Call Me Sweetea

Sample from a TTB. The strawberry smells really candylike, and it tastes sweet and pleasant too. However the base tea seems pretty average. It’s a little thin and bitter and not exciting. I wish this delicious strawberry were paired with a better tea.

Was it butterscotchy? No, but it was like a warm spiced apple cake and I’m not mad at all. Super yummy!

Super sad the shop has closed, I love this blend.

Sky samurai was kind enough to send some tea my way, thanks! This one starts out promising with a nice strawberry smell and shortcake taste up front. But the lingering aftertaste is not pleasant. I might try cutting this with some lemongrass to counteract the astringent aftertaste. Or maybe I can pick the strawberry pieces out and add to a better base. The finish is disappointing as the dry leaf smells like a juicy strawberry :(

Lovely to see some green rooibos in the TTB! Unfortunately, this doesn’t turn out as light and lovely as many green rooibos teas. This one has hibiscus, which adds a lot more tartness than I’d prefer. It doesn’t allow the sweet, smooth green rooibos to shine. This just ended up sort of tart and plain.

I don’t usually go for coconut teas, but this one smelled absolutely incredible, so it’s the first one I tried from the TTB. Unfortunately the flavor doesn’t quite match up. I taste a lot of oolong, but it doesn’t taste the freshest. The coconut and fruit are there too, but again, not too special. The added flavors are too light, and the oolong isn’t a great one. It’s still always nice to try a new brand!

TTB

This is vaguely coconutty, but overall not very flavorful.

TTB #4

This smells delicious- sweet semi-realistic strawberry. Despite the sweetness of the aroma, I still added a sugar cube, as I was suspicious of how the flavor would translate.

Unfortunately, my suspicions were correct- this doesn’t taste nearly as good as it smells. Even the sugar couldn’t help temper the astringency. The strawberry flavor is barely noticeable.

Tea Theme (Not a sipdown yet): Tea with Honey

So the owner of Call Me Sweetea, Dani, finally closed shop for the foreseeable future. I am glad she is pursuing her future career aspirations but dang, I had just grown so attached to some of her blends: Believe, Cute, and Yum Cookies. I really dig the way she blended her teas with cocoa shells in black or herbal teas apparently. Anyways, I will probably sipping down what is in my stash this year and next year and morning my loss of them a little.

Preparation: Western
Tasting Note: The tea has some oolong, honey crystals and lavender in it and is pretty herbaceous. I think the honey crystals provide some extra floralness to the tea but it is not overly sweet. I am not particular fan of this type of oolong (I prefer more green or roasted oolongs, especially when they have floral or cinnamon or pastry notes). I haven’t done a second steep of the same leaves which could be better but I think it would lose most of the honey flavors.

The TTB tasting tour continues! I needed some caffeine today after a restless night, and the summery flavor vibes of this were appealing. Ultimately, it’s pleasant enough but doesn’t quite hit the spot for me. I think it’s because of the coconut cream pie flavoring – I would probably have enjoyed this more as a classic tropical oolong blend without the extra creaminess. BUT! I recognize that piña coladas are basically coconut milk + coconut cream + pineapple juice + booze and are beloved. So ymmv, if you enjoy a creamy tropical beverage you may enjoy this tea! I just tend to gravitate towards creaminess more for heavier flavors like coffee, chocolate, vanilla, etc. than for fruit.

Another fun try from the TTB! This one is infinitely better cold than it is hot. The flavors just don’t quite mesh until the tea cools. But once it does, it’s fruity, juicy, and tart. I get refreshing, generally tropical fruit vibes with sweet lychee and passion fruit that could just as easily be papaya or mango for all its distinctiveness. I like it well enough, it’s tasty, I just don’t love it.

Preparation: Western
Tasting Note: Waited for this one to cool off before I started sipping. The oolong has a little tiny bit of roasty notes but it is mostly pretty mild. It almost reminds me of a light black tea but without the astringency or heavy body. There isn’t a significant amount of creaminess or mango, I am getting as a flavor so I think this tea is stronger than those flavors and they may be doing more to mild out the base.

I think I will have to try some different brew methods and see what I get.

The Call Me Sweetea order from her end of winter sale just arrived. I am trying to make this the one and only tea order purchase this month in order to stay within my new tea budget and sipdown goals.

Preparation: Western
Tasting note: In beginning when it was really hot, I got the toasted cocoa notes and the savoriness of the hibiscus and little of the white chocolate. It sort of felt like a black tea blend at first. Then once it cooled off it was more hibiscus and a little less of that chocolatey toastiness. I liked it more when it was really hot because it was more chocolatey and like a black tea. However, when it cooled off the stronger hibiscus and cocoa bitterness were the main players which made me think of Merlot for some reason. Overall, I think I will have to try more of this to get a better understanding where I fall on this one.

Had this one later in the evening because I knew we had a late D&D session tonight.
Preparation: Western (a tiny bit of rock sugar)
Tasting note: This blend is one part bitter cocoa, one part pithy orange and final part is a kind of a caramel base. Despite added toffee flavoring, I detected no sweetness added to this tea. In fact, I think this tea needed more sweetener to give any sort of toffee resemblance. I liked the blend as a bitter-pithy blend though, it was like a dark chocolate earl grey and was nice. The two tiny rock sugar crystals i added didnt make much of a difference in this tea. Maybe honey would have been a better option.

