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With all the excitement of getting new teas in, I have not had a coconut cream pie latte in DAYS. I was thinking about that this morning walking back from turning in my paper (on time, yay!) and debating on more cheesecake chai or coconut cream pie. I decided due to our long separation it was time to reunite with this tea though.

Mmmm, still so tasty. I love the texture of this tea when it’s got milk added. It’s kind of funny because I was most underwhelmed by this pouch when I first ordered it, but now it’s the one decreasing most rapidly.

Particularly chocolatey spoonful today apparently! Perfect start to a morning dedicated to finishing a paper due at noon!

Rooibos for the daaaaaay AND my last TeaFrog sample…no trying other rooiboses on the sly, me! I’ve got my eye on you. me. whatever. I chose this tea as one of my samples because the combination sounded interesting and, seeing no reviews up here, decided to find out what it was like for myself.

The actual tea smells overridingly of orange and maybe a little of almond, so my hopes are not too high to start out with. I’m not sure what gives gingerbread it’s distinctive taste, is it coriander? Because there’s some in here. Isn’t coriander dried cilantro? Cilantro is super tasty in like, salsa and stuff. You would think it would be ginger, what with the name and all. But maybe that refers to color?

Tea itself is…interesting. In a positive sense! The orange is still the dominant flavor, and the rooibos is not, I think, particularly noticeable. It’s weird because I feel like I get cardamon and almond individually but they don’t seem to blend that well together. I have no idea what coriander tastes like, I am assuming not cilantro because that would be weird. There’s a kind of creamy taste to it, almost giving it creamsicle properties until the other spices catch up.

But, the question is, is it gingerbread? The answer is…um. Does anyone else get the thing where they drink a flavored tea and they are like “this does not taste like the thing it says it does” and then they stop and are like “wait do I remember what the thing in question actually tastes like?” and then are full of doubt and confusion? Because I am trying to think of what gingerbread tastes like and it is just not coming to me. On the other hand, perhaps I am overthinking this and if the tea DID taste like gingerbread I would know immediately. I’m gonna leave this to cool for a bit and see if it doesn’t pull a thing like the Tiramisu did and all of a sudden start tasting like gingerbread when it’s cool.

Regardless of whether or not it tastes like gingerbread though, the important thing is, is it tasty? Yes, yes it is, but I think at the moment I prefer the Tiramisu. I place it in the: I will finish the sample with enjoyment but am unlikely to order more unless something crazy happens when it cools category.

The problem with getting samples is that you want to just try them all at once. I’m trying to space out my TeaFrog samples, but…I don’t know how successful I’ll be. I’m going for two per day, so…this is number one!

So here’s what I’m thinking. Do I count this as my green for the day? If I drink it TWICE can I count it as my green for the day? How does that work exactly. I treated it as a black tea since the bag called it one, so did I kill all the useful stuff in the green tea? Dunno!

On to the tea. The aroma of both the leaves and the tea itself is VERY fruity to me. Which is weird because it is full of flowers. I’m not getting the sort of artificial sense that I am interpreting the posts that compare this to candy as indicating, though. The steep came out a very light brown. Golden brown? Sure, why not.

Trying this out, it’s quite nice! Very flowery with a light hint of fruit and the black tea peeking through. The green tea is kind of absent though, although that’s probably due to the way I prepared it more than anything else. I have to say that I really like the combination of these flowers – it gives the tea a kind of body that I don’t think a single one of them would have been able to grant. I can’t really differentiate them individually, but, on the other hand, i don’t really have much experience with the taste of flowers other than roses so it would probably be weird if I could.

Not sure that I would want this as part of my permanent collection, although I would drink it with pleasure if I had it. I was thinking to myself a while back that I could use more fruity/flowery teas for when that mood hits me, but is this the one I want? Dunno! Have to try the others first.

Tried this with a short steep time today to see what it was like. Looks like I like it most with the shortest and the longest steeping time! It’s a little weird because a lot of the other people said 7 was the sweet spot and I totally didn’t get that at all. Maybe I’m just doing it to be contrary.

Hmm I just noticed that 52teas (Frank? I guess it’s Frank, but I feel weird calling him that. That’s just me though. After two years I still haven’t started calling my thesis adviser by her first name.) was raving about this in latte form, so clearly I should try that as well.

