Steven Smith Teamaker

I received this as a gift from Todd back in 2020, and I’m working on sipping it down by enjoying it in the mornings. The hojicha is lightly woody/nutty, and I like how it compliments the spices — in particular, the citrusy notes of the cardamom really pops. In some sips the woodiness of the hojicha mixed with the cardamom create an almost piney sort of flavor. It is the strongest spice I’m getting, though I do taste a bit of the ginger and the cloves and the cloves in particular leave a strong aftertaste. Apparently this tea is supposed to have chocolate flavoring and cocoa nibs according to the ingredients? I don’t taste even a hint of chocolate. (I know it’s old, but it has been kept factory-sealed in the tin since I received it, so I thought at least some of the flavoring notes would survive…)

This is very enjoyable… definitely a cozy-feeling tea.

Single bag from a TTB. Normally, I love chamomile, but this one was strangely bitter? I even steeped it for less time than usual, so I’m not sure what the problem was. This has other ingredients, so maybe one of those didn’t align with my tastes. Still drinkable with almond milk and sugar.

This mug of tea really freaked me out because the dry leaf smelled so much like powdered peanut butter and chocolate that I actually pulled up Steven Smith’s website to double check the ingredients. It even smelled like peanut butter once it was steep up. Thankfully, the taste was exactly the smooth cocoa and cooling peppermint profile that it should have been without any of the unexpected nuttiness I was getting aroma wise.

Made this last night and was a little surprised by how sweet tasting it was! Definitely strong but fairly well balanced notes of cinnamon (like cinnamon hearts candy), peppermint, and a more woody/nutty leaning red rooibos – but then it finishes was a slicky sarsaparilla or licorice root type of throat coating sweetness. Caught me off guard with the first few sips, but then I actually started to enjoy it. It seemed especially complimentary to the cinnamon notes of the blend.

Had this a few nights ago!

There’s something so intensely familiar tasting about this tea, but I just genuinely couldn’t put my hand on what it was. Definitely mint forward but with a pretty lingering and coating sweet finish and aftertaste. I taste a lot of sarsaparilla which I know isn’t for everyone, but I enjoyed it – especially with the cooling menthol of the mint. I felt the licorice root in texture more than I got it in taste, and for that I was thankful.

The cinnamon comes through too, but with everything else going on I actually felt like it pretty seamlessly slipped into the background.

Sipdown 52 – 2024

Finished my last teabag- sad. Really lovely creamy turmeric blend. Will likely re-purchase at some point.

My favorite turmeric tea. The sarsaparilla adds such an interesting element, and really smooths out the turmeric. I’m still really trying to drink through my stash, so decided to not make any Black Friday tea purchases…but resisting stocking up on this was a challenge!

Cold Brew!

I really wanted to like this one, but the flavour composition just disagreed with me. It did have a nice rum note that I thought worked well with the coconut, but the mix of coconut and lemongrass was giving me strong sun screen lotion type vibes. Not from it being sour/rancid or anything like that, but just that kind of weird and fake-y coconut and citrus scent those lotions sometimes have. It was also a little strange since the mouthfeel was so buttery and creamy from the fat in the coconut shreds. I did finish it, but it certainly took a while and I just wasn’t an overwhelmingly positive experience.

Side note – I definitely expected a much greater presence of oolong in the blend. Especially for a company like Steven Smith Teamaker, the fact this was majority lemongrass was pretty unexpected. I feel like they might as well have just skipped the oolong and just went for an herbal blend.

Full rolling boil with just a minute or two steep, AKA my usual “trick” for getting more roast out of a genmaicha and less of the green tea. I was curious how that would work with this tea given the rose in the blend. The rose still hangs on and isn’t totally lost, but this definitely ups the toastiness and makes it a bit harder to taste it. Still yummy, but maybe a trick better left for other genmaicha since part of what makes this one so nice is that rose inclusion.

Brewed this up over the weekend and it was fine. I think the real issue here was that I was so clearly craving the toastier brown rice notes of the genmaicha but I wasn’t really as in the mood for florals as I thought when I’d started steeping the mug. So, I had a very split experience sipping on this. No fault of the blend, though! I probably just should have gone with a plain genmaicha instead on this particular instance.

