teafiend

So I’ve been a vagrant, but I’ve settled back down state-side and bored out of my mind. Left home alone to my own devices, I’ve taken up to a new level of “tea drinking”. Which, mind you, is what my collegial buddies call my rising alcoholism.
Needless to say, this afternoon I partook in my normal beveraging. But today for the first time in a long while tea has factored in, due to a cold front on my normally lovely East Coast. So I figured I should tell you all. And the most important factor in this story is some lovely lemon flavored vodka.
Lemon flavored vodka in addition to a normally lemony flavored tea is wondrous and warming. I might even have added honey, a sugar I save for when I’ve forgotten to eat. So my friends, as colder night draw upon us, what particular concoctions do you generally prefer as a warming and buzz worthy create.

I really like pear flavored things. It seems that even the most artificial pear flavored things taste good anyways, like jelly beans and yogurt. So, when I got a sample tin of White Pear in the mail, I was terribly excited (mostly for free tea). I apparently had a cup over break, as the package is now one shy of full, but I have no recollection of drinking it. With a new cup in front of me, I don’t recall the previous sip.

Tasting it now, I initially get that its a white tea, but tones of pear. After a bit of searching, and I get a faint idea of it, but not the juicy richness I have come to expect from even the most pathetically pear-flavored things. It is most apparent when I swallow, and lingers briefly on the back of tongue. I’m thinking I might have under-steeped it (3mins) but after reading a few other notes on it I’m not as sure.

The base tea of this is nicely mellow and soothing, but I still want more from it.
Not to say this is a bad tea, its just uninteresting. A pleasant cup for a busy day or a low key change of pace from my usual fair of black tea.

Bottom line: If I’m mellowing out with a little jazz, but still need the focus of the caffeine, its a hit. If its a normal day of enjoying high stress I’d pass it over.

Long time no see…
So long, I’ve forgotten how to really think in tea…
So I drank this. It was good and warm and peachy. But I have no idea how to go about describing a oolong. A bit drying, astringent as it is. I like its slight bitterness, I may have over brewed it but I like it like that.
Hrummmm…I can’t listen to podcasts and type, and I ran out of tea to really dissect the taste when actually paying attention. $5 I’ll be slacking off more tomorrow, so I’ll make a better attempt at this.
On the absolutely generic level, I like it!

I really like this tea! I’m not a huge fan of greens, but this really is very nice. Smooth, and kinda buttery a bit. I’m getting a bit of smokiness at the tail end and a bit of astringency in the corners of my mouth. It has a heavier taste to it than most other greens I’ve had, a bit darker if you would. I feel like this should have a massive caffeine kick, which is exactly what I need.

I just heard something AWESOME. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies will be turned into a movie, starring Natalie Portman! Life will be amaaaaazing. Also! Today was my last day of classes, so I’ll be around and about more often. <3

No notes yet.

So I’m getting a lot of marshmallow out of this tea today. V. strange, but still awesome and holiday-y. I’m so at odds as to whether or not I like that its decaf. I like to being able to drink it before bed, but I need a kick to study.
I’m wondering if adding actual green tea to this will distort the flavor more than I’m okay with.
On a side note:
SNOW! I FINALLY GOT SOME. I AM PUMPED. for the 1/2 cm thats in very small patches…but its snow!

The first time I heard about this tea was well before I really became a fiend. It was in a book, I’ve long since forgotten the name, that my friends had read and would joke about. I later read the book, cover to cover as I was crushing on the girl who lent it to me, and the description the main character had given was that the tea “smelt like water that a ham bone that had been boiled for a week.” Or something very similar.

I agree, it smells like jerky. But their are other elements to it. I can definitely smell and taste the pine, along with the smokey-ness its known for. It kind of tastes a bit like ham, but I haven’t eaten meat, ham especially, in ages so I might have forgotten. As it cools it almost like the resin of the pine is in my mouth. Very piney for me, a little smoky, and kinda meaty. As I don’t like any of these things, I don’t like this tea. But its not that the tea itself is bad, just not what I like.
I’m gonna go brush me teeth.

So school has been using me as a punching bag as of late, but only about a month left to go. I honestly feel bad about not updating here whenever I’ve had a new tea, so I’m taking a quick break to fill in this one gap at least.

That being said, this tea was worth the loss of the nap I was planning on taking. When I first opened the tin (ages ago) I smelt sour and cinnamon, but with something else that adds a bit of sweetness. The smells blend oddy well together and kind of overlap in my mind,but I’m not a fan. The leaves look un-uniform, with some rolled and downy silver and other open and blackish-brown. I did really enjoy the light yellow it brewed to, and in my glass mug I could see the little hairs from the leaves floating around. I tried not to think about that too much when I maned up and took a dainty sip.

