871 Tasting Notes
Continuing on with my orange slice series – I added an orange slice to this tea. The orange slice made the tea much more tasty. It just brought out the orange flavour in the tea. It is a little candy-like, artificial orange tasting, but with the orange slice there is a stronger orange flavour. This tea ended up in the back of my tea cupboard because I didn’t find it too appetizing before, so I was ignoring it. But now I think I have found a way to drink it.
Preparation
As part of my tea fun series, I made this one and 52 teas Butterbeer as iced cubes. A long time ago my sister got me these silicon ice cube trays from IKEA in the shapes of crosses and arrows. I never use them because they are so hard to get the ice cubes out of. But I thought for fun, I should use them for my tea cubes.
I planned to make the tea cubes and then put them in soda water. I brewed both teas double strength and froze them in ice cubes after they cooled. I also added some sugar while the teas were hot.
I mixed a full cup of ice cubes, one each of butterbeer and cherry vanilla cola, in a half cup of soda water.
It didn’t turn out as expected. The tea cubes took forever to melt, so I couldn’t really drink my fancy drinks while they were cold. Initially all I could taste was straight soda water, which is not too delicious. I think it would have been better just to make tea popsicles or mix the cold tea with the soda water. Essentially each tea just tasted like the respective tea, but with a bit of carbonation, most of the carbonation had dissipated by the time the cubes melted. It was still good, just had to wait forever to drink it. I guess I took the long way around this time.
Decided to have some tea fun today. So I made a few tea cocktails and other drinks.
This is the first one. I steeped 1 tsp in 2 oz gin for approx. 2 days. I then mixed it with soda water.
At first it tasted like a gin lemonade, which is one of my favorite drinks, but it was quite tart lemon tasting. Not bad, but I wanted a bit of sweetness so I added a tiny spoon of white sugar. It made it the drink much better. Still tart lemonade but the sugar balances out the soda water taste. I am thinking I might just have to infuse some gin with this tea and keep it on hand at all times :D
Made this one iced today. Used 3 tsp in 20 oz boiling water. Steeped 4 minutes then chilled. This one is delicious iced. The black base is light, with a taste of lemon. The mint is much stronger when it is iced vs. hot. It is a very refreshing drink, and although I didn’t do it this time, I may add some rum next time to make a kind of mojito type drink. I added 2 tsp sugar to sweeten it up a bit, but that was a bit too much. Without sugar it tastes good, but the sugar makes the mint “pop” a whole lot more.
So I am finishing off the last of my sample of this from Sil before my order comes in the mail sometime next week. Sil had also sent me a sample Gout Russe Doushka by Dammann Freres a long time ago. That tea’s history is about putting a slice of orange in the tea; and it also tastes awesome. So I thought I am going to put a slice of orange in my tea today to see how awesome it will be.
I brewed up a cup of the tiger assam as normal. Then added a whole slice of orange. The orange slice floated on the top of the cup, so for the first couple of sips I felt like I was sipping my tea through the orange. But that doesn’t matter because it was delicious. This is my new favourite.
I taste the boldness but smoothness of the assam. It is strong, with a kick, but not so strong it makes you cringe. The orange slice adds a bit of sweetness. It is not sweetness like adding sugar, but more like the natural sweetness that is found in the rind of the orange. There is also a slight tartness from the orange, that works well with the boldness of the assam. There is a very light natural orange flavour underneath the flavours of the malty assam.
I think this is going to become commonplace when I drink black teas.
Preparation
neat! I’ll have to try that next time i happen to have an orange in the house :)
I’ve actually also been thinking of trying putting an orange slice in my tea, & when we were at the store monday Leif asked to get some oranges, so I’m going for it!
As an aside, the London Tea room has a blend called Jubilee, which is a blend of black tea, orange, & bergamot. Although I’m not a huge fan of earl grey, it is pretty good when I’m in the right mood, & that is one of Tony’s favorite blends. Sometime when he has some, I’ll send you a sample Lala (& you too Sil…if you want to brave the bergamot, LOL)
That sounds awesome, Terri!
Always!
This is May’s tea of the month. I am quite excited for this one. I am trying this one first hot, but I am excited to try as an iced tea.
The dry tea is a mix of black tea, pieces of lemon peel, and varying sized pieces of chopped mint. It smells delicious and super refreshing. Like iced tea lemonade with mint.
The tea tastes like a moderately bold black tea, accented with sweet lemon and mint. The mint is not overpowering, which is nice. I find sometimes mint teas can taste like toothpaste or mouthwash, but this one does not. There is a boldness to the tea with the slightest hint of astringency, but it is quite refreshing.
Anticipating a great iced tea!
Preparation
I had a few problems getting this April tea, so Caleb from Handmade tea sent it to me again with May’s tea. It was well worth the wait!
The dry tea is a mix of green tea leaves, large pieces of hops and small chopped up dried apricot. The smell is divine. It smells like sweet, fruity, buttery, green tea with malty hops. The tea tastes like smooth, buttery, green tea, there is a very gentle sweetness from the apricots. It is perfectly proportioned so that the sweetness doesn’t overpower the subtleties of the green tea, but it is also not fake tasting. The hops taste medium strong underneath the buttery green tea. The tea is thick but not strong. There is a very slight bitter aftertaste, that I find to be similar when drinking hop-py beer.
This tea blend is excellent.
I love hops!
Preparation
never had hops before, but this tea sounds quite intriguing!
JustJame – all I can tell you is hops are mostly used in beer. Butiki also makes a tea with hops called Peach Hoppitea. To me, hops have a malty, grassy, hay-like, slightly bitter flavour. I can send you a sample of this one if you like.
hops are also known as a sleep aid, if memory serves, it affected the harvesters in the early 1900’s. do you find it helpful to take before bed?
