The Tea Centre

sipdown! I don’t know how to explain this one. It reminds me of wild mountain black without that juiciness that it has. I have enjoyed this one quite a bit. It is not a smokey keemun, which are generally my favourite but this was a really nice black. The last little bit of this is headed to one of my tea friends to try :) Thanks again for this great one alice!

i had 2 cups of tea today. I won’t get in to my day, but it suffices to say that I’m currently hiding from my blackberry having 5 mins away to drink some rye and coke before the next headache starts. As a result…i didn’t get to fully appreciate this while i was drinknig it today but it DID get my through the day. I did NOT add maple syrup to this one as i usually do with keemuns and it was a really wonderful cup of tea. thank goodness i’ve got more to enjoy later!

Today’s cup of this is much less coconut-y and more fruity tasting?? Thats happened with a few teas today so maybe my tastebuds are having a weird day. This is an interesting tea, though the difference today is pretty huge from the first time i had it. I like it, but it wouldn’t be a repurchase, which makes me a little happy since getting this from Australia would be a pain in the ass :) Thanks so much for the share though alice as it’s been an enjoyable cup :)

This is another tea from Alice and i can’t say that I’ve ever had a “cherry ripe” bar but i was curious. I’ll have to try this with milk next time as i mostly had a sense of the coconut while drinking this. There wasn’t a lot of cherry or cranberry. However, this is chocolatey and coconuty. Coconut isn’t my favourite taste but i was still looking forward to drinking this. I’m glad i have a few more cups! thanks Alice!

this is a sipdown, even though Alice was generous enough to send me enough for a bunch of cups. I just drink big cups AND want to share/return the tea favour with tea friends. So the rest of this is going off to a mystery tea friend since i think she/he might enjoy it. ha! this isn’t bad. i found myself drinking it and wishing it was just a little bit more apple pie like, but still enjoying the flavours and the fact that the tea base is still present, unlike a vast majority of flavoured teas. So thank you Alice this was enjoyable!

sipdown! (174) I had another cup of this today and it was pretty tasty. Less malty than a number of assam i’ve had with a mild bit of astringency. Over all a decent cup. Thanks for sharing Alice!

I received this one from Alice in our swap and honestly, i just wanted to drink it because the name is fun to say. :) It also helps that it’s an assam, which i love. I don’t recall much of this one as it’s a backlog from yesterday but i do remember enjoying it thoroughly. I have just enough for a small cup to really pay attention to it, while still being able to send a taste to Terri for her to try :)

I started a new job this week and my workplace doesn’t have a kettle (what?!) so I’ve not been drinking too much tea, mostly coffee. I did an overnight cold brew of this though and it is delicious, like sunshine in a cup.

I’d never cold brewed a darjeeling before but it worked really well. I left it a bit longer than I usually would because I slept in and it is really interesting to get the flavour of a darjeeling that strong without the astringency.

I am still surprised by every sip at how citrusy this tea is. Such an uplifting drink!

I think 85C is better than the 80C I brewed this cup at, 85C has a more intense flavour but not too bitter or astringent.

First off this tea has a beautiful soft straw colour and a fruity/citrusy scent. It really smells amazing. It is a green style darjeeling and you can definitely pick up those vegetal notes but they are far more delicate and subtle than in something like a japanese green tea. Even if you don’t usually like green teas, as long as you don’t mind a bit of astringency, you could probably enjoy this. It isn’t suitable for milk and great by itself but if you wanted to add something, lemon would be a nice match.

In Perth after weeks and weeks of rain it seems like today spring is finally here and this tea is just perfect to sip from a glass cup in the sunshine.

This one has mixed reviews but I love coconut so was pretty sure I’d like it and I was right.

The cherry aspect of the “cherry ripe” (from the cranberries I suppose) is lacking, you could get away with calling this one “bounty bar” as it is mostly coconut and chocolate. That is fine with me but I can see it would disappoint some.

This is a tea to snuggle up with at night. With or without milk.

I worked this tea out just in time to run out of it. It turns out that it requires a fair bit more leaf than the assams that I’ve drunk in the past. I was being a bit stingy with it because it was pretty expensive but once I let that go, upped the leaf and lowered the brew time, it became a whole different tea.

I can’t rate it too highly though because for the price, I just don’t love assam or think this tea stands out enough to ever repurchase it.

Oh well. At least the Perth weather is cool enough to really enjoy some tea sipping again.

I had this cold brewed today with milk and maple syrup because I was too lazy to make up a simple syrup. It needed sweetening but perhaps that was because my 6 hour brew turned into 8/9 hours when I went to pick my parents up from the airport and their plane was delayed…

I don’t know. I feel like I still must be doing something wrong because this tea just does nothing for me. Assam isn’t my preferred black tea and now that I think about it, I can’t name any that stand out to me. Maybe there is nothing there in this tea or maybe there is and I’m just not capable of appreciating it.

My partner loves a good Assam and seems to really enjoy this which makes me think it might just be me. Perhaps I need a crash course in Assam appreciation.

I know I said I’d be drinking Laoshan Black today but I wasn’t feeling so well and since I only have a sample, I don’t want to waste it on a stuffy nose day.

As for this tea. I still haven’t worked it out. I was hoping that it would wow me but it hasn’t and I’m continually adjusting how I brew it hoping to find a sweet spot. I’ll give it a proper review and rating after a few more trials.

On a side note apparently the Joonktollee tea estate also produces a green assam tea which I’d love to get my hands on someday to try.

I’m drinking this with milk tonight which seems a bit indulgent given the price, I don’t know, I just feel like fine teas should be drunk straight to really appreciate the subtleties. At the same time since Keemun is the base of a good English Breakfast it also seems appropriate to drink with milk.

This is a world away from your typical english breakfast but delicious with milk all the same. It is sweet, malty and floral with an earthy pine aroma . When I’m craving something sweet I sometimes take my tea with about a quarter of teaspoon of sugar and this tea has that sweetness without needing to add any sugar.

I’ve enjoyed this tea straight a few times and I’m surprised by how much I enjoy it with milk too. I’d love this to be an everyday drink if only it wasn’t so damn expensive.

I was looking forward to trying this tea but it has been weeks since I have been in the city during the day. After a couple of hours hunting around for Father’s Day gifts with my sister, we made our way to the Tea Centre for afternoon tea.

Really not impressed with this one at all. The taste was like a really watered-down, generic green tea with a drop of lemon juice. The tea was paired with some cake, so at first I put it down to a poor combination of tea and food, but even after drinking two cups I was still underwhelmed.

The guy at the store said that it was a very mild tea, and to be fair it doesn’t taste “bad”. Perhaps to my jaded palate it just happened to be too mild and flavourless. I was really hoping for an intense brew like their Japanese Lime, so I will have to content and console myself with my latest Tea Centre purchase – Chocolate Mint.

This is my everyday black tea at the moment. It has a nice strong flavour and perks me up in the morning and during the day. It is not the most exciting tea but great for daily drinking.