Fru P Kaffe & The

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Recent Tasting Notes

88
drank Black Chai by Fru P Kaffe & The
1500 tasting notes

Like the first time I had it, this is a beautiful, rich, well-balanced chai. I most definitely want to get more, and will see if the email I have, works.

Preparation
200 °F / 93 °C 2 min, 0 sec 2 tsp 16 OZ / 473 ML

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88
drank Black Chai by Fru P Kaffe & The
1500 tasting notes

The problem with exchanging tea with Steepsterites from exotic (to me!) locales like Denmark is that you get amazing teas that you must have more of, yet will need to rely on that person to get them to you – and vice versa. Because OH MY GOODNESS this is a lovely chai.

Smooth and rich, with all of the requisite spices present yet none taking center stage. It’s sweet and creamy too, even without any milk or cream, and mild yet wonderfully satisfying.

Yes Angrboda, I may need to make arrangements with you to get more of this. :) Thank you so much for all of the wonderful and local-to-you teas that you sent!

Preparation
200 °F / 93 °C 3 min, 30 sec 2 tsp 16 OZ / 473 ML
Sil

Fru P needs an online store. that is all.

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drank Rhubarb Green by Fru P Kaffe & The
1500 tasting notes

I have fond memories of rhubarb growing up – eating it raw from the garden at the neighbor’s across the street (just stay away from the green bits!) and then learning how to stew it and make it into pie. Ah…. yes, and definitely yum. The tart, sweet, creamy and gelatinous mix always turned my crank, although it’s likely been 30 years since I’ve had any. Does this tea remind me of that? Maybe, however I fear there’s something strawberry-ish in the mix for flavor, as I’m having a mild allergic reaction to the tea. Boo.

I must have gotten this from Angrboda, although I swore it came from Ysurella. I really need to start labeling my teas better! :) Regardless, thank you for sharing this with me, as it’s really a lovely, light tea.

Preparation
175 °F / 79 °C 2 min, 30 sec 2 tsp 12 OZ / 354 ML
TheTeaFairy

Ahhh, I LOVE raw rhubarb!! People always go “ewww” on me when I tell them I just eat it like that. Isn’t it the best tartness ever? It makes my inner cheeks squeak :-)

Suziqzer

Ok, so I’m one of those people that says yuck to raw rhubarb. My parents have a couple of plants and mom makes rhubarb desserts, but I never could handle the stuff raw. I guess you really have to like tart/sour!

Angrboda

That was definitely me, unless Ysuarella has a Danish source that I don’t know about. Fru P is a local shop in the city where I work and she doesn’t have a webshop. I’m sorry about the reaction though. :(

Dustin

I have never tried rhubarb raw! I have read that you can grow it in Texas, but it is difficult because it is a cold loving plant.

Such a shame that you have reactions to strawberries! Strawberry and rhubarb seems like two tastes that were made for each other.

MissB

I used to love strawberries and rhubarb together… it was only a few years ago that I developed this allergy, which I’m told is quite common to get as an adult.

Angrboda: of course you’re right. My bad! Thank you again for your generosity. :)

Angrboda

Husband’s mother can’t have strawberries either, but that’s because of the little seeds not agreeing with her. The seeds in tomatoes cause problems as well or poppy seeds. Any sort of seed in that general size is avoided.

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50
drank Rhubarb Vanilla by Fru P Kaffe & The
303 tasting notes

Oh wow, the leaf expansion. Completely unexpected. I turned away for a second (Okay, well, fine, four minutes.) and just SPLORFA! I swear I did not overleaf.

Anyway, I’ve tried a good number of rhubarb teas, and they all too often end up too tart for my tastes. A little tonguetip-tartness is fine, but not a whole soursip’s worth. This tea isn’t tart at all. On the other hand, nor does it taste of rhubarb. The vanilla element, though, is surprisingly nice. It’s silky smooth throughout, and comes off very rich and natural.

But I would like a whole lot more of it. And, seeing as it’s a rhubarb tea, just a little bit of rhubarb would be good, too.

As usual with Fru P’s teas, I’m left a little confused. One thing I like so much about companies like Mariage Frères or Lupicia, is that there’s a certain level, or profile, or something along those lines, that I can rely on. If it says, ‘Vanilla’, then I know what kind of vanilla to expect, not to mention how present it’s going to be. With Fru P (and many other smaller retailers, for obvious reasons) it’s just a lottery. Sometimes the base tea is great, sometimes very low grade, sometimes the flavouring is top notch, sometimes it’s painfully artificial. The comparison is unfair, I know, but, in the end, that reliability is what makes me commit to a company.

Thanks, Ang!

