The Tea Table

Really quite sweet. The bergamot is there, but the orange and clove are what really come through for me. Probably the least “Earl Grey” of any Earl Grey spin offs I’ve seen. A good, enjoyable tea, but nothing I feel the need rush out and force people to drink.

what a wonderful full bodied green tea with the jasmin not being over powered it was great.

while making a delicious breakfast this morning of cheesy scrambled eggs and potatoes i decided i would try my new wonderful green tea from the Tea Table. i got this as a sample with my last order and i love it. its a smooth earthy-ish green tea with a lovely golden yellow liquor. when i brewed it this morning i did a quick rinse and then a 30 second steep. i then re-steeped it several more times adding about 15 seconds each time. i felt the more i re-steeped it the more a a soothing smooth texture the liquor had. this is a wonderful tea especially in the morning for those who dont like black teas.

I made a pot of this tea in my 2-cup teapot, and the smells while steeping are so nice! It smells like a very strong chai, which I love, so I’m anxious to give it a go. This is a good one! It’s full-bodied, no bitterness steeped at 4 minutes, and with a bit of sugar and milk, it’s the perfect comfort tea! Very spicy, not much heat though, and absolutely yummy. I’d recommend a smaller amount of milk than you normally put in your chais though, as it seemed to weaken the tea a good bit.

This Oolong has a lightly roasted taste very similar to many Formosas, this makes a wonderful mid morning or early afternoon tea do to a subtle rich, sweet flavor that is more common to darker Oolongs.

I woke up on my coach this morning after a night of being a college student and realized that this weekend i have dissipated from my tea drinking habits do to be super busy. waking up on the coach i realised i needed to enjoy a kup of tea in which would counterballance the uncomfort i am in do to the coach. i decided on this wonderful oolong since i havent enjoyed it in so long. i used my newly purchased ceramic pot that also includes a one serving 8 ounce tea mug. this tea has a wonderful buttery texture once it starts to cool like most other Oolongs.
Water temp: 185 degrees F
Steeping time: 3 minutes with leafs free in tea pot. (every steeping i add 30 seconds)

the color of a nicely brewed Da Hong Pao is a rich gold almost close to a rising golden sun.

this tea is definately a great way to end my weekend and a wonderful way to kick off this next week.

since it is sunday, as a college student it is the day of homework and i recently found a Tea house up in Crested Butte Colorado which is just 30 minute drive away. So im going to venture up there after this Cup of tea and check the place out while doing some homework. Wahooo!!

I feel that I received this from Alphakitty in a swap.
I requested this thinking buttery soft chocolates. I didn’t check the description so when I got it I was surprised by what I smelt and saw. Straight up butter with spices. I then realized truffles are also some other type of food, but can’t think of what it is.
Once I steeped this is smelt so butter like, and then you got some of the spice smell.

This is really unique and complex. I like it, a lot actually, which I’m surprised by. It’s super buytery and them freakin deliciously spicy, but not your typical tea spicy. I don’t get the pistachio or any sweetness from it. Purely savoury. This could easily replace a bag of chips for those nights that I’m craving salty things.

The last of my samples from The Tea Table! I wanted to do something special with this one, so I brewed it extra strong and then made a latte with coconut milk and dulce de leche. Ooooh lord is it amazing! The chai itself is quite strong and spicy, with a lot of ginger. The lemongrass is prominent, but it doesn’t overpower the other spices. The base tea is very strong, even with all the other stuff going on, which I love. I like my chais strong in all respects, and this definitely delivers!

With the coconut milk it reminds me a bit of Adagio’s Thai Chai, only dare I say better. It’s stronger and spicier, but still with distinct lemongrass/ginger flavors that gives you that Asian feel. The dulce just takes it to the next level, adding caramel notes and delicious sweetness. As I prepared it this probably warrants a 100 rating, but of course I’ll try to contain my excitement and rate based on the tea itself!

EDIT: I made a second cup of this with all the extras and the flavor held up just as well—in fact, it was a little spicy! Chais often don’t resteep well but I think I could even get a 3rd out of this blend. I really shouldn’t be drinking two sugary lattes in a day, but my kitty is sick and I won’t be able to get him to the vet until tomorrow and of course I am driving myself crazy with worry so I need something comforting.

