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I enjoy this tea in a bit of an… unconventional way. I noticed that it has a very close flavor profile to another tea in my collection, which is Adagio’s White Chai. Though this tea is entirely an herbal blend, Adagio’s White Chai has so little white tea in it, and the rest of the ingredients between the two blends are pretty much identical, so the flavors are very close. They both are spicy teas with a strong lemon base and noticeable pine notes, and a strong spicy finish. The main difference with this blend is that the fruit notes aren’t as strong as in Adagio’s White Chai, so it isn’t as sweet, and the peppery finish from the red peppercorns is much stronger, leaving more of a bite right at the end of the sip. Between the two, when I just want a cuppa, I prefer the slightly sweeter and less-spicy White Chai, so I started using this tea as a broth base for my ramen.

I can’t use the flavor packets that come with the noodles since they contain MSG (which is a migraine trigger for me), so I started experimenting with using tea as my ramen broth instead, and found I actually really like this tea as a broth. It has a really strong flavor, and works nicely to create this spicy lemon base to the noodles, and it still tastes really nice after the noodles have been eaten out of the bowl and the tea has been salted a bit. The salty notes go well with the peppery notes from the peppercorn, like a “salt and pepper” flavor compliment. It just seems like a lemon ginger tea, but works out to be surpringly savory.

Full Review: https://teatimetuesdayreviews.wordpress.com/2017/12/12/tea50/

Ah, Scottish Caramel Pu-erh. I think nearly every independant teashop I’ve visited has had this on the line-up, and if you search it here on Steepster, you’ll probably get a good twenty iterations of it because of that, but I’m fairly positive they are all wholesaling it from the same popular teashop wholesaler — Metropolitan Tea Company. What I find most fascinating is how many of these teashops put butterscotch or caramel (or both) on the ingredients list (the one I purchased it from did!) yet inspecting the leaf, there isn’t a trace of caramel or butterscotch pieces in it (only chopped almond), meaning these are flavorings. That makes a big difference to those with dietary restrictions, preferences, or allergies; my BFF is Vegan and the difference between caramel flavoring (often non-dairy) and caramel pieces (typically dairy) is huge, and simply listing “caramel” on the ingredients list is not very helpful! The consumer shouldn’t have to dig through their leaf to figure out what is in their tea, especially after buying… /end rant

In any event, I picked up my go at this blend from Shakespeare’s Corner Shoppe and Afternoon Tea last year when I was on vacation in San Diego. The leaf does have a bit of the “fishy” smell I find tends to be a problem with the bases in flavored pu-erh blends, but thankfully it mellows out in the brewed cup, and doesn’t leave any lingering flavors (at least that I notice, and that can’t be said for some other flavored pu-erhs in my collection). The tea brews up very thick and dark as coffee, has a damp earth flavor with a bit of a mineral finish, but is very sweet. The pu-erh base is a bit strong so I don’t get a heavy caramel note, but more of a sweet, burnt sugar finish, with a slight caramely taste left lingering on my tongue afterwards. During the sip, something about the sweet flavorings and the earthiness of the base gives me this coconut flavor on my tongue… I realize there is nothing in the tea to produce a coconut flavor, but the caramel notes read to my palate that way more than caramel. (That isn’t exactly a bad thing, I like coconut, but I find it interesting). I’m not sure what the diced almonds are doing for the blend, since I don’t get any nutty notes from the tea. The tea comes off as a cheap pu-erh that uses its flavoring to pre-sweeten the leaf and hide the unappealing notes that typically come with a cheap pu-erh. It’s drinkable, but not something I’m going to miss once I manage to finish it off.

I think I drank too much caffeinated tea too late into the evening tonight, because it’s 3 a.m. and I just can’t get my sleepy on… I was tempted to pull out Bluebird’s Cat’s Pyjamas, but I ordered some lemon-infused honey from Etsy to try to help me get over the fact it tastes of nothing but super-strong chamomile, a flavor I don’t particularly enjoy, and I’m still waiting on that to arrive. So I decided to dig into my stash for some other sleepytime teas.

I got some Teapigs samplers not long ago, so I decided to try this one out. Snooze is a blend of apple pieces, chamomile, and lavender, and I am quite a fan of apple and lavender, and hoping those things will balance out the chamomile flavor, though it really all comes down to how the tea is blended. The first thing I notice, looking at the sachet, is that the chamomile is not whole flowers, but shredded flower, while there is quite a bit of chunky bits of apple, and there appears to be a pretty decent lavender-to-chamomile ratio. Things are looking decidedly up for me already!

