Yumchaa

SIPDOWN!

mmmm i was a little worried about this one because i accidentally let it steep for something like 8 minutes. I apparently had no reason to worry since this still tastes delicious and wonderful. I like the way that this tea is both berry like with a hint of smoke. I’m bumping the rating up a bit, though i wish the berry taste was just a little stronger. However, the base on this tea is great!

thank you Scheherazade for this swap! I’m sad to say that we, for whatever reason, decided that rearranging our entire house again was something we wanted to do late into this evening. I blame the purchase of 5 new board games on that.
In any case, as a result i wasn’t able to focus on this tea as much as i wanted to. Overall, it came across as a pretty great cup of tea. Fruity with hints of smokiness from the assam. Luckily i have enough for at least another cup, maybe two, so that i can spend a bit more time focusing on the tea.

Guys! I am TOTALLY in the home stretch…well mostly, provided no teas show up tomorrow, though i also kind of want them to lol SIPDOWN! Bringing my grand total to 208 and i still have Friday and Saturday! If i don’t manage it, it’s going to be awfully close :) Of course the week after I’ll be back to adding teas into my cupboard but at least i’ll be able to try and keep it around the 200 mark…still aiming for 150 by november heh.

I save this tea for the last of the day because I wanted to pay attention to it. Last time i gulped it down distractedly without taking notes. Soo i um may have accidentally steeped this one for about 25 mins LOL

The good news? It’s only slightly more hibiscusy than i would want. It also REALLY reminds me of another tea. it’s appley and cinnamony and i just enjoy this one. quite a bit. yep tasty! i think this would be pretty good cold too if the hibiscus didn’t overpower everything.

mmm this is tasty…well that’s what i remember thinking but then i got distracted on my conference calls tonight and forgot to pay more attention to it. I picked this up in my swap with Scheherazade and i still have a bit mroe to have again so better tasting note then i promise!

SIPDOWN!

I meant to try this one as a latte but i forgot and now it’s gone but that’s alright. I’m super happy to have been able to try a new company through my swaps. Long day…one more cup to go after this before i wrap myself into my blankets and drift away. thank god it’s almost Friday.

oh yeah… the tea lol not too shabby…let it steep for a long time but i’m still getting that rooibos-ey taste so not my overall favourite in terms of rooibos tea.

thank you to Scheherazade who let me try some of this in our swap! This one smells like rooibos when it’s in dry form and brewing but once you take a sip of this its full of delicious berry goodness! This is more a red fruit rooibos than blue fruit but overall it’s just a happy fruity goodness time. That is my official stance. and now? now i’m tired. seriously behind in sipdowns but at least i managed a couple today with some steps towards being able to finish a bunch up over the next couple of days..216 and counting, though i think i’m slightly less as i lost track of a few things i suspect.

A lovely flavoured green, which I appreciate the more for having tried a few artificially flavoured ones by mistake. The mango is delicious, and either it balances out sencha’s typical bite of bitterness or this is a particularly mellow sencha base. This one even convinced Becca (not a green tea fan) that green teas could be good, though she said she’d have preferred it with a bit of honey.

I’ve never got around to drinking it as an iced tea, despite the suggestions from Yumchaa, but then it’s just not often hot enough to put you off drinking hot tea here! Second infusions have been a bit less tasty, but I’ll try again and make more careful notes.

I had the ends of a bag of this, and a new one of Yumchaa’s Raspberry Vanilla, and after a few nights of alternate enjoying, decided it was time for a proper taste test, before all the Berry Berry Nice was gone. It was totally scientific! Well, actually, it was nothing of the sort. I put the teas straight into two cups and infused for the same amount of time, then divided those two cups into two more, so Cara and I could each taste properly. Naturally, we ended up with different preferences, but Berry Berry Nice is my winner.

With that mix of fruits, I’ve very little hope of distinguishing each flavour note, but despite Yumchaa’s description of it as a “tart treat”, I don’t find it tart at all. Both it and Raspberry Vanilla have vanilla and rose petals (though BBN has vanilla “pieces” while RV has “pods” — ??) and I’d have thought the combined fruits in BBN were at least as tart as raspberry, but I find it a smoother, less tangy tea nonetheless.

