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So, I really really love RLT’s flavoured matcha – and of all the different kinds I own this is probably the most versatile: I’ve successfully used it cold shaken in water, whisked into cold milk, in smoothies and milkshakes, and as a matcha soda. No matter how I use it the flavour remains distinctly juicy pineapple. Tonight, I went with matcha soda.

Here’s my recipe:

1.5 tsp. of matcha disolved into about 2 oz. of hot water
1 tsp. of sugar
1 can of club soda

Interestingly, as a matcha soda I find that the pineapple, while retaining some of the natural taste it has, becomes a little bit more like candied pineapple, and in the case of this particular batch it tasted just a little bit like bubble gum – but I enjoyed how different that was, and the added element/dimension it brought to the flavour. It is also possible the added sweetness was more from the added sugar; typically I do not ad d any sweetner to any of my tea, the matcha soda being the exception because I find the sweetner is needed to combat the taste of the club soda.

Just a friendly reminder if you’re gonna go the match soda route; remember to occasionally stir it a little bit because otherwise any matcha that didn’t properly dissolve will end up sitting on the bottom and your last few sips will be really, really concentrated!

And that, folks, is the last of my epic, long as fuck queue – so I can finally go to sleep now, and start fresh tomorrow without any backlog! Hooray! I feel like I’ve accomplished so much.

Coming up on a sipdown soon. I’ve decided not to restock this one – and I have another tea in mind to replace the tin, so I could very well be hurrying up to finish this one off too, just to clear it out of my cupboard and reduce my numbers.

Tonight I added milk to this. Taste wise, it was actually much, much more minty than it was caramel flavoured, but it was a soft, smooth and silky mint flavour with a very gentle and light caramel and rooibos undertone to it that made the whole mug really calming, and very easy to cuddle up with. I wont lie though; I was hoping for just a little bit more caramel. But hey; I’ll take what I can get and it looks like a fair bit of the mint from this one has sunk to the bottom of the tin over time so these last few mugs probably will be a bit more mint heavy than previous mugs I’ve enjoyed.

So in between all the backlogged tasting notes I had a really good evening overall; Big Brother was on so I made a couple different teas and Tre and I watched while eating pie. It’s kinda nice watching with him; we often have late night conversations and sometimes we go out to eat together, but very rarely do we do other stuff together…

Except for Big Brother. That’s kinda become “our thing” or whatever; we watch every episode together and flip shit about the houseguests (we both adore Donny!). The key difference is that I am a hardcore fan and he is a casual fan, so sometimes he says things that make ZERO sense strategically, and I have to playfully remind him that he’s an idiot. But overall it’s fun times. Pie tonight was kinda gross; we bought a Saskatoon Berry pie from a local bakery but there’s no whole fruits in the pie – just this very, very thick Sasktoon Berry sludge. Tre says that means they used too much corn starch or something like that? I don’t know – it tasted good but the consistency was pretty revolting, and hard to get past.

Anyway the tea; I had this set aside for cold brewing but instead I decided to have a hot cup (even though this is not one of those fruit tisanes that says “hot tea”) and cold brew one of the samples in my sample drawer/sipdown drawer instead. And really, it wasn’t so bad actually!

It was like Fuji Apples and berries, and was sorta lemony and is definitely tasted red. As much as any one thing can taste “like a colour”, anyway. I mean, I love this cold brewed and I vaguely recall having this one hot before and not loving it (don’t feel like checking past tasting notes at the moment – I’m just going to trust my memory) but really this was nice! It was totally weird because it was simultaneously tart and not tart, and flavourful but watery, but weird in a really good way.

I don’t know – I feel like that’s how I’m best going to be able to describe it.

Hey, would you look at that! It’s 2AM and I’m finally getting around to tasting notes for the teas I had today (technically yesterday, because it’s 2AM). That’s maybe a little sad…

I cold brewed this one, and really sadly the tin is now practically empty. There’s enough left for about one more cold brew and now I have to decide whether I want to restock this one, and I’m pretty sure I do but that means yet another shopping trip to yet another part of town, and I don’t feel like I want to do that…

Hooray crippling anti-socialness! But not really. I should go to Tea Desire; I want to restock this one and Sweet Toffee anyway, and tomorrow is payday so it’s probably the best day to do it; but damn I don’t feel up to the post office, grocery shopping, DAVIDsTEA, and Tea Desire especially because it means busing and the city recently changed all the bus routes and I haven’t learned them all yet! Wah wah wah.

