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I had a really nice mug of this yesterday;

The flavour was very smooth and clean with lots of round berry notes such as blueberry, acai, and a less distinct red berry flavour. My favourite thing about this blend is how strong the juniper berries are though – they’ve got a very strong pine-like flavour that comes across wonderfully, and makes this tea seem even more natural, unrefined and “raw”. I feel like I could be a black bear eating berries in the forest.

It’s been pointed out to me that I’m probably sleeping a little too much. Currently, I’m only awake around nine hours a day? I know that’s awful – but with the stress of the move I’ve just felt so drained/tired. My daily schedule right now looks a little like this:

- Wake Up
- Look at online job listings
- Apply to online job listings
- Tea and a snack
- Nap
- Tea
- Look at online listings again
- Apply anywhere new
- Tea and food
- Hand out resumes in person
- Tea
- Go to bed…

I think once I’m working again I’ll be able to get into more of a routine, though.

Sometimes you just have to have a crazy one person dance party in your kitchen at two in the afternoon; and that’s exactly what I did until my brother got home early from school and walked in on me dancing my ass off. Damn teenagers skipping school!

I joke; he has a fifth period spare every other day.

This was my dance companion; I added in some coconut milk to amp up the creaminess and it was this lovely decadent treat with weighty vanilla and cinnamon notes and a rootbeer sweetness more in the end of the sip that anywhere else. I shared some with Liam, my brother, and he said it tasted like bitter cinnamon. And Earl Grey. What!?

I swear, EVERYTHING I share with my brother tastes like Earl Grey. Do you guys have that problem sharing tea with family? I swear ‘everything tastes like Earl Grey’ just because that’s typically the ‘flavoured tea’ most non-tea drinkers are most familiar with, and for that reason alone…

Made this as tea soda while having a fun, lowkey games type night with my family. We played a couple rounds of Sushi Go! which I picked up months ago (after seeing it on Tabletop) but haven’t had anyone to play with yet. It was super fun and easy to pick up – I’d love to play more to try and work on the strategy side of it.

This tea soda was really nice; I was saying to someone in the Steepster chat the other day that I hadn’t found an oolong yet that I really like as a soda which is why I chose to make this one tonight. It wasn’t very strong/powerful and actually had more of a subtly flavoured “Carbonated Spring Water”/spritzer kind of vibe but I think that was actually a good thing because it meant I could taste some of the delicate aspects of the tea like the floral and peachier notes of the oolong. And of course the raspberry.

Also, I already wrote today about doing the written part of my test but I also did the presentation portion too. This module’s presentation was a comparison of two similar but different teas highlighting what makes them different and even though I prepped to talk about oolongs on a whim I switched to talking about Chinese and Japanese green teas. I think I did well; wish me luck! I probably wont know how I did overall for another couple of days, though.

I decided to try practicing out doing a more serious, thought out tea and food pairing since that’s the next module I’m doing with class and the last week of Tea 103 did touch on this topic. I waited to see what my mom had planned out for supper and then picked my tea out afterwards!

So, tonight we ended up eating spinach stuffed ravioli with a parmesan topping (and the meat eaters in the family had chicken as well – but I am not a meat eater). I decided that because all of the flavours in that dish are pretty light that a full bodied, brisker tea like an Assam would be an inappropriate pairing. A medium bodied or lighter tea would probably be a more suitable pairing.

I picked this unconventional Genmaicha because I thought that the delicate flavour nuances wouldn’t drown out the flavour of the pasta, and the vegetal nature of the green tea would blend in with the spinach filling while the toasted rice notes would provide some contrast. I definitely really enjoyed the meal even if I’m not totally positive this was the best pairing I could have come up with. I think a medium bodied tea like a high grown Ceylon or something like a greener oolong with floral notes both would’ve tasted really good too.

As for the tea itself, it was very soft with a good balance of sweeter vegetal notes like spring beans and a subtle marine-like quality with some toasted rice notes and a slight nuttiness as well as a soft vanilla edge. The taste was very clean and well rounded. I couldn’t taste the juniper in this infusion but I also didn’t crush the berries before hand which is what I’ve been doing lately when I drink this. I still really, really love this Genmaicha.

Chai Popcorn!!!

I had such an intense craving for popcorn tonight; I actually really wanted to make matcha popcorn but this late at night I didn’t want to risk the caffeine amount. I’m happy I settled on this though – it was just the right balance of sweet and salty which I think is what I was craving in the first place. Besides, the vanilla notes with the popcorn were a match made in heaven. Actually, it was like eating one of those marshmallow-y popcorn balls that people sometimes make around Christmas!

I should move these tins upstairs though; at this rate it’ll take me forever to finish either of them and these are blends I really wouldn’t be upset with my new ‘roomies’ my brother and mom drinking.

I feel like DAVIDsTEA actually came up with some really interesting flavours this fall – this one in particular is very strange and I don’t know how on board I am with a muffin flavoured tea. Actually, in fact I know I’m not totally on board with a muffin tea. I know people were weirded out by a peanut butter tea, but this is so much stranger to me. For whatever reason.

