95 Tasting Notes

70
drank Sakura Tea by Lipton
95 tasting notes

Got a box of this along with several packs of Rich Matcha KitKats from JapanHaul. Those things are amazing and I love them. I wasn’t expecting much, because Lipton tea is Lipton tea no matter where it comes from, but for three dollars and change I wasn’t really going to be too broken up if it wasn’t good.

It smelled of cherries, which makes sense considering it’s supposed to be sakura tea. It tasted of cherry too, with a slight floral undertone to it. Couldn’t really taste anything in the way of the black tea base but again, Lipton. All in all it was nice, but wasn’t different enough from a plain old cherry tea to make it worth waiting three weeks for again.

Those KitKats are another story though. Definitely worth it.

Flavors: Cherry

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80

Chocolate and raspberry has been my favorite flavor combination since I was little. Joyva jelly rings are one of my favorite candies ever, and with a spoonful of sugar added this tastes just like them. There are whole raspberries in the dry mix, which is nice. Chocolate chips too, which I honestly wish were dark instead of milk, but it doesn’t really impact my overall enjoyment of the tea.

Did I mention it sparkles? Because it sparkles. It took me a moment to notice it , but the first time I saw it my inner 6-year-old took over and I sat there for a good five minutes swirling my glittery chocolate raspberry tea around in my mug.

tea-sipper

Chocolate and raspberry is my favorite flavor combo too.

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drank Asian Pear Harmony by Stash Tea
95 tasting notes

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90
drank Sweet Honeydew by Stash Tea
95 tasting notes

For my birthday I decided to indulge in two things I love: tea and videogames. Subscribed to WoW and FFXIV for two more months each, and put in a pre-order for KH3. I would have liked to add Code Vein to that list, but sadly it’s been delayed to who-knows-when. Thanks, Namco Bandai. Anyway.

Unlike the white chocolate mocha which was mediocre at best, this is really good. I followed the package’s directions and steeped it for 3 minutes at 175 degrees. It tastes just like honeydew. There’s supposedly guava flavoring in it too, but I’m not picking up on it. All honeydew, all the time. The green base isn’t overly bitter or grassy, and just sort of fades into the background. I could probably drink this every day.

I’m really not of a mind to make iced tea right now, but I imagine this would make for a really nice iced tea come the spring and summer.

Tabby

I love this one so much. I have a big box of it on my Amazon wishlist, haha.

tea-sipper

Kingdom Hearts 3. sigh. I have been waiting for this game forever but I will sadly never catch up on game systems. I also sadly haven’t been playing video games as much lately. I hope KH3 is awesome for you though! Happy birthday!

Orphia

Thanks! From the trailers it looks like it’s going to be good. A little disappointed that we didn’t get a Gargoyles level, but that’s always been wishful thinking on my part.

tea-sipper

I remember a trailer from YEARS ago where Sora is riding a wave of heartless, and that sold me!

Orphia

I remember that one! I don’t know if anything like that’ll be in the finished game, but I hope so.

What I’d really like is a bonus boss other than Sephiroth. It was fun the first couple of times, but I’d like to fight another classic baddie. Kefka, for example. FF6 was always my favorite installment in the series.

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70

Stash is discontinuing this flavor, so I figured I’d try it before they did.

It’s alright, but really not that great. It might be better if they didn’t try to cram way too many different things in it. There’s chocolate flavoring, white chocolate flavoring, tiramisu flavoring, and coffee flavoring in there along with cocoa shells and cinnamon. As a result, it’s hard to pick anything out; it’s a muddle of chocolate, white chocolate and cinnamon with a vague hint of coffee in the background and oh yeah, some tea and possibly tiramisu. Maybe if they left out the cocoa shells, chocolate flavoring and tiramisu flavoring, sticking only to white chocolate, coffee and cinnamon it’d have been better.

I’ll drink the rest of what I have since it’s not terrible, but it’s not like I’d stock up on it before it’s gone.

