot. Either way, I don’t get pomegranate. I get something tart that I guess is supposed to be pomegranate. It was a lot better hot though once it finally cooled enough in my travel mug that I could drink it.

I honestly thought the base for this was ridiculous but it wasn’t so bad and held up pretty well for being trapped in a travel mug.

Somehow I didn’t even realize this was a green tea until I was making it. I had to make a quick temperature switch on the kettle! Like apparently I never even looked at it and assumed it was a black tea.

The jasmine overtakes everything else in here, and not in a good way. When it’s hot, it does not smell good at all. Cold, it smells like just your usual jasmine green which is not really what I expected from something that should have white wine grape notes too.

But jasmine just overpowers everything about it and it wasn’t even a good type of jasmine tea. I couldn’t finish it. I may try having it iced, maybe try steeping for a minute instead too, but it isn’t working for me hot!

Thanks Azzrian for the sample!

Every time I opened my travel mug yesterday it was like whooooosh PEAR. So pear indeed, it’s hard to find a tasty pear tea.

This one isn’t bad, it just has a lot of floral notes to it. Perfect? Better than the only other pear tea I’ve had for sure. Since I have actually been in the mood for something floral I didn’t really mind it, but I can imagine it’s kind of offputting if that’s not your thing.

I’ve only got half an ounce of this so I might try experimenting with it a little but I don’t think I’d get more.

Ok bit of backlogging time. So maybe I will stop thinking about going to grad school OH GOD WHY I JUST WANT TO NOT GO TO SCHOOL BUT I SHOULD—err. (not even going to get into the part where I don’t even know which of my two options I’d go with. NOT both again.)

I had this on Sunday night and it was a fantastic tea dessert. I’ve not tried lime chiffon yet, but I had just had lemon chiffon a week prior to this and didn’t really think it tasted like a blend of both. I don’t really pick up on the cream strongly like I do in this one.

This has both lemon and lime for sure, like I can actually taste each one distinctly…unlike a lot of other things touted as lemon-lime where it’s just some vague citrus flavor.

This is definitely pretty sweet by itself too, I think it’d make a pretty interesting latte, maybe an iced one would be in order too.

I felt like having iced tea today. Iced tea! It was 65 when I had it, so it was worthwhile. I had the windows open, and Sebastian communicated with a sparrow.

This is super fruity, and I love that they used green rooibos so that it’s the perfect iced tea. Papaya is the strongest fruit flavor I can taste.

I will definitely be cold brewing this one once it stays warm. I love fruity iced teas and I’ve been missing green rooibos. Nothing beats it as an iced tea for me.

Wow, heavy tisane.

For reference, the 25g of Forever Nuts bag I got is as full as the 50g bag of Banana Nut Bread. So, this better not be too delicious as it can’t make that many cups.

I had an amazing smoothie for lunch that was PURELY fruit. It was amazing. I said that. Anyway all I want right now for some reason is fruit and I figured this might be a good thing to try for something different, since I loaded my smoothie with berries.

It’s pretty good, although I don’t get fully reminded of bread, it does have the right flavors.

I wish I saw the note to use a t-sac, oh man pulling the infuser out…nasty.

Back in December, the Yelp elite event of the month was dinner at a pop-up restaurant followed by Totem. Cirque du Soleil, FOR FREE. I was all over that as I’ve never seen a Cirque show. It was Totem! So when Amy oh offered me this in a swap I had to have it.

This tea is nothing like Totem in my opinion. Then again I have no idea what the point of Totem was other than to make me feel inferior and useless as I will never ever be able to flip bowls on gigantic unicycles or roller skate around in a 1.5 meter wide platform.

Hot, this is not so great. It really has no flavor to it other than that it’s tart. I let it cool off and it was WAY better to have iced. It was still tart but it actually had flavors to it, mostly the papaya at this point.

I really am not a fan of green/mate blends and I’m glad this actually worked out with Capital Teas’ instructions.

Wow I didn’t taste caramel at all in here, just vanilla. Weird. To me it was very much like genmaicha ice cream in tea form! Actually I know this company here has made genmaicha ice cream in the past…must inquire when they will do so again.

So I’m not sure what purpose the black tea in here serves, I decided to steep it like a green and sencha was definitely the predominant flavor despite how the dry leaf looked. This tea was both sweet and savory at the same time, but it’s not quite my favorite combination for that. I feel like I missed out on something by not tasting any caramel at all.

