Tippity

I finished up my sample with two big cups. This one walks a nice line between tasty and soothing, I’d get this back into stock.

Oh, how lovely!

I do have a soft spot for relaxing herbals but most taste the same as each other—Mary Mary’s got something a little extra sassy and sweet to her that leaves me interested.

Yes, this is definitely one I’d like to have in the cupboard! It doesn’t quite overtake my favourite from T2 but in the spirit of trying not to buy from them (or at least not much at all) perhaps I’ll next restock my herbal in the form of Mary Mary… yes, that’ll do nicely.

Definitely a stronger citrusy take on an earl grey. Quite nice black or with a dash of milk.

Lapsang Souchong has to be bacon/smoke tea for me, just an assault to the senses. This one wasn’t. It’s not bad, but considering how much I like their take on russian caravan, I wanted a lot more from this. BACON ME!

Hm. Not crazy about this chai, actually.

It’s funny, I was never really a huge chai fan until trying that masala chai from Monstrositea (or more accurately, that masala chai from India), which actually seemed to have a fair amount of CTC tea in it, as well as a perfectly blended selection of spices. Something about it blew me away, and I got excited about chai for the first time in my life.

Is Tippity’s masala chai bad? No.

Is it a good masala chai? Probably.

I feel like I probably just have a very particular masala palate. What’s funny is that I am actually kinda crazy about Tippity’s honey-soaked chai. Just not this guy! I wish I could put my finger on what it is about this that didn’t get me going mad for it, but I think it’s my own weird palate and nothing to do with the blend. (Though of course I noticed the beautiful full leaves in the brew and compared them immediately to the CTC in the Monstrositea blend.)

Stabilise my Vata Dosha, Hava!

Another gracious sample from the gang at Tippity. I’m always very interested in medicinal teas, and I think this Ayurvedic blend would sit on my medicinal shelf for sure. After having two big mugs of it tonight after a night of poor sleep last night and a bit of anxiety, I’ll see how I feel in the morning, but right now I’m feeling super great.

This tisane has a lot of flavour to it and the one that wins is the sage, damn son. Sit down. Down in front. The citrus and lemongrass are an excellent balance to the blend. I can sense this is one I’d crave after a belly full of food, and can see how it’d bring about some calm.

So after my great first direct encounter with Andrew from Tippity (see: La Luotuo-de), I sent him an email to ask if he would consider selling me some samples of blends, because my biggest fear with buying online is that I’ll shell out for 100g and then hate it. Or even nothing it. I wanna love it, you know? And I’m a hoarder, so I don’t find it easy to just discard a tea if I’m not crazy about it. Nope, I’ll keep it in the cupboard for MONTHS.

So what was cool was that Andrew replied pretty quickly to say he’d a) literally just gotten some sample bags in and b) hadn’t thought to sell samples through the store but dug my idea so much that he wanted to send me samples of some blends for free as thanks for the suggestion.

HOORAY! Tippity is seriously kicking goals for me. I can’t wait to place my first proper order with them, and hopefully I’ll be keen on a whole bunch of these nine samples I got in the post the other day. First up: this guy.

It’s pretty cool.

Chai with honey premixed, so it comes kinda sticky and molasses-y, then as soon as it hits water it puffs out and breaks up and floats around more like regular tea.

This has a really nice spice to it, and my favourite part is that it needs no further sweetening. The honey soaked through gives it just the right amount of sweetness to mix with the spice.

I tried it for the first time tonight in a Zero Japan pot for around 4mins, then doled out with decent lashings of milk. Yum. Yum. Snow on the mountain predicted overnight. Perfect.

I comfortably worked my way through a pot of this today, so I wasn’t as low as I thought… but now I might be. Eep! But I’m poor now! That’s ok, still plenty more teas in the cupboard…

No! How did this get so low! Do I really only have a couple of cups left? HRMMM.

I’ve been getting through my stock of this more lately as my lazy morning beverage, seeing as I now work somewhere I can make myself a good coffee in the morning I don’t keep fresh beans around at home so coffee isn’t the go-to even on days off. Making me happy, this new routine!

Wow. Wow! I am a lucky girl. Last week my friend asked me via twitter about some local tea shop recs for those that stock Russian Caravan blends, as his boyfriend won’t let him buy from big bad Unilever-owned T2 any more. I mentioned Tippity and they got in touch with us and offered to send us both a pressie.

A 200g bag of Tippity’s Russian Caravan arrived for me today!!!

And it is lovely. It’s been a while since I’ve had RC, though it was my first “different” tea love after growing up on English Breakfast. I started buying RC teabags instead of EB ones when I was around 18, or maybe even younger. But with tea discoveries of the last few years, straight blacks have fallen a little by the wayside for me.

Not any more! Not with this amount of gorgeous RC in my cupboard! It’s smoky and woody and one thing I’ve found coming out the other side of my tea addiction is that it’s absolutely lovely as a plain black, too.

Definitely looking forward to drinking the rest of it, and thanks so much to Tippity for the “little pressie”, shucks!