New Tasting Notes

1.5 tsp for 250mL water @ 100C. Steeped 8 minutes. Sweetened with 2tsp white sugar.

I really, really like this tisane with a bit of sweetening. Make no mistake: chicory is bitt-errrr, but it’s not sour. Bitterness can be dealt with. Even with 2tsp of sugar, there’s some bitterness in the aftertaste, but I find that adds to the overall richness of the drink. It’s an herbal, earthy bitterness. Sweetened, the liquor develops a heavy body and a winey taste. In appearance, it’s a dead ringer for black coffee. Not something I drink every day, but I always enjoy it when I do.

I bought this tea from a villager at the base of a 3200 year old tea tree. The leaves are nice a big, wiry and full of mango and dried apricot flavor. I’ve been drinking this tea a fair amount, and I’ve been impressed with it each time. Every new brew tells a different story of Yunnan.

I was lucky to snag the last one bag of this one. While I do enjoy it, I think the chocolate is still in the background of this tea. It could be because I am not adding any sweetener or milk but I have had some more chocolate flavour in teas before.

I do like how the flavours mix and think it is an awesome chocolate tea. Just not as much in your face chocolate that I was expecting with the name.

This is one of my favourites from 52teas. I am waiting on a refill of it in the mail right now. I enjoyed a cup of this especially after lunch.

It is a warm and toasty tea with a great cinnamon flavour. The roll part of the tea comes in the aftertaste. You really taste it in your mouth and when you smack your lips together. A real treat!

I drink this one plain with no additives.

I have been lurking this site for about a year. All your reviews helped me on my own tea journey. I currently have 22 teas spread over two drawers in my work cabinet. A few more at home and 4 coming in the mail which I can’t wait for.

That being said I had to put my review up for English Rose because I do not think it deserves such a low score. I think it is great as a hot tea. The white chocolate just brings out the rose flavour so much. It is very much a comfort tea with its sweet aroma and taste.

I drink all my teas plain with no additions. I think this tea is fine to drink that way. However I would imagine adding cream would make it even more rich.

I had only bought 25g to start but I have been having at least two cups a day and running low so I will be buying a 100g tin today.

Grrrrr… argh…

I am so very sleepy this morning. I even hit snooze too many times and was subsequently late for work. D’oh!

So simplicity is what this morning calls for. Brewed this up in my generic tea bottle, with water out of the dispenser, which technically isn’t hot enough, but, again, simplicity. I was already heating my oatmeal.

This time, I am tasting the cocoa notes of this, which don’t usually come through for me as much. It’s a comforting, dependable tea though, and that’s what counts.

Last night, I downloaded the Zombies, Run! app to my cell phone, and went for a quick walk/occasional sprint with it. It was a lot of fun as I went around my own neighborhood, imagining it as a post-apocolyptic wasteland where I gathered supplies and ran away from hordes of shuffling undead.

I was thinking this morning that I would definitely have to add tea to my must-pick-up supplies in a Zombie invasion. This tea would be on my hoped for list. And Jasmine tea, as well. At some point, you might be reduced to Lipton teabags though. shudder

If you knew a Zombie invasion was coming, what tea would you stockpile? :D

Yes…yes…I AM eating Lentil Chips at 9:30 in the morning…sue me! LOL

Special thanks to LiberTEAs for this one!

This is mellower than I thought it would be but still a nice straight-up black tea. It’s very clean tasting and I would side with those saying it’s more like a Ceylon (instead of an Assam) – not that THAT is good, bad, or indifferent…just a personal observation.

This one is alright. I kinda of wish it had a little more oooomph tho. Still tasty, regardless!

Mmm, strawberry shortcake tea! I took one sip plain and immediately knew the flavor would be enhanced with skim milk and Truvia, so I added some. It truly tastes like pound cake laden with strawberries and cream.

My mouth actually felt coated like when you eat heavy whipping cream. That coated mouthfeel overwhelms the strawberry and cake flavor, which is a little sad. I wish the strawberry was more bright and acidic like fresh strawberries.

