Tea Runners

I feel like my brain can’t decide if it wants to still be in the middle of the summer or if it’s ready for Autumn to hit – I keep going back in forth in my tea cravings, too! This was definitely from a more “summer mood” kind of day. Just a nice hot cup of something sunny and bright. Love the simple and sweet lemon notes here with the full bodied black tea.

Pretty simple blend but I do really like that approach when it comes to lemon black teas because it feels so classic to me. I appreciate that this is smooth and full bodied without being pithy or bitter, and there’s a subtle creamy sweetness to the lemon that also works super well in my opinion. Nothing magic here, but for a staple flavour I would consider this a solid option to fit in that “daily drinker” sort of category.

Slightly over steeped this so it had just a bit of astringency to the finish, but otherwise the crisp vegetal cucumber skin flavour mixed with the subtle brightness of lime was very refreshing. Love a cucumber tea. There should be more of them.

Definitely not so much a lime tea as it is a cucumber one, but I love the crisp and vegetal flavours of cucumber and this tea doesn’t skimp on those! More the slightly bitter but still refreshing green notes of cucumber skin and less the pulp. All on a gently roasted and nutty green oolong base. Really gives me “cucumber water” and spa type vibes. Enjoyed it a lot.

Thought I’d oversteeped this because I forgot about the mug I’d made until it had been steeping probably around a dozen minutes or so but it was delish! Very cucumber forward – which I think was one of my criticisms last time? Nice and crisp clean vegetal cucumber pulp notes with a gentle roast and nuttiness from the oolong itself and then a very faint bit of lime in the finish. Sooo… mental note for me: steep this bad boy longer than you’d think to!

Cold Brew!

I think I expected this tea to be either more vegetal and cucumber forward or to have more bright top note citrus/lime – and so I was surprised when it was really neither of those two options. More than anything, I found this was a really oolong forward blend with a lot of woodier/bark-like notes and nuttiness to it. Definitely still had those cucumber elements, but a little more green and of the rind/peel than the cooling and somewhat creamy pulp of the cucumber. The lime was soft and subtle – like having a squeeze of fresh lime or lemon in an ice cold glass of water.

I think I liked it, but it was so far off the mark in terms of my expectations that my immediate thought is that I need to revisit and form a fresh opinion now that I have a better sense of what I’ll be getting in the cup flavour wise.

Western style cuppa with a nice glug of butter pecan creamer added to it. This almost feels like a bit too nice of a tea to use a super sweet flavoured creamer with, and I was actually intending to use an Orange Pekoe but I couldn’t find the sample I had in mind and I also didn’t like that narrow mindset I felt myself slipping into so I decided this would do just fine – and it was fine! Very robust full bodied black tea with deeper cocoa and malty leather type notes that complimented the subtle nuttiness and rich velvety cream that I had added. Not too sweet, and not a sacrifice of the tea’s tasting notes themselves either.

Gongfu!

Enjoyed this session with some super sweet and jammy grapes!! I feel like Thai black tea is severely underrated, and this one in particular is quite lovely! Thick and full bodied with the slightest nod of astringency, I’m finding this to be quite a rich tea session filled with notes of brandied black cherry, grilled plums, dark malted grains, molasses, raisin bread, and warm autumnal leaves. The flavours are bold but the liquor quite smooth!

Thank you to Tea Runners for the gifted tea – I’m once again impressed with the customization of this sub box. Though not every tea this month resonated as strongly as this tea, I’m happy I got to try the blends between the different boxes that made me the most curious!

Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/CSfYu7nAX1l/

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYx-0WjC8Zo&ab_channel=anjimile

I’ve started thinking of this as Old Reliable. No matter how I feel or how my day has gone, or how much I have screwed up the steeping parameters, its always smooth, kind of buttery with a lovely mouth feel. A nice hint of sweetness as well.

I feel so lucky as I only initially bought it because I needed a little more in my cart for free shipping.

