Chance Combinations

So despite the teabox in my possession, I just had to try this combination today (and write this tasting note to remember because it was delicious). Necessiteas Warm Vanilla Chai (1 teaspoon) and Necessiteas Eggnaughtea (1 heaping teaspoon). I wanted an eggnog chai! I think it turned out pretty well. I really would like to get some nutmeg and add it whenever I make chai. Only nine results for ‘nutmeg’ in Steepster! WHHAA? I’ll need to keep brewing my chai blends, since it’s supposed to feel like 30 below out there this weekend. sigh.
Steep #1 // few minutes after boiling // 3 minute steep
Steep #2 // just boiled // 4 minute steep

Since my tasting note for PTA mentions caramel and strawberry, I thought it would be awesome mixed with the wonderful Ruby Pie. And it is! Though I don’t think neither blend is improved when blended with the other, they’re certainly delicious together — not a bad idea at all to blend them. They result in such a light brew anyway (I expected a deeper flavor though, since this is essentially two servings of tea in a brew basket!) Sadly enough though, I don’t think this harvest of PTA was as amazing as others that I’ve had.
Steep #1 // 1 tsp Ruby + 1 1/2 tsp PTA // few minutes after boiling // 2 1/2 minute steep
Steep #2 // just boiled // 3-4 min

Oh my gosh, this might be my best tea mixing creation. Butiki’s Sourenee Black Blossom with Zen’s Jasmine Yin Hao. I’m sipping this right now and it is PERFECT. I wanted to try mixing a jasmine tea with a black tea and since I only have green jasmine teas, it couldn’t be paired with a black tea that had to be at boiling temperatures. The green tea just melds with this dark Darjeeling with the perfect amount of jasmine. The leaves even almost look the same. I’m doing a tasting note for this one so I don’t forget this “recipe”.
1 1/2 teaspoons of Black Blosson + 1 tsp of Jasmine Yin Hao
Steep #1 // 23 minutes after boiling // 2 1/2 minute steep
Steep #2 soon

I’ve seen others put in custom blends- so I hope I’m doing this correctly. I mixed Adagio’s Cream (black tea) with Tea Gschwendner’s Caramel. These were samples from The Cookie Lady and Marzipan- thanks ladies! I thought Caramel Cream sounded good. It’s already been a long hard day and it’s just the afternoon. So, I’m sitting down to rest some with my cup of tea! My sister was put into the hospital yesterday with chest pains and they are doing testing. We homeschool and have had a full day. I’ve done 4 loads of laundry and cleaned the kitchen. I have overdone it and I’m now hurting. A cup of tea to the rescue! (And essential oils for pain!). Enjoying the caramel and cream flavors. I am getting both flavors but the caramel is the strongest. I would have liked a creamy cup- had one from the tea spot that was really creamy. Kinda sits on the tongue with a bit of aftertaste that has a bitter bite to it. Perhaps I oversteeped it? Directions on one was 3minutes and other was 2 minutes. I should have gone for the less time but I did it in the middle at 2 1/2 minutes. I would try this blend again.

Another mix of two blends! The chai blend is from TeaEqualsBliss (where have you been? – haven’t seen you on Steepster for a while!) that I somehow remembered had slippery elm & licorice that would help my sore throat (maybe because the name is BE WELL. haha.) I decided to mix it with Della Terra’s Dubbele Chocolade thanks to TastyBrew.. the one tea she sent me in her awesome package that I’ve actually tried before but I was happy to have more of! Both steeps of this were lovely! When I had this tea before, it was so very chocolatey… probably the tea that was the most chocolate that I’ve tried. But this time around it seems less chocolatey. Maybe it is just the addition of the spices though. I like this chai but it is supposed to help the throat, it also has rooibos in it for some reason. It’d be so much better without rooibos! I loved this one anyway and it seemed to help.

