ETTE TEA

Revisiting this tea today whilst curled up in front of the TV. I repurchased this tea from Ette’s Black Friday sale for my sister. i gave her a cup of it when i first recieved this tea as part of a group buy a while ago. i remeber being quite fond of it then.

While the flavor has not stood up well to the ziploc baggie it was inside of, I can still get a very decent cup out of it. It’s as sweet as I remember, creamy, desserty and has hints of graham crackers. The houjicha is stronger, with it’s nutty goodness. I am surprised that this blend has lasted the neglect I have given it.

Oh yeah, it also goes great with pumpkin pie.

This whimsically-named little tea caught my attention at milk oolong and held it… riiight up until bergamot. Put those torches out, I’m just telling the truth. I do enjoy the occasional earl grey, but the potential for bitterness always kind of put me off. Furthermore, I’ve never encountered bergamot outside of the Grey realm, so I went back and forth about this tea before I decided, what the hell, milk oolong is my jam, maybe I’ll be pleasantly surprised. Turns out I am. The first steep is very strongly bergamot, but the milk oolong rushes in and saves my damsel tongue from the citrus dragon. I’m hoping subsequent steeps will be a little more oolong and a little less bergamot. Still, this is one of the rare instances where I don’t really mind it overly much. It is very reminiscent of the “creme” versions of earl greys I’ve had before, but much lighter and very smooth courtesy of the oolong. I’m also getting soft floral notes, though I honestly couldn’t say whether that’s the forget-me-not blossoms, the lotus stamens, or both of them working in concert. My only complaint is that I can’t really detect much coconut, though that could easily be blamed on the scoop I took out of the caddy, as I don’t see any coconut flakes in my infuser. Next time!

Also, I feel like it’s worth mentioning that this tea is gorgeous. I love looking at it, with the little blue flowers that I mistook for cornflower blossoms, and the coconut flakes rising out of the blend like shark fins. The oolong pellets are made up of variegated greens, ranging from nearly-brown to jade. Watching it unfurl was half the fun.

I’ve had this tea for a while, and I’ll admit upfront that it did not endear itself to me immediately. I think I was expecting a black tea instead of a green based on the look of the leaves and the color of the liquor, and my taste buds were feeling put out as a result. However, after months spent languishing in an unlabeled little baggie in the cupboard, I discovered it again and tried it anew, cold-brew style. Once I figured out what on earth it was, I realized I quite enjoyed it, and would commit to a tin of it in the future. I really love osmanthus in my oolongs, and it happens to compliment the cinnamon in this cup really well. It isn’t as toasty as one would expect from the leaf color, which is just as well, because I’m not a huge fan of overly roasted greens. Instead a light, breezy sweetness is coupled with cinnamon spice, to the point where I can practically feel it rolling across my tongue. It’s something like an apple pie reduction, minus the apple – if that even makes any sense, ugh. Word failure. There’s something distinctly pastry-like about it, but I’ve never had the titular dessert before, so maybe that’s why I’m grasping at straws here. Anyway, I’m really glad that I gave it a second try, even if it was mostly inadvertent on my part.

additional notes: I remember I wanted to pass this one along a while ago, as it wasn’t a favorite, but it’s still lingering around and too old to pass to someone so I might as well drink it. Having it again (six years later. cough.) I’m not thinking it’s as bad as I remember. It’s still much more grapefruit than a bergamot, which is different. I think I was much more in love with Earl Cremes six years ago and this is not that. I’m more generous now. Or my steeping is better. I’m just surprised this has any flavor at all. I enjoyed it! A couple cups left.

Thank you for including this one in the package, Nicole! I had this one a few days ago so bear with me. I’ve heard this one talked about around here on Steepster and I needed to try it! Try all the Earls! I’ve heard this one sparkles, but looking at it, I don’t see much. It’s also supposed to have vanilla but I don’t taste it at all. The bergamot on the solid black tea seems slightly more citrus/grapefruit to me than a traditional bergamot. Or maybe there isn’t any cream which is why I’m not liking it as much. But there should be vanilla! This isn’t the most spectacular Earl, especially as it looks a little pricy on the site. (Forgot exact parameters I used.)

So… I finally got around to trying this. And it’s… okay.

Love the sparkles – those don’t disappoint. And the side of my hand was silver dusted when I reached in the bag for tea. :)

The flavor is fine. Nothing awesome, nothing really unusual going on. And I generally prefer stronger bergamot. Glad to have some to try and I’ll experiment with steeping a bit.