Continuing on my exploration of lychee teas, I picked up an ounce of this from The Tea Table. It seems to be one of those blends that is stocked at a few stores, I suppose it comes from some other source. Sometimes I wonder where all these teas originate—some blends seem to be carried by 5 or 6 different places with the exact same ingredient list & description! But, in any case, it’s pretty cheap anywhere you get it.

I cold brewed this for 12 hours and it’s pretty much exactly what I expected. A soft, sweet green base complimented by floral jasmine and sweet, juicy lychee. It’s a nice departure from the black-based blends I’ve been trying, the lychee matches so well with both the jasmine and green tea. Since lychee is a little floral on its own I was worried that this might come out perfume-y but it’s definitely not! Another lychee blend I love, sigh. Now I have to make decisions on which ones to stock!

I got this tea as one of my free samples simply because of the name. I used to live in a gorgeous house in Hoboken that was actually IN the movie On The Waterfront! So how could I resist? Well maybe if it was banana bacon flavored or something, but it also happens to have a lot of ingredients that I love.

At first sip, it tastes like a peppermint tea. A very nice one, but just peppermint. But the more you drink, the more the other flavors start popping up in the background. A bit of rose, a hint of nuttiness, a whiff of ginger. It’s really an interesting tea! I am going to try it with a shorter steep as well to see if the other flavors become more dominant, though right now I am really enjoying playing the “flavor guessing game” with this blend.

EDIT: Did a short 4-minute steep (which is very short for an herbal!) and the other flavors came out a lot stronger. The peppermint is still dominant, but it’s easier to pick out the rose, ginger, almond, hibiscus, and a few other things. It’s a long ingredient list! I am thinking of keeping this around as an everyday mint—it’s between this and Mint Medley, though at the moment I prefer the complexity of this blend.

One of the nice things about The Tea Table is that you get 3 free samples with any order, no matter the size, and you can pick from any of their teas. So I placed a teeny order, just for 4 teas in a 1-ounce size, but got a bunch of samples too! This was one of them, since I’ve discovered that I love berry teas.

This is an okay tea. I don’t think it’s anything special, a mildly smooth black base with a pretty generic “berry” taste. It doesn’t really say WHAT kind of berry it is, and I don’t think I could place it. It’s not tart like raspberry or cranberry, sweet like strawberry, rich like blackberry or currant, or with that signature juiciness from blueberries. It’s like… the lowest common denominator berry flavor. It’s definitely berry, but it’s a bit muddled—especially since I had to add cream as the base brewed up a tad bitter. I do have a few cups of it left (they’re pretty generously sized for free samples!) so I might try this iced, I have a feeling that I’d like it a whole lot better.

EDIT: Gave this tea another shot with a short 4-hour cold brew using my once-steeped leaves, and served it with a slice of lemon. Wow, what a difference! The weird “mixed berry” taste has faded significantly, leaving a more distinct flavor: raspberry! There’s also something else fruity, and it’s pretty clearly apricot to me. So it’s like an apricot raspberry blend now! The lemon also helps subdue the artificial taste, leaving a crisp and sparking iced tea. It’s almost hard to believe these are the same leaves I used before: for the rest of my sample I’ll definitely give them a good rinse to get out some of the flavoring and then cold brew it. I’d give the hot tea a 72 and the cold an 85, so I’ll bump the rating to meet somewhere in the middle.

I’ve been enamored with lychee (which apparently is sometimes spelled lichee) in tea since I tried DT’s Cheeky Lychee, which was the perfect balance of floral and fruity. However, there are a LOT of lychee teas out there so I wanted to try a few more before I made a big purchase. Cause honestly, I could drink an iced lychee blend every day!

And lo and behold, this one tastes JUST like Cheeky Lychee. I mean identical—in a blind taste test I know I couldn’t tell them apart. Sweet, fruity, light, floral, with a nice strong black base that works so well iced. It’s also cheaper than Cheeky Lychee, which is always a bonus. I do have a jasmine lychee blend from them to try, but so far this might be the lychee tea for me.