I know I was a little bit less than enthused about this tea the last time I had it, but I think something must have subconsciously resonated with me because I have not been able to get it out of my head. I ended up making another mug of it while working from home yesterday and it really resonated with me. Gently toasty with a light and almost citrusy freshness to accompany a very aromatic, delicate rose note. I was just really impressed, and the bergamot didn’t bother me at all this time around.

Tea Photo: https://www.instagram.com/p/Cz4fs9mOA2Y/?img_index=2 (2nd Pic)

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAQNnd7QIkk

I love the idea of this tea… minus maybe the bergamot.

Steeped up I had such an enjoyable time drinking this cup. It was the perfect amount of deeper, toasty brown rice notes with a very fresh, fragrant taste and aroma of roses. It made me feel a little like I was walking through a rose garden at sundown. Weirdly romantic and poetic feeling.

I did, however, feel like the entire time I had this back of my head feeling that I was enjoying this tea in spite of the bergamot and not because of it. I’m for sure going to need future cups of this tea to really process how I feel about that ingredient inclusion.

Cold Brew!

Brisk, tannic black tea with notes of pithy fresh squeezed lemon and a hint of stonefruit all with a very distinct, boozier tequila flavour. As I’ve said before in a past tasting note, I don’t particularly love tequila and I’m not a HUGE fan of this tea (though I think it’s very well executed). However, I ended up drinking the last half of this brew with my supper and I have to say that something about pairing it with food actually made it much more enjoyable. It was just flavourful enough with that sort of “sweet tea” vibe from the bold black tea and citrus to feel… I don’t know… correct?

Cold Brew!

I keep wanting to call this tea Agave Sunrise as if it was named after a Tequila Sunrise cocktail. Except that’s not the name, even though it’s clearly loosely the inspiration. Missed naming opportunity, IMO.

The tea itself was really interesting. It’s made with tequila infused Darjeeling, in addition to a few other ingredients like citrus and nectarine flavouring. Tequila is one of my least favourite spirits, but I still needed to see what this was like. It does, both surprisingly and unsuprisingly, taste very alcoholic. Strong tequila flavour but without the burn of real alcohol. It’s one of the strongest notes in the brew, alongside a hint of stonefruit and citrus and the more floral leaning black tea. It felt very much like I was drinking a cocktail made using tea, which is definitely the intention Steven Smith was going for so we’re basically looking at a 10/10 for nailing the concept.

Still a little on the fence about whether I enjoyed it. I didn’t dislike it but, as I said, I don’t love Tequila. It feels like it would nice in a giant pitcher during the heat of Summer at, like, a pool party or BBQ. More of a situational tea.

#mugtober

Do you consider ice cream a picnic food? I know that, practically speaking, it’s challenging to bring ice cream on a picnic but I’ve always thought it’s a really nice way to cap off a picnic at the park – whether it’s grabbing something from a passing by ice cream van or stopping by a local store on the walk home.

Anyway, that was my logic when I chose this tea for the picnic theme this month. As I’ve said in the past, this is more a very milky and buttery tasting milk oolong with just a hint of vanilla than a true ice cream flavour, but as the liquor cooled some more sweetness came out and it did feel a little closer to the namesake. Regardless, it’s a tea I’m enjoying more and more each time I steep it up.

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QN5bqIkWYR8

It’s been a hot moment since I’ve done this, so I thought I’d do a “Teas I Drink In A Day” roundup a few days ago – no theme. Just whatever I wanted to drink.

Sometimes I feel like the tins of tea sitting on my shelves are just staring straight at me practically daring me to make a mug of them – and that was the situation here when I decided to just make a large Western style mug to sip on while getting ready for work.

I have to say that, having now experienced this tea once before, I had a much better time with this mug than my first. My expectations were just more realistic, and instead of being let down by a lack of sweeter cream or vanilla notes I found myself more readily embracing the rich and very, very smooth buttery profile. The little hint of salt was pleasant and it made the lingering aftertaste after the sip feel naturally sweeter as well. It was just very cozy and relaxing all in all.

