Featured & New Tasting Notes
Another old; as from huge bags section.
As I am trying to drink caffeine-free teas today (I want to have nice rest while sleeping in night), I took this one, decaffeinated tea. I was sceptical, as caffeine-free teas are usually quite tasteless. ButI have oped, as this is with spices, it won’t be that bad.
It is not so bad, but base tea is almost non-present and spices are just “something in aftertaste”. It is not spicy at all, I noticed cinnamon and bit of ginger; tea was just hay-like or grass seed-like. It was very weak in all means of flavours.
It is such a shame, but yeah – it is decaffeinated tea, so… maybe it is feature. (It’s not a bug, it is a feature).
Currently, I don’t want to try it again, but if it is fresh? Maybe I would gladly to try again
Flavors: Cinnamon, Ginger, Grass Seed, Hay
Preparation
I ordered this just because I wanted to get something from the Teavivre US warehouse to show support while their China warehouse is closed due to Coronavirus. They have been so generous with samples and such and have great customer service, so I chose a couple of things I knew I would love to have more of on hand.
I made this to go with lunch today. I have never served it to my husband that I can recall, and he usually takes milk and sugar with black tea. Since he has been drinking lots of roasted oolong, I didn’t mention that this was black and he drank it and liked it plain. It really is mild.
It had nice creamy texture and sweet potato aroma so lots of sweetness here. We made two steeps. I used lots of leaf since it was to go with food. This is best to me as an afternoon tea, I think, rather than a breakfast one. I expect we will plow through this bag in no time.
I think tonight I will use it for our gong fu session and see how well it goes for that!
Sipdown. Boy, are my sipdowns super slow. In the beginning, I bought way too much of a tea at a time.
The dry leaf smelled good, sweet caramel aroma. It brewed to a pretty deep red, liquor smells of caramel. To me though, the flavor came off as artificial. I do like that it wasn’t overly sweet, but this caramel/toffee flavor rooibos just wasn’t for me. To be fair, I admit that I’m not a huge fan of rooibos and I drink it for health purposes. The strawberry is by far the best of the three.
Preparation western brew: 12oz, 212 ºF, 5g, 5 mins
Flavors: Caramel, Sweet, Toffee
Preparation
Another Steepsterite reviewed this as follows: The king of bagged decaf black tea. Accept no substitutes! I believe I agree. Nothing fancy or subtle, but enough strength to make this a viable substitute for bop-you-on-the-head builders tea.
‘Samurai’ Traveling Teabox – Tea #12
Another interesting one to see in the teabox. I wasn’t paying attention to the instructions though and made this as a normal tea instead of the latte. This is the finest ground rooibos I’ve ever seen. It almost looks like rooibos matcha but they say to put it in a teabag. The ingredients say rooibos, vanilla bean and fenugreek for some reason. The resulting brew is surprisingly light. The flavor is vanilla enough but there is also the tiniest hint of an off flavor, like onion or something? I looked up fenugreek and it says it should have a maple flavor?
Steep #1 // 1 teaspoon for full mug // 10 minutes after boiling // 3 minute steep
Steep #2 // just boiled // 3 min
Another day: The second steep session, I tried to steep how they say on the bag: A teaspoon in a teabag in half a mug of water for five minutes (or less), then add milk to it. I don’t usually adding milk to my teas, but I wanted to try the LATTE brew. I can’t say I liked it better this way. It was fine. The milk really brought out that onion flavor though. If you can ignore that, it DOES really taste like caramel. But it mostly just seemed like milk. I’d rather just drink this brewed normally, without any milk.
Edited to add the next day: on the second steep, I brewed for about 30 minutes at boiling (despite the warning of bitterness on the package) and it was very good. No onions this time, which is odd that it disappeared if I brewed it longer. It’s only about the strength that I expected this tiny of rooibos to be. But the cup was tasty anyway. More maple.
This one was resting in cupboard for long time and I wasn’t really sure if I want to try it.
But today… I just wanted something warm and bit energy boosting.
derk wrote exactly what is this about; it is strong in cinnamon, it works well with base tea, I noticed notes of cloves and little of allspice. It is overall enjoyable, but nothing really to return. Maybe prepared in milk it would be bit better? Who knows?
Flavors: Cinnamon
Preparation
1.25 tsp for 250mL: water @95C, steeped 4 minutes.
UPDATE: I couldn’t finish drinking this tea. It’s like drinking heartburn.
Dry leaf: dark greenish black with many visible chunks of ginger and cardamon. Sneeze-worthy spicy scent.
