Fjellrev Send Message

The hotel I stayed in a couple weeks ago provided us with this tea, so I took it home to try. After my first sip, I thought to myself that there wasn’t any flavour at all. Just tasted like hot water.

After a few more sips, the tropical flavours come out a bit more. I can now taste the mango, but it tastes a little off. The tea smells alright though, like a tropical fruit gum. But as this is cooling, it’s getting more bitter. I did steep it a little longer than I should have since I was preoccupied washing blueberries, but it’s still all wrong, and a disappointment. It’s not terrible, but it could have been better.

I finally get to try the illustrious Quangzhou Milk Oolong. I’ve been saving it until I had time to really enjoy it, and give it a good three steeps.

The scent of the dry leaf isn’t a surprise. That classic oolong semi-floralness mixed in with milkiness. Like a true cup of milk mixed in with the tea leaves. Weird side note, though. While I was waiting for the water to boil and had my tea ready to go in my Tea Stick, I caught a whiff of cheese. Like creamy havarti. Took me a while to realize it was coming from the tea!

I didn’t write down how long each steep was for, but if I remember correctly, I steeped this the first time for around four minutes at approximately 90°C. The steeped tea smelled similar to the dry leaf, although I found the milky aspect to blossom and take over the other notes. Now for the taste. Initially, I got a touch of floral, but the more I drank it, the more that went away. This has a wonderful, classic, underlying oolong, but the milkiness is domineering. It tastes like milk, but in a “dairy” way. I can’t really describe what I mean by that. It’s a more savoury milky note than sweet.

The second steep was even milkier. That slightly floral taste I was getting before was at this point gone entirely. And the milkiness got even creamier. A tad sweeter, as well. Second round definitely won. There was the perfect balance amongst all the flavours. It was more buttery, sweeter, and creamier.

The third steep was already getting rather weak. With the hint of floral long gone and the sweetness of the second steep gone as well, this started to almost taste like that havarti I was smelling earlier. That milkiness was going a little sour too. Not in an atrociously disgusting way, but it was noticeable.

Anyway, blah blah blah, that was my Quanqzhou Milk Oolong adventure. I bought about 16g or so, so I’ll gladly finish it off, but I’m not sure if I would buy it again? This made me realize that I prefer my oolongs on the more floral side. It’s still a marvellous tea.

I acquired a bag of this from a restaurant but ended up just taking it home to try instead. It’s a quite a straightforward Ceylon tea. Indeed full-bodied as the package says. It’s quite strong considering I only steeped it for three minutes. I added some light soy milk to my cup and the two go very well together. Bold and rich, and now laced with a little bit of creaminess. I wouldn’t buy it but it’s a good choice for this morning’s breakfast.

When I was in the store last week, aside from my list, I still felt like getting a little something extra and the SA suggested this one. I was unsure about the concept while reading about it on their site, but the smell of the dry leaves won me over, so I purchased not quite 20g.

The dry leaves have a lot going on. Sure, I can smell root beer, but it’s more like a syrupy root beer smell from root beer freezies or slushies, and the cinnamon comes and goes. The white chocolate is there too, and together, they create a pleasantly sweet aroma.

I’m reviewing this hot first and will try it iced once I move into my new place next week. Hot, the steeped tea smells like flat root beer, but in a good way. The taste reminds me of a melted root beer freezie with the added touch of white chocolate. Not to mention, the black tea base isn’t too strong at all despite steeping this for five minutes. It’s also sweet enough for me, but granted, I almost never add sugar to tea anyway. I can’t wait to try this one iced since I’m sure it’ll translate even better.

This makes me want a birch beer tea. I could see that playing very well with a black tea base.

Coconut and chamomile are two of my favourite things, but together, I wasn’t so sure how this would pan out. The scent of the dry leaves doesn’t have a single trace of chamomile, but rather, a mixture of coconut and white chocolate.

I love how the scent morphs into a much toastier coconut when this is steeped. It even tastes like a toasted coconut macaroon. I also don’t taste any chamomile. Hmm, perhaps it blends in with the coconut to create that chocolatey vibe. The tea base is nice and smooth here. Not bitter or overpowering. I find that there is a perfect balance between the tea base and the coconut & friends.

I purchased 18g of this and will definitely pick up more once this is done. It’s the kind of tea that’s great to sip on when you’re not in the mood for anything too bold.

What a day. Today was my first day in Vancouver, and I started it off with breakfast by the quay with a cup of this. They really didn’t have much else to choose from, and when I picked it from the basket, I didn’t notice that it was decaf.

