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This is Day 3 of the Plum Deluxe 2022 herbal advent calendar. I’m feeling particularly sore today, so I was happy to see a ginger tea. I was even happier to realize that the ginger in here is genuinely good quality. It has that specific ginger zing you can only get from proper ginger, down to the slight burning-in-a-good-way on your lips. That ginger heat is complemented by sweetness from the apple in the blend. I got a delicious second steep out of it, too. I steeped for a really long time, though, so the flavor was very heavy on the ginger with only a little bit of gentle sweetness on the back end. Which is fine by me because I like ginger, but maybe not the best representation of everything this blend can do. I made the whole packet in a giant mug so I don’t have any left to play with, but I’d happily play around with this one some more in the future to see if I can tease out the other flavors. That delightful ginger really sells me.

After getting off to a rocky start with a blend I didn’t love for Day 1, the Plum Deluxe 2022 herbal advent calendar redeems itself with an utterly delicious blend for Day 2. The dry leaf and brewed tea smell exactly like a caramel snickerdoodle. I went for a 10-minute steep, just to get as much flavor as I could out of it (and having learned my lesson from Day 1). It worked really well. Drunk straight, the sweet caramel, hint of cinnamon, and cookie flavor are absolutely on point. As an oat milk latte, this is downright decadent. Would happily add this to a future order.

Dammann Freres 2022 advent calendar Day 3. Just assume I’m brewing all of these in my little teapot and drinking them from my delightful, perfect teacup (it’s this one and I’m obsessed with it: https://www.neimanmarcus.com/p/juliska-country-estate-flint-teacup-prod193440738?utm_=). I enjoy the fruitiness of this one, both hot and cold, but it’s a little weird on a black tea base. I think I would have preferred this flavoring on a green tea base. The black tea isn’t astringent or tannic, but it’s still heavy in a way that green teas aren’t, and it weighs down the fruit flavor. The major flavors are peach and strawberry; I really have to work to find the cherry notes. Given another chance, I might try cold brewing this one to see what happens.

Day 3 & 15 of the Clipper advent calendar. The lemon in this has a candy sweetness to it, probably from the licorice root, while the mate adds a savory note reminiscent of rosemary. I actually like this better cold – the licorice fades out a bit and it makes the lemon taste more lemony and less candy-like. I have a tasting note from 9 years ago saying that I had this and found it tart and lemon-y, and I remember genuinely enjoying it, but it’s just not doing the trick today.

This is Days 2 and 14 of the Clipper advent calendar. It’s so aromatic! Even my partner noticed the berry scent. Blackcurrant is definitely the dominant aroma and flavor, which is fun because it’s not necessarily the most common flavor in berry blends. The texture of this tea is maybe not for everyone though. It’s syrupy, in a way that I find pleasant when hot but a bit much cold. I made the last of it into a tea soda and that was a fantastic choice – highly recommend! 

Dammann Freres 2022 advent calendar Day 2. Like Day 1, I brewed this up in a little Western-style teapot so I could drink it from a teacup & saucer set. When I saw the company describe this as evoking brioche, I hoped it might be similar to or a dupe for ATR’s Brioche. Unfortunately it’s not, but it is tasty! It’s bready and has a fun candy orange note. It pairs nicely with a Te Company pineapple linzer, which has a similar flavor profile. Plus it holds up well on the second steep. I’ve never had panettone so I can’t speak to flavor accuracy, but I enjoyed it anyway!

Plum Deluxe has been on my to-try list for a while so I was excited to use the advent calendar as an opportunity to try out a bunch of their teas! I got the herbal calendar, so that I could drink through it at any time of day without worrying about maxing out my caffeine for the day or caffeinating too late. Day 1 of the 2022 herbal advent calendar is called Strawberries n’ Vanilla. Unfortunately, I threw out the packet before realizing that there’s no Steepster listing for this blend and it’s not on their website, so I couldn’t create a listing. 

I had to play around with it a lot, but the long and the short of it is that this blend doesn’t really work unless you add sugar to it. I don’t mind adding sugar sometimes to give tea flavoring a boost and really take it over the top, but if I have to add sugar in order to coax the flavor out then it’s ultimately not going to work for me. And my ability to taste and smell is otherwise working fine today, so it’s thankfully not an early covid symptom.

That’s not to say this wasn’t tasty once sweetened! Even with a short (3-minute) first steep and really long second steep, the second steep is relatively weak. So it makes more sense to just aim for one really solid first/only steep – I found that 7.5 minutes worked. Either way, I found that the brewed tea smelled faintly of strawberries and had a strong woody rooibos base. With the longer steep, I was able to get some soft, sweet strawberry and gentle vanilla flavor, but it was still dominated by the base. Adding oat milk didn’t do anything to change the flavor balance, it just made it creamier. But adding sugar and oat milk made it taste like a strawberry milkshake or strawberry taffy. Or just sugar alone, which is what I did with the first cup, brought out a nice, tart strawberry flavor and creamy vanilla. Really, if I could get this flavor without having to add sugar every time I’d be much more into this tea.

So excited to be trying the Dammann Freres advent calendar this year! I paid international shipping for it, which feels beyond indulgent, but it’s absolutely beautiful. This tea is Day 1! The dry leaf smells strongly of vanilla and bergamot, with an almost equally intense jasmine note. I made this in a little Western-style teapot so I could drink it from a teacup & saucer set. It brews up orange, presumably because of the black tea. The first impression is bergamot, followed by a pastry-type vanilla that lingers long after the sip. That initial bergamot hit also has a bit of that astringency that black tea sometimes has. The floral note from the scent of the dry leaf doesn’t really come through in the taste, but it’s a flavorful brew even without it. You CAN do a second steep, but it has to be really long (15+ minutes) and will come out paler. It still has a nice vanilla flavor with strong bergamot notes – a reversal of the order from the first steep – and no discernable floral element. Overly, this was really tasty and enjoyable. I’m looking forward to this calendar! 

Amongst my various and sundry advent calendars this year is the one from Clipper, which is super cute! I love the design! I like that it’s nice and compact – basically a fancy version of a regular teabox – but still has a nice variety and is thoughtfully designed. I don’t mind that it uses every tea twice (going from 1-12 and then repeating in the same order from 13-24), but the system designed for keeping it a surprise is suboptimal. Each individual teabag has a cute design and a number on it, not indicating what tea is inside, which is what you’d expect from an advent. BUT, once you open the pouch, the only way to know what kind of tea you’re drinking is to read the side of the box – where ALL of the teas are listed. So I have to put in extra effort to avoid spoiling the surprise, when it feels like they could have just printed the name of the tea on the tag? Presumably that would have been more expensive and that’s why they didn’t, and as inconveniences go it’s not the end of the world (especially at this price point), but it is annoying.

So! To the tea! Days 1 & 13 are Happy Mondays. I somehow didn’t know that white hibiscus is a thing, but it’s an ingredient in this blend! But also because of that, I don’t really know how to evaluate its presence here. I’m not picking up on any typical hibiscus flavor. There’s definitely a nice lemon flavor here, that maybe the hibiscus is contributing to? There’s also a pleasant spicy sharpness. It seems to come more from the pepper than the ginger, but I like it. Lemon pepper is a winning spice combo for a reason. Definitely better hot than cold, but not entirely undrinkable cold.

Day 6 of my Steepster homemade advent calendar from Kelmishka! I brewed this up as a bedtime tea. As described, the chamomile is redolent of apple. That’s the primary flavor by a mile, but there’s also a nice secondary note of peppermint. I’m not really tasting any ginger though. Overall, very soothing!