Will need do some testing on this one. I am starting to notice that Call Me Sweetea doesn’t have very strong flavorings used for the amaretto, toffee, butterscotch teas. They seem to be completely overwhelmed by the other ingredients. The rest of the teas composition though is quite good. I would say though now trying 4 teas that it is the chunks of ingredients that shine through the most. So I would say that if you are ordering from her expect that the flavorings to be faint or not really there and the “whole” ingredients to be the true flavor of the tea.

I had this tea a day or two ago. So what I remember may not be the whole story any more.

Preparation: Western (No additives)
Tasting Note: There are cocoa shells in this tea and I have noticed Call Me Sweeteas with cocoa shells are the most dark chocolate tasting teas that I have had. This is true with Believe as well. They are like bitter dark chocolate, but it is really nice and rich and filling. This tea had a little strawberry but it was more sweet than tangy, which was nice. It wasn’t a strong strawberry taste if I can recall. From my experience with Call Me Sweeteas, her teas taste the strongest and best without adding cream or sugar. This was one of my favorite blends along with Believe so far from her so far.

Preparation: Western
Tasting note: So I started out drinking this tea straight and I think it is truly better this way. It sort of reminds me of a rose darjeeling blend I had in England back in 2017 when I visited. There is a light rose note and the black tea is light. I don’t know if I taste the amaretto flavoring or the almond. The tea is nice but I don’t know if the additives really bring anything to the table. As a latte the flavors are even more masked so it is not the best latte as it is a pretty light tea to begin with. (I am not marking this negatively as I feel like I should’ve known better to have this light tea as a latte).

Bottom line: Do I still get the Romp and Circumstance from this tea? yes, it reminds me of a gentle rose darjeeling which reminds me of an English high tea. Does it have all the notes of all the ingredients that are in the blend? No, I don’t get any almond or much amaretto. A good rating at best for that.

Tea two ways: John’s having it with oatley and i am having it straight.

Tasting note: I took a sip of John’s with the oatley and it didn’t really stand up to the oatmilk a whole lot. Its possible I put too much in.
Without any additives this is a strong tea. The chocolate is bitter but there is a light sweetness from the marshmallow and flavoring. I like this tea a lot, it is something rich that forces you to slow down and enjoy it. Also, it isnt as decadant as an actual hot chocolate. Honestly, the best chocolate herbal I have had without actually being hot chocolate.

The lead auditor class is finally done! At least for now… I haven’t got my test score back yet but I don’t feel very confident I passed this round because i ran out time before i could write anything for the last essay question. Luckily I can do a retake for the final one more time, if I didnt pass. ANYWAYS… back to reviewing teas.

Preparation: Western
Tasting Note: So since this was called butterscotch bliss, I thought it would be a lot more butterscotchy and was not. This is still a nice spiced apple tea though, not too sweet and not too spiced or bland. It has a caramel not thst isnt sweet, lots of red apple and cinnamon-ginger warmth.

I am rating this as a “I would still drink this as an apple tea but i can’t really detect butterscotch so it’s automatically not as good”.

I’ve spent much of my vacation so far catching up on Critical Role and I guess that’s maybe subconsciously informed some of my tea making decisions, because this is one of a couple different Critical Role inspired teas that I pulled out to sip on while watching.

This is always a delight though! Truly, I can’t say enough how much Dani just absolutely nailed the vision I had with this blend tasting like a smoked Creamsicle. Perfect for my little soft, empathetic red haired wizard with a penchant for fire.

Geek Steep Mini Episode: Top Fandoms

It’s part two of our special holiday mini episodes! No spoilers here for the fandoms that I picked out, but of course what would a top fandom episode be without drinking a fandom tea!? Bonus points for it being a Lapsang blend since these two mini episodes are the only ones where I’m drinking smoked teas this season…

Critical Role definitely became a major part of my life this year so this blend was a fantastic nod this episode to that fandom! I didn’t include it since it’s something we already covered this season, but it just really reignited a long standing love of D&D and I’m so grateful for that.

This tea is delicious and cozy with one of my ultimate comfort flavours: smoke!! The perfect delicious smoked creamsicle for my beloved fire loving murder wizard.

I won a contest on instagram recently from Call Me Sweetea where the prize was a custom designed fandom themed tea for a character of your choice – and I decided to do my favourite character from Campaign Two of Critical Role – Caleb Widowgast.

The overall flavour profile that I wanted to go for was a “Smoked Creamsicle” kind of vibe, based on a couple key ingredients/flavours that I felt represented aspects of the character. Dani, the shop owner, was very accommodating and easy to work with and I feel like she reallyyyyyy killed the execution of the blend and understood what I was going for!

I chose something smoked because the character (spoiler alert!) is a wizard that uses fire magic primarily and, as part of his backstory, was brain washed into burning his parents alive – it’s something that torments him throughout the campaign and ends up being on of his biggest driving motivators throughout the series. So, smoky lapsang!? Perfectly on the nose! I wanted the orange for his physical appearance; a mop of ginger hair that stands out amongst his travelling party. And then the cream/vanilla to me represented the softer and secretly warm/loving side of this grimy murder hobo.

In practice the smoke comes through at exactly the right level for me – I am a lover of all things smoked tea so I wouldn’t want it to be subtle but it’s also not so strong as to cover the other flavours and that’s just perfect! The orange is sweet and bright and exactly right for the sherbet part of a creamsicle. Because of the use of woodruff and whipped flavouring in place of vanilla, this ended a little more marshmallow-y tasting but the fluffy light sweetness still conveys the character trait that I wanted and it super delicious and complimentary with both the orange and smoke. Like a softly orange flavoured ooey gooey toasted marshmallow!

I’m super in love with this one of a kind blend – Dani killed it, and I look forward to enjoying this the next time I dive into an episode!