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One of my favorite teas as a Golden Mao Feng from TeaSource, which they stopped carrying. When I saw a Golden Mao Feng from Tea Runners, I had to grab it to see if it lived up to my memory… sadly, it appears Tea Runners no longer has this tea, either. I wonder if I’m just destined to always be chasing after this tea…

I love this tea, it exhibits so many elements of a Chinese black that I love. It brews up to a rich, malty aroma with a slight rosy aroma. On the tongue I get strong notes of malt, copper, and leather, with a sweeter flavor of dark chocolate-covered cherries that comes out as the tea cools a bit. Sometimes I get a slight rosy aftertaste. It’s a bit tannic but not bitter… sometimes it is a little strong on my weak GI if I drink it on an empty stomach. The caffeine-hit is substantial, too.

This will be missed when I finish up the bag!

I made this as coldbrew when my friend Todd was visiting, and we took it along on a picnic in the Sawtooth Forest to see a hummingbird feeder site. This is a really lovely root beer tea! The flavoring is spot on and the green rooibos base doesn’t really impede the flavoring in anyway, while coldbrewing like a champ. I think part of what really sells it is the tea is very sweet, really adding to that feel of drinking pop without adding any additional sweeteners. This is achieved by a high level of licorice root, however, which can be a contentious ingredient for a lot of tea drinkers, so if you are sensitive to it, this probably isn’t the tea for you. To me, the “sticky” sweetness left in my mouth just really sells the mouthfeel of actual root beer in a way the flavoring alone couldn’t.

I’m on my last liter, and I added CO2 to this one, and I really can’t tell the difference from a canned root beer. This will definitely be missed!

A few weeks ago when my friend Todd was visiting, several days of lackluster sleep were starting to catch up with me, so I pulled this out even though it is a “newer” order (which I typically ignore to drink older teas first) just because it was only one of two yerba mate blends I had in my current stash. After opening the package I realized it was cut with rooibos and thus probably not the caffeinated bomb I was hoping for, but at that point I brewed it up anyway.

Todd and I both really enjoyed it! The tea smells like cinnamon and cheesecake, and the flavor isn’t far from that, either. The tea is very sweet, with strong notes of woodsy cinnamon and cream cheese. There is a little lingering spice in the aftertaste that I think may be the ginger, but it doesn’t really come out in the sip. I’m not sure if I could say I’m getting horchata specifically, though I definitely understand it. I think for me it’s more of a warm cinnamon bun with cream cheese frosting, which I’m equally down for! A very desserty cup. Makes a fine latte, as well.

I’ve really been enjoying this floral-forward Earl Grey from Simpson & Vail (speaking of S&V, I won their summer tea giveaway, a tin each of “Blueberry Limeade” and “Summer Breeze!” I’ll have to get to those soon…) It is very aromatic, with the bergamot and rosemary hitting my nose first, followed by undertones of rose and lavender. The black tea base is a Rose Congou which is rich, malty, coppery, and floral, with the rose coming out more in the taste as the tea starts to cool a bit. The bergamot is a good strength, leaving the cup with a deeply satisfying citrus note that isn’t overpowered by the other flavors. The rosemary is the secret star for me in this blend, as it compliments the bergamot really well, helps the lavender notes pop a bit more, and leaves a very satisfying aftertaste.

This is definitely a tea for floral lovers and not those toeing the line; I fear the highly aromatic bergamot mixed with a lot of strong floral flavors will come off either perfumey or soapy to some. I have an extremely high floral tolerance and every now and then I’ll get a sip that leaves a bit of a pungent aftertaste. I also found the one time I tried making the tea as a latte it did taste a bit soapy to me, but I’m not sure if that was due to the strength of the leaf I used to offset the milk or that certain floral notes were hightened from the sweetened vanilla almond milk. Even then, I didn’t find it particularly unpleasant. But now I enjoy it hot and straight, and I really enjoy sniffing the steam as I go in for a sip.

A while ago I had really enjoyed steeping a teabag of Tazo’s “Pumpkin Spice Chai” along with some straight houjicha, finding they complimented each other very well. I finished up the Tazo teabags before the houjicha, but when I went back to my local grocery to restock, they no longer had the Tazo “Pumpkin Spice Chai” so I grabbed a random other chai from what they had available, which was this one. And I found, as I do with most grocery store chai options, that I hated it. It uses waaaaaaaaaaay too much spice oils/flavoring rather than whole spices for my tastes. I sometimes do okay with the cinnamon flavoring used in teas with those sweet “cinnamon candy” sort of blends, but here it just comes off as really artificial… and the clove and cardamom oil tastes really strong. I like clove in tea (I realize it is a polarizing ingredient in chai) but this just punches you in the face with it.

