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This is a pretty straightforward tea. Assam CTC with bits of cardamom pods mixed in. The CTC makes this very dense – my 10g sample package only had about 3tsp in it, and when I weighed out one teaspoon it came out to over 4g. It both smells and tastes of cardamom.

Steeped in 96C water for 4min, it was pretty strong and bitter – not really good straight, but delicious with milk and sugar, as I’d planned. The liquor was a very dark brown, almost coffee-like, and mellowed out to a creamy milk chocolate colour with milk.

An easy, straightforward cup of chai.

Oh wait! This was actually the first cup of the day, but I drank it down so fast, I forgot about it.

Good root beer fragrance and flavour, with a touch of creaminess and a hint of fruit from the base. I still prefer DAVIDs, but this is really tasty, and would probably be great with milk and sugar.

OMG. I just, finally, finished logging all my Teabox teas in my cupboard. The teas I ordered during Black Friday. I’d been chipping away at the task for a while and I thought I was a good amount of the way through, and boy was I wrong. I added 76 teas to my cupboard today and yesterday. I’m actually a little embarrassed by how much tea I have. Granted, all 135 Teabox teas are 10g samples, but that’s still an absurd amount of tea!

So I’m digging into them!

The dry leaf is a small grain CTC, with a scant sprinkling of other ingredients. The smell is all cardamom and ginger.

Steeped for 5min in 98C water, then topped it up with milk to 8oz and added a scant teaspoon of sugar.

This is surprisingly mild – I was expecting something more kick in the pants – but actually, it’s perfect for right now. I love that this has no cinnamon or clove in it. Nothing wrong with those flavours, but I find that most chai blends tend to get dominated by those flavours, and this one doesn’t miss them at all. A great balance of ginger, fennel and cardamom flavours.

I might see about stewing this one for my next cup, to get more flavour out of it, but it’s really fantastic just as it is.

What a day! This was my first proper cup of tea, and I didn’t get to have it till 5pm.

I slept in today, then spent a bunch of time taking the cat to the vet to get some stuff checked – she needs dental work, which I knew, as well as a couple of other small things (why u so expensive cat??!? Not that it’s a surprise – she was rescued from a hoarder and had a lot of medical issues from the start.) Our vet is out of town, so it was over an hour of driving round trip. The roads kind of sucked, as did the wind, with my tiny Smart Car at highway speeds, but kitty is soooo good in the car. I used to do little road trips to visit family during holidays, and I’d have three cats in my truck for an eight hour drive with no troubles.

After the vet, I came home and my partner made me an awesome dinner (steak and potatoes with mushroom onion gravy), and then drove me across town to the university to guest lecture. It went really well, and I enjoy doing it so much, but I’m all exhausted and sweaty now. I don’t get at all nervous about public speaking any more – I feel very mentally relaxed doing it, but my body reacts like I’m stressed and anxious – sweating, back tension and all that. Which sucks, and I need to figure out how to make that stop.

Now I’m at home, in my robe.

So the tea! So delicious. I threw a teaspoon of pearls into my travel mug, filled it 3/4 of the way with 82C water, and then topped it up with cold water after a few min. The leaves unfurled quickly and the resulting brew was intensely jasmine – perfumey, but not at all in a negative way – with some really beautiful peach notes. After a couple of hours of sipping at this, there was a slight bit of astringency, and some more vegetal flavours emerging, but it was still delicious and drinkable.

This was a lot better than I remembered it being. I know Teavana is all about their fruit blends, but I feel like I’ve been pretty impressed with their teas that don’t contain any chunks of stuff.

Well poop. I grabbed this this morning because I needed something reliable, and then I totally messed up brewing it for my travel mug and it ended up being not even worth drinking :( So that kind of sucked.

This tea is always so amazingly fantastic. We made a big pot of it tonight, using up most of my sweetie’s stash, and it was loaded with grape and malt flavours, as always.

It’s so interesting – my sweetie and I make tea with such different steeping parameters, but I always enjoy their results, though I don’t think I would if I made tea at home the same way. We both western brew, but I tend to go for much shorter steeps of the same teas. Usually 2-3 min for blacks, 30 sec – 2 min for greens and 4min for oolongs. They do 5 min for blacks, 3min for greens and 7 min for oolongs. The tea they make here rarely ever tastes oversteeped. We’re both using city tap water, have the same variable temp kettle, use about the same ratio of leaf to water, and generally follow the temperature directions given by the seller. Very curious.

And raising my rating on this, because I really love it so much.

Sipped this down as a cold brew today. Unfortunately, cold brewing did not bring out the best in this tea – it was all floral, bordering on soapy, with just a touch of grape on the finish. Drinkable, but I would not make it this way again.

I’ve never really done cold brewing before, but suddenly I have the urge to try cold brewing everything. I blame Roswell Strange and aisling of tea and all their notes about delicious cold brews.

So I have SO MUCH of this tea. I picked up the 250g web specials bag, and I love it, but I’m also never going to get through it all. This also just seemed like the perfect tea for a cold brew. And it is! It’s sweet, with melon, cucumber and mint notes, and is ridiculously refreshing cold brewed. All of the flavours come out wonderfully.

I think I’m going to be drinking this one a lot, come summer.

Thanks to Janelle for this sample.

The name of this sounds so delicious and intriguing, but I’m sadly not getting much of the description in the taste or smell. There’s a hint of hops and vanilla and a lingering tartness at the back of my tongue on the finish, which I guess could be rhubarb, so it’s not inaccurate, but it’s not exciting me either, and I’m not sure I’d pick out those flavours if I weren’t prompted.

A touch of sugar and letting the cup cool improved it a little bit but not a lot.

I’m glad I got to try this but this is not for me.

Dry leaf smells intensely umami, sweet and nutty, almost savoury. Steeped, golden liquor has delicate honey taste with a bit of vegetal on the finish.