Haven’t touched this in ages. I’ve been getting so many new teas that its kind of just falling by the wayside. But as I was digging through my tea drawer this morning, I saw its tin and thought, yeah this is the one. And, I had forgotten how smooth this one is with a pleasant mouth feel and a lightly sweet aftertaste.

Oh and now I have a little glass teapot. It is fun to watch it steep. :)

The tin is getting low. I suspect I’ll be doing a restock sometime this spring.

Its been a while so I thought I’d add a new note. In fact its been a while since I had this one.

Nice body, not harsh in any way, there’s a sweetness to it at the end of a sip. Another one I really enjoy but tend to forget that I enjoy it way too often.

Just steeped up the last cone today. What a pleasant surprise from what was basically a whim order.

But nothing to fear. I went a little insane on Black Friday sales and just got ship notification of 5 more ounces heading my way.

Well its happened twice in a row now. I pour the water into my cup, walk back to my desk, and a shipping company shows up with a crate and the guy wants to argue with me about how a Suite 200 doesn’t have a loading dock.

And you know what? This stuff is still smooth, and I needed it after dealing with the shipping guy.

Honestly, I wasn’t expecting much here. I mostly picked it up because it looked interesting and I needed a little more in my cart to get free shipping.

I steeped this up this morning. It almost makes me wish I had a glass tea pot so I could have watched it better. It blooms very prettily. I ended up over steeping due to a small emergency this morning, so it ended up going a good 6 minutes or so before I stopped it. I usually max out steeps at around 2-3 minutes.

Even with that delay, this was very nicely smooth. No bitterness, just the tiniest little hint of astringency. Second steep is as good as the first and I’m betting that this could easily go a third, but I’m running out of time today.

I’m quite pleased and glad I chose this one to give a try. I’m also curious how this one will do iced.

From Subscription Box

Drank 2 cups, don’t have much of an opinion. Another good sign.

Its a bit bitter (even I notice it). Its more than a bit astringent. Not massively so, but enough for it to be rather noticeable.

As for flavor. nothing special here. There’s a lot better out there.

Geek Steep S3E20 – Firefly (TV Series)

Cold Brew!

It’s always so hard to figure out what our last episode is going to be each season, but this one felt right. We began with Buffy way back in season three, and so ended this season with an exploration of another one of Whedon’s series felt a bit like an homage to that.

I drank this one cold brewed with added blueberry popping boba during recording, largely just because that sounded really delicious. However, the added layer here is that Tea Runners was founded in part by the actress who plays Kayleigh in the series. So, there was the underlying nerdly little bonus. It was a very tasty brew – like a mellowed out fruit punch flavour with a hint of strawberry and then, of course, the little mini bursts of deeper, sweet blueberry.

This is a fruity, sweet and enjoyable rooibos with a nice lightness to and an overall refreshing taste. However, it definitely tastes like strawberry and not dragonfruit. I liked it, but I just couldn’t make my brain get anywhere close to blurring those flavour lines enough to come even close to something passably dragonfruit or even just tropical.

This was one of the teas that came with the gifted August subscription box from Tea Runners. Like last month, I got the “Original” box but then HIGHLY utilized the customization feature to swap out the teas that I’d tried before or seemed uninteresting to me in favor of ones that were more unique…

I really wanted to try this one as soon as I saw it because, off hand, I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen another dragonfruit rooibos blend before and I was really curious how those flavours would play together. It looks quite nice, with a simple visual comprised mostly of green rooibos some petals and a scarce amount of candied fruits. The dry aroma is sweet and reminds me of the dragonfruit flavoured “Hi-Chew” candies, but tinged with strawberry.

I enjoyed the taste a lot steeped up! It’s not overly flavoured or sweet, though a lot of the clarity of the fruit flavour was lost and it read more to me as a sweet and vaguely candied strawberry taste mixed with more of a generic tropical/fruit punch vibe versus dragonfruit specifically. Still plenty tasty, and really approachable in intensity. I liked the overall simplicity – and the choice of a green rooibos base with these softer sweet fruity notes is great.

Not an instant smash hit, but I think this is a solid fruity rooibos option even if it’s not the most “dragonfruit” of dragonfruit flavours.