Anyway, this cold brew was amazing! Vibrant, mouth watering and insanely juicy kiwi/melon/pear with just a little rose petal dusting to give it an added dimension. It’s a little sour, I’ve give it that – but the flavours are really dynamic and scream summer, and on the whole it’s sweet enough to counterbalance any sourness. More so it’s just like juice or Kool-Aid or something.

Yeah, I totally gotta get more of this. It’s just a question of when, really…

Oh man, I’ve fucked up my sleep schedule so badly.

So, uhh, “yesterday” I decided that I HAD to finish the latest season of Drop Dead Diva so I mass streamed/marathoned the whole season and I was up until 8 AM watching the finale. Like, I was up from 12:30PM the day before until 8AM, which is kinda crazy right? Tre even left for work at 7AM and was all “OMG, why are you up so early” and I had to answer back, ashamed, “No, I haven’t gone to bed yet.”.

And when I finally did go back to bed I didn’t get up until 4:30PM which is BAD because now it’s 2AM and I’m wide awake, and yes I do have tomorrow off BUT I don’t want to sleep until 4PM again and then throw myself off for when I need be back at work. And also, I just finished packing up swap stuff for VariaTEA and Cameron B. that I want to send out tomorrow so it would be nice to be leaving the house for the post office (and maybe DAVIDsTEA since I’ve been putting off that shopping trip for weeks now) at a reasonable time tomorrow.

Ick. Ew. Yuck.

Why sleep!? Why… And that is my whiny rant for the evening.

So this is my most drank tea…

As of this tasting note I’ve reviewed it on Steepster 16 times, and I know I’ve definitely had it before and not logged it – so I’m guessing that calling it my “most had tea” is actually probably really accurate to reality. It’s just so damn good! And who’d have thought that a blueberry tea would go over so well with me, given my dislike for blueberries “irl”? Not me, that’s who.

Anyway, this type I had it in my timolino and by the time I got to it the tea had gone close to stone cold – but it was still delicious that way, in fact it was kinda blueberry juice fresh, uhh, “squeezed” from the berry. I don’t think that’s the right wording, but you get the idea. Very fresh and natural tasting! Mmm!

Sipdown (131/138)!

So I cold brewed the last of the sample from Dexter and I have to admit that I did like the cold brew more so than the hot cup I had earlier in the week; I found that the pineapple flavour and strong green oolong base were both really present still but the weird, highly buttery (like popcorn butter) notes weren’t as noticeable, so I felt that on the whole I could enjoy this one more so as a cold brew.

That said, this isn’t a tea I would want to order for myself and I’m perfectly fine not having it again; I’m thankful for the chance to try it though because I would have been so very curious otherwise!

Had a craving for this one, which is odd because it’s one I’ve kinda lost interest in overtime (kinda just like VariaTEA has, I guess) but overall probably a good thing I was craving it given how much I still have left to get through.

I prepared it in my timolino and added milk to it, and thankfully it tied everything together really nicely – this one has a bit of a tendency to venture into “hand lotion” territory because of the coconut/lavendar combination, but instead this was really, really calming silky coconut with lavendar as a nice accent with honey notes.

Smooth and relaxing. Remind me to finish this one off with milk! Not so bad at all!

Cold Brewed this one!

Sadly my tin of this is getting kinda noticeably scarce and given this is one I want to continue to stock that means I’m probably going to start rationing it soon – so this latest cold brew might be the last I have of this one for a while because I don’t particularly want to run out of another Della Terra blend (this and PUDC) and then have to wait forever before I restock.

The logic is sound; at least in my head. Don’t question me on it.

Anyway, this cold brew was delish! Very creamy and silky with a rich lime flavour that was just sour/tart enough to pop but without sacrificing the sweetness. So glad I still really love this one!

Closer to a sipdown of this one than I had realized! Then I guess I’ll have to move on to sipping down another bagged tea…

This was really tart; I let it steep longer than I should have. Even still, it had a candy sweet cinnamon dusted plum aftertaste to it that was enjoyable.