A tasting note from Dinosara the other day gave me the idea to mix a smoky tea with a chocolate tea. (And as I’m typing this I just realized that Dinosara sent me one of the teas I used here.) So I took two teas that I didn’t LOVE and made them better. A teaspoon of the chocolate and a Choice Russian Caravan teabag (which are actually really good for a teabag, but they are getting older.) Both of them combined make me like them more! It’s a nice smoky milky chocolate. So so good. The second cup wasn’t as marvelous, but the first one was awesome. Lesson learned: combining teas I don’t LOVE might make them better together (and think of all the flavor combinations!)

I had a brilliant idea of making a hot apple cider and then steeping chai in it! I heated a mug of apple cider in the microwave and then filled a teabag with Element’s Indian chai and steeped that for a few minutes. I chose this chai because it’s a CTC and I thought it would be more noticeable in the cider. The cider did turn a deeper color, but not black like a chai. The flavor isn’t great. The chai kind of just gives the cider a bitter flavor, maybe because it is a CTC and I steeped for a few minutes or maybe just because this was a bad idea. :D

I had to try mixing hojicha with Earl Grey Cream after I saw an Adagio tasting note mixing them! (I’ve also heard of a cream hojicha, so I thought the Earl Grey CREAM would work better than a regular Earl Grey.) So I mixed one teaspoon of each and it is GOOD… probably not for everyone but this is good for me. I love the toastiness of the hojicha with the cream. The bergamot seemed a bit muted and this blend usually has a pretty strong bergamot taste. But I really liked this and I really need to think outside the box from now on with tea blending.

I keep having issues with this tea LOL I made it yesterday to take to class and it smelled so soapy. But then eventually I couldn’t drink it because I guess I didn’t fully get the cinnamon out of the tumbler from when I made hot cinnamon spice. Meh.

So I gave up on it, but I really wanted to taste it, and tried again this morning. The rose is really strong in the aftertaste, it’s kind of interesting. It feels like otherwise you can’t taste it. The ceylon is alright, not the best one I’ve tasted. It’s pretty bitter for my parameters too.

I barely drank any tea yesterday because I had a paper to finish and wow hockey took at least three years off my life, what a game. I also had a growler full of ale I bought to make beer cheese soup. Beer cheese soup only needed 3 oz of beer. I bought 64 so I had to try some.

Now today is back to tea.

Another from the Traveling Tea Box! I have quite a few rose blacks in my cupboard but I am always up for trying some more. This one smells lovely, very strong rose flavor! I cold brewed it because, well, I was really in the mood for an iced rose tea!

This is nice, the rose is very powerful but not in a prefumey way and it reminds me of many of the rose congus I’ve had in the past. The black base is nice but ceylons aren’t really my favorite (with the notable exception of GMT’s Sinhraja!). I kind of think of them as the “default” black tea since sooo many blends use it. I’m sure ceylons can be very nice but I never end up picking out individual notes, they just taste like strong tea! I think that speaks more of my own bias and tea history (since most bagged ones use CTC ceylon) rather than Ceylon as a region.

I had half a cup of my iced Blueberry Crumble from Della Terra left over, and on a whim I mixed it with this. It went from good to oh my god incredible! Cinnamon and rose, mmmm. The blueberry couldn’t really compete with the cinnamon crumble and rose notes, but holy cow is that a good mix. I think I need to try out something similar with Blueberry Crumble and Amandine Rose!

We had tea party today even though it was Independence Day because our plans were all for the evening.

I decided to combine the wee bit of remaining Moroccan Mint from Market Spice and Serendipitea with a bit of Tin Roof Tea to make a full pot. It came out pretty well and my guest enjoyed it, especially the sweet spearmint.

I did sweeten it just a little with German rock sugar from Teavana, but only a very little. It was served hot, but I have had it MM iced and really liked it.

Another tea from the tea box!

The rose in this tea is lovely. It’s not overpowering, but it definitely lifts what would be a middle of the road Ceylon up a notch. The base tea has a bit of an edge to it, a tiny hint of bitterness. The rose flavor helps smooth the tea out, and it gives a fullness I think would be missing otherwise. Very nice.