The first taste was more spice than I expected. The cucumber aspect was definitly overwhelmed, but when I did isolate it was like woah. I felt a the same sensation when I’m eating cucumbers, sans crunch, that wetter than water feeling. It also tastes pretty much what I’d expect from a cucumber tea, cucumbery goodness, when ignoring the cinnamon.
One the second steep, the cinnamon was cut back and I enjoyed this cup more than the first. One the third steep I lost interest and left it to sit for about 6 hrs.

Does any know why Adagio added the cinnamon aspect? It doesn’t really detract from the tea, or help it, but I can’t figure out why it would be there. I’ve never thought cucumbers and spices. Pickles and spice, yes. But cukes? Not really.

So I did something awesome today. It was brewing this with eggnog. Massive success! Any and all eggnog fans much try.
Per usual the chocolate was a bit more subdued than I wanted, but it had a definite presence. While I over did it on the eggnog, I still got more of a tea taste than I normally do with this tea, odd. The spices in the chai works perfectly with the eggnog, although overall it came out a bit too sweet as store bought nog so often is.

So, I’ve stopped just logging my teas if I don’t have anything new to add to because then my log would get a bit out of hand. So don’t think I’m not drinking my tea, I’m just being lazy about posting it.

Anyways, this is getting special notice as I’m on vacation up in N, and forgot to bring this one with me. No worries I’ve got my Jakee Muntz, Valentines, chocolate chai, and some Candy Cane Lane to accompany me. But I missed my PG tips (for the whole day we were separated) so when my dad went to the tiny little market in backwater NH, I asked him to poke around to see if this happened to be there.

And it was! much to my surprise and delight. Some days I can’t even find it in the big chain market and I usually have to look in the international aisle. So, this little mountain town general store had a couple boxes, and now I know what I’m thankful for this Thanksgiving.
I had a nice mug with a bit of milk and settled in front of the fire with my family (and orgo book).

This tea awesome! Its like a dessert, but totally better. I’ve always been a huge fan of chocolate and any sort of fruit and this taste so spot on I’m definitely drinking it by the potful.
The chocolate is more like a dark chocolate to me than milk, which complements the Ceylon and the strawberry very well. The strawberry notes are well defined and have the authenticity to them that make me glee. I over-brewed it a bit, as the bitterness was a touch out-of-balance, but not unbearable. A slight bitterness I feel would accent the chocolate, but I missed my mark by about 30 seconds.

Another thing that might be related to over brewing is that the mouth-feel was off. I really wanted it to be super moist, not as drying as it was. Another downside is more to due with the name perhaps, but this tea really makes me miss having a girlfriend. Ah well, thats what tea is for.

This is my first Darjeeling and I have a class in like 10mins, so this will be short and under-educated.
I most likely over steeped this because the first taste I’m getting is bitterness. Subsequent is the boldness I expect from any black tea with layers of what I’m gonna to say is floral with a bit of spices. I’n also tasting some notes that are like raisins but better. Nice clean astringent finish. I will have to re-steep and report back on that. Till then, I will refrain from rating it.

I had a decently sized, well thought out comment on this tea. But then I got distracted, ate dinner, did some work, watch a little South Park, and realized I never finished or posted the note. And then we had a system update, so it was lost.
All in all it boiled down to this tea tastes like sesame seeds and it was delicious in that sense. But I’m not a huge fan of sesame, so I won’t drink it often.
Also, the dried leaves smell exactly like soy sauce, and maybe a little bit of peanut butter if you stick your nose in there deep and good. They look super oily too. Very odd.

I had this two night ago, and wasn’t really with it at the point to write a decent commentary. Now its not directly in front of me, so I’m working from memory here.

The first impression of the smell is chocolate, infused with mint. A deeper whiff adds a smell of dry earth, very dirt like. In the taste the earthiness of the rooibos became much more prominent and almost interfered with my enjoy of the cocomint. The chocolate wasn’t to over the top sweet, and the mint tasted fresh and real. These two blended very well together, while the roughness of the actual rooibos was a bit out of sync.

I did enjoy it throughly, and will drink deeply but I will have to make sure I’m the proper mood for such a tea.

My first reaction to smelling this tea was, “oh man, I was looking forward to this, what a disappointment.” I literally gagged a little on the overwhelming fruitiness. Its not even like a sweet fruity, more like semi-fermented fruity. I’m having issues linking this unnatural scent to any sort of edible plant, never mind my beloved artichoke. Eh, I think to myself, I’ve had tea that smell like woodsmoke and taste like carmel and creme, might as well brew it up.

Thank Crickt I did! This is absolute amazing in a cup! The taste of the green tea and whatever they did to make it artichoke flavor meld perfectly into one glorious note. This is the artichoke flavor that permeates the breadcrumbs in stuffed artichokes that makes it not stuffing. But distilled and added to a mellow grassy base that only enhances the taste. Also so natural sweetness from the green really gives it a nice solid finish. My favorite part has to be that first tangy high note that settles down into the whole artichoke taste.

