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I have had a huge bag of this sitting around for a while. It kinda got lost in the tea shuffle.

So for a while I have been trying to drink a lot of lemon-ginger water. Just basic glass of water with slice of lemon and slice of fresh ginger in it. It tastes good and I have a feeling it keeps me somewhat alive.

I decided to brew up some of this and try it I place of water with the lemon and ginger,

I used 6 tsp of buckwheat for 2 L of boiling water. I steeped for 5 ish, probably more like 7ish minutes. Then threw in the fridge. After it cooled I put it in my glass with my already kind of used lemon and ginger.

It actually tastes pretty good. The lemon and ginger are very subtle and it works really good with the roasted buckwheat flavour. It adds a but of depth and sweetness. I thinks it works well like this but I think if the lemon was stronger it would not work out so well.

Glad I rediscovered this one.

This is another sample that Liquid Proust provided for free for the GCTTB5.

I quite like blackberry anything. I have had many blackberry and blackberry sage teas. Some of them have been good and some not so good. I find it mostly comes down to the base. And with this tea, the keemun base, works real good.

I don’t get much scent from the dry tea but as soon as the hot water hit the tea a sweet candy like blackberry smell wafted up. It was delicious.

The brewed tea is slightly smoky from the keemun base. There is a candy, slightly tart, blackberry flavour. The sage is super light, which actually works well with the tea. It gives it that slight pepper on the back of your throat with each sip. The candy blackberry flavours lingers for quite a while in the aftertaste.

I quite like this one. The keemun and blackberry work well together.

P.S. LP – you should make more of this :)

Liquid Proust very generously offered up samples to include in the GCTTB5. I snuck a sample of some of the teas before I sent the box out as chances are there will be none left when it comes back to me.

This one sounds interesting. I quite like mead, the drink, so I thought this would be right up my alley.

The dry tea smells mostly just like a gold tipped tea to me. Nice and malty. The brewed tea does have a hint of bees wax scent, it is slightly sweet smelling and malty.

To me the tea is moderately bold, there is definitely quite a bit of malty flavour. There is just a slight bit of astringency at the end of the sip. There are hints of the bees wax flavour. There is a very subtle sweetness to the tea. The liquor feels quite thick as you swallow. Not so much honey flavour though. As the tea cools, it becomes more sweet with slight fruity undertones.

This one was a good tea. I would have like it to be a bit more meady, but that is just my preference.

Received this one from a swap with Christina!

I generally like Russian teas.

The dry tea is nice long, spiraled leaves which look quite nice.

This one is good. It is not too strong but still has some boldness to it. Very slightly sweet. There are definitely burnt flavours, without any smokiness, and I like that. There is a bit of malt to the tea. I don’t get any astringency with this one. The second steep brews up quite a bit lighter, but the burnt flavour profile is stronger.

Still like Russian teas.

Thanks Christina!

Thanks Christina for sending me a sample of this tea.

This is the spring 2015 version.

I thought based on the reviews and the initial dry tea smell that I would love this one but it has been weird for me.

The dry tea smells nice and sweet and malty, with a bit of dark chocolate notes. However after brewing, the initial sip is quite a turn off for me. All I can taste is burnt dirt, earth, and mushroom-y type flavour. As it cools, it turns into the more malty, sweet black tea I was expecting. There is no more earthy or mushroom flavours. But it unfortunately loses a lot of its “punch”. It is not horrible but luke warm tea is not my favourite. I have played around with steeping parameters but just can’t find what works for me with this tea.

Thanks Christine for sending me this one to try.

Thanks so much Christina for this sample!

I had started a thread regarding compressed black tea. I received a lot of recommendations and Christina thoughtfully offered me some of this tea to try.

The sample I received was a few “chunks” of this tea. The smell upon the hot water hitting the tea immediately reminded me of sweet cinnamon. I wondered for a second if there was some contamination from my tea implements. But the smell quickly faded to subtly sweet black tea scent. A bit of an earthiness smell but still every once in a while my brain tells me cinnamon.

I did the first infusion with just boiled water for 60 seconds. My first thoughts were this tastes kind of musty, or dusty. After a few sips, I think what I am tasting is the chrysanthemum. There is what I would guess to be a slight dried flower floral flavour. The black tea does not seem to be very strong. It is slightly sweet but not getting the cinnamon flavour that I get in the scent. There is a generic light spiciness to the tea. At the end of the sip there is some dryness in my mouth but I would not describe this as astringent. I read someone’s tea blog that described this tea as “autumn” and I would agree.