Still, this is a yummy cup of tea. And who else can say they had strawberry shortcake for breakfast this morning? ;) Thanks for the sample, Kittenna!!

This summer has been one for heat! We have had at least two heat waves, and I was starting to think that maybe there wasn’t an end in sight! But this morning I was struggling to wake up (which I do on a good day hahaha), and I realized it’s because it’s dark and rainy out! The heat has broken for at least today and been replaced with crazy amounts of rain! Maybe now my flowers will come back to life in the garden!
So I thought, what better day than today, to enjoy a favourite such as pumpkin chai! It is such a warm comforting tea to me.
This tea screams fall. It’s the perfect cup of tea to snuggle up with on a gloomy-looking day such as today. And although I have to work this morning, I brought some with me and I’m really enjoying the soothing comfort of this tea. It is delightful!

Oh! The Purrfect Cup sent this my way! I’m VERY grateful! Thanks so much!

This is really something! The LS is a bit more gentle and I like it. Sure…it’s a bit smoky but you can TASTE the 3 bases. The LS, the Keemun, and the Darjeeling…Individually as well as combined. I am thinking I enjoying the Keemun flavors the best out of the 3 – but I am partial to a flavorful Keemun! This is even great for a 2nd infusion! lovely! YUM!

I’m going to share a bit with LiberTEAs but I could see myself drinking this many days of the week if I had a huge amount in my stash!

YUMMO!

1.25 tsp for 250mL water @ 98C. Steeped 5 minutes. Drunk bare.

Sipdown.

A very acceptable Assam. Tippy leaves. A leathery note if steeped too long. Some distant rose and bread notes. Not as malty as some. A sweet finish, something cheaper Assams lack. (I avoid Twinings Assam for that reason.) Liquor is reddish brown and a bit murky. No real depth or complexity, though. I won’t be buying this one again, not when I can have Kopili or Gingia instead.

Pretty tasty tea. The best part however was that it got rid of a headache and cleared up my sinuses. :D

Very nice. I often find unflavored white teas can verge on the bland side
And you just wish there was more flavor there- not so with this tea.

I really enjoyed the strong-for-a-white tea vibe and would definitely have this one again.
Brews up just like a light green tea, tasted fantastic. Prob one of my favorite unflavored white teas yet.

Thank you so much to Angel for the sample of this tea! I am really impressed by the generosity and social networking/tech savvy of Teavivre. But I won’t let that color my rating and review too much – my first exposure to them was some tea I purchased myself. :)

Anyway – Tie Guan Yin. A quintessential oolong! This example is just lovely, with a balanced flavor and nuanced character. I drank this all day, steeped and re-steeped all kinds of ways, to get a better understanding of it. This tea holds up exceptionally well to multiple steeps, making it a great value.

Early steeps at low temperatures yield a pale celadon-spring green liquor with a dainty aroma, best taken by itself, with no additives or food on the side to muddy the flavor! I got a sweet, floral impression – echoes of orchid and jasmine-like flavors – laid over a pleasantly vegetal green taste that has a pleasantly full-bodied mouthfeel.

Subsequent steeps at higher temperatures and longer brew-times result in a golden colored liquid and a more robust taste. Though the first steeps I prefer to take alone, the next few pair well with a variety of foods, making this a great choice for a tea taken before/during/after a meal or snack. The floral sweetness mostly fades out, and the vegetal green notes, accented with a touch of that cool “mineral” flavor, deepen. The mouthfeel and aftertaste are exactly what I want out of an oolong: it feels somehow round and buttery-smooth. I think this is a great choice if you’d like a green oolong in your cupboard.

This is the one that I considered not buying … and I’m really glad that I changed my mind and went for it.

I cold-brewed this, and it is really good. It is not as bold as I think it would have been if I had steeped it hot, and now, it has a very smooth flavor with fruit notes, hints of malt, and a lovely sweetness. It is still good and strong, and there is no bitterness or astringency.

A really awesome glass of iced tea right here!