Wet leaf: very little tea. Mostly chunks of spice and cocoa shells.
Liquor: cloudy brown. Most unappealing.
Aroma: assertive ginger, cinnamon , and caradmom. Everyone in my office wants to know what I’m drinking.
Flavour: well now! That’s some hot ginger and cinnamon. I quite like it. Very subtle earthiness in the finish from the pu ehr. Thin-bodied tea, not much heft or mouthfeel, We’ll see later what effect the guarana has.
I loved the old Chai Guarana, made with a black tea base. It was one of DavidTea’s more interesting blends. Like most of my DT favourites, it’s long since been been continued. (Oh, what I wouldn’t give for Super Chocolate to come back!) In fact. DavidsTea’s deplorable habit of offering a truly interesting tea or tisane and then withdrawing it is one of the reasons I hardly ever shop there anymore.
This blend’s decent for a spice hit, If you don’t mind not getting much actual tea, this should work for you.
Update: I can’t finish it. It’s triggering heartburn and frankly feels like heartburn when I swallow it.
oh. ugh.
Yep. It’s a disaster. My stomach is still burning. Way too much ginger and cassia oil.
Which bring me to a frequent complaint I have about DT blends: WHERE’S THE TEA?
@michelle….and that’s why I don’t bother with DT anymore.
Right? When I first became a DT customer about 10 years ago, ordering online because my city didn’t have a store, I was so excited. And they offered a decent range of straight teas,And the blends I tried had plenty of tea in them.
Now it seems DT is much more about blends, and blends that are full of bits of dehydrated food, very little tea.
when they started, i had such hope. then they served me tea to stay in a cardboard cup and added milk to the tea without letting it steep. sigh. i call them the soda pop of teas.
I thought I’d either love this or hate it. Such an odd blend. Cereal?! I made sure to get at least one frosted flake looking piece of the cereal in there. But there is a ton of huge pieces of coconut. I MUST make sure to get one of these huge pillowy marshmallows in each mug… but they hardly melted at all in the first steep. This actually tastes like the sugariest of cereal milks at the bottom of the bowl. And WHOA this is very sugary. I guess I don’t really have too many issues with stevia, if it’s FRESH stevia but I think it tends to age very quickly and ruin any blend it’s in. This is one of those blends I will have to sip down faster between the coconut, cereal, stevia. It will certainly help sugar cravings, but I do wish there had more elements here than just sugar milk, maybe a toastier cereal flavor.
Steep #1 // 1 1/2 teaspoons for full mug // 10 minutes after boiling // 2 1/2 minute steep
Steep #2 // just boiled // 20 min steep
‘Samurai’ Traveling Teabox – Tea #11
Somehow I haven’t tried this one from any tea shop yet. I think it’s sourced from Bitaco and Simpson & Vail also carries it. (ALSO Simpson & Vail has a new national park collection of teas!) This tea is as lovely as I’d expected. It’s strictly for cocoa/ dark chocolate cravings because it is strictly dark chocolate and cocoa. I’m not sure how much is from the cocoa shells and how much of the flavor is from the black tea itself. But the flavor is dreamy. Two solid steeps. Not much else to say! There are some fancy teas in this teabox — thank you SkySamurai!
Steep #1 // 1 1/2 teaspoons for full mug // 18 minutes after boiling // 2 minute steep
Steep #2 // just boiled // 4 min
Flavors: Cocoa, Dark Chocolate
I had somehow upset stomach, really bad feeling (it included more than just being sick)…
I don’t know, if the beer yesterday was bad (I feel like one wasn’t really fresh); if combination of beers and rum (mexican) made that mess? No, I don’t really think so. Kebab wasn’t to shame as well, it worked rather well as it something warm.
Maybe just nerves, because new semester just started. Maybe combination of lots of together. Maybe tiredness as well.
Anyway, I know that black tea works best when feeling like that. And with lemon, it sounds quite good. And it was so lemony… that it doesn’t want to brew at all. It was quite light base tea with hints of lemon. I know I said it was so lemony, I was exaggerating a bit. I blame lots of lemon in for not brewing much. As citric acid slows steeping.
The tea itself was…
Base was prominent, but nothing really strong. Lemon wasn’t much present, it made it bit pleasantly sour. But that was only note of lemons there, no juicyness, no lemon peels. Well, I have expected more.
