New Tasting Notes

Ah, Forever Nuts. The tea that finally swayed me to the side of Big Tea. (The husband imagines some large SPECTRE type tea conglomeration ruling over the world and desperately trying to put more people under it’s spell as he can’t fathom why anyone would drink it.)

I’ll concur that there is more of an apple cinnamon flavouring, but I still do notice a nutty undertone. I drink this with increasingly less sweetener as time goes on, occasionally some honey but more often than not just on it’s own. This is the tea I give to friends who want to try something new and I’ve yet to encounter anyone who didn’t enjoy it (aside from the aforementioned husband who likened it to tree bark.)

I am really liking this. Seriously, it’s good!
Have you ever had a really sweet, I mean naturally sweet, green tea? I’m getting that sort of caramel flavour here, along with another, deeper type of sweetness that extends throughout the sip.
In the middle, there is a slight hint of cocoa and the aftertaste? milk. Very milky.
Interesting, I really like this blend!!

Stacy from Butiki Thank You for this one as well as the other teas you sent us at Sororitea Sisters!

I didn’t see this one on the website (YET) but if aroma counts I share hope you add it!

It smells hearty like a meal, slightly bready, and malty.

WOWZA! This is a STRONG TEA! I’m glad I actually followed the instructions of ONLY 1 teaspoon – I usually use more because I LOVE strong black teas! BUT this is CRAZY bold, intensely strong, malty, peppery, and an interesting level of crustiness to it!

It should be called Grandpa’s Anytime (You Need A Kick In The Pants) Tea!

I love it!

It does smooth out more as it cools naturally at room temp but it’s still hearty and full of flavor!

A little bit goes a long way with this one and I think it’s DANDY!

It is already great to be off from work until the new year, but having a new Christmas present tea to taste makes life even better! I was fascinated by the name of this tea.

Being of direct Scottish heritage (my mother was born and partially raised in Scotland), and having spent a month and a half in Scotland myself, I was intrigued by the inclusion of Scottish thistle in this tea. Heather, I could understand. After all, heather is a sweet and dainty little flower that grows on the Scottish hillsides. Thistle, on the other hand, has painful thorns. According to legend, the invention of the kilt was necessary to allow Scottish soldiers to be mobile when marching through fields covered with this prickly plant. So, thistle is not an ingredient that I would expect to find in my beverage.

When I opened the hinged tin and pierced the bag inside, I noticed that the short tea leaves were like coffee grounds. Also, many red and yellow thistle blossom pieces were mixed with the leaves. The aroma of the unbrewed leaves was standard African tea with something extra, although the smell was not flowery.

I brewed the leaves for five minutes at 212 degrees, the maximum recommended time and temperature. The color was a brownish gold. The brewed aroma was again standard tea with something else.

I hate to be repetitious, but the flavor of this tea also was…you guessed it…standard tea with something extra. The best way to explain it is that the sweet overtones and astringency that I’ve often noticed in flowery teas were present in this tea, but not to the extent where I could classify them. I can only identify the taste by calling it STANDARD AFRICAN TEA PLUS.

This is a pleasant tasting tea. It is not bitter. I liked drinking four cups of it. I just did not find the flavor easy to pinpoint. Maybe that doesn’t matter. Perhaps I should just shut up and enjoy it.

Now that I’m out of the Queen, I’ve been drinking this on its own. Not terrible.
Still about 60g left, but somehow the leaves get used up faster than I expected. They aren’t ctc, but cut up into tiny little squares. Does it take up more room that way? I’d have thought less!
Bah….
So for today’s cup I steeped 3min 20sec and added chocolate syrup. Maybe I should have added an extra thirty seconds because the overall tea flavor was a little weak. I prefer stout, hardy teas with alot of malt. I find that factor to be hit and miss with blacks. Am I doing something different or are my buds off? Hmmm.

I had just gotten a cute little teapot for christmas (orange, with two matching cups!) and I decided I wanted to go out to DavidsTea and buy some loose leaf for me to drink at home.

After a while of sniffing I was stuck between this and the Pure Vanilla, and decided to go with this.

I brought this home and oh boy, it smelled DELICIOUS. It was something I hadn’t really smelled before, light and vanilla-y with a floral hint.

That was yesterday and I was saving my first cup for today, and I’m glad I did. It’s a great tea with a smooth vanilla flavour that anyone would like!

Trying to finish up this sample, looks like I have one cup left after this one!

Still tasty, steeped it for 3 minutes this time around and definitely had no need to add any milk! This is pretty sweet and malty by itself. But sadly not enough to keep me awake, I had to take a nap already (thanks brother’s girlfriend for being a nutcase).

Would I get more of this? Not anytime soon after I added up all my teas and samples. Jeeeeeez.

Yup! This smells and tastes like Candy Cane! I’m super excited S&V made this with a GREEN Rooibos Base…I don’t think I have had a Candy Cane Flavored GREEN Rooibos before so that’s cool!

There is that lovely candy cane flavor with a sweet green rooibos but there is also a hint of stevia in there and S&V did the Stevia RIGHT :) Not by over doing it! YAY! The Red and White Cornflower petals are more for show, I think…but I am cool with that.

This is tasty! I’m partial because I am a MINT freak but I love this!

Good balance of tea and sweetness.