Anyway, this marks the end of the samples from the EU swap box – it’s been great fun. A huge thanks to those who participated – I loved trying out your teas!

[Sample from the EU Travelling Box, autumn 2013.]

Preparation
Boiling 4 min, 0 sec
Fjellrev

It’s always frustrating when a company lacks consistency.

Anna

Haha, yeah – I guess I could have summed up that Overly Long paragraph with that very sentence.

TeaExplorer

SPLORFA” … LOL … I’m stealing that :D

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65
drank Vanilla by Fru P Kaffe & The
303 tasting notes

So it’s clearly time to start dipping into the samples from the EU box swap I did (Thanks again for setting it up, KittyLovesTea!) These are chosen on scent and scent alone – I had no clue what it was I was smelling, as I wanted to try to choose as instinctively as possible. It’s easy to get bogged down with recommendations and ratings.

Quite simply, this smelled tasty in the bag. I mostly get a warm caramel vanilla. Brewed up, it’s even better – very much like dessert in a cup. Flavour wise, it’s surprising, though. Where I expected this full, round, almost malty sip, I get a completely unexpected tartness – it’s ever so slight, just barely there, but so out of place it’s noticeable.

So there’s the tongue-tip tartness, then a great mouthful of what I thought this would taste like – warm, caramel vanilla… but then, surprise again! Because the aftertaste just isn’t there. I find most teas I try that aren’t overly flavourful usually offer some aftertaste payoff, but not this one.

This is going to be so hard to rate, because it’s definitely a nice, comfy vanilla (although much less elegant than MF’s Vanille des Îles) but the flavour profile as a whole is very surprising. I will definitely enjoy finishing the rest of this sample, but this is not a tea I would buy. Which is strange, because as I now read the reviews, this tea sounds like it’s made for me. Alas, the hunt for the perfect vanilla black goes on! Seriously, this is so much fun.

Thanks, Ang!

[Sample from the EU Travelling Box, autumn 2013.]

Preparation
Boiling 4 min, 0 sec

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28

December 17th

Oh look, it’s the first unflavoured tea that I’ve seen in this calendar so far! It’s morning, we’re going to England tomorrow, what could be more suitable, then, than English Breakfast? I can’t remember the last time I had a breakfast blend…

There is a very strong Darjeeling-y aroma to this. It smells very VERY much like Darjeeling. heavy sigh It smells rather astringent as well, which is annoying because I used a timer and it’s not even ctc leaf. Underneath all that I’m vaguely detecting something darker which makes me think Assam-y thoughts, but I can’t be certain because of all the Darj. I hope it’s just my nose playing tricks on me.

ACK! Horribly! Bitter! What the h…??? I used a timer! My coughy throat is definitely not liking this, it’s undrinkable. I’m going to make a new cup and set the timer for even less. (2 minutes on a small pot! That has never been too much before with non-ctc! Mind boggles.)

Oh wait. Rinsing out the pot, there’s an awful lot of leaf in there. I must have accidentally added leaf twice. No wonder it turned out so horrid, then. That explains a lot. And my timer-use should be fine. phew!

Right, here we are! Fresh cup. It still smells a bit Darjeeling-y, but Darj-Gone-Wrong isn’t the overpowering note here. I should point out that when I say something smells like Darj it doesn’t mean it’s necessarily in there. It doesn’t even mean that I think it’s in there at this point. It just has some notes in it that reminds me of what I dislike about Darj. Really it could be any high-grown tea. They all do that for me, but I’ve just learned to recognise it as ‘Darj-y’. Mind you, in an English Breakfast blend the inclusion of Darjeeling is not at all unlikely.

Unlike before, when Assam-y notes were just vaguely there in the background, it smells primarily Assam-y now. Thick and malty with a bit of honey and wood to it as well.

Flavourwise, it now seems a bit on the thin side. eyes cup Since when did breakfast blends turn into rocket science??? This is why I prefer Chinese black! I never have these problems with Chinese blacks! I was hoping it was just because it was still too hot to drink, but the problem persists after a bit of cooling. It’s as if there’s a note missing right in the middle and it has been replaced by hot water. This means it doesn’t actually taste like very much.

Highly disappointing, considering how much it smells like Assam, and Assam is not exactly a delicate tea. I really can’t describe what little flavour there is there. It’s just coming across as vaguely tea-like with a Darj-y aftertaste, a bit sour and grassy.

I suppose it’s drinkable, but absolutely nothing to write home about. And immensely disappointing. If I hadn’t known better, I’d have thought this was out of your average cheapster quality teabag, probably one that had been marked down due to approaching the last sell-by date.

I think in the future this blend will be beefed up by what other good black teas I can find on my shelf. In this form, however… No. Just, no.