While I tend to not get that nasty “papery” teabag taste from sachets, out of principal I cut the sachet open and let the ingredients infuse in my gravity well infuser (not that herbals do much expansion, but I liked the idea of all that apple fully floating around in the water!) Surprisingly, for so much apple in the tea, I didn’t get a very pronounced apple flavor… but what I did get, was a much sweeter flavor, with a much more subdued and less overwhelming chamomile taste, which is exactly what I was hoping for! I don’t mind when chamomile is in a blend, I just don’t really like the taste of it when it’s the dominant flavor and stands out in the foreground; I really prefer it as a background note. I can still make out that it is there, but it doesn’t have that strong (and to me, often oddly soapy) floral presense, and instead a sweet, apple note comes through in the finish. There is also a strong lavender flavor in this tea which helps (for me!) a lot, as I’m a huge fan of lavender; it hits in the aroma immediately, and that somewhat floral/minty flavor is strong in the sip and follows through right to the finish. That, for me, is probably my favorite part, so if you don’t like lavender, I can assure you aren’t going to like this one.

I really like this one! I wouldn’t say it knocks me out like Cat’s Pyjamas does (must be the valerian root!) but this is certainly soothing and tastes wonderful.

This is a tea that has changed for me a lot. I used to find this tea very peachy, and I remember the first time I sampled it at my local tea shop, I actually assumed it was a green tea, as I didn’t really notice the base tea much. I just remembered a strong, peachy flavor. My first experience with it cold brewed was such a refreshing, nice peachy tea with this sort of brisk aftertaste that reminded me somewhat of peach wine coolers. I really loved it, and drank it a lot last summer.

But I made a cold brew of this recently, and instead it tasted just like English Tea Store’s Peach Apricot White tea, a tea I found to have such a strongly vegetal taste beneath the peachy tones that it was really unappealing to me, so I gifted it off to my mom. I’m not sure how I could’ve ended up with such a different experience with this one — has my palate changed that much in such a small amount of time? I have stopped sweetening my tea, and I recall I used to, so I did try adding a bit of sweetener which did help mellow the leafiness and bring out the peachiness a bit, but it wasn’t nearly enough… this tea simply isn’t what I remembered. It just has this sort of autumn leaf pile vegetative flavor that dominates the cup, and the peach flavor just isn’t enough to overcome it. It is definitely better as a sweetened cold brew then as a warm cup… I have a hard time even drinking the tea warm, but iced it is at least palatable. Still, after revisiting this, I think I prefer the Bonita Peach green rooibos as a peach iced tea. It lacks that weird leafy taste.

Full review: https://teatimetuesdayreviews.wordpress.com/2017/08/01/tea31/

I first made this tea last week when I had a very early morning meeting to take on a car trip; I made a big thermos of it the night before, two parts tea and one part milk, put it in the fridge to ice over night, and was surprised that my thermos was so powerful it kept the tea from fully chilling over night, so it still had a slight, lukewarm edge to it! It wasn’t bad, but hardly the best iced tea I’ve ever made, and now I know I’ll have to make my “roadtrip” tea in a mason jar and move it over to the thermos the next morning, even if it is a little more inconvenient.

This morning I made a proper warm cuppa. I was too much a zombie on the day of my twilight hour car trip to try to really appreciate the tea beyond, “yerba mate… give me CAFFEINE!” I enjoy roasted mate for having such a smooth, roasted base, free of the astringency of black teas, so I actually really like this as the base of a chai. The most recent chais I’ve tried have been very unbalanced, but this chai is very well-rounded; I don’t find any particular spice overpowering, they all blend well together, and the spices don’t leave a lingering or unpleasant heat in my mouth (and I’m a very spice-sensitive person!) so the tea goes down very smooth. This is the sort of chai I can drink plain, without having to add a ton of milk and sugar, because the spices are blended so well. However, it still takes milk and sugar well if preferred that way, as I drank it iced and latte-style the other morning and found it enjoyable that way (despite being lukewarm) as well.

A solid chai if looking for a mate alternative!

I have been interested in trying this one out since reading Scheherazade’s review, since chocolate, coconut, and lavender are three of my favorite things! (I’ve been making a lot of lavender cocoa recently, and even my friends are quite fond of it!) I wasn’t crazy about the flavor of the Cat’s Pyjamas tea sampler in the Dreamtime Collection I picked up from Bluebird (though that stuff is a miracle drug at helping me go to bed early, so I’ll definitely be keeping it around and drinking it with some extra lemon and honey to help with the taste for those nights when I need to turn in extra early, so it has its uses!), but based on ingredients alone, I have high hopes that the flavor of this particular Dreamtime Collection tea will be a bit more to my liking!

The tea has a nice lavender aroma, with some carmelly sweet notes from the rooibos. The flavor of the tea is a very sweet rooibos base that has some caramel and mellow chocolately notes; it isn’t a strong, rich flavor, but more of a sweet subnote. There is touch of a coconut flavor, but the floral lavender notes come out much stronger. I absolutely love lavender, but the flavor is a bit overwhelming to the coconut here.

I don’t typically add milk to rooibos, but I do love milk in lavender blacks, so I decided to go with Scheherazade’s suggestion and added a dash of some coconut creamer. That definitely helped balance out the coconut notes, and the creamy texture was very pleasant. I enjoyed the tea enough before, but found the flavor balance much nicer with the dash of coconut creamer! I really enjoy coconut and lavender and found the combination a nice, sweet, relaxing cuppa for the afternoon and evening.