You know, I am not sure, have never noticed it before. This specific tea has black tea in it, so that will keep me awake all night. I will maybe have to have a beer or two and see what happens.
LOL… the syndrome was so pronounced that that was the reason they began to make pillows with hops in them…. argh, lemme see if i can the name… nope, sorry, saw it in a documentary a few years back and it’s defying my data mining (grrr), but hops are listed as ‘a mild sedative’ because of the methylbutanol content.
I know there’s some sleepy time tea with hops in it, I think from Marketspice?
I love hops. When I get a really hoppy beer I start to taste the floral notes of them. That’s why I found it incredibly funny when Slate wrote an article about how hoppy beers are terrible and ruining beer, like everyone’s taste buds are the same!
in human brains the senses mingle, as well… everything from good and bad memories, to a good palate, good sense of smell… i’m not a beer drinker, but i’d certainly be willing to try this tea… different beverage = different effect!
hops ruin beer? without hops there would be no beer. everything else comes down to personal preference.
They were claiming that IPAs especially are going “too far” and breweries need to tone it back. I don’t know where they’re getting beer, but when I go to growler shops here, there are maybe two really hoppy IPAs and the rest are pretty average, I don’t think the places where these crazy ones are being made are even available on a mass scale.
I know there’s also a site that sells malts meant for infusing as tea. I think it’s just malt-tea.com and they’re REALLY cheap for something else different.
I love pop flavoured things. But for some reason I have a hard time drinking carbonation, it just doesn’t go down my esophagus well. So I often do not choose to drink pop, or I will “press” it by adding water.
This dry tea smells exactly like those sour cola gummy candies. Mmmm. I bought this to make iced or cold, but I wanted to try it hot as well. Without sweetener it tasted quite flat. Not flat as in flat carbonation, but the taste was flat – if that makes sense. I added some rock sugar and that made the taste more dynamic. You can taste cola, sour cherry, and slight vanilla. It does have a taste of flat soda. To me it doesn’t taste like there is even much black tea in it. There were also full sized cherries mixed in with the tea, which is a bonus.
As I find with most 52 teas blends, the taste becomes stronger and more distinct as it cools.
Look forward to making this one iced.
Preparation
Ok, so I was impressed with SBT: Razzleberry, so I ordered the other flavours to try. The plan was to brew this one up last night, then let chill in the fridge and enjoy today. All went as planned with a few detours. I boiled the water and measured it out then poured it into the pitcher. Then I ripped open the package. But when I ripped open the package, I accidentally also ripped open the tea bag inside. I panicked and just threw the whole ripped tea bag into a strainer and then into the pitcher. But the tea bag was all crumpled up in the strainer and the water wasn’t high enough to cover all the tea in the strainer. So I fished out the strainer and just put the ripped tea bag into the water. By then I don’t know how long the tea kinda steeped for. So I steeped it for 3 more minutes. Then I tried to fish out the ripped tea bag without dumping out the tea contents, but as you guessed, that didn’t work. So then I strained the tea into a different container. Had to wash out a bunch of tea out of the iced tea pitcher. Pour the tea back into the pitcher. Then added cold water and put into the fridge. So needless to say, I did not have high hopes due to my performance on this tea.
But it turned out awesome! You can taste the black tea base, but there is a strong cotton candy flavour on top of the black tea. Without sugar, it was a dull cotton candy flavour, but still good. I am not a super sweet tea type of person so I thought it was ok that way. But just for iced tea authenticity I added some white sugar. With the sugar it is way more cotton candy type flavour. Not exactly what pink cotton candy tastes like, but it tastes very similar to other cotton candy flavoured things (candy, gum, drinks, etc.) that I have had before.
I kept what was left of the broken tea bag, and will be re-steeping.
Steeped in 16 oz boiling water for 3-ish minutes, added 2 quarts cold water.
Edit: Made a resteep. It steeped well but not as good as the first time – just not as strong. I resteeped in 16 oz boiling water but added only 1 quart cold water this time.
Preparation
Wow. That’s the most labour intensive cuppa I ever read about.
Ha ha. It was well worth it. I from now on I am going to be extra careful when I open the tea package.
Ahaha, I think there have been some epic fails with those teabags :D Last year, someone posted a pretty hilarious note, IIRC. Don’t remember who, though.
Ha ha Both of those reviews are hilarious. Glad to know I am not the only one with these kind of problems.
I too ripped the bag when I brewed up my cotton candy tea. The packaging is almost the same size as the brew bag inside. It was a small opening so i just carefully floated it in the water instead of pouring it over the bag. I will open my next one much more carefully.
I’ve been waiting to try this one all week. Finally had some time to brew it up and really appreciate the taste. I was very impressed with Pancake Breakfast, so I jumped at the chance to get this one.
The smell of the dry tea, has that slight rubbing alcohol smell that some of 52 teas have. But I can smell cinnamon and sugar as well.
The brewed tea tastes like cinnamon and dark brown sugar. It definitely gets better as it cools. As it gets cooler there is more of a pastry/bread type flavour, with cinnamon and the dark brown sugar. On my second cup I added a few pieces of rock sugar. The rock sugar brought out more of a syrup type taste. It also made the second cup of tea taste a lot thicker and creamier. I thought this tea tasted best when it was at a luke-warm temperature. Overall, I tasted cinnamon, dark brown sugar, light bread flavour, all on top of a black tea base. There is a light butter syrup flavour in the aftertaste.
I think I prefer pancake breakfast, but this one was also delicious.