Again, this appears to be another really heavy herbal blend. There are a lot of big cranberry chunks in the leaf that look as impressive in size as the ones in DT’s black Cranberry Pear blend that I’m accustomed to seeing. The smell of the dry leaf is really weird though: it’s got a really strong orange flavour, but in an off-‘orange peel’ kind of way rather than a sweet, juicy orange. I also smell cinnamon, oat, and something… else. Dandelion I guess? Whatever it is does NOT appeal to me. I mean, the smell isn’t gross but there’s just really no appeal. I cold brewed my sample; the liquor is pretty foggy and this weird orange/brown colour. The smell is quite fruity, with more orange/citrus notes than anything else. I also smell a lot of cinnamon, and a whiff of bran.

The first, most noticeable thing about the flavour is the fruity top notes. The cranberry is very piercing, and this lovely balance of sweet and tart. Somewhere in the mix, I can taste mango too. The orange follows quickly behind, but I can’t say I’m a fan of the flavour. It’s very semi-sweet bordering on not sweet at all and the combination of sourness/tartness and slight bitterness makes me image I’m chewing on an orange peel. Yuck! Unfortunately, those orange notes are really long lingering, well into the aftertaste. I’d love to swap out the intensity of the orange for cranberry.

The muffin taste is alright; I’d say it’s more of a weird starchy oat flavour and bran than a complete “muffin” taste, and there’s cinnamon peppered in there as well. Similar to the orange, the cinnamon is also very lingering. Once the initial fruit flavour subsides you can really taste the “muffin” element of the tisane quite well. I actually don’t mind the overall flavour, but it is strange to be tasting it in chilled, liquid form. Something else comes into play – probably the dandelion, and it’s putting a damper on the flavour too though. If anything I think that it (the ‘muffin’ and dandelion) would work better hot. However, with the unpleasant orange flavour I don’t know whether I want to experience a hot mug to test that theory out.

For me, this is a big mug of nope. Despite how accurate I think it is to the name, this is definitely NOT the tea for me. However, I do encourage people to give at least one cup a shot because it’s a unique flavour.

I made this tea last night; it’s a very aesthetically pretty tea with lots of golden tips throughout. I’d say the ratio is probably somewhere like 1:3 of the leaf is tips which certainly isn’t bad. The brewed up liquor was very dark; almost opaque in colour actually. To me, that definitely signified that this was going to be a strong, full bodied brew.

And it certainly was; in fact it was a little rough in addition to have a strong, brisk flavour. There were definitely very characteristic Assam flavours present like malt and a dark chocolate. It was a little bittersweet; perhaps in part from the chocolate notes and maybe in part because of the rougher overall mouthfeel/taste of the tea. This is possibly from over steeping, though if that’s the case then I’d say I only very slightly oversteeped – which would mean this is a more finicky/picky tea.

Other notes I found present were a kind of coffee grounds flavour, and somewhat of a ‘stale’ graham cracker flavour. Overall, not the smoothest Assam but good regardless. I think it’d definitely be a good candidate from a splash of milk, and morning consumption rather than evening.

I wanted to review this one on SororiTea Sisters but I couldn’t find the tea company it’s from online; if anyone can point me in the right direction that would be appreciated.

Sipdown (116)!

Finished this one off last night at something stupid like three in the morning. I was drinking it and my brother had just gotten home from work, came downstairs and instantly commented on how good it smelled/how strong the rich vanilla aroma was.

And the vanilla certainly was strong! This was a really wonderful tea to end the night on and I’m happy to have gotten in a sipdown since I’ve got tea en-route and just picked up some of DT’s fall stuff. Plus, now that I’m in Regina again it’s not too hard to pop on over to Cuppa’T and see if I can grab some more!

Man, I don’t envy Liam right now though. He’s working the same job I used to in highschool; at Galaxy Cinemas. He absolutely hates it – I can tell. To be fair, I did encourage him not to apply because I know he’s in no way an evening person and working at the theater is really late hours. But watching him do it, I have no idea how I did it – I AM an evening person so I know how I managed to stay up so late, but to then go to school at 8AM? That’s crazy.

I guess to be fair in my final year of highschool I did have a lot of spares; first and fifth period and then 2nd too because IB Art finished a few months early. So I’d just go to school with my brother in the morning and catch up on sleep in the art loft (we had the best couches up there and no one other than art students were allowed access) during my spares…

My mom continues to drink teas from my stash without letting me know (I’m talking things other than what I’m brewing for her/to share with her) including some of the more pricey ones so I’m returning the favor and drinking her teas…

I don’t know how she still has any of this left to be honest; I gave her a 20g bag as a Christmas present two years ago! And it still looked really full. What’s up with that mom!? My tea’s good enough but yours isn’t? I cold brewed it though; and man did I miss this tea! It makes the best creamy peppermint cold brew ever – like white chocolate bark but with increased refreshment/coolness.

Also, I just finished the written part of my Tea 103 exam and I crushed it! I ended up getting 94% which was 47/50 questions. I’m really proud of that; I don’t remember for sure but I think that’s a slight improvement on last time’s exam? Something is telling me I got 90% last time…

Today has been…

Well, lets just say I got up at around 2PM and began my day by making a mug of this for myself and my mom – then I helped her bake some banana bread. When it was done I practically ate my weight in banana bread. It was so good right out of the over! And I saved some of this tea that I was drinking while making it, let it go cold and dunk the banana bread in it. Omnomnomnomnom.

Sometime around four I wandered back downstairs, went to check my email and then feel asleep. So now I face a dilemma; it’s 7PM and I’m WIDE AWAKE and I need to be studying for my exams tomorrow. Crap; why am I SO TIRED all of the time!? But at least I had tasty, creamy vanilla cranberry tea and banana bread!