Fjellrev

Let’s just hope this one would ruin the good teas if you were to go ahead and mix them?

Angrboda

Well, when I say good, I don’t necessarily mean awesome. Just whatever black tea I’ve got on the Consider This First shelf that is in spite of all still better than this. :)

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43
drank Citrus by Fru P Kaffe & The
1353 tasting notes

December 15th, I think.

Yeah, I’ve given up on following any sort of system here. A cold which is causing me to cough rather a lot and consume my own weight in licorice root tea and lozenges is rather a lot of interference in any sort of Christmas calendar system. Not to mention the fact that we’ll be going to England as well, so it was actually doomed from the beginning. I now have four untried teas from the thing waiting on my desk and a fifth in my cup.

Which is this one. And this is exactly what it says on the bag. Just citrus. Could be anything. It looks like a herbal and it has a lot of lemongrass, so I’ve decided it’s another herbal. So far half the teas in the Christmas calendar have been herbals, which I have to say I’m finding a little disappointing. I mean, I know I’ve been rather interested in herbals lately, but that’s not why I bought the plocking Christmas calendar!

Anyway, this one. I suspect we have to do with a mate, here. There are tiny green leaf bits in between the lemon grass that look kind of mate-y and there’s a funny not-quite-smoky aroma to it as well. I think it’s a mate base.

It mostly tastes like lemon grass, though, and with a sort of roasted kind of note underneath and minty aftertaste. Yes, the evidence is definitely pointing towards a mate base.

It’s nice enough, but honestly nothing very exciting.

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89

This coughing, it’s getting old. And my Christmas calendar posting system has gone completely out of whack. The 13th is a chai blend which I haven’t even got around to trying yet. Fail. And the post about the 14th is also a day late.

Anyway. December 14th.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen this combination before. I’ve discovered that for me rooibos is best when it’s fruit-flavoured so I had a hard time imagining what a nut-flavoured one would be like. Actually, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a rooibos flavoured with any sort of nut before. I’m sure they exist, but I’ve never had one. I do have an almond flavoured black tea which is quite nice, so I was never completely worried about this one. In fact, I was rather curious.

Therefore, it was my Before Bed Beverage last night (see, at least I drank it on the correct date!). I tried to make sure to pay attention to what it was like so I could write it down but I must say I failed somewhat in that department.

It had a wonderful aroma. Very marcipan-like indeed. I think the scent of the rooibos actually enhanced the whole marcipan idea in it, because it seems so close.

The flavour wasn’t as overwhelmingly sweet as one could fear from such an aroma, but actually on a well-balanced level of nutty. I found that the nutty flavour actually went really well with the rooibos because it didn’t just temper the flavour notes of plain rooibos that I don’t like. It seemed to cover them entirely with nut and take them out of the equation.

So a rooibos which has had all the unpleasant notes stripped out and replaced with lovely almonds? Yes indeed.

I thought this one was wonderful. I could easily see myself buying more of that (once we get the choice of Before Bed Beverage Blends whittled down somewhat. I’m suddenly finding myself with loads. How did that happen…?)

Peggie Bennett

I love almond and rooibos, great combination!

Angrboda

I agree. I hadn’t expected that at all. :)

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71

December 12th

Today’s offering is a black tea with chocolate and mint. This Christmas calendar is definitely mint-heavy! I haven’t had much luck with chocolate in tea because it doesn’t deliver on the texture side of things, but once in a while somehow it seems to work.

This is not one of those times.

I mean, it’s not the texture thing this time. It’s the fact that it doesn’t actually taste like chocolate at all. I’ve been examining the leaf and I’ve come to the conclusion that they have used cacao husks or something similar to give the chocolate-y flavour, because there aren’t any chocolate bits in it. The thing about that though, is that it doesn’t taste like chocolate. It tastes like cocoa powder. That’s not really the same thing in terms of flavour.

It also doesn’t particularly taste like mint. I don’t know what the deal is with that. Probably I’d be able to tell a difference if I had a version of this without the mint, but at no point while drinking did I think minty thoughts.

That said, though, I found it quite pleasant and drinkable. I couldn’t tell you if there was a change as it cooled because I suddenly discovered my cup to be empty. I expect I must have been thirsty. Husband on the other hand thought it was dreadful, so I guess this bag is one for me to empty alone.

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26
drank Berry Dreams by Fru P Kaffe & The
1353 tasting notes

December 11th.

You’ll probably notice I appear to have skipped the 10th. That’s because the 10th was the wild cherries black tea that I’ve had before, so I thought it was less important to post about that one now. You can look up what I wrote on that one earlier if you like.