Tea Photo: https://www.instagram.com/p/C5RdiYtuAuR/?img_index=4 (4th Pic)

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zG28gw1KJU

This is such an infamous blend from Steven Smith Teamaker, and I’ve wanted to try it for like five years now. So, when I placed this recent order, it was a MUST TRY for me. Even though that meant blindly getting 4oz of it.

I will say it was a little different than expected. I knew it wasn’t going to be sweet the way a lot of ice cream inspired blends are because that’s not really SST’s style when it comes to blending. However, I will say I thought it would have a more discernible vanilla flavour or, at the very least, more of a custard-like creaminess. Instead I would say that the primary flavour was butter. Not as fake-y tasting as so many flavoured/scented milk oolongs are, but with the added salt in the blend it really did read more like a very freshly churned salted butter over anything ice cream like.

I still enjoyed the mug a lot – especially the floral undertones of the oolong. I think I’ll enjoy it more the next time I have it, since my expectations will be much more inline with how the blend actually tastes. Ice cream feels like a misrepresentation, though. Especially with all the imagery SST uses to market this blend. It’s more accurate, IMO, to call it just a really nice interpretation of a buttery milk oolong. A little more classic.

A gift from a friend visiting from PDX.

Filtered/boiled water allowed to cool. Infused for ~3.5 minutes at 179F. Followed up with a couple more infusions closer to 200F for 20 – 40 seconds.
Verona green/citrine/honeydew gradient.

Sachet was perfume-like with bergamot and rose up front. Nutty pan-fried Mao Feng, faint toasted rice, and mellow grassy sencha appear when the tea is brewed.

On the palate, the green tea takes center stage – mild, sweet, nutty/toasty flavors give way to the floral/herbal/citrus notes. Very faint umami at the edges in the finish, but the grassiness of the sencha and the vanilla/floral/citrus notes from the bergamot are present long into the aftertaste. Vague hints of aspirin and elderflower perhaps.

Light bodied, low tannins.

Flavors are alternately competitive and complimentary – a delicate but creative blend.

Solid ice tea backlog. I liked this one. It’s more citron heavy than pina colada in my opinion, but the orange coconut combo works pretty well. The rum is a little bit overpowering smelling the leaf, but it’s cohesive and subtle in the background behind the citrus. It does sometimes overstep the coconut, which is my issue. I like citrus, but the lemongrass and orange overpower the coconut imo for it to be a pina colada. On the other end, it works pretty well and is very refreshing. Coconut milk can beef up the pina colada coconut quality to cut back on the rum. They’re low calorie mocktail recipes are kind of cool too for this one too.

I like it, yet don’t love it. My biggest gripe is that you need to add more ingredients to get a true pina colada feeling.

Sipdown! (26 | 223)

The only one from the Steven Smith holiday trio that I’m not a fan of. I like cinnamon and peppermint, but did they really need to add licorice root, blackberry leaf, and stevia? I guess they wanted it to be candy cane-like, so they were trying to make it sweet without sugar. But the cinnamon already makes it not taste like a candy cane, so I don’t get it.

Not for me.

Another sipdown from today. I’ve been wanting to try this company for a long time, so I was very excited when a friend brought me back a sachet of this tea from a hotel stay! I am pleased to report that it did not disappoint. This is a tea for jasmine lovers, certainly. As soon as I opened the packet, a beautifully sweet jasmine perfume wafted up from the dry leaf. It wasn’t sickly sweet or artificial at all, but it was assertive. Brewed up, that sweet jasmine perfume softens a little bit, and there’s also an aroma of green beans and butter. The company’s website lists jasmine, steamed greens, and brown sugar as the tasting notes. I don’t know about the sugar, but the jasmine and steamed greens feels exactly on point. I got three extremely solid steeps out of this.

I’ve been drinking a lot of T2’s China Jasmine lately, and it just completely wilts next to this tea. This is one I’d be happy to revisit given the opportunity.

If you’re on the fence about lavender in tea, this is not the tea for you. The lavender is in your face on this one.

I think that this tea is not for me. I’ve tried it a few ways now and I just can’t find a combination of things that gets me to really enjoy it. I don’t hate it but I don’t find myself gravitating towards it.