I can’t believe I’m having more of this two days after I had the other steeps.. with new leaves! I think this is the record for having another cup of something of the same with new leaves. This cup wasn’t as good as the others (different size mug, more leaves)… but I had some more carrot cake to pair it with. I wish I could have recreated that perfect cup though! oh well. The next cup will be a sipdown of the ESP chai and I’ve got three more of the Gingerbread bags left.

Oh this is just a double dose I came up with. I want to start using the last couple of CS Gingerbread teabags to make space for other teas. It seemed excellent to pair it with a chai. I don’t remember this particular chai being so yummy. And it isn’t even that fresh either. It has black pepper in it! The flavors here were reminding me of raisins even before I had some in the carrot cake I was eating with this tea. Yes, I came up with this tea combination precisely to go with the carrot cake.

TTB-A sample! I had no idea when I pulled this out that it is apparently a combination tea and not actually a true rose congou (black tea scented with roses and rose oil)? In my experience rose petals themselves rarely impart a rosey enough flavor to keep up with other teas in the blend.

This is rosier than I expected but still relatively light for a rose black tea. There is a weird note to this base tea that I dislike; it’s one I’ve smelled/tasted before, but it’s not one I’ve ever associated with a ceylon. It’s kind of oddly bitter and weird in a way I’ve never been able to properly describe. But its there, so this tea is instantly not really for me. I think this also cements that I prefer Chinese-base rose black teas (really, true rose congou), because anything besides a keemun or fujian base just doesn’t sit right with me.

This tea has pretty rose-amber color in the cup. THe dry leaves are very attractive blend of black tea heavily sprinkled with beautiful pink rose petals. THis is a very attractive tea in the dry leaf. The dry leaves also smell VERY aromatic of rose.

A pleasant rosy cup of tea. No bitterness. The rose flavor is somewhat muted. However, when searching for the flavor in the sip it is clear this is a rose tea. In a lineup of teas it is clear that this one is rose.

So I’ve had this Silk Roads tea for quite some time now. I don’t really care for whites on their own and this one is quite hay like. I’m a bit confused as to why the water looks a bit green, but it smells great. I combined these two because I felt that the Teavana blend was seriously lacking in the actual tea department.
Oh this is good! There is lots of sweetness, herbs, and more white notes this way. Together these go really well and in the future I’ll be mixing these together.

I decided to combine these two teas! I think they both helped each other out. Basically 3/4 a teaspoon of the catuaba and filled the rest of my dipper infuser with the berries. Not terrible! The flavor of the woodchip like catuaba combined really well with the tangy berries to even out the flavor. I can’t really say how it will affect my energy levels, since I already had two cups of caffeine teas today.

Additional notes: ICED! Just a quick note on this one iced. Really, I just dumped some leaves in the mason jar without measuring like I usually do! After two days in the fridge, the flavor is mostly roses and not really any black tea. Most people probably wouldn’t like the flavor of the roses without the black tea, but I’m loving the flowery goodness. It tastes like summer.

This is an amazing combination! This particular black tea is a perfect pairing with these gorgeous pink rose petals, that actually have a very full flavor present in the cup! I don’t think I’ve had another tea with roses that were so flavorful. The black tea is a medium flavor, a tiny bit brisk, that really showcases the roses. I didn’t think I liked ceylon as much as other black teas, so this was a surprise!

This is my first Chance Combination! I wanted to have a sip down of something… and I knew I had a tiny bit of the 52 Teas Sheri’s blend left… not even a teaspoon. Then I had been wanting another cup of that delicious 52 Teas Date Nut Muffin Rooibos I had only a couple weeks ago. Then I thought they would taste great together! They are both 52 Teas and they both have fruit after all! They are pretty darn good together. The date nut’s awesome flavor lends some to the Sheri’s that I thought didn’t have much flavor the last time I tried it. The blended teas feature: dates, apricots, walnuts, cinnamon, a bit of butter flavor and rooibos. It sounds as amazing as it tastes! I’m so glad that Momo sent me some of the Date Nut because I just read her tasting note and I definitely love it more than she does. It’s one of the teas that will be regularly haunting me, begging for me to steep some up. I have enough for a few more cups! This one will be treasured a bit more than some of my other teas…