Tea Time

A bold tea, one that brews up quickly and has little distinguishing notes to it other than it’s faintly creamy, smells vaguely like an orange pekoe, and has a few notes of something sweet in it that I’m struggling to place. Honey, perhaps? Maybe a honeyed fruit? Wish I knew more about this tea prior to drinking it, as that would likely help my enjoyment. Off to investigate! :)

EDIT: Bah. This is a tricky one to find online. Does anyone have a URL for the company?

Thank you OMGsrlsy for sharing this with me! :)

Finishing this sample off.

Too-long-hiatus-from-Steepster, be gone! Drinking this tea this morning at the office. Mellow flavors for a black tea.

My boss brought me this tea, during her latest visit to the office. Quite a pleasant, light black tea. Made a whole, 4-cup pot of it and shared it around the desk cluster.

Nice kick in the pants this morning.

Not a bad tea, but… somewhat cardboardy. Or flat. :/ It doesn’t have the full flavour I’ve come to expect, although it is a strong tea with a lot of malt that is good with milk and sugar.

I haven’t had a kick-in-the-pants assam for a while.

This is that tea.

So good. So assam-y. Tasty with cranberry honey and almond milk.

I’ll need to try it plain at some point, but wow. Strong teas to have at breakfast err, brunch. I’ve MISSED you.

Steeped 3 min today and it’s less overpowering. Such a good tea before bed, though.

Night. :)

I’m thirsty, so I’m making this iced.

I know, I’m weird, whatever. It should go well with my saskatoon berry sorbet.

It works well enough, although it’s quite rooibosy. Oh wells. I’ll probably still manage to drink it. Definitely prefer this tea hot.

(1 tbsp in 12 oz for 5 minutes, over ice and cool water to 1 litre)

I stand by my initial claim – this is good. Again, the honey part is really similar to DavidsTea Honey Bee.

But this is a sleepy time tea. Rooibos, chamomile, lavender. A little woody, and sweet from the flowers and honey flavour.

I really like it.

SMELLS SO GOOD OMG.

I might put more chamomile in it because this is going to be an evening tea for me for SURE.

And actually, it’s really nice. It smells a lot like DavidsTea Honey Bee, which can be cloying (although it’s delicious and caffeinated). Taste-wise, it’s quite mild. I can taste the rooibos and some sweetness from the chamomile. The lavender is surprisingly faint, which is perfect. I was concerned it would be soapy.

The honey taste is more of a smell/evaporating off the tongue type taste than any sweetness or extra flavour during the sip. I think it’d be really nice sweetened with a wildflower honey. I’m just having it with a splash of almond milk tonight.

Yum. Glad I decided to pick this one up instead of another caffeinated tea!

(PS. Tea Time also sells some Mountain Rose Herbs blends. Like Fidnemed. Which they were sadly out of. Super excited to find it locally, though.)

PS: 1024 made me giggle.

Backlog from February 1.
Wow this is a super strong cup of tea. I added a bit of honey and almond milk to it. Perfect for those mornings that I am really sluggish and want that wake me up cup. It brewed so strong that it looked like a cup of coffee! (The strongest black tea I have in my tea cupboard☕️

Very nice ctc tea that is a bit “lighter” in strength than Irish Breakfast. I have been trying to find a nice cup of breakfast black tea that I don’t need to add sweetener to (aside from the almond milk). I think I have found a good contender!

Pretty sure this is what I had at the newly opened coffee/tea shop just a few blocks from my place. Interestingly, it’s called Camellia yet they’re more of a coffee place, AND there’s a tea house also opening next door.

So, I wanted to try something unique, and this called to me. Soursop?! Okay. It smelled like a dark berry with a hint of sourness, however brewed it smelled more.. floral. I ended up dumping it unfortunately, as it was all floral and soapy tasting to me. I’ll have to talk to the shop owners to see if it was perhaps their first brewed tea made (it well could have been) or if this is how the tea is naturally supposed to taste.

Backlog
Ok I didn’t realize I had never written a tasting note for this. Since I have none of this tea left that I had purchased a small bag of, I figured this was the best time as any to write about it. The dry leaf the tea smells kind of like bubblegum! I am assuming it is because of the grenadine flavoring. The tea was a bit sweet for me. It reminded me of fruity flavoured kids cough syrup with a medium black base and although I didn’t dislike it…it wasn’t something I would regularly stock either. My coworker was telling me how much her mom loved it so I gave the rest of my bag to a better home:)

This was the tea that I was trying to compare the French Blend to. This is a classic Earl Grey tea with well balanced lavender notes. Never thought I’d like lavender in tea, however I have had lavender shortbread cookies that I quite liked so why not tea too! I much prefer this simple addition of lavender into their Earl Grey to the more complex French Blend I tried yesterday.

Ok so I guess I am not a huge fan of florals. I like chinese Jasmine on it’s own, and earl grey but this is one interesting tea! I bought some of this to compare to the Versailles Earl Grey that Tea Time did for my niece. It seems to have way too many flavours going on for me to really enjoy this blend. Sometimes I taste Earl grey sometimes jasmine and sometimes I guess the lavender or rose. Wow quite different, not gross or anything but not quite my thing either. Not sure if this will grow on me…maybe I have to develop my palate more.

ETA: as the tea cooled down a bit the flavours balanced out and blended together better. I’ll have to remember to let it cool a bit before I drink it next time.

I picked up a small bag of this to compare to the English Breakfast Decaf that Tea Time carries. I love this tea just as much. I do not seem to have a well developed enough palate to really tell the difference between the two. I will have to do a side by side comparison when I feel better. I actually remembered to taste the tea before I added milk and honey! This tea is “sweet” enough and not bitter brewed at 3 1/2 minutes so that I was able to drink it black. Wow. Will have to try this with the English Breakfast next time to see if I can drink it without milk and honey as well. All in all a keeper especially since there aren’t many decaf teas to choose from!
ETA
Made this as an iced tea today sweetened and with a bit of lemon. It was a hit!! My son actually said to dad “you have to try this it’s so good!”

Ok I wanted something different from English Breakfast so I brewed a cup of this haha :)
Funny thing is with this sore throat the teas don’t taste that different even though I know they really are a bit different. Of course I added honey and almond milk to this too. If anything at least I will be hydrated. This is a really finely cut Irish breakfast tea so you need a very fine mesh filter or even a paper tea sac filter. This is nice strong and dark tea.

Trying this black today. Although I don’t find it bad straight I think I prefer this one with a bit of milk and honey. Compared to the Courtlodge I would say this is less “sweet” and less smooth. Really don’t know how to describe the differences especially since both are Ceylon base teas but they are slightly different…possibly it could be the difference in brewing, but for now I’d have to say I prefer the Courtlodge if I were to drink it straight.

This is a good basic English breakfast tea. I have been drinking tea non stop and have been comsuming anything that I could add honey to because of my sore throat :( Anyways I made a small pot of this delicious black tea after I got off work at 3pm. Bonus is there is no caffeine (or almost none). This tea is always stocked in my tea cupboard!

Mmmm super nice strong black tea that I usually use to make stove top Chai with. Brewed it for approx 3 mins in a teapot and had it with honey and almond milk today. It was great…why didn’t I brew it this way sooner? I think I have had this tea in my cupboard for well over a year or two and I never thought to just brew it in a teapot. How silly!!