I got my tiny order from The Tea Table today, and decided to dip into this one first. I had to be brave because in the bag it smelled… revolting. Almost barf-like. Seriously, it was horrifying! I am wondering if it was just the packaging, though the other teas I got don’t have a funky smell… nor do the dry leaves for this once they were in my little french press. Maybe it was just the smells from the flavoring trapped in there or something? Cause it only smelled like that when I first opened it. In any case, I’m glad I powered through because this is quite tasty!

Steeping, it smells like my beloved Tamarind Pop. Of course it doesn’t have any of the same flavors (or nearly as much complexity), so maybe it’s the rum part? It is a bit earthy and has that brown sugar-y taste going on, which I suppose was the association my brain made. The flavors seem odd (coconut, strawberry, rum, cream?!) but they work together well into a smooth and enjoyable cup. I got quite a bit of strawberry and a lot of cream, not so much coconut. The rum adds more of a buttery/malty background presence, it doesn’t really taste like actual rum. Not that I mind!

This is definitely tasty, especially after a nice light summer dinner of grilled chicken and rotini with pesto. It’s kind of rich and the flavoring is heavy: there’s a definite and distinct “black tea taste” but I’d be hard-pressed to pick up any of the individual tea notes. Sometimes, though, I’m really in the mood for a fruity, creamy, no-frills dessert-y tea!

I realized last night that since joining Steepster a few months ago, I haven’t decupboarded a single tea. Kind of a horrifying thought, since I keep ordering more. I’m determined to cull at least a few of them, and this seems as good a place as any to start since I only had about an ounce to start with! I’ve been quite taken with cold brewed Earl Greys recently, but haven’t tried it with an EGC so into the fridge this went!

One sip and I was in love. It’s so good! I think I need to up the rating, I’ve really enjoyed this one a lot. It’s good hot, cold, and in ice cream! So sweet and creamy, the vanilla and bergamot combine to make something that tastes like a luxurious dessert. Sadly, tragedy struck and I knocked over the cup. ;~; So about half ended up on the floor, sob. My cat did seem to enjoy it, which is weird because he never tries “human drinks.” This tea is so great it even wins over kitties!

Of course with only one teaspoon of the leaves left and half of this brew on the floor, I instantly thought “I need to buy more!” But really, do I need THREE earl grey creams? Especially since I have 8oz of the Upton one and 4oz of the white, which is very voluminous. I went to their site anyway and ended up placing a teeny order… that didn’t include this tea. Somehow that counts as self-control to me, sigh.

I’ve decided that I have too much tea, and that baking and cooking are the best way to reduce my stash in a reasonable amount of time. I’ve been successful with tea-infused english toffee, and ice cream was next up! There are tons of recipes out there, but I went with my tried and true custard-base instead. Steeped the cream/milk mixture with about 2 tablespoons of EGC for ~20 minutes, strained, and then did the whole temper the eggs, stir for forever until it thickens jazz.

The worst thing about ice cream is how darn long it takes. After making the base you have to chill it for 3 hours, then put it in the ice cream maker then freeze for 3+ hours so it firms up. I tasted the base during all the steps, but it’s really hard to tell how the final product is going to be. Well, it’s finally done, and it is AH-MA-ZING. Earl Grey ice cream is nice and all, but using an EGC boosted it to a whole other level of amazing. Combine it with a rich, creamy custard base and dear lord, I could eat it all tonight.

While my experience with Earl Grey Creams isn’t vast, I’ve liked the ones I have tried a lot. Citrus + cream + a strong black base, what can go wrong? Apparently nothing, since this is a very enjoyable cup. It smells like baked goods and frosting, quite similar to Upton’s version (which I am totally in love with). It’s very vanilla-y with a thick, creamy taste and the black base definitely holds up to these flavors.

However, if I didn’t know this was an EG I might not have identified it as one. The bergamot is a little lost under the other flavors, and I would have preferred it to be a little stronger and bolder. It really just came off as a delicious creamy black, almost dessert-y even without any additions. What I do really like is the base, which is brisk and a little malty which pairs nicely with vanilla and cream, keeping it from being an overwhelmingly sweet cup. I also got 3 steeps out of this, and the creamy flavors stayed strong!

I buy from 2 tea shops semi regularly, (Not as often as I would like, sad face) and the shop where I got this tea, they do not make it/prepare it, so I am not sure where the owner got it, but til I find out otherwise I will assume that it is this one.

