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2013/03/30
snog box!
just watched new doctor who.
drank over half of my sample of this today.
it was just so easy to drink!
the vanilla was subtle for me, but that is great cuz vanilla is so easy to over do.

update: so ya, i just ordered an additional mini sample of this with a new try me pack. i don’t think i love this tea, but maybe i love this tea, cuz obviously i can’t stop brewing it. it’s like i have a compulsion to drink it that is beyond my control.

2013/05/13
i win! bwahahahah!!!
i got a surprise bit of this tea from TastyBrew in our mystery swap, and that would be a ho-hum story except that i LOVE this TEA! i even ordered myself a second sample pouch from Della Terra after i finished my first pouch in record time. and now i have more of it! and i will goddamn hoard it all i want to!! cuz ’’’singit’’’ this is fucking awesummmm

purchased in bulk at my local health food store.
delicious. and not very minty. very much just like the usual apple cider vinegar type taste. if there is mint in there it’s so fain it just makes it more refreshing. can’t wait to but more and more during the summer.

i can smell the chocolate, caramel and almond flavour. this one is better than the rest of davidsteas pu-erh’s at least. but that’s not really saying much.

they do flavoured and fun teas so well. for example their oolongs are always enjoyable. so it seem strange to me that davidsteas made an entire collection of pu-erhs and somehow managed to suck all of the vibrancy and poetry out of the leaves. like a white tea or some jasmine pearls, even if the tea isn’t the best harvest ever it can still be good. it can still put you in touch with nature and have some depth.

i procrastinated and procrastinated drinking this coffee pu-erh for a very long time cuz i was dreading how bad it might be. but honestly, it might be the better of the pu-erh set. so if you like davidstea and you wanna drink pu-erh, pick this one or chocolate orange. but also, go buy some pu-erh somewhere else too. and keep giving it a chance.

another tea that i’ve drank many times and never review.
i like all of the russian blends from kusmi. i plan to try their other teas as well.

i guess nothing especially descriptive comes to mind about this tea. but please don’t think that means it’s isn’t very good. buy it! drink it!

this was a sample from kusmi and it came in a little muslin tea bag.
this is an impressively smooth cup.
i wouldn’t expect anything less from kusmi.

meh … it’s a free sample… why not.

i just sorted my teas digitally. i have 126 teas in my cupboard and my goal is to get it to 76. give or take. cuz i have put samples in my cupboard too, but that’s because some samples i’ve already drank plenty of and could easily give them away. this all kinda makes me feel a little better because i thought it was WAY more out of control than 126. even if i could get below 100 i’d be happy. not that i don’t love to have lots of tea! but i do wanna feel like my collection is manageable and like i can give each tea in my stash the attention it deserves.
i would also like to be able to add new teas to my stash immediately, instead of sticking them in tea purgatory (the darkness in the back of a bottom drawer) until i have room to properly open and taste them.

there are 43 teas in my stash that i haven’t tried yet.
i would like to reduce my stash by 50 teas overall if i can.

problem is, my sister is moving-in in 3 weeks and even when we merge our teas since we have many duplicates, she will still be bringing several new teas to the collection. also, soon i am going to europe, and i expect to bring A LOT of tea back with me. (I’m also gonna try VERY VERY hard to only buy samples.)

i’ll just plan to do a big spring cleaning when i get back i guess.

this bigelow isn’t nearly as awful as i assumed it was gonna be. take what you can get bigelow.

i actually brought a pu-erh cake and my small glass gung fu to work today.

it won’t be the classiest steep of all time, but i realized i was never gonna drink my unflavored or traditional teas if i didn’t start putting a little extra effort forth and make some compromises. and i’m pretty excited about this.

i did one 30 second rinse. then one 30 secondish steep. i realized a little too late i should have done both shorter. but this is learning! and it’s still a good tea experience i get to have.

the cake loosened and dissolved into little tea flakes immediately. after the rinse, the fishy pu-erh scent was immediately present, but not strong!! it really wasn’t.
again, i’m not very pu-erh knowledgeable yet, but i can immediately tell that this is much better than the crappy davidstea pu-erhs i’ve tried. (don’t get me wrong, i like davidsteas a lot! and they have a ton of great teas but really they do not do pu-erhs well at all.)
i steeped the next cup at 20 seconds, and then the next one at 30 seconds, etc. and my pu-erh innocence tells me that this is a very very good tea. my other great experience with pu-erh is a blood orange pu-erh from Carytown Teas that i tried once and then couldn’t get it out of my head. (so of course i own 2oz of it now.)
this is a rambley review i realize.
i think i have gained perspective on how a good pu-erh should taste. i’m excited.

seeing Duncan Trussell @ Strange Matter. Comedy and Tea! I win Tuesday.

this is not a tea i get excited about. and i could blame the hibiscus, but hibiscus or no hibiscus, i really i just think this tea is not very interesting. the scent doesn’t even really interest me. nothing about it draws me in. but it will probably be nice in the summer. and i do love cinnamon. so i see that as a perk.

i really enjoy this tea. and i think it could even stand up the whole year, through all the seasons. it’s slightly tart, and slightly cinnamon, and sweet to the nose. it has an interesting dichotomy where i find it both refreshing and hearty at the same time. mmmm