It took me forever to get around to trying this tea because it’s hard to distract me from my love of unflavored tea gong fu sessions, but I actually got to it at work today.

Under light, you can totally see the sparkles. Fun! It also tastes pretty great. I’m not a huge fan of earl grey, but like it occasionally. This hit the spot. The flavoring wasn’t too powerful and the overall texture of the tea was smooth. I didn’t add anything, and it was pretty great for a gloomy SF morning at work.

Another sample from beelicious thank you!!!

this one tastes like an average genmaicha to me. Not that it’s bad, but the mango flavour is a little lost in the brew. I was hoping for something that tasted much more like actual sticky rice, whereas i found this one to be a genmaicha…with a hint of mango. Still enjoyable, but not what i wanted this tea to be :)

FInal Count: 118 but i picked up 2 of the new teas from david’s to try and received a couple from dex that i still need to add in. :)

thank you beelicious sadly this one is too much jasmine for me. I am getting mostly jasmine and not enough lychee. I do enjoy the potential of this blend, and it’s one that i’d recommend to a number of people. It’s just not for me :)

This is an interesting blend. thanks to beelicious for sending some my way. osmanthous and cinnamon..those are the first things i taste. There’s an element here that reminds me of cake but it’s not super sweet or strong. I am enjoying this quite a bit.

Cold Brew Sipdown (114)!

I’m still not really into this tea, but at least the cold brew had a bit more presence to it. I thought it had really weighty, earthy Pu’Erh top notes that made it feel a bit more commanding, and a little bit of a sweet body. It was still nothing like described though – and of all the Ette Blends easily the worst.

However, the Ette group order was a really, really good experience overall! I really liked, Lychee Konnyaku and Mango Sticky Rice – and though I’m still finishing off Pandan Chiffon, it’s been really solid too. All three of those blends are ones I’d consider ordering again if I was a more rich person.

Ok, this is the last review of the night.

Unfortunately I’m ending on a bit of a sour note though; this was the last Ette Tea blend left for me to try and it really disappointed me. I’m not big into Chai at all so I had low expectations to begin with and they still weren’t met!

It just brewed up so incredibly, painfully weak and bland. I got a hint of cinnamon and nutmeg and just a whisper of citrus in the same way that you’d taste lemon of someone squeezed like three or four drops of lemon juice into a glass of water. Except, it’s supposed to be tangerine and not lemon. Also, I kind of hate super spicy teas; I can only imagine how mild this Chai would taste to someone who’s all up in those spices. The base didn’t seem to contribute either; I was hoping for maybe some earthiness from the Pu’Erh but neither it nor the black tea really brought anything to the party. Instead the party flat lined.

Have you ever been to a “dry” party? And not, like, the kind of party where you know no one’s gonna be drinking so it’s cool and you do fun shit like see how many pizza pops you can eat in one sitting and play some Apples to Apples; but the kind where you go prepared to get totally smashed, vomit on some stuff, just lose your freaking mind and even have the next day set aside as a recovery day. However, instead of that happening no one’s brought any booze or there’s so little you can’t even reach ‘tipsy’ level of drunk. So you just kind of sit around…

That’s my metaphor for this tea.

This tea has so much potential!
I’ve had sticky rice teas before that remind me of rice from Japan, while it sounds odd they are quite good :)
Unfortunately, this blend uses a toasted rice which will not produce a sweet and savory taste that sticky rice has- so the title is misleading. If you add cinnamon to this, which I did not do, this would count as a dessert tea because the roasted taste and mango come off that way. If there was say botan rice candy in this tea with the same ratio of mango and tea leaf, this tea would excel. The mango is good yes, but the way it is paired with the toasted rice does not and will not work.

First, thank you Nicole for organizing a group order. I have been eyeing Ette on Instagram for awhile but the amounts and cost steered me away.
I thought this would brew a cup that smells like mid 50 year old women perfume smell… but, instead it smells nasty. If it tasted like it smelled this tea would be doomed. However, it does not. There is an interesting taste to this, I won’t associate it with lychee because I’ve ate them before and they are different than what I am tasting. It’s a fruity taste, but a warm semi dry fruit taste. Overall this is smoother than I thought it would be as a hot steeped green tea with fruit in it. I shall cold steep it now as well!