This one is one of those fruit ‘herbal teas’ that aren’t actually anything other than a mix of dried fruits and no leaf of any sort. I haven’t had very much luck with those in the past. I’m not really interested in that at all to be honest. I would never actually knowingly buy such a blend. Oh well. Perhaps now when I’ve got a touch of a cold, it’ll actually come in handy. This is not really a time for ‘normal’ teas. They all taste funny right now. I had some of the licorice black this morning and decided that it wasn’t so much about making tea taste like licorice as it was making licorice easier to get down by making it taste like tea.

It has a deceptively tea-like brown colour, but it smells like warm cordial. I don’t actually mind warm cordial, but it’s not a favourite drink really. I prefer my cordial cold. At least it doesn’t have that blood red colour that indicates the presence of the dreaded hibiscus.

I’m still hesitating about tasting it, though. For some reason I just don’t want to. Tough, self. Nothing for it but to get it over with

It’s berry alright. As I thought, a cup of hot cordial, really, only without all the sugar.

I don’t think that there is hibiscus in this, because I can usually detect that even in small amounts, but there is something which comes close to giving me that same experience that hibiscus does. A metallic tang as if there’s blood in it. I saw there were bits of dried pineapple in it, and while pineapple doesn’t taste like that to me at all, I wonder if the tartness of the pineapple is somehow interacting with the berries to create this effect. It’s not as bad as actual hibiscus, but… I don’t think I want to drink this once it starts cooling off.

No, I’m still not at all convinced about these fruit blends. Seems to me they’re generally better eaten rather than steeped.

ETA I was both right and sort of both right and wrong. I definitely didn’t want it as it cooled off, gosh that was horrid! So I was right about that.

As for hibiscus, as it cooled and I poured out the rest of it, it did actually develop that tell-tale hibiscus colour, so the hibiscus-y notes that at first I thought wasn’t hibiscus, probably actually was hibiscus, although it would seem in a quite small amount. So I was wrong that it wasn’t there, but I was right that I can still detect very small amounts and that even very small amounts still causes unpleasantness. I just need to trust my tastebuds there, I guess.

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57
drank Goodnight by Fru P Kaffe & The
1353 tasting notes

December 9th

Can’t say I’m super-excited about this. I like a cup of calming herbal tea before bedtime, but mostly because of the ritual and less because of the flavour. Therefore a bedtime blend only elicits a sort of ‘hmm… meh. Ok.’ reaction from me. (Even though I do tend to keep an eye out for something suitable for bedtime. I suspect I’m subconsciously searching for one that is both suitable and nommy and that’s hard to find.) However, I’m whacked and more than ready to be poured into bed, so it’s coming at a suitable time. I’ll just post quickly and be off.

This is largely chamomile and mint. I’m not sure whether it’s peppermint or spearmint or both, though. There are a few violet flowers in there as well, but I don’t know what they are. This Christmas calendar seems to be quite mint-heavy so far. This is the third minty thing in nine days.

For something that smells so very much like mint, is rather controlled. The flavour is just about chamomile and mint in equal measure, although strangely I still seem to be unable to determine what sort of mint it is. I usually tend to find spearmint fairly easy to recognise because it tastes so much like toothpaste. After a bit the chamomile comes out strongly in the aroma as well.

It’s a fairly inoffensive flavour for something with not a small amount of chamomile in it. Not a revalation in flavour, but I’m sure it’ll do the trick.

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66

December 8th.

What makes a Moroccan mint Moroccan? Is it just green tea with peppermint in it? If so, is this actually a kind of Moroccan mint? It only has green tea and mint.

The aroma is quite minty, although tempered by the green tea. The flavour is very minty, but still tempered. It’s not like drinking plain peppermint, but it does feel a little more like green tea flavoured peppermint rather than the other way around.

I don’t really have a lot else to say on the matter. It’s nice enough, but it’s not at all something mind blowing. I think my lucky streak has broken.

(Go on, post. Show up!)

K S

I think Moroccan mint tea is traditionally gunpowder green tea with mint and served very sweet.

cteresa

Moroccan tea I guess it not necessarily moroccan or just moroccan, spread over northern africa.

Wikipedia calls it Touareg tea http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Touareg_tea

and explains about the mint being a special variety, nana mint (Which I think is also one of our usual types of mint, though mint varieties is a whole world)

Nxtdoor

Spices?

Bonnie

I’ve had Middle Eastern friends serve it to me and it’s incredibly sweet and delicious! Went to a place in San Francisco with a Lebanese friend, and you can sit for hour while your mint tea pot is refilled over and over again. There’s tons of sugar and fresh leaves in the pot as well as a big bowl of sugar on the table. (You eat pastries with it)

Angrboda

Gosh, I don’t think I’d like a proper Moroccan mint, then. I can’t abide sweetener in my tea! O.o

CharlotteZero

If Bonnie happens to remember the name of the place you went to in SF, it sounds like a place I’d like to check out!

