52teas

Autumn Harvest! Decided to go with some carrot for my autumn harvest flavor today, so I’m trying this one from 52Teas. Opening the packet, it smells very mapley sweet (aaaaaah!) and I’m getting lots of spices. Smells a lot like a more maple-forward version of a pumpkin spice chai, and I can totally get behind that.

The steeped tea smells great! There is a slightly savory, squashy quality to it, but mostly it smells like warm maple syrup and sweet spices. The base of this tea is very rounded, it is a bit naturally sweet and tastes like it has some honeyed and raisiny notes coming through from the blend… maybe even just a touch of stonefruit. The flavor does have a spiced carrot cake taste, there is a subtle note of carrot but a lot of sweet spice, leaving a lingering sweetness of allspice and nutmeg on the tongue. I’m also getting an overall maple sweetness throughout the tea, which is very nice and sets this apart from other carrot cake teas I’ve tried in the past (which also seem to always be rooibos… I think this is my first on a black base).

Really enjoying this with my breakfast this morning!

This reemerged during the great teabox upheaval. Lovely cup. It’s all very subtle, but terrific, regardless.

This is nice and lemony without having sharpness to it. There is a slightly creamy note in the fragrance (marshmallow root maybe?) and I do barely detect it in the flavor. The green rooibos is nice in this, too. Lovely afternoon tea!

Super fab version of an Earl Grey Cream with a soft vanilla orange slant. Well, my pouch of this will disappear quickly. It’s nice to have the creamy vanilla aspect after a few days of drinking a more heavily bergamot Earl.

It’s really difficult to not sound like a shill for 52teas. Anne’s creations rarely disappoint me.

The apple and spice are a beautiful complement to the dense apple spice bread ness of the honeybush and rooibos.

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I’m not really ready for Christmas teas yet, but this was a very easy sipdown for me so I decided not to keep holding onto it and waiting for Christmas. It honestly smells amazing – very sweet and creamy with really strong, fresh notes of Spearmint. Sidebar; I think it’s hard for spearmint to not smell fresh – that’s just kind of part of the character of it as a type of mint!? This seemed especially fresh smelling to me, though. Steeped up, I found it a lot more tapered than the aroma was; though still definitely really distinctly spearmint flavoured. I thought that the body of the flavour was a little bit flat/dull with more of a muted spearmint/peppermint taste, notes of cocoa, and brisk black tea profile and not a lot of top notes to grab your attention. However, the finish is really divine; the body may be more dull but the finish is very creamy and silky. I could totally see how the marshmallow root in the blend was coming into play and leaving an impact on the flavour. Well worth the more boring body notes just to get to that enticing end of sip, which lingered delightfully.

Trick or Treat! I decided to switch things up for my Doctor Who episode viewing today and instead of making English Breakfast, make something else that was decidedly a bit British, but also fit with my October dessert theme… Afternoon Tea in a tea, Tea & Scones!

The dry leaf smells incredibly sweet and fruity, with a very strong raisin aroma and a little honey sweet. I steeped 3.5g of tea leaf (removing the raisins and orange peel from the weight and adding them back in afterwards) for three minutes in 16 oz. of 205F water. I nursed my little teapot throughout the episode while munching on McVities biscuits… mmm!

The brewed tea was a nice reddish hue, and had a strong grapey aroma from the raisins, very sweet and fruity like the dry leaf. This was a very sweet tea! It had a strong flavor of raisins, very juicy and a honeyed sort of sweet, with a grape note that was more natural that I typically find in teas (whenever I taste grape it is always that “Kool-Aid” sort of grape flavor rather than actual grapes). There was a very subtle raisin bread/oat note to the base of the tea, which reminded me a lot more of grapenuts cereal than scones, since I didn’t really pick up on any buttery notes. There was a very subtle hint of citrus right at the finish, which I think may have had a lot more to do with the base leaf than the added orange, since there wasn’t much of a distinct orange flavor; the sweet raisin flavor was very dominant. The tea also brewed quite smooth; the sweetness meant there was no room for any bitterness from the black base and I didn’t notice much, if any, astringency lingering after the sip.

It was nice, but definitely a very sweet cuppa. I think this may be the sweetest tea I’ve tried for my Treat or Treat October that wasn’t a chocolate tea!