This is my first and only matcha but I will say, I like how it’s sweet but still lets the green tea come through. Good for when you want something sweet, something quick, or something a little different. Beautiful deep green color. I don’t own a whisk but if you pour it from a bit of a height, you can get a pretty good froth on top. It’s good for cooking as well although I haven’t gotten a chance to do that yet.

So a while back I placed an order with teavivre and I have to say their customer service was pretty awesome, or at least unexpected. They actually emailed me because they were tracking my package and let me know the post office had said they’d tried to deliver. Now, unbeknowest to them, the post office here is riduculous and hadn’t but at least i was able to get right on the post office about where my order was.

Anyway, i digress. Since I need to get my cupboard under control, I’ve got to start drinking some of the tea samples from teavivre! I figure I can drink at least one a day which will get me through the first half of the samples i picked up (love that the samples come in 2 little packs instead of one big one!).

This was the random tea i grabbed this morning from the bunch..it’s like a grab back of delicious excitement waiting to happen! I have to say, this one is pretty darn tasty. I’ll be doing re-steeps tonight when i get home but this first brew is one I can see keeping around for one of my morning blacks. I’d put this one up there with my taiwanese assam from butiki and laoshan black from verdant. I’m sure there will be others but those are my favs at the moment.

This is a nice smooth black, that has a malty taste to it without being as intense as say, laoshan black. There’s a hint of caramel at teh end of the sip but it’s not overly pronounced. mmmm this is a really nice start to the morning.

I LOVE this tea!! (I will admit I’m a sucker for anything Earl Grey-related) The berries compliment the bergamot perfectly, and it’s a great tea to have at any time of the day. I’ve found that I prefer it with both milk and a sugar cube, but it is sweet enough on its own (depending on my mood). I would recommend this for anyone who likes Earl Grey, breakfast tea, or anything fruity!

K liked this a fair bit more than me! I liked it, but I’m always a BIT disappointed by maple flavours. Mostly this reminded us of the maple whiskey that K bought.. so we added a shot :P and that was pretty good, too! Lovely to have with an apple crisp! ;) Won’t buy more of this one, but it was nice to sample. :D

Wow. Instant favorite.

This sencha is perfect. Vegetal and sweet and silky smooth. Clean, no astringency. Just wow.

I was interested in trying this one because of the Mint and Lemon Verbena! But I was also curious because of the other ingredients and the NAME. One of the many reasons I LOVE Indie Tea!!!! The Names, the Product Descriptions, the Art! It’s all really wonderful! Organic and Vegan ingredients are a plus, too!

Gotu Kola – I have had before but wanted to learn more about it so I did by reading this link
http://www.umm.edu/altmed/articles/gotu-kola-000253.htm

I wasn’t as familiar with Brahmi so I looked that up, too!
http://www.nature.com/npp/journal/v27/n2/full/1395862a.html

All of these ingredients serve a purpose – or more than one purpose – and all make sense in this blend of herbals. WHO’S the SMARTY PANTS, now, Indie Tea!? Nicely done, btw! This Herbal Tisane Flavor is VERY pleasing. In addition to the Lemon/Mint Combo there is a bit of ginger shining thru as well as Tulsi! Very nice!

This tisane shines bright!

Ah- this tea is really, really great. I usually drink it in the summer iced, and it’s a nice treat once in a while.
It tastes so much like lime jello, but smoother. It really is fantastic.

I kind of thought this was a green tea at first. It even sort of tastes like it or at least a cross between a green and oolong. While being still true to the base it has a nice flavor…sweet, gingery, apple, NICE!

It also reminds me of a Scentsy Flavor of Wax Melt I have burning in my house at the present time.

This is delightful!

Another tea I had yesterday to get me thru the storm. I think I might finish it up today or tomorrow. See previous notes!

SIPDOWN and Backlog on this one! We got hit MAJOR with a storm and this was one of the ones I drank a few cups-worth of last night!

Goodbye dear english toffee matcha. You have been a delight to drink in the mornings :) I would buy this again, though i don’t think it will have a permanent place in my home for the sheer sake that I’m finding myself drawn to fruit matcha in summer and more coffee/mocha type matcha in winter. English toffee is a treat that I’ll have once in a while when i want to revist an old friend.

This is one of my Christmas present cakes from hubby! We drank it tonight while playing Star Trek Settlers of Catan with my son and godson.

First of all, I have had loose puerh and mini Tuocha in the past. I liked puerh right from the first time I tried it, even though the first ones I bought at A Southern Season were really fishy smelling. (Not fishy tasting, though.)

Tuocha are easy! Just drop it in! Getting the amount you need detached from the cake is a challenge and I don’t have a puerh pick or knife. I had read that a butter knife would do and that is what I used last night but it didn’t work so well.

Tonight I tried Granny Stella’s tomato knife, a cheap little white knife my husband got when his granny died. It has a serrated edge and a very pointy tip for piercing.

Now I don’t know if this cake is not as compact and hard as the other one, but that knife worked a treat and in no time I had pried off what I needed for steeping.

I am not an experienced and learned puerh drinker, though I hope to be some day, but I can give my impression of this. It was not fishy at all. It was rather mild and the liquor lighter than others I have tried. I used only a little leaf in an eight ounce pot and we got about six steeps that were pretty good strength from it. I was keeping it around thirty seconds per steep. A final steep was really pale but still tasted nice.

This is very good, and I think it would be a great unflavored puerh to start the fearful on the path.

Many thanks to mrmopar and Garret for their help in choosing my Christmas teas!