Peppermint Cream

Drank another of these this evening. I’m still not overwhelmed, although the flavour appealed to me a little more than it did last time. Maybe because I have a cold? I’ve been drinking a lot of minty teas recently, in an effort to try and soothe my throat. Don’t ask me why mint — it just seems to work.

Anyway, I noticed today that there’s actually very little oolong in here. There’s the odd bit here and there, but it’s mostly mint leaves. There is a distinctive creaminess in the flavour, though, which combines with the mint to replicate a candy-like flavour fairly well. As it cools, it becomes fairly dead-on peppermint cream, so I’m not sure why I haven’t liked it all that much before. As flavours go, it’s pretty accurate, and I like that in a tea. I’ve increased the rating a little to reflect this. I’d still like to have been able to taste the milk oolong, though. It gets pretty lost here.

Wowsers….this is super pepperminty with a gentle touch of vanilla resembling Twinings – Butter Mint. It looks like mostly finely chopped peppermint leaf (with some dust) and some small to medium sized Oolong balls amidst it.

The flavour is very mild considering it’s strong scent. In my first few sips it took a few seconds before any flavour came through and when it did I feel the strongest was the cocoa. It’s sweet but also creamy and very light. I wish the peppermint was stronger.

This blend is too mild, I may try and double the dose or the steep time for my next cup. So far this one is disappointing.

KittyLovesTea sent me a lovely package of teas… mostly Bluebird samples to try because I want that to be the ONE company I order from one time in 2014. (Yeah right.) I’d like to know what I like from Bluebird first! thanks so much!!

I wanted to try Bluebird’s Christmas Cake for Christmas day but a headache means I should have a mint tea. Well, this was a mint tea from Bluebird so I went with it. A second oolong blend in a row! I don’t try many of those. This is supposed to be at 194 degrees so the water was cooled for a minutes. This one is a bit odd tasting at the first sip. It tastes a bit like catnip smells (which is probably since catnip is a mint anyway). And the oolong is very vegetal…I’m surprised it’s a milk oolong. The hints of chocolate aren’t very creamy. Not bad, but it’s odd! The second steep tasted more like I thought it should. Not my favorite from Bluebird, but I’d love to try their amazing blends either way.

So I’d brought this with me to work, for casual work sipping, and I cleaned it off yesterday.
I have not been inclined to log it, which should tell you what I think about it.
It was almost a non entity, hardly registering as I drunk it down.
I’m afraid I find that to be a common factor for almost all Bird and Blend teas…. ok, but not enough to really impress me.

I moved to London, Ontario last week to start Law School. New city. New school. No one I know, in an apartment all my own. On the plus side, that means I can decorate the place however I want, including a a tall bookshelf solely for displaying my teaware (well, the teaware I could get to fit). On the downside, that means I am alone and anxious and per past experiences, until I adjust, I don’t really eat and I don’t really drink. Mostly I just sit on a couch or in a bed and binge watch shows and retreat into myself. So, that means I haven’t been drinking much tea either.

I should say that all last week was Orientation week which means I was mostly out of the house doing orientation things like going to lectures about mental wellness and being forced to socialize so in addition to the not eating/drinking thing, I also didn’t have very much time at home to even make tea. Yesterday, was the first time I really spent at my apartment following classes that ended at 2:30. I came home and rewatched The Flash (which is now on Netflix…Yay!) and thought about making tea but couldn’t pick which tea I wanted and couldn’t force myself off the couch without a concrete plan so basically I sat in the dark watching until I decided it was time for bed.

I thought about making tea all day today as well but was struggling because I thought maybe I should write a tea review for Sororitea Sisters but wasn’t sure which tea to review. And I thought about how I should pick a tea I haven’t taken a pic of yet because I haven’t posted for my #365daysoftea in over a week. And I was also trying to do some organizing for school and honestly it just felt like a lot, even though I know it wasn’t. Finally I decided I was being ridiculous and just got the kettle boiling. Then picking mugs and a tea stressed me out which is silly but for some reason I was just very anxious and even got distracted and ended up steeping this at too low a temperature (160 vs the 175 it should have been steeped in). Ultimately, I picked my mug that says “home is where my tea is” – something I hope feels much more true shortly.

As for the tea, it is very smooth and definitely creamy. Peppermint is the most distinct flavor, acting as the top note that treads toward medicinal and blocks out most other flavors. I don’t get much from the cacao. The oolong is contributing the creaminess and comes through really floral in the aftertaste. I think that maybe the lower temperature hindered the cup as a whole since the oolong didn’t unroll all that much and I think in the future, brewed properly, this might have some more balance because right now it is a touch bland and one-note.

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.

In my experiences the greener varieties of oolong don’t seem to play well with additional ingredients. Some oolong is so light and floral that it tends to make the flavours seem spaced out and buffered instead of well mixed- if that makes sense. This something that inhibits my enjoyment of most “Oolong Chai” renditions.

Peppermint Cream doesn’t really suffer from this problem in so much that it’s more of a milk oolong flavoured mint tea than the other way around. The milkiness adds convincing depth to the cocoa “cream” (more like skim milk), while the airy green quality of the oolong amplifies the fresh breath quality of peppermint. Space is used well here.

It potently evokes memories of crisp fall mornings and that kind of thing. It also resteeps fairly well. My only complaints are the blend’s metallic tendency, and the fact that I don’t like cocoa in my tea.

Had this one at work with no idea that there was oolong in it until I poured it out. I never would have thought there would be a green oolong mixture with a peppermint leaf added into it. I probably should have waited for it to be cold to enjoy this more, but it was still good since I was inside drinking it while I worked :)
Interesting mixture that satisfied the mint desire a tea drinker may have, but I don’t think I had a note of cream in this tea… I’m curious what a creamy mint would be like with a tea, maybe a butter-mint?

I’m very excited to try this tea since the combination of cocoa shells and a milk oolong interests me. Peppermint isn’t as exciting for me, but I’ll deal with it. When I opened the bag, I was overwhelmed by all that peppermint! It’s incredibly strong. I don’t even really detect any oolong or cocoa shells in the scent.

Sipping… I was expecting this tea to be sharp, but it’s actually quite smooth. The cocoa flavor comes through stronger than I was expecting which is just lovely! I can’t say that it’s a strong chocolate flavor, but one that is specific to cocoa shells.. I’m not sure how else to describe it. The peppermint is definitely present – a little bit stinky and lingering, though. I can’t taste the oolong at all, sadly.

I do enjoy the combination of peppermint and cocoa shells, but I wish that the milk oolong would shine through. I’m not sure I would buy this one again, but I’m happy to finish up what I have.

Home – 7:00 PM

Ugh, being sick is the worst. So much sniffling and sneezing and blowing my nose and headaching… At least this cold seems to be passing quickly, I just caught it yesterday and it already seems on the way out.

We ordered a refrigerator and washer/dryer for our new house, though. Yay! We’ve been dealing with very sub-par appliances in our current rental house, so brand spanking new ones will be a nice change. Although really that’s the case with most things – the poor quality of our rental house is probably one of the main reasons we ended up building a brand new home instead of buying an existing one…

Anyway, the tea. I love this one from B&B – in fact, I just ordered a 50g pouch the other day. It makes me think of peppermint bark, though without the dark chocolate layer. The milk oolong really does taste like white chocolate with its creamy and buttery notes.

Really I would probably prefer peppermint flavoring to the dried peppermint leaf, but it’s still mighty tasty as-is.