And now it is done. I quite enjoyed this masterful blending of flavours. My foolish device will not let me slide to an 85 rating. Hopefully, I will remember to update it when I am on my laptop.

And it’s a sipdown.

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This has been my daily thing lately. Often I blend it half and half with 52Teas Strawberry Zabaglione to tone down the bergamot some. Either way, it’s a hit.

This is the sample I got with my latest 52Teas order. Boy, am I glad they sent this one along! It is rich, malty, chocolatey goodness, just like a chocolate malt from the old fashioned diner. I’m allergic to milk products, so I usually skip ice cream goodies but i’ve had malts and this is a malt! But even better in some ways, since I won’t get hives or itch for hours after having it ;)

Very nice, “solid” tea. I would actually love a little more blackberry, but I can definitely taste it and I do get a hint of buttery pastry, too. The base is smooth and strong. This makes a really nice morning tea. I do like it better with a little sugar or sweetener, but it just needs a touch to bring out the berry.

It’s cold today!! Not record breaking, but it was 13F when I got up and it never got much warmer. In fact, with the wind chill it was -12 in the afternoon. And it snowed and blowed. Just nasty weather all around. I stayed in and made progress on unpacking the sewing room. Now after hours of labor I am relaxing with a cup of tea. This one hits the spot. Mild, smooth, warm and comforting. The perfect before bed cuppa.

My 52Teas order came! And it came fast!

I ordered four teas and I had a hard time deciding which one to try tonight. I settled on this one because it sounded yummy and it was caffeine free. AAAND..!!! I have a teeny bit of my sense of smell back so I could smell it! I can’t tell you how amazing it is to smell my tea. Why they can’t find a cure for AERD I don’t know. At least the steroid shot helps for a few week a year.

Anyway. The tea. Yes. When I opened the pouch the strawberry scent was prominent, with a creaminess very like ice cream (oh! That’s something else I need to taste soon!) It brewed up not quite so dark as some honeybush teas. The brewed scent was fainter, but still present. The tea was creamy and sweet, with a teeny bit of tang from the strawberry. I am obviously not an expert on taste, but I thought the taste here was delightfully like ice cream and strawberries.

The strawberry flavour isn’t perfect – it has faded and is a bit artificial. The marshmallow is nice. I think a fresher version with freeze-dried strawberries would be amazing, but for a fairly old tea, this is a nice cup.

Well this tea is just fabulous. Rich raspberry and creamy, malty black tea. I think the raspberry flavour tastes a bit artificial because of the age of the sample. I am out of milk, but I think this would make a fabulous latte.

Trick or Treat! Decided to make some houjicha as my nightly cuppa tonight, as the caffeine is so mild in houjicha it should be fine as a bedtime tea. I picked this one up from Ost’s cupboard sale, so thank you Ost! This is the original version of the tea, not the reblend.

I love houjicha, but it is so hard to find houjicha blends. I really wish they were tackled more often. This is a very rich, woody, roasted houjicha base, but there is a distinct lemony flavor to the tea, which really comes out in the aftertaste; the citrus really lingers on the tongue. The lemon flavor also has a slightly floral quality to me, somehow; it reads with a bit of a floral sort of sweetness rather than fruity tart, I suppose? But aside from the slight floral sort of sweetness I get in the aftertaste, there isn’t anything particularly sweet, creamy, or that would otherwise make me think of cheesecake or associate this as a dessert tea; this is really just reading as a lemon-flavored houjicha. I’m enjoying the flavor, but I think it needs some added sweetness or creaminess to bring in the dessert element the name implies. I don’t milk or sweeten houjicha typically, but I wanted to try to get this closer to what I was imaginging, so I added just a mere tablespoon of warm vanilla almond milk mixed with a small dollap of lemon-infused honey to my cup, and that pushed in some of those sweet/creamy elements without overpowering the rich houjicha base.

I really want to like this one, but I just don’t. The first time I made it following the recommended directions RE amount (plus a bit extra), time, and temperature, and it just tasted like vaguely floral boiled water. I made it again, using 3x the recommended amount, and it still tasted like boiled water. It did have more fragrance this time, and I could get strawberry from it and yes, maybe a bit of ice cream. This just really didn’t do it for me, though.

Quite enjoyed this elderly tea. Aand l’ve been kicking myself that l didn’t order the recent Honeyed Strawberry offering from 52teas.

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