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This is another one from Dexter.

This one is interesting. I read tea description and was a bit confused. I feel like there is a bit of everything in this tea. Kind of like they threw all the left overs together and came up with a tea that certainly sounds fancy and high class.

The smell of the brewed tea is quite strong candied almond with some jasmine. Makes me a bit unsure.

The taste is different. Not bad, just not flavours I wouldn normally put together. I am getting strong almond and creamy flavours. There seems like there are also rose and jasmine tastes in there. There is a candied quality to the almonds, almost like marzipan. There is sweetness to the tea on its own, with no sweetner needed to be added.

I think this is a good tea. It is a rich tea. I am happy to have had a chance to try it but I don’t think I would purchase it.

Thanks Dexter for the opportunity to try this tea!

Hello Steepster!

It’s been awhile. I am still here, checking things out every once in a while. Things have been stupid crazy. So I haven’t drank a lot of tea lately, let alone have had time to review any. So of course I have a mad case of the grumps. So today I decided I am going to be a recluse, don’t talk to me, or text me, or come over, or book me an appointment, or ask me to do anything.

Well of course, because I decided today is MY day, I have already had to go out and run some errands, people were texting me at 7 am (FML). And now I have company coming. But they have been forewarned. I am not going to be a host, or pleasant at all. I don’t want them here (they thought I was joking, but I wasn’t). They can come and entertain themselves. That is what I am planning anyway. But I know it is not how it is going to go.

All I am asking for is for the world to leave me along today. sigh.

So I am going to try to get to some samples and do some reviews.

I received this one from Dexter! I am assuming this is the right tea, my little package was labelled La Poire, but I am sure this is the same tea.

The brewed tea smells like strong black tea, bold and malty, with a light fruity flavour.

Wow, the taste is very much pear. Definitely surprising. It is a bit of artificial pear-candy tasting, but much more pear flavour than I expected. I did not need to add any sweetener at all. The black tea is very bold, thick, strong, and malty. On first sip, there is a very strong pear flavour, then it quickly fades to the black base. The pear flavour becomes more natural and starts to linger longer once the tea begins to cool a bit.

It is supposed to be a rainy day. I love rain. Right now it is like the pre- gross windy weather that will blow in the rain. I can’t wait…for the rain, not my company. Damn people that love me and want to be around me. I need to be much more grumpy, unless they like grumpy, hmmm…

(I have clearly not had enough tea in recent times).

Received this one from a super secret surprise package from Dexter. This has been on my wish list for a long time but I had not yet had the chance to swap for it or put in a Steap Shoppe purchase.

This one smells super delicious, even though it is a pu’erh :P I just want to eat the dry leaf. It smells like cinnamon coffee cake. The brewed tea has a slight hint of pu’erh, but mostly smells like cinnamon french toast (yikes, why is my nose so sensitive to pu’erh; I am going to start claiming I have an allergy. That’s it – I am allergic to pu’erh).

I brewed this one up as per the recommendations from Dex on the package.

This tea is really good, but it is lacking just a little bit. I am getting a sweet cinnamon flacour, some light pastry. I feel like I am getting a bit of egg, such as with french toast. But I think it is lacking that thickness and heaviness of a real cinnamon bread. I think adding a bit of milk or creamer would help, but I am over on the couch and the milk is way over in the fridge….

I am getting just a slight hint of pu but it is tolerable, ha ha (I am allergic, you know, so I can only take it in small amounts…). This one definitely becomes more flavourful as it cools.

Thanks Dexter for so kindly seeing this one on my wishlist and sending it to me!

I quite like bamboo teas. Of the teas I have tried so far, the bamboo leaves seems to be quite large. By that I mean, there were quite large cut up/chunked up pieces of light green leaf. This tea, however, looks quite different. It is very skinny, long, slender dark green leaf, look very similar to flattened out pine needles. There are quite a few bunches of leaves that are still attached to a stem.

This tea definitely has a bamboo taste. But there is also something else there. Something very deeply vegetal, deeply woody. I know this is strange but the first thing that came to my mind was beef boullion, but without the saltiness, I am also thinking popcorn – its a bit weird. There is a thick, buttery quality to the tea that is similar to other bamboo teas I have tried.

This one is ok. I am not sure if there are different types of bamboo, but I am assuming there are different parts of the plant. But This one is ok, not my favorite bamboo tea.

So with my last Harney order, I ordered their K-cup style Paris and Earl Grey Supreme to take to my parents house. My parents don’t have a decent way to make tea at their house, but they do have a Keurig. I used to carry a large box of tea making supplies and teas with me, but had finally just settled into drinking Keurig style Twinnings Earl Grey, or coffee.