Flavors: Pleasantly Sour, Tea
Preparation
‘Samurai’ Traveling Teabox – Tea #10
A very tightly rolled, jade green oolong. The flavor is great but it’s tough to pick apart the flavors. The second steep might be the best after the first steep is just beginning to blossom. The third steep isn’t exactly oversteeped, but it doesn’t have that delicateness of flavor that was lovely in the second steep. The fourth steep: the flavor becomes more distinct and it tastes of orchids and vanilla. Perfect. I just wish it didn’t take so long for the flavor to get to that point. The leaves had certainly been unraveled by the third steep. Probably Western steeping isn’t the best for this one. I still feel I shouldn’t have steeped it for two minutes earlier on and I’m very glad I only used one teaspoon.
Steep #1 // 1 teaspoon for full mug // 22 minutes after boiling // rinse // 1 1/2 minute steep
Steep #2 // 16 minutes after boiling // 1 1/2 min
Steep #3 // 12 minutes after boiling // 2 min
Steep #4 // just boiled // 2 min
I’ve had my eye on this beautiful tea for the last two years, and I finally bought some. I’m drinking it warm, which probably isn’t how it’s meant to be enjoyed, but I like it like this! The flavor is almost like white grape. It’s so light and delicate. It’s also pleasant cold. I’m not sure it’s great enough to order again, but I definitely enjoyed my one ounce of it!
I grabbed this sample with the Japanese Orange matcha sample I tried from the same company. They claim to add sugarcane and sugar syrup to their soil to enhance the natural sweetness of the tea. Not sure if I buy that, but it was a perfectly decent bowl of matcha. Very smooth flavor, nicely grassy with only mild bitterness.
I bought a sencha at a tea festival where they said the same thing about using sugarcane in the soil to enhance natural sweetness in the sencha. It was one of the best sencha I’d ever sampled, I will say that, so I do have to wonder about the merit of it…
Interesting! The same brand does have a sencha that has won at the Global Tea Championships, I wonder if it’s the same company!
Oh! I think it is, now that I look closer… was the sencha called Issaku? Whether the sugar cane story was salesman snake oil or not, my friend and I loved that sencha sample at the Portland Tea Fest and both ended up going home with some!
I believe so! I’m very curios to try it. I don’t mind their claims, as long as the tea tastes good.
Made a mug of this in the morning today; I was really intrigued by the concept because it seemed so weird and out there to me – but then a coworker pointed out how common it is to see lemon or lime zest paired with dark chocolate in bar form and it seemed a lot less strange to me…
This really is just a hot cup of cocoa though; like making a flavoured instant hot chocolate but without the sugar in most instant hot chocolate mixes. I feel very on the fence about whether or not this should be considered “tea” or a “tea powder” given that it literally has no tea in it, and it’s more cocoa-y that herbal or fruit infusion.
It tastes nice, but still a little weird to me. The chocolate/cocoa is very smooth and rich, with quite a nice coating sweetness all over my palate. I enjoyed the other cocoa matcha that I tried from Bird & Blend in my advent calendar this past Christmas, and this isn’t an exception. I do get a little sourness/tartness from the lime, it’s bright and sweet but not stronger or more intense than the chocolate. So, it’s definitely there – albeit a very fake tasting lime. You have to remember, of course, that there isn’t any actual lime in the blend though aside from the naturally lime flavoured granules that have been mixed into the cocoa powder so that’s to be expected.
I think the reason this combination still feels so weird to my palate is because of the way I’m used to seeing lime zest and chocolate paired together, though. You don’t see it with milk chocolate, typically, but with dark chocolate. If the flavour of the cocoa in this powder was a little bit darker and had a touch of bitterness I think my brain would accept it a lot more.
Even still, neat concept and not a bad execution!
I made this by mixing it in warm milk and I feel like I should love it but I don’t. It’s got a custardy taste and mouthfeel and has a burnt sugar vibe to it but I’m just not loving it as much as I hoped. Not sure why but that’s where I’m at with this.
Wow. Oddly enough, this tastes like something I would love. Kinda sounds like Creme Brulee, which I adore in any form.
Honestly I love Creme brulee too which is why I don’t understand why this didn’t work for me. Everything about it screamed I should love it and I just didn’t.
Maybe the base wasn’t that good?
I think it was just me tbh
I can’t say that, because I haven’t got a matcha from B&B yet (I have one small sample though) and moreover, I never had this one.
Maybe, it’s just you. Maybe it is not that good.
