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Day 12 & 24 of the Clipper advent calendar! Loving this one. The chamomile and cinnamon work really well together. I just left the teabag in, and thankfully the valerian never becomes noticeable. I really dislike the flavor of valerian, so I’ve struggled with it as a sleep/relaxation aid. Can’t guarantee that’s why I’m finding this blend relaxing, but I am finding it soothing after a long and stressful day. Great for a supermarket tea!

Day 2 of the DT caffeine-free advent calendar. This is tasty enough, I suppose, but I feel like it has more ingredients than necessary. Hot, I just taste sugar and hibiscus, which… at that point I’d rather just have a good straight hibiscus without the sugar. Cold, it does taste like fruit punch but I don’t actually like fruit punch so that isn’t appealing. On the up side, I can’t taste the stevia under all the sugar. I can see this being a good candidate for a hibiscus lemonade cold steep – Cameron B. was writing about that the other day and now I’m eager to try it out.

This is Day 4 of the 2022 Kiani advent calendar; looks like it was in last year’s calendar too. This tea makes me feel like Goldilocks (putting aside the incredible weirdness of that story – Goldy is awfully picky for a burglar and poor Baby is probably still in therapy). The first steep was too confusingly smoky; the second steep lost its creaminess; but the third steep was jusssst right.

I followed packet instructions for the first steep and brewed this up at 70c/158f, Western style based on the suggested steep type. The packet says 3 minutes, though. and I accidentally overbrewed by about 40 seconds. I suspect this accounts for some of what happened with the flavor in this steep. The brewed leaf smelled buttery and very green, so I was completely unprepared when I took my first sip and found an unexpected flavor that I couldn’t quite place. Almost smoky, but not as smoky as a smoked lapsang. Reminiscent of wintermelon without the sweetness. Before I knew it, I was more than halfway through the cup and still hadn’t placed the flavor. I even pulled out my ITMA Tea Aroma Wheel, but that didn’t help either! By the end of the cup, the best I could conclude was that it was creamy and gently smoky, but the smokiness was such an ongoing surprise to the system that I had trouble picking out the underlying vegetal notes.

For the second steep, I watched the clock a little more carefully and brewed at 160f for 3 minutes 30 seconds. It wasn’t as smoky, having more of a mineral note instead. It was also less creamy than the first steep. This allowed the green notes to shine through more and I was finally able to place them – green beans! But I missed the creaminess!

Enter steep 3. I opted for a longer steep at the same low temp – a little over 6 min at 160f. This steep finally brought out the right balance of flavors from this tea. The smokiness was faint at first and dissipated entirely as it cooled, replaced by a gentle sweetness. Against that backdrop, I was able to truly enjoy and savor the butter, green beans, and slightly mineral notes of this steep. Like the others, it had zero astringency but was slightly dry at the end of the sip in a way that just let you know it was time for the next one – sort of the function famously performed by pretzels at a bar.

Once I got the balance right, this was a really tasty tea. It’s just a little finicky.

Day 11 & 23 of the Clipper advent calendar. This one smells like a lemon ginger candy or cough drop, pleasantly so. It tastes of lemon and ginger, as the name implies. The ginger is soft rather than sharp, with an overall sweetness to the tea. It’s sweeter than most lemon ginger blends I’ve had; even compared to Happy Mondays, this one is more candy-like while that one is more spicy (possibly from the pepper). The lack of sharpness in the ginger makes me think that the ginger is not very strong so I might not reach for this as a migraine tea, but this is enjoyable in its own right. I can also imagine it taking honey well and being a good option for a sore throat.

Day 9 of the Teeccino advent calendar and my 800th tasting note! I way overdid it with the caffeine yesterday and then couldn’t fall asleep until 5am, so I had to take it easy today. As terrible as Day 8’s Chaga Ashwagandha Butterscotch Cream was, this is all the way at the other end of the spectrum. It’s absolutely delicious, with all of the flavors complementing each other wonderfully and no harsh edges. The toasted coconut aroma and flavor is on point. Technically it’s supposed to just be coconut, but it’s coming across as toasted to me, probably because of the carob/chicory/dandelion root base. I made this as an oat milk latte and it was just a liquid macaroon. Marvelous.

Day 8 of the Teeccino advent calendar. I think I might actually be more offended by the addition of the butterscotch flavoring than if this were unflavored or just had a cream flavoring. The base here is just very bitter. Then there’s a layer of creaminess, which helps cut the bitterness. But the butterscotch layer on top of it all somehow doesn’t meld well at all with the bitter base. It just sits there. It’s like frosting a burnt cupcake – you can still tell the underlying thing tastes off. Just truly awful, and worse the more I drink it. Even the aftertaste is bad. This is one of the rare teas I wasn’t able to even finish the mug of. I had to force each sip down. When I actually looked into the mug after giving up and deciding to pour out the rest, I realized I hadn’t even made it through 1/4 of an 8 oz mug even though it felt like more. Definitely not for me.

Day 3 of the Kiani advent calendar! I brewed this up in a cute little blue and white gong fu teapot. It’s sweet, slightly floral, and just a touch savory. I’m getting a strong note of freshly sliced Persian cucumber. Really, the more I drink it, the more I get spa water vibes. Further steeps bring out the same flavors, light and savory all at once, with that persistent cucumber note. It’s absolutely delightful.

My Kiani advent calendar arrived last weekend and I’ve slowly been getting caught up! It’s so pretty! Each day’s packet comes with a beautiful quote tucked inside. I’ve put aside Day 1 because it’s an English Breakfast blend and my partner likes those while I don’t, so I’m starting my notes with Day 2.

Day 2 is this cacao tea, which smells wonderful. I think I used too much water in brewing it, though – if I were going to do it again, I’d use a higher leaf-to-water ratio. It came out tasting delicious but just a little more watery than I’d ideally like. Basically like watery hot cocoa, which admittedly is what cacao tisanes always taste like, but I got the distinct impression that there was more flavor to be coaxed from these beautiful shells by playing around with them more.

As if I don’t have enough advent calendars, I decided to pick up DT’s herbal advent when they had it heavily discounted recently. So I’m adding it to the rotation! The butterscotch chai is Day 1.

I had this both straight and as a latte. While I enjoyed it both ways, I think this is a particularly indulgent blend made all the more so in latte form. There’s a lot of sugar in the blend, but it’s hard to complain when it’s so effective. I wouldn’t have picked this up on my own because of the stevia in the ingredients, but I thankfully don’t really notice it in the brew. What I do taste is butterscotch. Very butterscotch, not very chai, but the butterscotch is so good that I don’t really feel like I’m missing the spices. Making it a latte helps here, because then it leans more towards being almost like a very subtly spiced butterscotch gingerbread cookie.

I took a peek at some of the other tasting notes before posting this, and it might be helpful to flag that I was really careful every time to get a little bit of everything into the steeper (there’s big bits and little bits in the blend, and they naturally tend to separate). I also erred on the side of longer-than-recommended steeps. So it might be less enjoyable with shorter steeps or if it’s not a perfectly balanced scoop.

Day 7 of the Plum Deluxe herbal advent! I steeped this up for a nice long while, having learned my lesson from the previous days that had flavored rooibos blends. I was worried that it would have the same problems as the other fruity rooibos blends, namely that the very woody rooibos base doesn’t pair great with the fruit. Thankfully, peach is a fruit flavor that actually complements the woody base really well! It’s more natural peach than peach candy, and there’s just enough cardamom to give it some complexity without being unbalanced. Loving this.