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This is my newest VIT (Very Important Tea) that I blended – I had originally planned on blending it in time for a January something release, because it goes along with the Candy Shop theme from January, but I was still so behind that I didn’t have time to do it.

I’m glad I did finally get this one blended though because it’s yummy. It’s inspired by one of my favorite lollipops from Lollies by Leah, a blend of strawberry ice cream and lemon sherbet flavors.

For this blend, I used Bu Lang black tea from the Yunnan province. The leaves are beautifully large and bulky and brewed without the strawberry and ice cream and lemon and sherbet flavors, it has a medium body, smooth, malty and fruity so I knew it would work well with these flavors.

My first couple of “taste test” cups were served hot and I loved them. Now I’m drinking it iced and I love it like that too. It’s a really wonderful blend.

I’m not sure if this will post or not – as it seems that my feed on Steepster hasn’t ‘fed’ at all in the last 24 hours, nor has it recorded my ‘likes’ or my comments – so I guess we shall see.

Anyway, this is a tea from our menu of teas for February. This tea wasn’t actually inspired by Pac-Man, it’s simply a blend of Pear, Apple & Cherry together with an organic green tea base of Chun Mee & Gunpowder. I thought PAC-Man was a better name than “Pear, Apple & Cherry”.

I’m enjoying this one as iced tea today – I did the taste testing as hot tea and really loved it that way but I knew this would be best iced (most fruity green teas are). Since I only had a very small amount of this left in my pantry, I wanted to use the rest for iced tea.

The green tea base is nice – I love this combination of Chun Mee & Gunpowder. The fruity notes are also quite pleasant – I notice pear as the prominent flavor but the apple and cherry come through nicely too. I wanted to be careful with the cherry as I am always mindful of the ‘medicinal’ note it can often have – but with these other fruits in play, I don’t pick up on any hint of cough medicine.

Delicious, fruity and refreshing – makes a nice glass of iced tea on this warm spring evening.

PS: We only have one taster pouch of this one left!

This is our Featured Reblend for February – and unfortunately (due to having less Genmaicha in stock than I realized) there isn’t a whole lot of it left after fulfilling subscriptions.

This tastes so much like I remember it – nice toasty rice flavor from the genmaicha – a sweet, custardy note, a touch of mango (that hits toward the finish and lingers) and toasted coconut. Sweet, yummy, creamy deliciousness. A nice representation, I think, of my favorite Thai dessert.

One of our teas from February. As I mention in my blog post for this tea, I was a little surprised that Frank didn’t try this tea – because he did quite a few peanut butter teas.

I love this – the peanut butter comes through nicely but the black tea is also nice and strong. There is just a hint of the cookie aspect – a hint of caramelized brown bottom, a hint of pastry/baked cookie. After my first taste test, I thought about playing around with that, but I loved the way it tasted so I didn’t want to possibly try to amplify the cookie to the potential ruin of the yummy peanut butter notes.

This was the tea of the week for February 4. This is really tasty on it’s own – the white chocolate adds some creaminess to it – but I prefer it as a latte. Most of the chai blends that I’ve made in the past have been ones that I’d prefer served straight – this one is definitely best served as a latte and I’m loving that. Creamy, nicely spiced and just – so – good!!!

I wanted to make this one a little different, so I added bay leaf to the blend in addition to the usual masala spices of cinnamon, cardamom, clove, ginger and peppercorns (I used not just black pepper but white and pink peppercorns too). The bay leaf gives this a slight earthiness – as well as enhances the spice notes overall.

the last Tea of the Week for the month of January (I still have a featured reblend coming though) – this candy scared me just a little because the name made it sound like it was going to be super sour. I’m not a big fan of super sour flavors – but I was pleasantly surprised because it really isn’t sour – a bit acidic, yes – but not sour. It has a strong citrus-y flavor that is mostly grapefruit, but it is really more ‘citrus’ to me than strictly grapefruit so I used more than just grapefruit in the blend. This has a base of Chun Mee, a bunch of grapefruit as well as lemon, lime and a few oranges. I also added some lime leaves for an added punch of citrus flavor and a little bit of lemongrass to smooth out the flavor just a little.