I am unsure about this tea as of yet. I would not describe it as bad or that I dislike it. I think I am just having a hard time harmonizing with the flavour. I am going to try a few more steeps.

For the second steep I added 30 seconds. I feel like in this steep there is more astringency, especially as the cup cools. The dried floral flavour profile has morphed into a dry hay flavour. I feel like there is quite a bit more earthiness into this steep.

More to come…..

I picked these ones up on my last visit. It was a bit of a surprise, I had never seen them here before. I am always a sucker for packaging. The store had these bricks packed 5 into a cute little box. I didn’t necessarily want 5, but that is how they came and it was better than having to purchase 50 or 100g.

They are really small mini bricks. About a half inch by half inch. I tried to confirm with the owner of the tea shop what kind of tea it was. All I got was it is real green tea leaves. So I am not sure what kind of green tea, but it is green tea. There are also what appear to be small rose petals in there.

The first time I tried this yesterday, it didn’t quite turn out. I did a quick rinse. I then planned to steep for about 30 seconds as that is how I prefer my green tea. But after about 30 seconds it wasn’t quite the right colour. So I wanted to leave it for a few seconds longer. Then my phone rang and it was an unexpected but important call… And it steeped for about 10 minutes. The brick was completely turned into just free floating large green tea leaves and fair sized pink rose buds. The tea was really bitter and had quite a strong roasted flavour. I steeped the leaves again, for about a minute and it wasn’t too bad. Still roasty, but there was quite a creamy flavour. It reminded me of sencha. There was not much rose flavour.

Today I thought I would try again. I did a quick rinse. I then steeped for 45 seconds, standing over the pot while it steeped. The brick expanded but stayed intact. The liquor was light straw colour. It was a nice, light, fresh green tea. There were light hints of creaminess. There was a very, very light rose, florarl flavour. The rose blended well with the green tea.

The second steep I did about 30 seconds. The brick was starting to break apart but still remained intact, and it brewed up really quick. There are starting to be metallic mineral notes to the green tea. It is also starting to get a little bit astringent. The rose floral is becoming a bit stronger but it is still pleasant.

More steeping to come…. I am not much of a re-steeper but I am interested to see how long this brick lasts for.

Update: I ended up getting 6 – 30 seconds steeps. That is how long it took for the brick to completely break up anyway. I am sure there were more steeps available. It did start to get quite astringent in the last steep and that is why I stopped.

This tea was a tea that was blended by a local tea merchant, Cuppa’T Specialty Teas, for 2016, which is the 125th Anniversary of Government House in Regina, SK.

Government House was built in 1891, and served as the official residence of the Lieutenant Governor of the Northwest Territories. It currently serves as a multi-purpose Heritage Facility and museum. And most importantly, in the spring/summer it serves Victorian High Tea on the weekends.

They did a contest where people could sign up to be a tea taster, there were 3 blends, this fruity blend, a traditional blend, and a maple blend, and I guess this is the one that won.

It is definitely not what I was expecting to be a Government House tea. I would think a bold black with creamy notes, or a black with vanilla, maybe a green with a bit of spice. Something simple but very elegant. I never expected a strawberry mint blend but I guess the description about the gardener makes perfect sense.

The dry tea is small leaves of black tea with very finely chopped mint. There are largish dried strawberries that are all clumped up with tea. It makes me think there was some oil or liquid type flavour that then clumped up all the tea.

The smell is super delicious. It smells like strawberry bubble gum; candied strawvberries with a bit of mint. It is sweet and has quite a bit of “pop” to it.

The tea brewed is ok. There is a black tea base that is slightly astringent at the end of the sip. It is light to moderate boldness. There are definitely cooling mint undertones. I think it is a bit of a spearmint/peppermint mix. It is not very strong but definitely present. The strawberry flavour is unfortunately lacklustre. It is an artificial, but not bad, strawberry flavour. But it loses the pop that the scent had. It definitely needs some sweetness added to it I think.

Overall it is good. The flavours were definitely a surprise from what I was expecting. I think it would be great iced. And maybe iced with lemonade :)

It is available only at Cuppa T and at Government House. All the proceeds go to the Government House Historical Society which supports and preserves this historical site.

https://www.saskatchewan.ca/government/news-and-media/2015/december/04/anniversary-tea-for-sale

http://www.cuppatteas.com/

Ridiculosity ensues.