Lol fair enough though having had others from B&B that I’ve enjoyed, plus being able to appreciate that this doesn’t taste bad in any way and other positive reviews, I think it’s just me and this one don’t get along and that’s perfectly fine since I, like so many others, have more tea than I know what to do with :P
Hey, you like what you like. Sometimes it doesn’t make sense.
Had this one last weekend, it was technically the last tea that I had in my old apartment but it wasn’t necessarily selected as such. I had it with a plate of mini scones while reading Febuary’s ‘Book of the Month’ (part of my goal of reading a book a month this year), which is Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman…
The tea was paired with the scones – which were almond cranberry with maple syrup. This tea, despite the name, has always been more of a sweet almond so I knew it would compliment those scone flavours perfectly. Truly it was delicious; the scones were sweet and nutty with those nutty elements and a little pop of acidity. The tea was malty and rich, with hints of almond and a baked bread note. Very dense and decadent but sometimes you just want/need comfort like that!
It was a good farewell to the apartment.
How sweet!
Whoops! That was supposed to go on the review for Zhen Wu!
I love that I have a job now where I get an hour break every day, so in the six months that I’ve had this job, I’ve read more books than in the past several years! I hope you find lots of joy in working toward your goal (:
Since you’re reading Gaiman and I know you like graphic novels, you should try the Neverwhere graphic novel. (It’s where I got my avatar.)
I actually have the Neverwhere book set aside for my March book! However, if I like the book I’ll definitely add the graphic novel to my normal graphic novel reading. I definitely read A LOT more than one graphic novel a month, but I’m working on focusing monthly on a physical/proper novel since I realized that between all my graphic novels I’ve not read a proper book cover to cover in almost a year (prior to January).
Nightcap to a dinner of homemade green curry. I’ve never had straight verbena. Pleasing, mellow aroma. Sip is citrusy and herbaceous followed by a unique, light sweetness. The aftertaste is fantastic and lingering. I couldn’t figure out how to describe it beyond green-sweet-citrus-floral(ish) but then I saw Mariage Frères mentions a taste of candied citron. That’s it. Lovely.
Flavors: Citrusy, Floral, Green, Herbaceous, Sweet
Preparation
For some reason this tea was not in my steepster cupboard but I have a lot of it since I stocked up when AQ2T announced they were going out of business. Tbh I have been a bit terrified to try it since I received it in August because I have been panicking that it would not be nearly as good as I remembered. However, steeped it has made my entire bedroom smell as mouthwatering as I recall this tea tasting. With that said, I managed to let it get quite cold and while it does remind me of the last batch, the base comes out a bit more at this temperature and the berry is a touch tart. However, I know the love is not gone and I probably just need to drink this while it is still at least warm.
What was this “tea”?
Company motto is “Ceylon’s gift to the world”
I think they meant German word Gift, not English one. In German it means poison.
THIS WAS TERRIBLE.
I have hoped it is black tea with citrus fruits. Their website: www.empireteas.com did not brought any results of this (or other teas). I have been warned by it, but still I wanted to try.
Oh, and I haven’t noticed the ingredients list on the backside. But it is there.
So, apparently it does not include any tea at all. But hey, it was so bad! Even smell of dry bag reminded me dish soap, artificial lemon, drying, medicinal. Taste, even brewed with almost boiling water… was disgusting! It was soooo artificial, sour and not even close to lemon. I would rather drink straight lemon juice than this tea again.
Yes, I finished my mug of tea… but luckily I was eating Scottish butter cookies along, otherwise I will throw up.
Bleh, never again. I have few more tea bags of this company, but now, I am not really sure if I want to try it.
Flavors: Artificial, Drying, Lemon, Lemon Zest, Medicinal, Sour
Preparation
Yuck! Lemon teas can be awful. Maybe you could save it by making ice tea with it . . . or you could just throw it out!
Ewwwwww! Sorry you had a bad tea experience. Or in this case, a “not really tea” experience.
This was certainly the worst. I don’t know if in lifetime, but certainly in my Steepster time. Yuck.
Happy Valentines day!
My goodness, we’re halfway through February already? Where is the time going? Ack!
It’s time to unearth an old favorite. I think I’m always going to like this one, it tastes light and fruity and lovely, and some days thats just all that I need!
OK, experts, are TenRen and TenFu cousins? Stepbrothers? Identical twins? A friend whose husband travels shared a little two-teaspoon sample packet with print so small it was nearly indecipherable. Anyway, my bifocals are pretty sure the label said TenFu, but the logo was almost indistinguishable from TenRen and the lovely, long blonde leaves look just like the ones in this picture. Everything else was in Chinese.