Needing a way to use up the teabags (I hate being wasteful of food I’ve already spent my dollars on), I’ve been using them up making tea pop. My first batch turned out pretty awful because my CO2 canister was at the bottom so it didn’t fizz up properly and made the tea really bitter, so a fresh CO2 canister and a little added sugar syrup later and it’s servicable in pop form. Still a little clove heavy, but it works much better as a fizzy carbonated cold drink and I can use up the teabags four at a time making the base coldbrew. One more liter to go to wash my hands of this chai!

I purchased this at a local Natural Grocers under Natural Grocers packaging, but it is the same tea offered from Tiesta so I’m recording it here rather than creating a duplicate under the Natural Grocers name.

This is a chunky, sweet fruit tea, which I coldbrewed when my friend Todd was visiting so there would be plenty of ice cold tea on hand. The flavor is an amalgamation of mango and pineapple, but despite the name, I get far more pineapple than mango (which is fine by me, as pineapple is probably my favorite fruit). There is a lot of dried orange in the blend, but I find it doesn’t really add much tanginess to the tea; occassionally I’ll get a bit of the note toward the end of the sip. The tea is very naturally sweet, and I couldn’t imagine adding any extra sweetener. It’s very gulpable, but it takes a lot of the tea to brew up a liter; I got 3 liters out of a 3 oz. package.

It’s genmaicha.

I tried this catalog tea years ago under the name “Blood-Orange Smoothie” from Spice and Tea Exchange, and sort of fell in love with it and then out of love with it. I think it was on sale at the time I made this particular Tealyra order so I figured I’d give it a try again, but mostly my opinion has stayed the same. I don’t dislike it, but I feel kinda meh about it… It has an amazing creamsicle aroma to the dry leaf, but that just doesn’t translate to the flavor. The blood orange comes out but there just isn’t enough of a sweet cream/vanilla flavor present for me. Plus, I feel the blood orange falls into the right flavor profile to bring out some of the medicinal notes in the rooibos that I don’t care for much. So to finish off the bag, I started brewing this cold brew… and it actually is pretty good that way. In general I tend to not cold brew red rooibos because in the past it has come out really cough syrupy to me that way, and despite getting a bit of that when I brew this hot, I’m not really getting that when its cold, and the orange feels particularly refreshing with this preparation method. So, I probably won’t grab this tea again in the future since it lacks that creamsicle vibe I’m looking for, but it also wasn’t really a chore to finish off this bag making cold brew pitchers.

Woke up to rain and decided to brew up a thermos of houjicha. This houjicha is stem-heavy and not as darkly roasted as some other houjicha I’ve had in the past, but it is perfectly pleasant. It’s very woody with a slight hay-like quality, with a lot of nutty overtones and a bit of roasted coffee undertones.

I’ve tried this particular houjicha a few different ways. Last weekend I made it into a latte with sweetened almond milk and maple syrup, but it came out way too cloyingly sweet so I think I either need a darker roast houjicha or to play around with the other factors a bit more. Steeping it with a bag of Tazo’s Pumpkin Chai has been by far my favorite preparation method so far, as the flavoring/spices blended really well with the particular notes of this houjicha. My typical grocery store didn’t have Tazo’s Pumpkin Chai in stock when I last went there so I bought a different bagged chai by Stash instead, but it didn’t have the same magic with this houjicha… the flavoring tasted weird and out of place with it, and again I think a darker roast houjicha would’ve worked better for that particular chai blend. This morning I’m just drinking it brewed hot and plain, no additions, and there is certainly nothing wrong that!

I’ve been making this tea as a cold brew, and it’s very refreshing. It brews a bright red color from the hibiscus, but there is no hibiscus flavor or tartness at all. It actually has a quite sweet and creamy flavor… I don’t really get watermelon, but I also associate watermelon with that really strong artificial watermelon flavoring used in candies, which this tea doesn’t taste like at all. Instead I get more of that mixed generic “melon” flavor used in Japanese candies that tastes a bit like cantalope mixed with honeydew and sweeter. I get a bit of a cucumber water note as well. The mint is a fairly strong backdrop, but blends with the melon flavor nicely, and gives the cold brew a very refreshing and cooling aftertaste.