Bonnie

Don’t know why it’s sweetened so much but it just is. I understand the hot beverage in a hot climate is for cooling the body so maybe the sugar helps.I dunno.

Angrboda

I think it might just be a cultural tea. I was a guest in a Turkish home once and was given Turkish apple tea in a tulip glass. As a student we were doing group projects, and one of the girls in my group was from Turkey. We wanted to interview some immigrants (by far the most immigrants in Denmark are muslim, the majority of them I believe from Turkey), so we made questionnaires and she then had her uncle take a pile with him to the mosque. He didn’t speak very good Danish, so he invited us over for tea so that she could explain to him what the questions were about. Anyway, her aunt served us traditional Turkish tea in those small tulip glasses and it was explained to us that it was important we sweetened it or it would be undrinkable. They brew it more or less samovar-style with a reeeeeeally strong concentrate which is diluted with hot water. I can’t remember what it tasted like, though. The other girl and I were too busy being on our best behaviour while everybody spoke Foreign around us. :)

Bonnie I was in Turkey and offered a choice of the apple tea or Turkish coffee and opted for the coffee. Oh well.
Bonnie

Sfcafezitouna.com is the Moroccan cafe restaurant in San Francisco I went to with my friend Randa. She used to work for Rafael House Carity down the block. There are 99 photo’s of the food and tea. Very authentic!

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75

December 7th.

And we’re catching up with a cup of this and a mince pie. Call it a celebration after Husband cleverly tech-savvied my computer and persuaded it to connect to Steam networks again. It hasn’t worked for days and it was bothered me. I tried opening it after not having used it for ages and it came up with a humongous update, which I suspect may or may not have been messed up and causing the problem. It works now, though, so we’ll just have to see if it continues to work.

This tea seems to be continuing my win streak with the Christmas calender. Caramel nommyness! (Unless it’s like that caramel black that refused to be awesome) I have to say, though, that the leaf smelled more rooibos-y than caramel-y so that doesn’t really get my hopes up too much.

It certainly smells very caramel-y and the flavour isn’t entirely un-caramelled either. It’s certainly not in-your-face caramel, but it’s not totally hiding either. It’s mostly detectable as an added sweetness, really. I would have liked it to have been stronger flavoured, but it seems like caramel is one of those difficult to get right flavours in general.

This will go down fine.

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75

December 6th.

Yes, I have a slight delay here. Very slight. Only 12 hours. I didn’t have any of it yesterday because I was too tired and too hungry when we came home. Husband was working from home yesterday so we met up when I got out and got all or Danish Christmas shopping done. We were quite efficient, actually. We went in with only a vague idea of what to get anybody and finished in just under two hours. Well, I say finished, but there are only a couple of small bits still missing. Now there’s just some of the English Christmas shopping left to do, as some of it has been done online already and the rest of it will be done when we’re in England. No reason to travel with it. So no tea for me last night. I opted for dinner instead. And a bedtime cup of nearly herbal.

Anyway, here is a fruity green. Fruity greens, I must admit, tend to be by far my favourite kind of green tea. It’s not the same as with rooibos, where I don’t actually like it if it isn’t flavoured. I do like green tea on its own. I just can’t muster up much interest in it.

This one smells delightfully tropical. I can detect lots of pineapple, but it seems to be overpowering the strawberry a bit, probably because pineapple has such a sharp smell. I think I can find the berries underneath, but it’s much more soft diffuse, so I can’t be entirely certain.

It’s coming through a lot more in the flavour. It’s really the opposite way around here. LOADS of strawberry and here and there a sharp spike of pineapple. The base isn’t very noticeable, but I can tell that there’s a bit of vegetative green in there somewhere. This is very nice!

I seem to be on a lucky streak with this Christmas calendar!

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80

December 5th

I haven’t the foggiest what’s in this. It’s a black blend, so there’s black tea. There are some blue flowers in it and some white ones as well and it smells like orange and something sweet. Other than that, it could be anything!

Tasting it, it’s definitely orange or a citrus fruit very similar to orange. I still can’t work out what the sweet note is. I’m leaning towards vanilla, but I hesitate to say so because I’m so vanilla obsessed that sometimes I wonder if I’m actually seeing vanilla everywhere. Whether, as soon as I meet this sort of sweet note, I automatically associate it with vanilla rather than putting some real effort into working out what it is. So it may or may not be vanilla. If it isn’t vanilla, then my second guess might be something along the lines of cream, I think.

