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Sipdown (165)

Today I moved into my sister’s apartment while she is on her honeymoon since its closer to my job. It is also closer to a strip club which my friends have all decided they want to go to. I am not overly enthused tbh (1. because its not my thing and 2. because I have been before and know how skeezy it is) but I will deal for the night…and there will be a lot of alcohol in my system while I do. With that in mind, I figured it will be a long night and so I am getting my caffeine on.

This definitely has the wet earth flavor of all other mates. It is less offensive than normal but still enough to make me not want more of this. There is also a richness that makes me think truffle but I think that is because it is what I am told to expect by the title and not because that is what I am actually tasting. It’s alright but I just want more truffle and less mate.

Cold brewed this one and the coconut is really coming through. It is a bit lotiony but toned down slightly by the strawberry flavor.

Combined this with pink lemonade as a teapop. The note can be found here: http://steepster.com/teas/davidstea/37830-pink-lemonade?post=343090

Sipdown (166)

Made this as a teapop using Purelife’s Raspberry Lime carbonated water. However, I didn’t have enough leaf so I added a couple spoons of Della Terra’s Lemon Chiffon. That helped tone down the artificial sweetener/stevia flavor. The lemon chiffon actually took over for the first few sips with the hibby contributing just a touch of tartness to make it more pink lemonade than just lemon. Unfortunately, as I continued to drink this, the weird artificial flavor built and drowned out all else. It was worth a shot but now this is gone and I am okay with that. I won’t be looking for this one again.

This is tasting especially like strawberry today. Yum :)

Sipdown (168)

Made this as a teapop and for some reason it has a lot of vanilla flavor to it. I think I definitely preferred this cold brewed because that brought out more of the fruitier flavors. It is a nice tea but I am okay saying good bye to this. Still its fun to try. Thank you Sil for the share :)

Sipdown (169)

Made as a latte and I am definitely getting coconut and since its a latte, its creamy. Banana is MIA and in its place is a fair amount of cinnamon. Its Fall appropriate but not what I expected.

So let me just start by saying this smells amazing, both as dry leaf and when brewed. Just a rich candy/fruit scent. Sipping on the “hot” (read luke warm thanks to a few dogs needing some attention :P) cup, I am impressed the scent actually comes through in flavor. Granted it is a bit more muted and there is a bit of hibby tartness but in this case I don’t mind it because I find it sells the cranberry element.

My mom is not feeling well and so this morning she handed me a recipe for soup she wanted me to make her. She then proceeded to be completely underfoot as I tried to do random tasks around the house. After yelling at her to go to bed and having my stepdad pick up the soup ingredients, I got to work.

As I made the soup, the proportions in the recipe seemed off to me so I sort of followed the recipe as a guideline and just winged it with the amounts. My soup ended up looking more like a stew but that’s fine. It means it will be all the more filling when she eats it.

While cooking, I decided to mix up some matcha milk since I was next to the milk frother anyways and had a couple minutes to kill between steps. Since I had been eyeballing everything else today, I just dumped in matcha and went on with my business. Unfortunately it seems this should have been the one thing I measured because when it came time to drink this, it just tasted like frothed milk. No matcha. No mocha. Just milk.

Sipdown! (173)

So when I went to check for the mail today I realized the temperature finally cooled and the sky had a dark-storm-brewing type of look which meant today was a pretty great day to use my Pumpkin Chai sample for a nice cozy latte. I dumped the whole tiny pack into the gravity steeper and away I went.

I frothed up the milk (which ended up in my mug basically being 50% tea and 50% froth) and topped it with cinnamon. Now as I sip, I find myself craving more richness. Skim milk was all I had but I could see a fuller milk helping that, plus a touch more leaf seeing as the sample was just shy of 4 perfect teaspoons.

With that said, there is a nice ribbon of caramel throughout the tea that is mixing really well with the cinnamon that was both in the tea blend and added on top. Pumpkin isn’t really coming through for me, except in the case of pumpkin spice. This doesn’t surprise me though because with the exception of one tea that I can think of, “pumpkin” in teas usually means pumpkin spice.