So I thought I would give these a try. The Paris k-cups are fairly decent. Of course, not as good as a loose leaf brewed with appropriate parameters, but it will do, and it is better than what I was drinking before. The Earl Grey Supreme was also pretty good. They both had that tinge of coffee flavour as that is what the Keurig is mostly used for.

I think Harney did a good job creating these k-cups as the flavours are pretty decent and very similar to the loose leaf versions, but I think after these boxes are done, I will just stick with the cheapy cheapy teas, as it is not worth the price, in my opinion.

I also asked my parents to hide this tea so that no one else would drink it up before I visited again. Hehe.

I bought a tin of this last year. And I just couldn’t get into liking it. I made it a few times this (neverending) Canadian winter and it just isn’t hitting the spot, or any spot, for me. So I tried it cold brewed vs iced.

It was really interesting, it cold brewed for 8 hours and there was still no colour change to the water with minimal flavour. After 24 hours, the water was quite pale. There was some taste. Definitely not very strong. It is not so much chemical passionfruit this way vs. iced, but don’t get me wrong, it is still not delicious. It is however, certainly drinkable this way. I think when I start doing some work in the yard (hint, hint – go away winter!), I will cold brew up a pitcher or two so I can drink it quickly as a thirst quencher. It is better cold brewed without sweetener added.

Also, as a note, I read that Terri planted her garden today. WTF, I still have snow in my yard. And it freezing rained last night so now it is more of that ice berg snow that you can’t even break up and spread around. sigh.

I would like to start the day but saying Thank you John Harney and family, Thank you!

Harney is one of my fav tea companies. So I was super excited to be able to pick up this special edition 30th Anniversary blend. It came in the usual Harney sachet form.

This tea is SOOOO good! The assam is bold and malty. But the Yunnan gold tips and silver tips definitely add a lot of silky smoothness the tea. It is lightly sweet, very natural tasting. There is a slight earthiness to the tea but it mixes well with the maltiness of the assam.

Definitely no additions needed for this tea. I will be drinking this on all day, and will shed a few tears when it is gone.

Well….
Hmmm….
Ummm…

I received this one as a free sample in my recent Harney order. They actually gave me two free samples, both this tea. The description of the tea on the package doesn’t sound too bad. This was the usual Harney sachet.

The dry tea looks like crushed up chammomile. So I brewed it up. The tea smells like frozen fish sticks. No jokes. It is very pu’erh, fishy. Also very deeply woody. But unfortunately like the old rotting wood and pine needles that have been laying on a forest floor for a few years. The kind when you step on it, you kind of sink in a bit.

Before I tasted it, I added some honey, lots of honey. I don’t usually add honey to my tea but I just couldn’t stomach the smell of the brewed tea.

To be honest, it is a bit hard to tell the taste. I also just ate a piece of pickled garlic because I am getting a sinus infection. Garlic works wonders for my immune system. I also love garlic. Mmmmm.

Ok back to the tea. Even though I have garlic lingering on my palate, I am getting a very woodsy type taste. More like cedar mixed with pine. There is a tingling feeling that I sometimes get with mint but there is no mint flavour. Even though I put about a TBSP of honey in the tea, it is only minimally sweet. This tea is very reminiscent of chamomile and chrysanthemum teas. Neither of which are even close to being on my “meh” tea list.

I think this is a good herbal tea, its not fruity, not spicey, definitely different. But I am not liking different tonight.

My dad gave me a pyramid tea bag of this a while ago.

I am already irritated by this tea and by this company. For starters there are several websites that are called Tea of Life, or something similar. When I finally got to what I assume to be the correct site, there is really no correct site and it all leads to facebook, amazon, ebay, etc. There is also no info on soursop tea from this company. So very irritating.

I figured out what soursop was from other teas with the same same. It is a custard apple. So this tea is supposed to be an excellent tasting green tea with a fruity flavour and a bitter aftertaste.

The dry tea smells funny, reminds me of soup broth.

The brewed tea is…different. The green tea is brisk. Not smooth or buttery. There is quite an artificial chemical taste which I am assuming is supposed to be the soursop. There is a slight sweet/sour taste. A bit like a granny smith apple but not quite strong and certainly not natural tasting. There is a bitter aftertaste but it is not bitter as in overbrewed green tea. More bitter, like how a fruit can be bitter.

I think it is safe to say I do not like this tea. But I also need to admit that this review was tainted by bad experience before I even tried the tea.

Made a resteep with last weekends tea bag. It was a bit week from the first steep so I did this one boiling in 2 cups for 3 minutes, with about 3 tsp white sugar, but added only half the amount (the pitcher) of water than usual. I am happy I did. It is quite weak. I find you can resteep most of SBT’s a second time but there are a few that just don’t hold out, and this is one of them.

It is still good. Just tastes like really weak iced tea. A bit of artificial lime flavour. Not so much cherry. Very mild black tea base. If I made this one again, I wouldn’t bother with the resteep.