I can’t tell much about the base. I suspect it’s Chinese because of the complete absence of astringency of any sort, but all in all this is a very pleasant blend. Not one that really sets the imagination going, but one that you can just relax with without having to pay too much attention to it.

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87

December 4th.

Here’s another one that I feel interested in. I have no need for anymore flavoured rooibos, really, but if I did this would be the sort of flavour that I might choose.

It smells very strawberry jam-y. I can’t smell any cream, but I can smell loads and loads of strawberry jam. It smells very lovely. After steeping the rooibos comes through, making it equal strawberry jam and rooibos, and I feel like I can detect a whiff of cream as well, but not much. Mind you, cream isn’t really something that has a smell as such, is it?

The flavour is actually quite close to the smell of it. Half strawberry jam, half rooibos base. There’s a softness to it, which I suspect must be the cream addition. It’s hard to tell at this point because the tea hasn’t cooled down enough yet. I find it’s very difficult to taste stuff when it’s piping hot and often flavours develop further the colder the brew gets, so I’ll have to show a little more patience. Promising so far, though.

This one doesn’t actually change much in flavour when it cools, but I can now feel, rather than taste, the cream in it. It lends a certain softness which is difficult to define and I probably wouldn’t have identified it if I hadn’t known about it.

Another good one. I’ll be enjoying the rest of this, I think.

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90

December 3rd in my Christmas calendar.

This one made me go ooooh! when I saw what it was. I find the idea of this extremely attractive. I don’t drink a lot of green and even less white, but when I do it’s 99% flavoured stuff, so the base blend here doesn’t put me off at all.

The leaf smells lovely, all rhubarb-y and sweet and exciting. After steeping it smells mostly like rhubarb with only a smidge of vanilla. It gets that funny bubblegum smell. It’s a pink smell and feels rubbery. You’d think this would be a minus, but I think of it kind of like the Assam and cardboard thing, so it’s probably more like something I would find weird if it wasn’t there.

It doesn’t taste like bubblegum, though. Rhubarb is a flavour that goes surprisingly well with tea. I have a rhubarb flavoured black also from Fru P and I’d never seen that before, but I’ve seen it often in green teas. I’m getting a lot of green tea and rhubarb flavour from it, but not so much vanilla. I can only sort of find the vanilla as a side flavour. A hint of it here and there, and I would have liked it to be a lot stronger.

My wish is granted through patience however, because once the cup cools just a little bit more there’s a heavy and thick vanilla-y aftertaste. And this right here at this particular temperature, this is just wonderful!

yyz

sounds really good!

TheTeaFairy

Haha! I like the pink smell and rubbery feel description! People usually think I’m nuts when I I try to convince them on how a certain tea «feels» to me. To a non tea lover, it’s absolute rubbish, but I totally get it :-)
Never came across a vanilla-rhubarb combination, makes sense though, it must mellow down the tartness…sounds like a good mood lifter :-)

Ysaurella

I love rhubarb and vanilla together it reminds me my grandma ! I should try this one

JustJames

i have a rhubarb cream coming from tgteas out of germany….. can’t wait!

Angrboda

yyz, it is. Rhubarb goes surprisingly well with teas. :)

TheTeaFairy, I often feel silly when I write stuff like that. But I can’t describe it any other way, so in the interest of honesty… At least it’s entertaining. :)

Ysaurella, it does for me as well! My paternal gran would serve a fruit porridge of rhubarb and strawberry as a summer dessert. Cold, with some cold milk or cream poured on it.

JustJames, rhubarb and cream would undoubtedly be an excellent combination. See above mentioned dessert. :)

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39
drank Licorice by Fru P Kaffe & The
1353 tasting notes

December 2nd in my Fru P Christmas calender. After yesterday’s blend which was rather overwhelming in the licorice root department, I can’t say that I wasn’t a little disappointed by today’s tea when I saw what it was. I love licorice, but I tend to feel about it the same way Husband does about mint. I will happily eat it, but I don’t particularly wish to drink it.

Anise Attack! That’s what this blend might as well have been called. It smells more anise-y than licorice-y and I don’t count that a good thing at all. Anise may taste vaguely like licorice, but it has nothing to do with licorice otherwise. Licorice =/= anise. But that’s a rant for another day. I seem to recall I actually made that particular rant a couple of years ago.

Happily this is a black tea, unlike yesterday’s herbal blend, and as it turns out the base really manages to temper the flavouring here so I’m not getting licorice overload. I am however lacking the licorice root-y aftertaste and throat feeling, which brings us straight back to the anise problem.

Yeah, I’m not particularly keen on todays offering, but it seems to be vaguely drinkable.