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60

There is a very, very unpleasant smell to both the dry mix and the brewed tea. I won’t sugarcoat it; it stinks like urine. Urine mixed with chai spices, if you can imagine such a thing. This is pretty much the only reason I’m rating it as low as I am.

The taste is actually pretty good if you ignore the horrid smell and don’t oversteep. It’s chocolatey and spicy, smoother than the standard chocolate chai Adagio offers. I find it’s best if you use a teaspoon and a half, and stick to near-boiling water. Three minute steep, since at the recommended five the ginger overpowers everything else.

But that pee smell, ugh. It doesn’t exactly entice me to restock after finishing my sample.

Preparation
205 °F / 96 °C 3 min, 0 sec

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40
drank Panyang Congou by Harney & Sons
95 tasting notes

Today I start my day with a cup of disappointment. Rule of thumb for me is that if the tea smells like nothing in the tin, it’s not going to taste all that good. This didn’t really smell like nothing, but a faint smell of hay isn’t any better.

Long story short, it wasn’t anything like the toasty, chocolatey panyangs I’ve gotten from other retailers. It was light, weak, and tasted like hay. Not anything I like or want to keep. Good thing Harney’s offering free shipping for domestic orders now, or I’d regret this even more.

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10
drank Kashmir Rose by Simpson & Vail
95 tasting notes

Let me just start this review by saying I normally like rose and cardamom-flavored things; the container of rose-cardamom ice cream in my freezer is testament to that.

That said, this was awful. The first thing I often do with a new tea is open it up and take a whiff of the dry leaf; I instantly regretted it as this smelled powerfully, overwhelmingly like floor cleaner. I actually grimaced a little. To be fair I’ve had a lot of teas with a strong scent in the pouch that turned out to be more subtly-flavored, so I decided to brew a cup, add some sugar, and try it out.

Big mistake.

It tasted just like it smelled, but now it was sugary floor cleaner. One of the listed ingredients is cardamom flavoring, and there’s far too much of it. I hardly get any of the rose for all the cardamom, and it goes beyond making the tea spicy and on to simply unpleasant. Maybe if it had cardamom seeds or pods instead of flavoring it would be better-balanced, but as it is, it’s a no-go for me.

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77

It’s the time of year again when I hoard pumpkin spice teas because I NEED them.

That said, this is more ‘Cinnamony Pumpkin Pancakes’ than ‘Syrupy’. There’s huge pieces of cinnamon in the dry mix; I had to break a few to get them to fit into my tea ball. The smell of it, both dry leaf and brewed tea, is also overwhelmingly of cinnamon and other spices. It goes without saying that it tastes mainly of cinnamon when it’s freshly brewed, and just a bit bitter from the Ceylon. When it cools a little the other spice flavors come out a bit more, and just a little bit of pumpkin. If the syrup’s there at all, it’s lost under all the spices. It’s not particularly pancakelike either; it’s really more of a cinnamon-heavy pumpkin chai than anything else.

I took the package’s advice for my second cup and added maple syrup as a sweetener; then I got the maple flavor because I added it myself. So yeah, BYOS if you want the ‘syrupy’ part of this at all.

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Bio

Even though my profile picture’s the worgen crest, rest assured my heart belongs to the Horde.

I’m a gamer girl who drinks a lot of tea. My tastes tend heavily towards black tea, though I won’t turn down a nice green or white either.

I stay away from most herbals because far too many of them have hibiscus. I find hibiscus disgusting. Nor am I a fan of rooibos; the taste has to be pretty heavily masked for me to drink it. Usually if I’m drinking a tisane it’s something purely floral like lavender, or rose buds, or chrysanthemum.

I’ll almost always put sugar in my tea, unless it’s something that really doesn’t work well with it (I will never ever add sugar to lapsang souchong again) or something that honestly doesn’t need it or would be ruined by it, like most unflavored greens or whites.

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