Very, very good. I’m usually not a fan of greens or flavored teas, but I hope this sticks around for a long time so I can re-order it. Not a perfect 100, because I have a hard time declaring things perfect being the good skeptical scientist that I am. But this is damn close.

I got my new teas! And this one for some reason has been nagging me to drink it. I used two balls for a decently sized cup, but decided against using my tea ball so I could watch them unfurl. So cool, but then I realized that this is probably why I over steep everything.
This is the darkest liquor I’ve encounter. When I went to scoop out the leaves, after about an inch I lost sight of my spoon. The leaves are long and very a chocolaty brown. When dried the definite smelt like cocoa.

Funny story, I opened my package at the start of my Entomology class out of pure excitement, and let my friends and professor smell the tins. Everyone immediately jumped to chocolate at this one and was highly confused at the artichoke. I do believe I made a few converts, even if their in it just so I bump their grade up. Thus is the power of being the TA with the grade book.

The tea smells bittersweet and a touch cocoa like, but very clearly black. The taste is strong and bold, but smooth. The feel is more coffee-like to me with that (good)acidic/tangy bite. The complexity is fun to mill over, and I feel predominately its earthy with that strange not-quite-sweetness edging in.

Now that its cooled down, I definitely tasting chocolate notes. That aside, it tastes like most black teas and isn’t quite distinctive for me to re-buy, but I will throughly enjoy my sample size.

Once again, the start to my day. More bitter than usual and I’m noticing maybe a bit more malty-ness. This was what I was sipping as my paper was being edited. A 6 pager on tea! I thought it was crap, but apparently my classmates like it. Also, my new teas from Adagio are coming in today! So pumped! Expect a lot from me today.

If I could marry a tea, it would be this one. My friend ordered some tea, at my incessant nagging, and this was one of her choices. I’ve never been more proud!
She of course got the first steep, but as it was my tea-ball, I kept the leaves. On steep 4, and this is still amazing.
Very light and elegant. The jasmine dominates, as it should, and it taste so fresh and floral and real. The white is playing an divine violin to it with its soft, rounded grassy tones. This is the sort of thing I been looking for since I became interested in tea.
This fair lady has won me over, and I will most certainly court her till I die.

I am Aries hear me roar! I like my Irish breakfast and I like my chai. Not really much to report other than it tastes like a mix of both. Still good and warming.

Yummy with milk in a travel mug while taking a Greek exam. Tasted a bit like I had put honey in it, very pleasant. My morning tea, as I am to lazy to deal with loose leaf that early.

Ah, my first loose leaf. I’ve ignored you for so long, but you’ll always be there for me.
I smelt the leaves today, very cloying which is to be expected as I’ve had it for like 2 years now. Still this is what I think of when I think tea, even if I recognize its not the best.

I am so happy I decided to buy this! So yummy and wintery and I can have right before bed! It smells very heavily of vanilla and tastes exactly as I want it to. I’m really liking the peppermint/vanilla, and the touch of cinnamon and spice is a bonus. As for the green tea aspect, its really just the vector and nothing special, but it really doesn’t need to be. A down point is that the tea does taste semi-stale, but I wasn’t really expecting high-quality leaves from this.
I like how sweet the aftertaste is especially because I refuse to put sugar in anything and rarely have sweet drinks. I do however eat cake like its my job.

So me and my compadres went on an outing today and ended up in a Barnes and Nobel. Thusly, I had to check out the cafe for tea and saw 10 tins of beauty. Harney & Sons? Do my eyes deceive me? I know my contacts need to be replaced, but seriously? Seriously. Needless to say it took me forever to pick out the kind I wanted and went with this one due to the outbreak of Vanilla and Almond. I regret nothing. I also bought Candy Cane Lane earlier in the evening, so expect a epic Virgel style on that later tonight.

The first thing I noticed about the tea was that the water was way to hot, and that the white was definitely being mistreated. Then across the store after stopping and examining books, that I forgot to take out the bag in a timely manner. Needless to say, the white was being prissy and bitter about the whole thing. After the initial shock of “how can a white be so bitter?” comes very enjoyable notes of almond with vanilla, vanilla lingering a bit longer on the tongue. There is some astringency that is ill-fitting with the texture of the tea, not as crisp as it usually feels. I want to say more and feel like I would have more great thing to say, if only the circumstances had been different. Thus, a relatively low grade, as it is very bitter.
This tea and the other Christmas tea are selling for like 16 bucks together (60 satchels overall), and there is no isolated tin of White Christmas. However, the other tins are like $10 for one so I might just have deal with having another tea when I return to buy it. Life is so cruel.
Also, mentioning being a “tea fiend” in conversation has become a new hobby, that annoys most of my friends.

I forget that a cup of caffeinated tea before doesn’t work out too well. I had this after a cup of Pumpkin Spice, and it worked well enough for me.
For a bagged herbal, its pretty alright.