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58
drank Cool Mint by Fru P Kaffe & The
1353 tasting notes

The first tea in my Christmas calendar! Obviously I’m posting this now instead of adding it to my queue. If I were to add it to the queue like normal, I’d end up writing it now and posting it in February, and I figured this was a little too topical for that sort of thing. So I’ve decided to skip the queue. I’ll just have to try and not forget about the queue in the meantime or those posts will get SERIOUSLY old before I get to them.

The information on the little bags is sparse. It just says a name and steeping suggestions and type. This one is a minty herbal. Husband don’t really care for minty teas, but he’s trying some this morning anyway, because of the possibility of creating a little air in his sinuses. His voice was threatening on going yesterday and this morning he’s discovered a whole new lower register.

Anyway! I haven’t the foggiest what all is in this stuff other than mint. I saw some lemon grass in it and some big brown chunks of… something.

I can definitely smell the lemon grass and surprisingly vaguely the mint. Then there’s this big smell of something which must be the big brown chunks. I think perhaps they’re dried apple.

When sipping I can taste primarily lemon grass and LOTS of surprise licorice! That should be good for Husband’s throat! I’ve been giving him chamomile with licorice root yesterday which is quite soothing for troublesome throats. There’s some mint in there somewhere but for a blend that is actually called ‘cool mint’ I would have suspected more of it. You can tell it’s there, though, from the way the mouth feels cold after sipping. I still don’t know about the maybe-apple. I can’t really identify it, so maybe it’s just a sort of filler flavour.

This should be very suitable for a bedtime blend, but I’m not going to run in and get more of it.

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48

This isn’t actually really a tea. At all. It consists of tiny bits of hazelnut, (very bitter, very dry) chocolate bits and dried black currant. That is all. There’s no leaf what so ever of any kind in sight here. Mrs P told me to brew it up as though it was a chai, which I thought sounded reasonable, but once I actually wanted to do so, I was in doubt.

When she says ‘like a chai’ what does she actually mean? Some people prefer chais without milk, after all, and there are probably several hundred different recipes for brewing it in a saucepan on the hob.

I’m not used to chai at all, so I haven’t even got a preferred method.

What to do, what to do? Improvise. I’ve got a mug and some milk and some water and a kettle and a microwave. Half a mug of milk, nuked in microwave to a suitable temperature. Mixture in a filter bag into milk and topped up with boiling water.

So far so good. Except the paper filter wasn’t really working for me so I tore that up and just dumped the mixture straight out into the cup. After all, it’s made out of three perfectly edible things and there’s no reason to act like a wuss when I could just as well eat the stuff as it was. (Wouldn’t recommend eating it right out of the tin, though.)

Then, because I thought the milk ought to take at least a little colour from the chocolate bits, I added a little more mixture to the cup. Very systematic brewing method this!

I had rather imagined that the chocolate would melt but that seems to not be the case. The milk is still far more white than brown, but I’ve tasted it and it does indeed taste like chocolate and hazelnuts.

For something with such a very dry and bitter chocolate in it, and I know this because I tasted some, it’s ridiculously sweet. I think it must be the hazelnuts that does it. The black currant might as well not be there at all, but they taste awesome when chewed with a bit of the chocolate.

I don’t really know what to make of this. It smells great and it tastes lovely, but… It isn’t tea, and unlike the majority of herbal concoctions out there, doesn’t really feel like something that can be drunk as such. Although she said brew it like a chai, it doesn’t feel chai-y at all either. We’re closer to a hot chocolate category with this, and I do happen to possess a couple of different hot chocolate powders. I’m going to try and use some of this in that and see what happens. I suspect that would be great on an epic scale.

Barbara

It sounds like quite an adventure… :-).

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84
drank Rhubarb black by Fru P Kaffe & The
1353 tasting notes

I stopped in at Fru P on the way home to stock up on the nommy vanilla, and as usual I fell into a few of the others as well. This one and a herbal mix containing nothing but chocolate (lots!), hazelnut and black currant, which she recommended preparing like a chai.

Apart from the vanilla, her teas have however always disappointed me a little. I mean, they were good enough, but they weren’t awesome. The aroma is generally over the top awesome, but the flavouring itself always seemed a bit out of balance. I’m pressing on, though, because I simply refuse to believe that she’s only got one awesome tea in the whole shop. Strikes me as highly unlikely.

This one also delivers on the aroma. Very rhubarb-y and sour. I have to admit I did get a little concerned about hibiscus at this point, but when I tasted it, my fears were laid to rest. Tart and rhubarb-y, but no metallic side-flavours to be found. There’s a creamy vanilla-y note to it as well, which makes me wonder if there might be some vanilla blended in as well.