OMG! This was the 1st loose tea that I have had in years, (that I’ve bought.) and it is simply wonderful. If you love Orange Creamsicles, then this tea is for you! I put some equal in mine because I cannot taste sweet very well, but try it without any sweetener 1st. This is also delicious as an Iced Tea.

Great with a scone! would be great when I have a cold

I still haven’t the faintest idea why this is called Butter Truffles. Anyways, brewed some up today and it was ok. I still think it’s a weird set of flavours to have in tea, but that’s ok! Parents thought it was alright and not too weird.

This is the first sample of a few very generous ones sent to me by Amy oh! I was super curious about this different-sounding tea. And the potential that it tastes like an Indian dessert? I’m in!

The dry tea definitely smells weird. Not off-putting weird, like the Pina Colada I had from Adagio, just an unconventional sort of weird. Spicy-ish and spiced, and I could perhaps liken it to a spiced dessert. I’m really not sure what all I’m smelling. Steeped, I’m getting a spiced baked goodsy sort of aroma.

Woah, so interesting! Butter truffles? I think not. Interestingly savoury-spicy tea? Definitely! I can pick out the pepper and coriander, mainly, and am getting a buttery creaminess at the end of the sip which is quite nice. This tea really throws you for a loop though, being so savoury. I’m reminded of Verdant’s Elderberry Pu’er that I drank a couple days ago. Not necessarily due to flavour similarity, just due to the savoury flavours one wouldn’t necessarily associate with tea. I can also taste the black tea base in the background and it’s pretty good.

Overall definitely worth a cup, and I’ll probably drink it again a few times (Amy sent a ton! :P) Thanks again for the sample!

ETA: Second infusion is definitely more spice than tea. Probably not worth it (although the spicing is the same, it needs more of the base IMO).

The mint taste is very strong, but I like it. I also like that you can completely change the taste with a change in steep time. No matter how long you steep though it is always yummy, particularlly when iced :)

Pretty good, you can taste the Assam in this one but it is well balanced with the others for a very nice anytime cup of tea.

First let me explain a little something. This tea is going to be far stronger than I normally drink it due to my issues with sample sizes. You see, I use a perfect teaspoon (trademark thing here), which I’ve been told is actually closer to 1.5 tsp. Given that I use a (roughly) 16 oz mug, I generally fix whatever tea I’m making with two PT spoonfuls. Now the Tea Table sample sizes are probably made for someone who actually uses self control and reasoning, as they contain enough for roughly 2 1\2 – 2 2/3 PT spoonfuls (not heaping, but not level). Me, being the devil may care (read: lazy) man that I am, I just dump the package in. Now previously I’ve handled this by making a full 16 oz cup and about half of a 12 oz cup. The full cup I’ve been adding milk and sugar too, and the smaller cup I’ve been taking straight. This time around I forgot about the fact that I had developed that method, and added my normal amount of water.

I’m digging the result. It’s a bit of a punch in the face, but in the best possible way. You know, like if Natalie Portman punched me in the face because we were in a singles fight club. I took a couple sips of this before I doctored it up, and there was a solid bit of astringency there that follows on the heels of a nice full mouth feel. I did add a drop of milk and sugar, as that’s pretty much how I always drink my breakfast teas, and it’s a bit like putting a saddle on a bronco. It’s still an exciting ride, but it’s just a bit more comfortable.

A nice maltiness, a bit of astringency, full body, and a slight sweetness I picked up on even before I added the milk and sugar. This is a nice rich Scottish Breakfast.

EDIT: I forgot to mention, this tea makes me want to eat provolone.

Thanks to MadelineAlyce for this sample!

I read the reviews just now (after drinking it) and I can totally see how the ingredients remind me of Buttered Rum by DT. Sadly though, I did not enjoy this tea :(

Something about the smell, both dry and steeped, smelled off. It reminded me a bit or something I won’t mention, because I don’t want to turn other people off of this tea haha, but it was not a good sense memory! The taste had a rum flavour to it, that’s for sure, but I couldn’t shake the bad taste – almost sourness – so I gave the rest to the boyfriend. He enjoyed it!

Thanks for the sample though <3
I think I’m going through my stage (finally) out of flavoured blacks being #1 and into the world of straight teas. Whoop! I have a lot to drink until then haha.