Love You Oolong Time! I love milk oolong, but this is the first time I can recall finding a flavored blend using milk oolong as a base. Milk oolong already has such an interesting flavor naturally, the idea of making a blend out of it both perplexed me and oddly piqued my interest, so I was quite interested in trying this one out.

I was happy to find that the mouthfeel of milk oolong holds out here; the tea has a very silky, creamy feel. I get some buttery notes from the base as well, though they are a little more subdued due to the rich, minty flavor of the tea, which comes to the forefront. There is a subtle sweetness in the background, that isn’t a rich, full, chocolately flavor, but there is a light, sweet, chocolate-mint candy impression left on the tongue in the aftertaste. I’m /really/ enjoying how this is all coming together; the milk oolong makes what would otherwise be just another standard choco-mint tea feel more creamy and buttery and dessert-like than it really should. It’s really good, and this is likely going to end up a permanent fixture in my cabinent. Right between my regular milk oolong and my chocolate mint rooibos, because while this is very similar in ways to each of those, neither of them can quite scratch the same itch as this.

Love You Oolong Time! I got a sample of this in the Here’s Hoping Traveling Teabox (thanks tea-sipper for organizing and to whoever contributed this!), and it appears to be the original blend, rather than the reblend. As I’m trying to focus on oolongs this month, and since I’m fighting off a cold I’ve been craving citrus ginger blends, this was a perfect choice!

This tea has a very silky, smooth, somewhat creamy mouthfeel. It steeps up a bold lemon yellow color, and has a very sweet lemony flavor. There are some subtle ginger notes that hit toward the back of the tongue toward the finish of the sip, but they are more mellow than a typical lemon ginger tea, and since I prefer my teas to not be too heavy on the ginger, I prefer the more gentle touch of the spice and the overall naturally sweeter profile. I think what is most unique about the flavor is there is a soft, subtle floral flavor just beneath the citrus, which likely contributes to a lot of the sweetness and mellowing out the heat of the touch of ginger. This is a very nice lemon ginger tea, much sweeter and creamier than any of the other lemon ginger teas I’ve tried recently during “ward off the plague” mode. I don’t normally add sweetener to my teas, but do feel that adding a little sugar makes this a little more “cookie” like; while I really enjoy the tea for what it is, it doesn’t really make me think of a dessert blend.

Full Review: https://teatimetuesdayreviews.wordpress.com/2018/02/13/tea59/

Recently I picked up a sampler set of the Dreamtime Collection from Bluebird Tea Co., mostly because the blends in the set included lavender, and I’ve been on a big lavender kick lately. This was the only blend in the collection lacking lavender, and therefore the one I was the least interested in… but I have to turn in early tonight because I have a cataloger’s meeting that is at a library two hours away tomorrow (meaning I have to get up at the buttcrack of dawn to get on the road to make it in time!), so I figured this blend, with it’s valerian root (known as a holistic sleep aid) and chamomile (a beloved relaxant) would be a good choice to try to get me to bed a bit early.

As far as flavor… I’m not going to lie, this tea isn’t a favorite. I am not a fan of the flavor of chamomile, and that is all I can smell and taste from this cup of tea. I was really hoping that the lemon verbena in the blend would leave a stronger impression (or any impression, really) and bring some nice citrus notes to the forefront, but I just get that strong, floral, chamomile flavor. There is no cinnamon flavor or spicy warmth from the cinnamon in the blend, either. As far as I’m concerned, I may as well just be drinking plain chamomile tea, here. It’s pretty disappointing, especially since I prefer chamomile notes in a blend to be on the subtle side. When they are this strong, I have to add lemon juice and honey to the tea to make it more palatable.

So as far as taste goes, this tea fails for me. Fuctionally, though, this tea works very well! I had two cups in the evening, and I was really winding down, feeling quite groggy and drowsy well before my typical bedtime! As far as a nightcap to help unwind and get ready to go to bed, I think this herbal hits the spot! If you are looking for a good “unwind” tea to help you nod off, you may want to give this one a try!

Love You Oolong Time! This is a very nice flavored oolong. I prefer TeaSource’s Rhubarb Oolong a bit more, but this one is also quite nice. The base is very smooth and sweet, with some vegetal notes, reminding me of a green tea. It has a mellow strawberry flavor that does a nice job of not being too heavy, syrupy, or artificial, but instead just adds a lingering sweet fruity note to the tea. I enjoy the tea warm (it reminds me a lot of a strawberry sencha), but the tea is very pleasant after the cup has gone tepid, and especially as an iced tea. I enjoy cold-brewing it overnight, straining off the (very-full!) leaf the next morning, and enjoying the refreshing sweet, slightly vegetal, smooth strawberry flavored cool tea throughout the day. It’s even better with some sliced strawberries floating in the glass!

Full review: https://teatimetuesdayreviews.wordpress.com/2017/07/04/tea27/