If one enjoys a rhubarb flavoured tea, then this is actually quite good. I’ve only ever had it in green tea before, and that Ruby Pie (I believe) that Sil shared with me, so it was the combination with black tea that drew me in.

I’m uncertain about how much I like it. I mean I like it, but I can’t really decide whether I love it or merely like it. I think it’s something in between. It’s quite interesting though, and it’s the sort of tea that really invites you to play with it. Mix it with other things, see what happens. I’m definitely going to try it in combination with the lovely nommy vanilla. I suspect that might be a combination that could be awesome.

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84

I had to give this a good nudge upwards, because I’ve been drinking it a lot lately, and every time I have it, it seems to be growing on me. It’s gone from something that was vaguely disappointing to something that tastes quite home-y and safe, sort of. It’s rather inspiring me to explore more nut-flavoured teas.

I used to have it rated at 75 points, so up it goes.

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84

I’m adopting Rie’s system of making bits of the post that doesn’t really pertain to the tea in question smaller. That way it’s a lot easier for people who aren’t interested in that to just skip ahead to where the review is. I’ve been neglecting my social sites recently. I’ve fallen into this game, you see, called GeoGuessr. It plops you down somewhere on the planet and then you have to travel around and guess where you are using only Google Street View. It’s surprisingly addictive but takes a long time. I have a tendency to always get some deserted stretch of road with NO road signs what so ever.

Most of this post is a backlog. I wrote it while having the tea but didn’t have time to finish it, so it’s been languishing for a while. I’ve mentioned that I share tea at work with my boss, and sometimes we go to a local cafe wtih a fairly large selection of teas (and great cakes) and have a little “afternoon meeting.” I had told her about Fru P, so last time we went, we went in there first for a little explore, and I decided to buy some of this one.

My thought was that since the caramel one was such a disappointment, I’d just check the others of the same sort of family, and I figured that brittle was sort of caramel-y. Nut flavouring in teas can frequently make them quite sweet, so I wanted to see if I could get a fuller caramel-esque experience this way.

Like with the other teas I’ve tried from this shop so far, the aroma is strong and extremely promising. This one is heavily hazelnut with sweet sweet brittle underneath, and it makes me worried because with the exception of the vanilla, the others have all had this strong aroma but completely failed to deliver on flavour. I’m steeling myself for disappointment.

Now! This one actually has flavour. I’m getting a ton of hazelnut right at the first sip. Not so much in the way of base flavour, though, but it might show up when it cools a little more. The brittle part appears to be absent at this point, save for a slight sweetness.

The sweetness of the brittle increases as the tea cools, but the hazelnut is still the strong primary flavour. Unfortunately the base doesn’t really come through with much flavour on its own, but I find that this is really not as much of a problem as I would have thought, because hazelnut provides such a full flavour all on its own.

I’m pleased with this, but unlike what I had been hoping, it doesn’t fall into the sweetie-caramel-y sort of category at all. It’s quite nice on its own though. I might try and mix it with the caramel and see what happens then. I saw she also had a hazelnut and cocoa tea in her shop. I might try that one later on for comparison.

Dinosara

Haha I love geoguessr! Total time suck, though.

Angrboda

It is! A whole game takes all day to complete. Sometimes you get to see some weird places though. Especially, it seems like, in Japan. Once it set me down inside(!) what I think was a museum and I could navigate the rooms but I couldn’t leave. The other day it was inside a stadium and all I could do was go round and round the running track. Makes it rather hard to guess! O.o Why did they send the steet view photographer in there???

OMGsrsly

The ones in Japan are hilarious! I ended up near some hot springs where snow monkeys were bathing. :) “Hiked” the trails, couldn’t find a way out.

Angrboda

I’ve found that it’s really important to pay attention to the compass at all times or it’s way too easy to get lost.

Dinosara

Haha awesome. One time I got set down in someone’s backyard in Eastern Europe somewhere, and all I could do was turn in a circle… I couldn’t go anywhere!

Angrboda

Oh I hate when it puts me somewhere with a different alphabet! It’s impossible to guess where I am when I can’t read the signs. I usually just give up and whack the arrow down somewhere in Mid-Russia if it’s Cyrillic and somewhere in mid-China if it’s some kind of Asian writing and hope for the best. :)

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71
drank Caramel by Fru P Kaffe & The
15019 tasting notes

SIPDOWN! I’m behind with my sipdowns for this week but that will change. I took this one with me to finish off since it was calling my name. I never found the sweet spot with this tea that resulted in a tea that tasted like it smelled but it was still a tasty cup! thank you angrboda

Nxtdoor

There’s a bunch of fusion tea samples headed your way so … drink fast :)

Sil

haha i’d totally forgotten about that! Now i really will need to hustle. Might have to “work from home” one of these days this week lol

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