This is really good – very citrus-y as you might imagine – but if you like citrus, then you will really enjoy this one.

I hope that you are all keeping warm – especially those in the polar vortex areas where they’re experiencing below 0 weather! Stay warm and stay safe, please!

About this tea: we only have one pouch of this tea left – so I decided to go ahead and brew what I had of this tea in my pantry and write a tasting note for it. This was a tea of the week in November – A green tea blend of Chun Mee & Gunpowder, blended with orange and warm spice.

A really nice, winter-ish blend.

This is the Tea of the Week for January 21 – and to continue the theme of “Retro Candy Shop” I chose to create a tea inspired by my favorite candy from my Handy Candy haul – Licorice Rockies! I wasn’t at all surprised that I loved the candy since I love black licorice. But I do know that it’s a somewhat polarizing flavor, most people either love it or hate it. So I’m careful not to go crazy making licorice flavored teas but the candy that inspires this tea is a bit different from most licorice candy because the black licorice rope is filled with a sweet fruit and cream filling that softens that sharp edge that is usually present with most licorice candy. So while it does have a taste of licorice, it also has the taste of fruit (the flavor I noticed most was raspberry) and sweet vanilla cream and since it was a bit softer than most licorice candy, I thought this would be a safe inspiration to draw upon and that even those who might not be terribly fond of licorice might like this.

This has a licorice presence but I also taste a note of raspberry which is particularly noticeable in the aftertaste. In the aftertaste, it comes out as a distinct raspberry flavor while through the sip, I get more of berry-ish fruit notes. It doesn’t come across as strongly raspberry. When I taste tested it, I didn’t want to play around with that a lot to make it taste more raspberry because this isn’t specifically a raspberry candy, it’s licorice with a few different fruit flavors with raspberry the most distinct flavor I noticed. So I decided to have raspberry play the role of “fruit” in this blend. The cream is also not strongly “vanilla” but more of a smooth, sweet cream note that does more to soften the licorice than it does to offer a stand-out flavor of its own.

I absolutely love this tea.

Hello Everybody! This is another Tea of the Week for January (Retro Candy Shop Month!) – this tea was inspired by a candy called (interestingly enough) “Grays Teacake” which really doesn’t taste much like a teacake at all – but more like a sweet, toasted coconut-y, chewy candy with hints of caramel.

I must admit that as far as candy goes, this wasn’t my favorite in the box but I did enjoy it (I placed an order with “Handy Candy” for some old fashioned British candies – for research purposes only, you understand). I decided to craft this tea primarily because of the name of the tea – I mean, how could I NOT craft a Grays Teacake blend for Retro Candy Shop month?

And I’m glad I decided to go with this blend, because even though the candy wasn’t my favorite, the tea is fantastic. Oh, I enjoyed the candy well enough, but I certainly had a few favorites in my box – this one was yummy but not one of those favorites. But this is a lovely tea: it has a lovely roasty-toasty flavor, a sweet, creamy coconut note and a touch of caramel in the background.

This is the Tea of the Week for January 7, 2019. The theme for this month is “Retro Candy Shop” – inspired by old fashioned candies (mostly British Candies but also one of my favorites from my childhood). This is the one from my childhood favorites. Remember those little strawberry candies – the hard candies that were wrapped in the shiny strawberry wrapper? This tea was inspired by those candies.

It has a really nice strawberry flavor – and the lighter base of Ceylon and Nilgiri allow the strawberry to shine through. It’s a little sweeter than true-to-the-fruit (because, you know, it’s a candy-like version) but certainly not as sweet as the candy – the tea cuts through that a bit.

I’m happy with how this one turned out. (Oh – and the boxes are going out over the course of the next three days!)