A Quarter to Tea

I was not as impressed as most are with this tea. I found it primarily tasted of roasted oolong with a slight mineral tone blended with hojicha. I had only a faint apple taste at the front of the sip, and no caramel flavour what so ever. Oh well. I drank a few cups of this and will be adding the rest of this into the Here’s Hoping Traveling Tea Box. It appears most people really enjoy it so hopefully it was be appreciated by someone else. :)

This was the tea that sparked my entire order from A Quarter to Tea, it sounded too good to pass up (especially since my all-time favorite drink happens to be Mexican hot chocolate.) Unfortunately the tea didn’t really live up to its name. It’s a little sweet, with a hint of chocolate flavor and a slight kiss of heat. The flavor is nice, but not really what I was looking for, especially since the dominant flavor comes from the oolong. Still, if you’re looking for a spice tea that isn’t chai, this is a great alternative, it just isn’t something I’m likely to order again.

You can read the full review on my blog:
http://www.notstarvingyet.com/index/2016/3/29/tuesday-tea-mexican-hot-chocolate-oolong

Sample. I smell vanilla sugar. I get vanilla cake….rooibos. The rooibos is not woody in this blend so it works. Pretty good tea, but sugary. More sugary than I prefer my teas to be. It did capture it’s intended taste.

The bag smells like key lime, but lime green skittles. As soon as I soak the leaves with hot water-thick, buttery cream blams into my nose with the key lime. I was not counting time, but it could not be more than two minutes and thirty seconds. Water at around 200 F, 6 ounces, a little over a teaspoon. The leaves opened up quickly.

First taste, key lime pie. Moslty key lime custard with a strong, but thinner cream note. The cream flavor blended into the oolong perfectly. It actually made me think of Mandala’s Milk Oolong in a weird way. Specifically, the first five second steep where you can taste a weird buttery creamy candiness. It was not nearly as thick as the Mandala’s Milk, but still milky nonetheless. Some might disagree with my comparison, but the creaminess is there. The graham cracker is a lot more subtle, but if you pay attention, it’s there.

More will be written. Expect me to edit this.

I can say that I wish Lauren always had a Jade blend up because she has done a good job with every one that I tried.

I messed this sample up…great. Boiling water and soaked for three minutes.

I taste the blueberry and lemon a little bit but then a flat rooibos. Really flat rooibos. I’m thinking the flatness has to do with higher temperature…

More after it cools down…

Better after it cools down and second steep at 190 in 6 minutes. Blueberry and lemon are a really good combo. Cudos to Lauren for successfully mimicking the buttery finish of a muffin and the kind of density you get with it. The lemon really fuses with the roibos making it fruitier. I’m still not too sure about the rooibos with this Darjeeling. I like the Darjeeling a lot and it makes me wonder what it really tastes like on its own. The rooibos otherwise was fairly dominant.

Good if you like lemon and blueberry, and a good tea overall, but I prefer Lauren’s other ones. Namely a lot of her limited editions. Top few: Vanilla Cider Panna Cotta, The Key Lime Pie Oolong (maybe, about equal to the next one), Eggnog Poundcake, Cherry Wassail, Cherry Chocolate Latte Oolong, and the Chestnut Caramel Keemum

Taste and smells like a mega syrupy cherry pie. Dy leaf scent is like finely cooked crust drizzled in sugared up cherry glaze. Or that’s the graham cracker I’m perceiving.

In terms of taste, it is incredibly similar to the Chocolate Cherry Latte Oolong. Strong cherry with a smoother tea base. The Fujian is pretty chocolaty for a black tea base, but I kinda expected that from the description and my experience with this particular tea. I also taste the vanilla, but it goes back and forth from the cherry. Unlike the Cherry Latte, there is a little bit of a tartness similar to cherry cough syrup which I’m a little bit hesitant about. Some might consider the cherry syrup aspect to be more like pancake cherry syrup or the thick cherry sugar syrup that you cook in the pies. That tartness is really coming from the rosehip and the raspberry leaves, which is good and realistic, but an ingredient that I hesitate about personally. Sometimes, they overtake the vanilla but that could be just me.

I’m really glad that I sampled this tea and again I’m impressed with the Fujian tea base and the cherry flavoring. The thing that I wasn’t a huge fan of was the aftertaste from the rosehip which is just a personal preference. Rosehip IS basically the border of fruity too fruity for me despite my affiliation for fruity teas. It is also really close to cranberry, which I usually prefer in a cold drink…until I find a tea that makes me change my mind. I guess I like tropical fruit and stone fruit more in my tea. It also has the same occasional flatness that the Cherry Chocolate Latte can have if over or under steeped. I’m losing the flavor too much in those moments. Hence me having a heftier sample to experiment with.