I don’t drink whiskey really at all. I think the closest I ever got was one time with car friends, I had some with Dr. Pepper, and I guess I liked it. After the whole thing was over, some weird dude promised me Jack Daniels the next meet up…I was like, “bro, I live in Tennessee (at the time I did), no.” I think at that point it was just like wooo drinks…I probably hate whiskey.

So I thought though that the flavor would be pretty cool with white tea. And the worst thing that happens, this doesn’t taste like bourbon at all or anything, and it’s just a peach tea.

And that’s really what I get. Peach. I like the idea of a flash steep with this one rather than the four min I believe I went with (I have since left my notebook, which I filled over 6 months with 450+ tasting notes!). That might make it a bit more interesting. There were flashes of whiskey but not enough to make it worth the name.

An expensive experiment, but hey, it’s a discontinued peach tea with stevia that I can drink, unlike Southern Belle.

For some reason I was able to keep myself from opening this up until a few days ago. I finally just really needed to try it.

I have been just really wanting banana flavored teas for some reason. Did I mention I’m not a big fan of actual bananas? I don’t get it.

So this definitely has banana. And on some sips, it tastes very strange, like it just doesn’t work to have banana, cheesecake, and genmaicha all together. But then the very next sip tastes marvelous.

It might be even better iced with just a touch of sweetened condensed milk, I think. I will have to try that. I’m not sure if it was the tea hot or the genmaicha that just makes it seem odd at times, but overall it’s a pretty awesome blend.

Time to finally get some backlogging going. This is the first EG cream I’ve ever had! I assume the addition of a vanilla/cream flavor is what separates the cream from the usual. I think 4 min is a bit of overkill on this tea. I definitely could taste bergamot in here, but vanilla, not so much. It was probably borderline bitter, but tolerable for at least half the cup…I ended up making dinner in the midst of drinking it and honestly didn’t miss it.

Next time, shorter steep.

Thanks, Cavocorax!

why did they think this was okay to make?

Felt all blah waking up, figured I’d drink some mate and take a nap so I’d wake up energized.

Yeah…woke up at 1pm.

I found myself wanting this, yet skeptical when I saw it described as tasting like orange juice….but it does. It’s like that Simply Orange (that’s not simply orange it turns out) with pineapple, and papaya too.

This is definitely one of the better flavored green mates I’ve had, although I prefer to be able to taste a bit of the mate itself. It’s pretty covered up in this one by being so fruity. If this manages to still be around when I finally drink down tea, I would definitely get more. Thanks Kittenna!

tl;dr I need a little rant, scroll down for tea.

Did not have a good day, I thought it was going to go so well because I got through 4 traffic lights that usually require me to sit at least 10 minutes total. I brought the wrong textbook to study on the train (though that I think turned out ok), and some guy decided to grab me by the elbow downtown and mock me when I yelled at him not to touch me.

I’m actually getting really tired of it because I am harassed almost weekly now, if not more sometimes. I skip class a lot because I don’t want to deal with it. I’ve had a guy start hitting on me just because I sat down next to him on the train when I had no other options. I’ve had two guys touch me despite the fact I am ignoring them saying excuse me. I have heard comments that don’t need to be said about my butt. Only once has a cop been close by for me to do anything. I’m about to carry pepper spray and use it.

I’m just tired of being violated. That’s how it feels to have someone mock you for getting upset they just touched you without it being okay. And he mocked me because apparently he’s free to do what he wants and there is just SO much wrong with that kind of mentality. And there’s so much wrong with that area of Atlanta. They just allow these guys who clearly have nothing else to do loiter around and stuff like this shines a bad light on the city. You know, I rolled my eyes at first when this whole bad ass mall cop thing came out on reddit which spread to the local news, because I knew that wasn’t Atlanta, but with that, a WAFFLE HOUSE charging 20% more for security at night, and all the crap I deal with, Atlanta deserves the rep. Instead of focusing on actual problems, it’s all this stuff with a new billion dollar stadium for a football team, despite the fact there’s a perfectly good stadium already there.

So after my test I just came home and eat whatever I wanted and watch a movie and drink tea. Though, this is from last night but I noticed the dashboard wasn’t working.

here starts an actual tasting note

This was way better than I expected it to be. I thought it would end up being too spiced, but it was very light. None of the spices really stood out, as I was expecting it to be really peppery from all the peppercorns.

The elderberry was really good. I had just had that Wonderberry Truffle oolong from Teavana earlier which is strongly elderberry, and this tea just blew that one out of the water. Mostly because I could also taste the base tea still.