Another older tea from my stash, but I was craving genmaicha Friday night and even if the flavouring is weak/has degraded with age the thing about genmaicha is that it sort of lasts forever so I figured that best case I’d get a genmaicha with mango and worst case I’d just get genmaicha…

To my surprise, I could taste a hint of mango in the steeped cup but mostly this was just toasty and cozy genmaicha. A classic flavour – and while it’s disappointing that much of what made this a unique genmaicha has been lost to time, I can’t fault the genmaicha base itself because it’s solid.

Earlier in the week.

This one continues to be a bit of a disappointment for me; as a straight Genmaicha it’s solid – but this is not supposed to be a straight genmaicha, and it simply can’t nail the mango or coconut notes consistently. This cup did have a TINY amount of mango to it; but it was really only present with the assistance of agave to punch up the flavour a little bit.

It’s sad – and I think the order this is from is one of the biggest regrets I have tea order wise, just… ever.

Not nearly enough mango to satisfy me in that department, but the toasted coconut and overall roastiness of the genmaicha is really doing it for me with this one. I just feel like I’m kind of missing out on a key part of what this one is supposed to taste like? Maybe next time I’ll add a pinch of my mango matcha and try and coax out more of that mango element…

Kind of feel like I need to lower my rating from the ‘91’ it’s currently sitting at: this is still a good tea, but it’s not delivering COMPLETELY on the profile it’s boasting tasting like.

Recently picked up a tin of this in an online order during a period where ETTE was running a free shipping promo…

I have to say, that this might be one of the most frustrating ordering experiences I’ve ever had with any company. For starters, it took nearly three months for this tea to get to me. I mean, it was coming from Singapore so I expected it to take a while, but those three months the tracking for this delivery wasn’t updated AT ALL. So, after about month two and a half I had pretty much just written off the whole order as having been lost along the way. Like, I realize this is something the company has NO control over, but if a shipment has tracking I damn well want that tracking to be updated, especially if it’s coming from overseas…

Then, when the package arrived pretty well everything in it was wrecked. The bag with my Kebaya Blue sachets was open and they were just lying around in the box, and the tin of this tea was open, and poured pretty well everywhere. The only thing in tact, thank God, was the matcha I’d ordered. The damaged tea isn’t entirely ETTE’s fault; but the fact that this tin had ZERO protective wrapping in the box certainly didn’t help. Like, the box itself that this was shipped in looked crushed like something VERY heavy had been placed on top of it, and I think that’s the main culprit here but just… damn…

So, I estimate that I lost roughly half the tin of tea because it had either fallen out of the tin and, subsequently, the hole in the side of the box that had split open from it being crushed OR it was stuck to the masking tape that the post office had used to try and patch said hole, and could not be salvaged. The rest was just loose in the box, and I had to try to scoop up as much of it as possible/salvage it from the box.

I was really fucking mad.

But anyway – I finally got around to making my first cup of this one last night. Honestly? It was disappointing. Now, I have to admit that part of that has to be how much I had built it up in my head, and the months of having to wait for it. Plus, who’s the say how all the factors from shipping, like being loose in a box for potentially months, affected the flavour of the tea…

The main issue was just that it tasted really bitter/charred. I was very careful steeping this, as I am with all my Genmaicha blends, but it was just so off. It tasted like burned/overly roasted brown rice – ashy/char like, with a bitter edge from the green tea. No mango notes to speak of, either. Only saving grace was a bit of sweetness from the coconut in the body of the sip. Still, that’s one very small pro next to a huge list of cons…

Hopefully the rest of my salvaged tin is ok.

All I know is that I’m probably not going to be ordering from ETTE again after this last experience. It’s just not worth the headache.

Sipdown (119)!

Made the last of this one in my timolino to take for work – it was just as delicious this second time as it was the first time around. Definitely worth note that this one travels well! Though there were some flavor differences, there was less of a coconut flavor but the mango flavor was much stronger. It was equally pleasant to the flavor first time around!

I was working a file maintenance shift yesterday; one of the things I put sale tags up for was this new line of Gelato we’re carrying. What was one of the flavours? Mango Sticky Rice! Of course I 100% bought a tub. I haven’t tried it yet – but look forward to it!

Today’s word of the day is… Whodunit: “a narrative dealing with a murder or a series of murders and the detection of the criminal”.