I’ll be writing more about this tea since all I know that I like it but not in love with it as I have been with some of Lauren’s other teas. So I’m not making a full judgement yet.

Thank you Lauren for the sample!

Well, I like this one. I did not expect it to be as sweet as it was, but the cardamom and the pistachio together are really sweet. The pistachio itself is a creamy nutty. The black tea base is malt, through and through with the chai spices in the background. I love that the cardamom and pistachio are dominant being the closest thing that I can get to a Kashmiri or Noon Chai at the moment. Unfortunately, I can’t pick out the other spices as distinctly and the tea base was flat compared to the flavors in the tea. A splash of milk, however, brought the other profiles to light giving a little bit more nuance to the tea.

I’m not sure I’d buy an ounce of this personally, but I do think this is a good chai.

sample from an order from forever and a day ago. This one isn’t bad, but it’s very minty and not as much chocolate as i’d like to see. That’s not to say it’s bad, i do like the rooibos in this but it’s more mint than chocolate mint. And is still not contest for peppermint patty. heh

Whoops! I thought I had done a review for this tea…total blond moment….I’ve bought so much tea these last few months that its hard to keep track.

Anyways…I am super picky about Eg blends…I mean I’ll willingly try out samples, but buying more then that it has to both unusual and fantastic.

So far this is managing to be both.

This tastes more like Carrot Cake if steeped 175f 2 minutes. The steeping instructions for 200F for 60 seconds is meh and I didn’t get good results.

I got raisin notes, carrots, lots of toasty rice notes, and fresh green. Pretty good, and lightly sweet. A fun blend!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO THE BESTEST TEA TWIN IN THE WORLD, ROSWELL STRANGE!!! IN HONOR OF YOUR BIRTHDAY I AM HAVING CAKE (or at least the batter)!

The dry leaf of this tea seems so festive with sprinkles and coconut slivers and silver sugar balls. It seems like it would be a huge punch of flavor. With that said, in a hot brew, all those festive elements leave the tea pretty scummy and the rooibos takes over as the predominant element. The sugar adds sweetness but that just makes it sweet rooibos. Perhaps this would be better the cold brew route?

There really aren’t enough words to convey how much I love this tea—it’s everything I ever wanted out of a chocolate tea and then some. The combination of quilan oolong, hojicha, and chicory is brilliant—it gives the tea a nice roasted flavor with a tinge of bitterness on the back of the tongue, just like good quality dark chocolate. It really hits all of the right notes for me and then comes the sweet cherry flavor. This tea reminds me of the chocolate covered cherries my grandma bought every Christmas throughout my childhood. I have such fond memories of them and it was always such a treat when she would share a bite with us. Those cordial cherries from Queen Anne were her favorite (and I wouldn’t have blamed her if she had decided to hoard the entire box, those things are delicious.) This is hands down the most realistically flavored chocolate tea I’ve come across. Lauren at A Quarter to Tea really is a talented tea blender, I can’t wait to see what new flavors she dreams up next.

You can read the full review on my blog:
http://www.notstarvingyet.com/index/2016/3/8/chocolate-cherry-latte-oolong-a-quarter-to-tea

I had this the other day and forgot to log it (life has been extremely hectic lately.)

It was good, but not great. The spices shine, but the chocolate/hot cocoa flavor was long on me and the oolong base had more power (which is okay – just not for me.)

Another blue tea. Lovely smell, lovely leaves. Blueberry, or currant, and roses are what I smell and taste every time. Fruity overall. And nice.

There were no blueberry and very little flowers left over. It did not turn blue, but the taste was still wonderful. It looked like and tasted like a hot Canadian Ice Wine. I got four steeps so far and counting. All western.

I’m surprised no one else has written about the tea. It is a very good white blend. I’m also surprised this kept so well in my cabinet for over a year. Cheers to a happy new year and to preserving old jewels.

This tea is bizarrely alien. Vanilla and eucalyptus with a berry note rose from the bag. I have to write another paper for work, and I have an emergency. I know that I’m running my stash low. But I need more tea.

I brewed for a little bit and it was the usual white tea color. Near four minutes, the tea turned into a highly translucent aqua green color. The smell was like vanilla and what I’m going call fermenting grain, almost like a beer.