Tea itself: Superb. Sweet wheat bread. Will resteep this last spoonful as many times as possible before it becomes dishwater.
I don’t even know how to convey how excited I am to have a large stash of this tea at my disposal now, but I am VERY stoked about it! I’ve been hoarding this tea, along with all my apple blends from AQ2T, for a while now because I love them so much but now I don’t need to…
Potent, sweet, juicy, dense, floral – even boozy.
It’s such a particular but excellent apple flavour, and this mug made me smile soooo much.
I swear I threw a bag of Whittard’s Chelsea Garden in my purse last night before leaving for church, but it was no where to be found once I got there. I had resigned myself to drinking something awful from the church cabinet (I really need to mercy stock that thing) when the Bible study teacher pulled out a tea wallet and said, “Here! Choose from one of these!”
She loves black tea and was listing the contents (PG Tips, English Breakfasst, etc.) when she said, “Vanilla Caramel Chai? Where did that come from? I don’t even like chai, at all!” So I told her I would take that one to get it out of her wallet and to keep from depriving her of a tea she loves!
It wasn’t bad! The tea aspect was pretty weak but the flavors were pretty good. We had tiramisu as our snack and it went well enough with that. By the end of the mug, the licorice root was really noticeable, but I don’t mind licorice root in the right places and it didn’t bother me. I include that info for those who hate the stuff, because I know a lot of people do.
I’d never heard of a tea wallet until just now, but now that I know they exist I feel I must have one.
Chai with vanilla and caramel? It’s is then still chai?
Ohhh, I could turn my peacoat into a teacoat.
Shae: lots of instructions to make them from good craft paper or fabric online, plus etsy and tea shops sell them! There are lots of cool patterns.
Martin: I saw two women from India grimace at each other’s description of how they make chai, so I think ingredients may vary widely by region. One made a very sweet chai, the other very peppery with lots of turmeric and such. But this…more a flavored than a chai in my opinion.
Derk: go for it! :)
Haha, well, India is huge country, so actually no surprise there :)
a teacoat! I’m imagining watch sellers (or what have you) opening their coats to show their wares in the olden days.
I have a huge tartan Pendleton wool cape thatt reaches to my ankles; my son dubbed it “the rabbi cape.” There’s probably a good 15 square feet of pocket space available….
Now that’s some pocket space! Enough for a suitable number of tea choices? Questionable.
Let’s see…at roughly 2×2 inches per teabag…do we have any math majors out there?
Y’all cracking me up!
‘Samurai’ Traveling Teabox – Tea #5
I forgot this was the company run by Kaylee from Firefly! haha. I just finished rewatching Firefly about a month ago. sigh. I miss it already, yet again. She was also on the episode of The Magicians I just watched last night. Tea Runners actually have a good sale right now. A handful I wouldn’t mind trying: like the coconut pineapple oolong. Though I think I can spot the sources for some of their teas. This is loose leaf ripe pu-erh. The flavor is in the middle of the pack of deliciousness for ripe pu-erhs. It’s not too strong, not too weak. No negative qualities. But not too many things that make it a unique one. A level of starchiness but then a very thin aftertaste? It’s tough to describe. Now that I’m looking at the steep instructions, it says the first steep should have been for five minutes, so possibly I should have been steeping these leaves much longer than I did. Not really many flavor notes I can pull from this one!
Steep #1 // 1 1/2 teaspoons for a full mug // 5 minutes after boiling // 3 minute steep
Steep #2 // 10 minutes after boiling // 3 minute steep
Steep #3 // just boiled // 8 minute steep
Wait, really? Did I miss something?
ashmanra, I don’t know what you think you missed? Nothing new about Firefly… I was just rewatching it? Jewel Staite is on a couple episodes of The Magicians? Or Tea Runners is owned by Jewel Staite or that TeaRunners is having a sale? I don’t know. :D
Yeah, I would love to support her company, but it seems like a lot of her teas come from Simpson & Vail, so it makes more sense to buy it straight from them.
yep, I noticed S&V teas too.
I LOVE Firefly! I had no idea Jewel Staite had a tea company! Squeeeeeeee!
I agree though, if it is S&V teas I would just order straight from them.
(Off to check out website NOW.)
Decaf teas really are weak in flavor, especially if they aren’t fresh. It’s always disappointing when you expect a nice, strong cup and end up with hot water that tastes vaguely of tea.
Yep, I hoped the spices would do the trick for me today. But even them were weak.