You know, when I joined Steepster I was all like “BAH TO SWEETENER AND MILK IN TEA,” and it seems like these days I’m just like “what? add milk? sure!” On the other hand, as far as plain black tea goes, I still don’t add milk or sweetener. I just like to experiment with nifty teas! If someone wrote “holy shit this tastes so awesome when you add Dr. Pepper to it” I would probably try that as well :P Well not really, I hate Dr. Pepper.

I too ordered this with my TeaFrog order. There is SOMETHING in there that has the most overpowering fruity smell so whenever I open the box I’ve stuck them in (thanks Golden Moon :D ) it hits me first. I think it’s the Hawaiian thingy. I may have to isolate it from my other teas because that is all I get until I move like, ten feet away from my cupboard.

Once that happens, I can smell hmm, something. Not sure that it is tiramisu per se, but it’s nice! Now, before I tried this, I tried, using advance scientific techniques, to ascertain tiramisu’s place in my pastry affections. But then I realized that I love all pastry in different ways and to compare them is unfair. But I DO like it a lot. On the other hand, I haven’t had it in a while. Now that I think about it, the last time I had it was in Japan, so…god only knows if it actually tasted like Tiramisu is supposed to. At that point I was willingly eating pizza with corn on it.

Anyway so the tea. It smells quite nice, but I can’t say that it’s Tiramisu-y and the taste is…hmm, I’m not sure. Very almondy. Amaretto perhaps? I can definitely see the cherry flavor mentioned by some of the other reviewed. I don’t think the rooibos is that prominent to be honest though, the blend, while not necessarily tiramisu like works well.

I DO find this tea tasty, but I have a bunch of other rooibos samples in my TeaFrog order so perhaps one of the others will speak to me more.

Second steep: as it cools it becomes more tiramisu like! That’s weird! Clearly more experimentation is called for.

So I was reading about Morgana’s Critical Tea Fail and it must have affected my hindbrain or something because all of a sudden I am totally being overwhelmed by the ginger in this. I’m also getting a weird saltwatery taste – I wonder if that’s not just what happens when your tastebuds get overwhelmed by gingery spiciness: hard reboot and redirection to saltiness?

Blegh. Not sure if I’m gonna be able to finish this! (Well, I’ll probably absent-mindedly drink it while doing something else, so no worries there!)

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT!
My TeaFrog order came in today! The package looked like it had been through several wars and was torn in several places (the samples were OK, though don’t worry!) so I have come up with a theory for its lateness that involves a SINGLE POSTMAN transported to a WAR-TORN CANADA IN AN ALTERNATE UNIVERSE determined to return to his reality and DELIVER HIS PACKAGE AT ALL COSTS (Warner Bros: call me).

Obviously I made a beeline straight for the Earl Grey Special because…Earl Grey! Special! AND put back on the “in stock” list JUST FOR ME ( ♥ TeaFrog). The smell is certainly quite distinctive, I’m not sure I would have been able to peg it as an Earl Grey if I didn’t know that that’s what it was. There’s a general lemony, fruitiness about it, but there’s still a bit of the Earl peaking through saying ‘yes, yes I’m here, wot wot.’

This is definitely not your ordinary Earl Grey. I wouldn’t say that the lemon is dominating, but I think that the interaction of the various citrus with the jasmine has created something extremely interesting – definitely something that I could see drinking regularly. I doubt it will replace just straight Earl Grey for me, but it will be great as an Earl Grey alternative (a la Lady Grey, etc.).

Oddly, as the tea cools I get more of a taste of um hm, lemon hard candy? I’m thinking of a specific Polish candy but I don’t think that will help anyone. Lemon drops maybe? I’m not sure that I’ve ever had a lemon drop but it looks right! The moral of this story is: drink this tea while it is hot. It is a fine moral.

I have to say as a final note that I really quite like the base tea here. It is present, but not overwhelming. Very nice.

First, I would just like to say that it amuses me greatly that I must search for this tea by just writing “malted chocomat” because if I put an e without the accent mark it doesn’t come up? I am not sure why this amuses me but it does.

Tried this with a longer steep time today. Think I like it better than 7 minutes, although it does mean that the cocoa receded a lot. It was a very pleasant morning tea though – definitely good for tiding me over until I can get some more breakfast blend in. Yay!

Tried this just plain. You don’t really get the shiny cheesecakeyness as much like this, although it’s still plenty tasty. It’s just that the spices are much more dominant. On the other hand, it is hardly surprising that a chai would be better with milk so…YOU WIN THIS ONE CHEESECAKE CHAI.