TeaGschwendner

This is the real advent day 5 tea, not Sencha Claus. Whoops.
Anyways… this is a bright and strong tea! It has a grassy flavor without the bite. It has a light bean taste, but not in an unpleasant way. I’m not super into straight green, but this one is alright.

Advent Day 5, Sencha Claus. Heh heh heh, clever. Dry this smells super fruity, like fruity cereal. The almond comes out much more in the cup with a slightly bakes flavor and mixes well with the fruit flavors. The tea base is light, but has a mouth drying sensation after each sip. I don’t quite get what I think of as sencha in this cup, but it’s a pretty tasty cup.

Edit: Awwww crap. I opened door 6 instead of 5. Advent fail.

Advent day 4. Plain, this tastes a little malty and like bread, but has a slightly bitter bite towards the end of the sip. I figured it was a good candidate for cream, but I’m not sure if that was the right choice. There is an almost peanut shell taste. Once I sip on past the shock of the flavor change I find a slight fruitiness to the cup. Is that right? Was my steeping basket contaminated from last night’s cup of Fireside Mocha? It’s hard to tell, but I have drank to the bottom of the cup as I ponder it all. It wasn’t a bad cup, but not quite remarkable either.

Advent day 3. I’ve been cheating . I’ve been opening the next day’s tea in all 3 advents the night before to plot my course of action for the morning cups. I’ll open them and smell them and tuck them back away. When I opened this, there was so much tropical fruit scent that I feared it must have hibiscus in it. I was relieved when I steeped it that the water didn’t turn that tell tale pink! It’s been a stressful morning and I have been sipping this from my travel thermos while distracted. Now that I’m sitting for a few I’m noticing a lovely passion fruit flavor. Lupica used to have a passion EG, Loke Lani, that was wonderful and this brings that tea to mind. I can taste a bit of the tea in the sip, but the finish is all passion fruit. I’d consider a purchase of this and I’d be tempted to add a little Earl Grey in the mix. Not sure where the “fire” in Tropical Fire comes from, but this is a solid tea either way.

Advent day 2! I didn’t like this when it was hot, but now that it has been sitting around for several hours it is better. I can smell an almost fermented orange. Reminds me of the preserved orange peel candy in Asian markets. This has a similar taste with the earthy addition of ginger. It’s not a ginger with any sort of bite, it’s an older ginger. I’m trying to think of nice things to say about this tea. I want to like it, but it isn’t doing it for me.
https://www.instagram.com/p/B5mXYPVALxY/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

Also known as weihnachtskräuter, or 1181, this tea is in day 1 of the advent calendar. It was a challenge to figure out what the English name for this was, especially because they don’t offer it on the US site. I hope the rest of the teas are easier to identify. It tasted like it has some chamomile in it with that licorice root sweetness to it. I steeped it for 4 minutes and the flavor was really light. After letting it steep much longer than that, it had developed more flavor and was enjoyable, but wasn’t something I was wowed by.
https://www.instagram.com/p/B5ifODdg67W/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

This had been on my wishlist for quite some time, and since I was ordering more Green Coconut (the weather is slowly warming up, and this is a solid, refreshing tea in iced form), I tacked O’Conner’s Cream onto my order. I really think Teagschwendner should offer smaller amounts for online ordering (100g minimum? Really?), but I just went for it.

Basically, it’s an Irish Cream-flavored black tea. I happen to love that, and I also happen to love flavored blacks in general. Not to say I don’t love unflavored, “pure” teas, but there’s room in my cupboard for pretty much all kinds of teas. Except rooibos. I will never love rooibos.

Upon opening up the package, there’s a strong alcohol scent from the flavoring. Not the first I’ve experienced this, but it’s still disturbing. If this goes as I expect, after awhile that will dissipate and the flavoring will be intact. If you love Bailey’s, then this is the tea for you. I imagine this would be a great tea for one of those raw, damp, November days when you crave something comforting. Definitely has a taste of whiskey and cream. Does it crowd out the black tea flavor? No, it still tastes like tea. Would I drink it black? Nope – this cries out for milk. Just the way I like it. Great dessert / treat tea.

This is either from MissB or Sil – so thank you!

I’d put off having this one for far too long as I’m not fond of many herbals, but it looks like this has nothing I dislike in it, which is nice! My initial impression was that this was straight up lemongrass, until I realized that the lemony flavour wasn’t quite right for that. I can’t really taste any vanilla, but I also may not have had any vanilla bean pieces in this cup – the smaller pieces in my baggie remain there. This was all large chunks. Despite the lack of vanilla, this is actually fairly tasty. It’s nicely lemony without being bitter, and quite refreshing. I’m drinking it room temp, which puts it more in the “iced” realm, and I think that’s how I’d prefer this, though I feel like it would be pretty tasty hot with honey, too. Pretty pleased with this one.