This is the tea that got me interested in Ette tea in the first place! The idea of mango and genmaicha is definitely very, very appealing. Really, any genmaicha with a twist gets me excited – it’s the first variety of green tea I ever really liked, and I’m still incredibly partial to it.

Dry, this is very roasty smelling with a distinct, and very fresh coconut aroma. I’m not getting much of the mango yet, but I can see several chunks of it in the dry leaf so I have faith that it’ll shop up in the flavor. For my preparation, I did a very quick 1 minute steep Western style in boiling hot water; I find that’s long enough to draw out the flavour, especially the roastier notes of a good Genmaicha, but not long enough for the brew to get bitter.

This method has worked well here; this has a very strong toasted rice flavor with absolutely no bitterness. It’s also accented by a lovely, clear toasted coconut flavour that pairs phenomenally with the rice and subtle vegetalness of the green tea. There’s also a slight creaminess to the coconut as well. There are some very light nutty notes as well, imparted both from the toasted rice and the green base. The black tea in the blend is a little less pronounced than the green; but I think that’s how it should be.

The mango is less obvious than anticipated, but still very much present and distinct; true to Ette Tea’s description of their blend it’s more show cased in the end of the sip and aftertaste and the sweet, tropical and fruity flavour it provides alongside the coconut does make me think of Thai food, though I don’t know if it specifically conjures up images of sticky rice. It’s delicious though!

This is an incredible tea, and while it’s not totally what I imagined it to be at this point I don’t think there’s a thing I’d change about it either. It’s very comforting, and because of the gentle wave of flavours both sweet and slightly savory I think it makes a really nice tea to curl up with at the end of the day. That said, unlike I would do with a conventional Genmaicha I think this would also work very well iced as something to take with you on a day out and about: the unconventional fruit flavors give this a little more life and lend themselves well to cold prep.

This is definitely my favourite Ette blend so far (something I feel like I’ve said with nearly all the Ette Teas as I’ve had them) and I would definitely buy more of this one!

Today I discovered that all that glitters is not gold. It’s silver sprinkles.

Thanks Nicole for putting together this group order! While I am not as keen on earl grey as the next person, this is a really nice earl grey. I love the combination of vanilla and bergamot in this particular blend. I thought I didn’t get any silver sparkles in my wee bit, but as soon as I poured a small cup for myself, yup, there they are! Just swimming in the depths of my teacup. I nice smooth earl grey A+ would recommend

This sounded good, but it’s a bit boring. The base is a nice thick, smooth black. There is a hint of tangerine and a hint of spice, maybe nutmeg, but it’s not knocking my socks off. Maybe I expect too much?

This is the tea that convinced me to go in on the group order. My husband and I always get mango sticky rice when we go out for Thai, which is usually at least once a week. We Love it! So, when I saw there was a tea that tasted like it, I couldn’t resist checking it out!

We just got back from Thai for lunch, and guess what we ate? ;) So let’s see how this compares! I love genmaicha, so this should be good. It smells amazing. Actually, the aroma of the steeped tea is exactly like mango sticky rice! Sweet, creamy coconut, mango, rice…it’s all there! Unfortunately, the flavor doesn’t pop in your mouth. It’s kinda blah. I noticed I was tasting it more after I drank it all, like it lingered in my mouth, but you really gotta inhale the aroma as you are sipping to really get the flavor.

Sipdown (117)!

This is the second Ette blend that I’ve finished off as a cold brew when I initially had it hot, and I think that I may have to try each blend this way – cold brewed and hot, because so far my observations have been that each tea can taste dramatically different depending on the two prep styles.

While Kris Grey was much improved as a cold brewed tea, I definitely think that had I tried this one cold brewed first (like I was sort of inclined to) I definitely wouldn’t have liked it as much.

The flavor of the jasmine is drastically more drawn out as a cold brew, and the green tea is now clearly more dominant than the black tea used. There is also quite a bit less cranberry flavour, which is perhaps the most disappointing thing. However the lychee is very, very intense. I’d summarize by saying this has now shaped up to be a Jasmine Green tea with lychee; no longer a lychee tea with jasmine.

I’m still liking it – but definitely not as much. Ultimately, I think I’d maybe consider ordering this one; it’s all dependent on falling in love with enough of these Ette blends to be able to justify the fairly steep shipping cost, and the dollar conversion. It’s not the best lychee tea I’ve had; but it’s certainly up there! However, without the cranberry an important dimension of the flavor is definitely lost…