What can I say, it was underwhelming and ultra bland. The bergamot in this was a sad attempt. Not even distinctly bergamot, but rather a dull, vague citrus. I had to resort to adding milk and sugar to make this more interesting, and even then, it tasted watery. I let it steep for around four minutes too.

But that’s ok. To all the Canadians out there, I ran into Rex Murphy today so that was cool. I felt bad talking to him but at least I made him laugh. Unlike this tea, the experience definitely wasn’t decaffeinated or banal.

I haven’t actually tried salted caramel before. Blasphemy! But between the description of this tea, the ingredients, and the smell of the dry leaves, I just couldn’t resist.

The dry leaves are very fragrant and sweet. Like an overly sweet caramel macchiato. It doesn’t actually smell like coffee, but the combination of notes reminds me of an espresso-laced drink you can find at a Starbucks. If I concentrate, I can also smell a Skor- or Daim-like note in there too, although it’s not nearly as buttery as the chocolate bar. The coconut is mainly a phantom note. I can detect hints of it but if I didn’t know it was there, it would most likely go undetected.

The smell of the steeped tea is quite different. It has simplified to a basic, but ultra rich toffee. Taste-wise, it’s basically just caramel. No coconut nor creaminess, and after two cups, I’ve noticed that I can’t taste the sea salt until I get to the bottom of the mug, so looks like it doesn’t dissolve. The shot of salty sediment at the end is interesting, but I wish I could taste a smoother version of that with every sip.

It’s a great caramel black but I’m not sure if I like it enough to repurchase. Honestly, I need to try more caramel blacks before I can honestly say just how good this one is. Although I must say, the scent of the dry leaves is reason enough alone to go out and buy some.

I just got back from DT with a pleasing array of teas to try out. Out of all the ones I chose, my mom liked the smell of this the most, so I thought I’d make a pot of this beauty first.

At the moment, I only have my Tea Stick with me, and seeing that this is mostly plump mulberries, I could already tell that it wasn’t going to work out, so I passed on that and dumped around 1.5 tsp of the tea into the teapot. The teapot residence services provided us here is really small so I figured after it’s done steeping, I could just split it into two mugs and nothing won’t be oversteeping.

The dry leaves, if you can even call them that, are seriously 60% mulberries, 30% coconut shreds, and 10% silver needle. So it’s barely a tea. BUT. It smells exquisite. Like a coconut cake with layers of fresh mulberries.

For the first steep, I kind of lost track, but I’m sure I steeped it for like six minutes. It tastes more caramel-like than I had imagined. And much creamier too. I would never want to taint this with any additives. One moment, it’s coconut, then the next it’s caramel, and then there’s that very subtle taste of creamy berry woven throughout everything else.

The coconut got lost with the second steep. It’s mostly creamy caramel. And that’s all there is to it.

I’m going to have to agree with several others that to be fair, the price of this tea is quite steep (no pun intended) considering the fact that this has very little actual tea leaves. But granted, I’ve paid more per gram for by far drabber, more flavour- and tea leaf-lacking teas from other places cough Teavana cough, so whatevz. This tea is so worth it in comparison.

I was in a green tea mood when I stopped in last time, and the idea of mango appealed to me, especially since it’s been warm and sunny.

The tea leaves look fresh, and there are little cubes of dried mango here and there. And the smell of the dry tea is definitely mango, but sweeter than the fresh fruit. Mind you, dried fruits tend to smell even sweeter.

When it comes to the taste, it is a little bit of a disappointment. I’ve drunk it a few times already, adding different amounts of leaves, steeping a little longer, etc, and I can’t seem to draw that much flavour out of it. Although I taste a hint of fruit from it, it’s more peach than mango. The green tea base itself is very light too, nearly non-existant. If it weren’t for the colour of the liquor, I wouldn’t even think that I was drinking a green tea.

It’s good but not great. I’m glad that one can purchase an ounce instead of having to commit to even more than that.

I’m sitting here enjoying a pot of this for breakfast while I plan today’s adventure.

The liquor is a rich, deep burgundy brown, and smells slightly sweet and malty. It actually reminds me a lot of the Empress’ signature blend, but with more Assam.

It even tastes like that too. I get more of the maltiness and it leaves a pleasant malty oaky aftertaste. I haven’t tried this with milk and/or sugar yet, but I’m sure it would taste very similar to the Empress signature blend.

Better than I expected. A good tea to grab in the morning when you’re in a hurry and don’t want to have to deal with the mess of loose tea leaves. I kind of feel like this should get a higher rating than the Empress since I’m preferring the more dominant Assam in this, but for now, I’ll rate them almost the same until I try this one with milk and sugar. That’ll be the real test.