Hello steepsterites!!

Honeymoon is nearly over and we are leaving Norwich after breakfast. I’ve ticked a few more of those Very English things off my list such as fish’n’chips and brown sauce with breakfast sausages. Also banoffee pie and a large number of J2O flavours.

Most importantly though, THIS was as close as I got to a real proper cream tea. I could have had it. I was supposed to have it. But I’d had a large lunch and I don’t know if you are aware of this.steepsterites but cream tea involves an awful lot of food. There are little sandwiches, scones with clotted cream and cakes, and I just couldnt eat all that without bursting, so we went for just tea and cake instead.

So clotted cream and cucumber sandwiches are still unticked but i saw someone else having it so I was definitely close.

I hope you all have been behaving yourselves in my absence. It was the plan to try and keep up womewhat with the phone but the B&B wi-fi is dreadfully slow.

I’ve drank a lot of earl grey blends, but never an oolong-based one before. The dry tea just by itself is interesting to look at with loosely-rolled green oolong tea leaves, bits of orange peel, jasmine flower buds and what I at first thought were juniper berries but later I realized were actually schizandra berries (thankfully).

The first steep brewed up quite a light gold colour with a delicate citrus-floral odor. The flavour was quite smooth though tangy with a subtle floral finish that isn’t too perfumy. I’ve never tried schizandra berries before so I have no idea how they tastes and I really couldn’t say if they’re influencing the flavour at all.

The second steep wasn’t any darker in appearance and there was an odd sour note (from the citrus maybe?) that made it not as palatable as the first steeping. I’m also not getting the usual sweet flavour I tend to taste in green oolongs as they cool off. So not a good re-steeper in my opinion but an intriguing novelty over all.

This smells DIVINE!
I took the lid off the pot to remove the basket and the deep, rich chocolaty smell of hot cocoa wafted up at me. If I hadn’t of known this was tea, I would have really thought it was hot cocoa.

This is one of the most amazing chocolate teas’s I’ve ever had. It’s like creamy cake. I added a little milk and it’s made the chocolate taste a little richer. There are raspberry pieces in the tea, but I can’t make out the taste of them – maybe because of the milk – so for me it’s more a chocolate cake tea than a Red Velvet cupcake. Nevertheless this is outstanding!

I also like the lined brown bag packaging the tea came in. On one hand I love nice tins, however it always brings up the already exorbitant international shipping costs. So I’m happy when vendors package simply.
The only comment I have is that the ingredients are not marked on the package and I have to go online to look for them.

But the tea? I can already see this is going to be a contender to take over the top spot in my “favorite chocolate rooibos” list, because of the cakey aspect of the tea. I will definitely need more than the 2oz I ordered!

this one is meh. i’m not a fan of rooibos so i probably shouldn’t have bothered, but the ‘creamsicle’ whisperings got me interested.
just mostly a strong rooibos flavour with a hint of vanilla and orange in the background. but that’s about it. too bad. :(

tastes MUCH better than it smells when dry.
really minty with a touch of light seaweed behind it.
i prefer Seamist from Silk Road as far as a mint/seaweed tea goes though, so i wont be getting any more of this unfortunately!

delicious! tastes as good as it smells!
i’m so glad WHITE hibiscus is in this one, it has all the flavour and barely a touch of tartness. excellent. really nice for this white tea.
very fruity and light. lovely.

yesss this one makes up for ‘detox’, it tastes way less medicinal, much better.
this will be my go-to detox tea for now i think!
it’s pretty light, with some nice clean flavours.

an okay tea. i have chocolate rocket that i like better as a mate, and many citrusy teas, so i won’t be buying any more of this.
it tastes very green, quite strong. the lemongrass dominates, and i think that’s where that green, grassy taste comes from.
my mom really enjoyed this one though! so at least it wasn’t all for nothing!

smells amaaazing but unfortunately the flavours don’t translate well when hot.
i will try it iced and sweetened and maybe top it up with a few crushed raspberries to bring out the flavour more, so no rating yet!