I taste it, and damn. I’ve tasted very few teas like this, and the few I refer to are from Lauren. You can definitely tell this is a white tea with it’s natural creamy and light texture. But the liquor is really sweet. It is practically a candy laced with vanilla and a lighter eucalyptus taste. I ‘m also tasting a bit of grain and something that I want to call blueberry, but isn’t. It’s almost sour. I’m guessing that’s the brandy.

It still smells strong, and I’m brewing it two more times to get more out of it.

I still am sore about Eggnog Poundcake and wanting more of that, but I HIGHLY recommend a try of this just because of how unique it is. I’m really not sure how else to describe this tea, and I don’t know if the berry taste is accurate, but that’s the best way that I can think of describing the other sweet aspect of this. The longer you steep it, the bluer it gets.

Backlog
The smell is lovely. Rose and bergamot all the way, drizzled with slight chocolate smooth like satin. For when I drank it, I got an incredibly smooth rosy Earl Grey. It is malty, but not overly malty as others that I’ve had. I think I have the rose and thank for that and what was left of the chocolate that was hiding into the black tea. But the rose more than makes up for it.

The lack of chocolate in that cup was my only drawback. Otherwise, I do think that this tea was incredibly successful in being a Valentines day tea. I kinda wish I have more because I cannot get enough of its smell.

Obviously, I’m going to try this again for what I have left of the sample. But I do wonder if there are any other good chocolate Earl Grey’s out there? If not, I’m still pretty happy with the taste of this tea.

Glad I sampled it. A good black tea and what needed to keep awake, but a little bit too much on the strong end for me. Cream and sugar would give this one superpowers, though.

Overall, I get MEGA pumpkin spice with a really nice maple flavor blended in the bitter and malty tea. This would probably be a good latte, or a replacement for the Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Latte for all you white girls.

Back log.

With lots of papers, assignments, exercise, and the constant snow fronts, I’ve utterly failed my goal in savoring and budgeting my teas. The following are snippets of me drinking down Quarter to Tea Tea’s.

So, glad I tried this one. Peachy and sweet through and through. I really can taste the raspberry, but it translates as fruity over all with the tea. A sugary texture pops up every now and then. I could also be imagining it.

The Eggnog remains as my favorite White tea from Lauren, but still good.

Sipdown (292)

Spice is such a strange thing because people can handle different levels of it. I know in my family, what my siblings consider spicy, I find is not. So, when I sip on this tea, though there is a chipotle flavor, it is not one that has much spice to it. That leaves me wanting more. Also, the focus is on the chipotle so there is a touch of chocolate flavor but not much and not one that is creamy like a chocolate pudding. All in all, this is not bad but it is also not for me.

I wish I had the good sense to try this next to the Mexican Hot Chocolate as I feel they are similar enough that it would have been interesting to compare their flavor profiles. Oh well.

As I sip on this, the first thing I noticed was it does have a smooth, silky texture that one would expect from pudding. There is also a slight burn at the back of the throat that comes with spice/chipotle but flavorwise, I am not getting any. Also, there is the faintest essence of chocolate but I am not sure if that is because it is actually there or if I just want it to be there given the name. It’s not a particularly bad cuppa, it just leaves me wanting more – more spice, more chocolate, more everything!

Backlong….

One of my 3 samples….the genmai cha was the most prominent note, though as the tea cooled, I did notice more of the carrot cake notes, mostly in the spices and sort of sweet and creamy frosting notes. I can’t recall much, as I used the whole sample in my travel mug. I will likely get more on a future order.

I used the entire sampler bag and did one of my odd Gong Fu/Western combo brews.
At 30 seconds:
Roastiness of hojicka and oolong with a apple aftertaste. Still more tea base, overall made me think of a Dan Cong with a fruity apple note mixed into the heavily roasted, smokey taste.
3 minutes:
I get the apple and the caramel with the base still strong. The cinnamon is starting to sneak up…
And the rest is a flux of the apple and the roasty teas getting a little bit spicier with the cinnamon. I changed the times and relied on smell and color to brew the tea.

It was warming and was more of a winter/fall tea for sure. It felt especially good on my soar throat. I might have to try it again because I did enjoy it.

I do prefer the cherry chocolate latte slightly because I love those things, but the apple was a little bit more natural with the hojicka for me. It is crispy which a baked apple should be. The caramel is the main thing that meanders in and out of the cup.

I would recommend a try of it, and specifically recommend it for those who especially like toasty teas.