The back story: So we are moving locations at work. Closing down the current location and moving to a brand new building. The owners didn’t want to have a lot of down time so there has been a lot of packing of things while everyone continues to work full hours and full duties. It was a ridiculous mess, and things were packed up that were needed and then unpacked and then lost, etc. Lots of stress. So the day before the last day at the old location, the tea kettle was packed up. Blasphemy. But alas, I am a type A tea drinker. So I brought my little hot shot water heater to work the next day. So I get to work. Heat up my water. Get my tea out. My strainer is GONE. GONE I tell you. It was packed up. Who would go into my stuff and pack up the strainer and not the tea? My boss, that’s who. And guess what else. The “random tea bag drawer” is empty :( I had to wait 2 hours for the closest drug store to open to go and buy a bagged tea.

The tea story: I picked this one up based on the fact it was the least scarey for a bagged tea, who wouldn’t like black with vanilla. The box is hilarious. It is supposedly “High Tea”, the French side reads “Haute Societhe”. I actually laughed when I read that. Then I googled the definition of Haute just to make sure I was understanding this right. Haute – fashionably elegant; high class. The box also makes a big deal of this fancy new tea bag string system. A Haute tea string system – cue eye roll.

The scent tea immediately is a turn off for me. All I can think of is why does this black tea smell like rooibos. Then it eventually comes to me that I at one time bought Tetley Madagascar Vanilla rooibos tea and it was disgusting and it smelled exactly like this tea. Its the vanilla. But I suck it up because its tea, and its all I have.

The rant story: This tea bag string system is a joke. It is the kind of string that is all embedded inside the tea bag and you have to pull it out to extend the string. There are two strings. So I pull the strings and it immediately rips the bag open. Whatevs, I have like 20 of the sachets I will prolly never drink again. And the whole idea about this awesome new string system is you can pull the two strings in opposite directions when you are done with the tea and it will squeeze the tea bag out so you get every last drop of flavour. Really Tetley?!? Who squeezes the tea bag? Not me anyway. You simply pull it out of the water, let it drip, then fling it into the garbage hoping you don’t drip on the floor. I obviously did not watch the video on their website about how to use this new tea string system. I guess I am not Haute enough.

Back to the tea story: The tea is what I expected. I already knew I wouldn’t like the tea based on the vanilla smell. The black tea was ok. Not bitter which was nice. Moderately strong based on the crushed up tea dust in the bag. Tasted mostly like an orange pekoe. The vanilla to me is bitter and sweet at the same time and it actually does not taste like vanilla at all. There is only “natural flavours” listed on the ingredients and not actually vanilla so who knows what it really it. It was ok. I guess I am not into Haute vanilla. It gave me my tea fix. I will definitely make sure the tea situation at the new place is much improved.

Haute, so haute.

So when I was travelling through Italy the coffee, ie. the espresso, was super amazing. And I have no idea why. I like coffee but not as much as tea. It was pointed out to me that the location/experience can have lots to do with the perception of how good food or drink are.

So today is a super foggy day. One of those fogs where you are immediately wet when you go outside but it isn’t raining. So I decided I wanted to go for a walk around the lake. Those days are going to start getting few and far between with winter coming soon. Usually we are deep in winter by this time of year but for some reason we are experiencing a really nice fall. So I am going to enjoy it as much as I can. The walking path was almost deserted, which was nice. Leaves are still falling off of the trees and there are still ducks and geese hanging out. The air was crisp and fresh and I didn’t feel the cold until I got back inside.

I was cold and wet when I got home. So I brewed up something I have posted on.

I used 3/4 tsp of this assam, 3/4 tsp of lapsang souchong, 4 dried rose buds and a few slices of fresh ginger.

It was so delicious. Better than it has ever been. The assam gave depth, boldness and thickness to the tea. And it cut down a bit on the strong smokey, sometimes bitter, flavour of the lapsang. The lapsang had a great balance of smokeyness to it. The rose always mellows the flavours and blends them together, giving just the slightest floral flavour profile. I like using rose buds because it eliminates the chemical flavour of rose scented tea. The ginger added the right amount of spice. The ginger flavours made the smokey of the lapsang really pop. Like that first wood fire of the winter, that scent you get when you first start in the fire in the chimney. It could have been the brand of teas I used. But it may have just been the experience :)