This is the first of my Dryad samples where I feel like I need to get a full ounce of it. I think it would make a good iced tea too, almost like a spiced berry-based punch.

It kind of reminded me of Glitter and Gold if it was a little toned down in spice, and with berry instead of citrus.

This is still hot in my travel mug 5 hours later! Awesome. I have been savoring it because it’s a tasty, fruity blend.

This does have hints of pomegranate to it, along with the cranberry. It’s not super strongly flavored, which I like. The fruit is tart and just a bit sweet. It’s pretty awesome that it provides a nice balance to the black tea base.

This will be a good one to try iced, but not today.There’s a little weather statement about the wind chill getting down to possibly even the single digits so no iced tea here haha.

Haha I’ve got two teas going on right now because I got this for after dinner at Panera. I think I have some of the loose leaf of this from Cup of Tree that I haven’t tried yet, oops. So since this helped my boyfriend get his cinnamon cake slice for 99 cents, even better.

This is definitely honey flavored. That’s about all I taste. It’s sweet, but not cloying or anything.

Can’t wait to try it outside of a crushed up tea sachet. I hope it tastes more like green tea that way.

I love coconut white teas. I’m super psyched about this one because the white coconut creme tends to be the one everywhere, and while good, I’m loving the idea of a rose coconut tea even more!

This is so good. I love that I can taste the white tea so much. The other usual coconut white can almost make me feel like coconut shreds are in the tea with its powerful coconut-ness. This one perfectly melds the white tea with the coconut. It’s sweet, a little creamy, and just all around awesome.

I don’t get too much rose, but it does taste like there might be just a little bit of a floral note.

Love this for a coconut tea that’s just a bit more delicate tasting, I can’t wait to try more of what I ordered from Steep City now!

So when I had this in the 12 days of Christmas last year, I didn’t care for it at all. I bought up a bunch of 52teas stuff from KeenTeaThyme and some of hers was in there. I figured if it’s still going to taste good, it will now with having an electric kettle. And it worked out! I actually kind of enjoyed it, but it’s still not my favorite vanilla. Of course it’d be hard to take the place of Vanille des Iles.

It’s alright, I like the Assam, and the vanilla did finally come through for me. But I wouldn’t want it beyond this honestly.

So this looks like the same ingredients as Crème de Menthe from DavidsTea, and I was considering buying it since they’re discontinuing it, but ZenTea has it $1.50 cheaper sooo we’ll see.

Thanks Kallieboo! for this sample!

I gave it a little rinse over prior to infusing. Maybe useless but whatever, I’ve been burned too many times by Chocolate Orange.

This isn’t mindblowing at all, so I don’t think I’ll be buying creme de menthe, I was hoping for minty mint mint but the cinnamon is a lot stronger.

I let it cool off and now it finally has more of that obnoxiously green mint candy taste but I think the rest of this sample from Kallieboo will suffice for me, and if I really crave it more, obviously I can order from Zen Tea instead.

I gave Sebastian broccoli for the first time and he’s turned into a birdie vacuum. He was even eating past midnight last night. So funny.

I was thinking I should have a rose tea today and was going to have one later without realizing this one is most definitely rose! Raspberry, rose, clove, apparently. Not getting clove, but there’s definitely a unique sweetness to the rose that comes from the raspberry.

This is really well done, it’s only the second time I’ve had a rose tea because I was apprehensive of them, but I’d put this one tops now. It’s sweet and not soapy at all.

I just downed this in five minutes.

I think I might like it.

I was afraid to try this one for the longest time because I thought it was a very almondy tea and I figured there would be added flavor, which is usual what makes me hate almond. Instead, it almost reminds me of Mom’s Apple Pie minus any green tea…

It has the smell of those candied almonds you find at fairs and what not, but when you drink it, the apple is a lot stronger of a flavor. There’s still almond in there, but it’s behind the tart/sweet apple. And I love it.

Definitely getting more of this ASAP! Thanks Kittenna!

Sipdown…so sad :( but I have a different silver needle on the way hopefully soon for the time being.

Since it was the last I steeped it twice. I used the entire packet for one mug so it was pretty flavorful both times. I was definitely getting fruit from this, some kind of mix between watermelon and berries. Just a little pepper too, but mostly sweet hay notes. It got cold all of a sudden (or maybe not suddenly, I just didn’t know to expect it!) and this makes me feel like it’s back to a nice 70 degree day.

I’ll always love this tea because it helped me learn there are flavors to white tea, and it tastes best when it’s something so pure.