Disappointed. Went into the shop to get a cup to go and was told this was a straight milk oolong – no flavoring added. Even the label on the container made no mention of added ingredients. One sip and I could tell that this is definitely not a straight tea. It’s drinkable, but has a slight sour, artificial note to it. Milk oolongs are smooth and buttery, and this really lacks that smoothness.

Sipdown (600)!

I’m still on the hunt for the perfect rich, creamy and decadent caramel tea. This one isn’t it, but it was fairly close to what I wanted. I mean, it tasted a lot like caramel and was pretty sweet/rich – but it also had a ton of briskness and maltiness from the black base, and was quite astringent. My perfect caramel tea shouldn’t be brisk and astringent – it should be silky smooth and creamy. So, a decent attempt but not the one.

10/10 name, but 5/10 tea…

Very “marzipan” in terms of flavour, which I suppose makes a lot of sense for a German tea vendor. However, there’s a bitterness to this that is unpleasant to me; I think it partly comes from the almond, partly from the orange, and partly from the green tea itself. I’m sure a little bitterness might be a nice contrast to the sweeter marzipan and may be intentionally present – but this is enough so that I don’t find it hardly drinkable.

Pass.

Sipping on this now.

There’s something very lovely about the dry leaf aroma; it has a brightness to it and a sweetness to the citrus elements. I’m admittedly not super familiar with the taste of pomelo so I wont even bother to try to comment on the authenticity/presence of that flavour note but I do detect something grapefruit like that is sparking curiousity for me…

Steeped up, I unfortunately find this to be a pretty ‘run of the mill’ flavour. There’s an undertone of something nice and citrus-y (grapefruit?) with more body to it, but it’s really swallowed up by the mid sip which is just HEAVILY dominated by lemongrass, and a little apple? Nothing stand out to me – I wish there was something a little more interesting going on in this for me. However, I can find lemongrass teas much more easily if that was a profile that I wanted…

Meep.

This tea is… Why!?

I guess putting gummy bears in your tea must be a novelty thing or meant to appeal to kids? However, it baffles me because I can’t imagine they impart a lot of flavour or melt down all that nicely; and if the amount of gummy bears isn’t JUST RIGHT in the blend then you have cups missing them (and they at least feel like a crucial ingredient based on the name) or they take over the cup given the size/weight!

I steeped this up though, and tried to keep an open mind. It tastes fine; but not particularly “gummy bear” like in terms of flavour. While it definitely get sweeter and mellowed out a little bit as the tea cooled, I found the profile to be an essentially hibiscus and orange dominant cup with a lot of tartness and general acidity. Not bad at all, but super generic and not really worth the novelty of buying a ‘gummy bear’ tea IMO.

But I guess it made for a cute photo so I suppose that’s a win!?

EDIT: Worth noting that this would probably be decent iced.

Received this as a gift and fell in love with the presentation – the tin is just so elegant and it’s a lovely tea to look at. And sniff. I swear, my habitual tea sniffing will eventually be to the detriment of my collection. :D

Anyway, about the tea…did a quick brew earlier to give me something to sip on while emailing. The cherry aroma comes across very strongly in the final amber liquid, but the actual flavour is pleasantly mild. You pick up a lot more of the grassy/woody tones of the green tea with only a gentle overlay of fruitiness.

No issues with bitterness and I’m inclined to believe it would take sweetener well.

Well, that was unexpected, and I think I may be able to guess why this replaced the White Oothu. I somehow missed the timer going off, resulting in an unintentionally long steep time of a bit over 6 minutes. But it still tasted fruity, without any bitterness. I think the White Oothu would probably have been slightly less forgiving(though still more so than a classic Chinese white tea), and since this is TG’s cheapest white tea(and therefore probably the one most often bought by people new to white tea), that complete lack of bitterness was probably considered more important than the option of getting multiple steeps out of it.

It was a pleasant surprise that it wasn’t bitter after that steep, and I think I’m more likely to either make this in my big glass pot(technically the glass body of a Bodum Assam), like I did this time, or throw it in the Mono Filio as a base for White Vanilla Chai, than to brew it gongfu in a gaiwan, so I think I probably won’t really miss the extra steeps(I have other white teas that i can use for gongfu, so …).

It’s too warm for a classic cinnamon-heavy chai, so instead I’m drinking this, with a little extra ginger.