It’s all gone now, and I will definitely be ordering more of this favourite. It happily serves as a winter, nighttime drink, as well as the summery one the “drink while wearing sunglasses” suggests.

My favourite rooibos tea so far. It’s probably worth mentioning that my gingerbread recipe is adapted by (at least) tripling the amount of ginger, doubling the amount of cinnamon, and adding nutmeg, cloves and cardamom. I LIKE spicy. (And now I’m thinking it should get some pepper and chilli too.)

All that said, the tea is spicy but not overly so! A good rooibos base, with strong but balanced flavours of cinnamon and ginger, and a nice kick of chilli. (I’ve no idea what red thistle adds to the mix – does anyone know what it tastes like?) I almost always brew this in a large filter bag (Palais des Thés calls the size small, but they’re generous) and leave it in, as rooibos doesn’t get bitter with long steeping. I’ve noticed that when I drink it without milk (it’s good either way) the last little bit of tea has a much more pronounced sweetness than the rest of the cup.

Have re-ordered several times from Yumchaa, and will keep buying as long as they keep selling!

SIPDOWN!

So i tried this again and overleafed it a little to see if that helped with the flavour. I’m happy to say that it did, so this seems to be a tea where a little more leaf is a good thing. What i like about this one is that it’s a more natural tasting caramel than say your della terra teas, however it is a much weaker taste in my opinion as well. That being said, i’m ever so glad to have tried it. Thank you so much Scheherazade for the swap!

ANother tea from Scheherazade that I am having the pleasure of trying. This one? I think i’m going to hold off rating until i have another go at it. It’s pretty weak sauce at the moment and i’m not sure why. I can almost taste the cocao notes if i focus really hard while i’m drinking it, but the base is almost not really there. I’m going to chalk this one up to not having steeping directions…and no, yumchaa doesn’t feel the need to share them on their website either. bah!

SIPDOWN! having a lovely cup of this while i organize tea purchasing and relax for tonight. Sad to see this one go, but for sure could be a re-purchase one day :) thanks again for the swap Scheherazade!

another delicious tea from Scheherazade I steeped this one for 6+mins and i’m pretty sure that longer would make it even better. Falling asleep at the moment but this one was a tasty raspberry tea, blending lovely with the vanilla.

sipdown!

I decided to cold brew the last of this one the other night to see how it holds up as a cold brew. Overall? Not a bad brew. It’s still to “tea like” for my other half to appreciate it, but I could certainly enjoy this cup hot or cold in the long run. It’s fruity and not terribly floral, thank god! Greeted a sweetness to it as well that is only enhanced with the addition of a little bit of sugar. I’m Happy I got the chance to try this one out!

Thank you Scheherazade for this sample! While this doesn’t knock my socks off or anything, i must say that this is a pleasantly smooth blend of tea. Most of you know that as a preference, i tend to stay away from greens/whites as they are generally just not as bold and wonderful as my blacks.

Yumchaa appears to do well with making their blends smooth and pulling the tea into the blend so that it isn’t bitter. In terms of the taste on this one though, I’m not getting an overly strong specific rhubard or blackberry taste. Instead it’s a more generic “fruit” sort of taste on a very nice green base.

SIPDOWN!

Thank you Scheherazade for this one! I had this as a cold brew with dinner and man it was tasty! The only down side? as a cold brew it pretty much smells like a dog’s butt. So my other half wouldn’t even try it :( I liked it though!

OH man. thank you to Scheherazade for sending me some of this one. I am LOVING this! It’s tangy, it’s sweet, it’s fruity, it’s zingy…it’s just a really nice tisane! I’m looking forward to steeping the last of what i have as a cold brew just to see how incredible that might be for summer.

Sipdown! This one was a long time coming, but I got there in the end. I wasn’t sure about it at first, because there’s a lot going on in terms of flavour, and it just seemed a bit confused. It’s grown on me, though, especially as the days have gotten cooler. I drank the last cup of this at work on friday afternoon, after I’d spent a couple of hours over in estates packing boxes of freight. It was freezing, and so this fruity, caramelly, slightly nutty, spicy wonder was just the thing when I got back. It reminded me almost of mulled wine, and maybe that’s the comparison I’ve been looking for all this time. Probably not one I’d buy again, but a nice enough autumn/winter rooibos for all that.

As the mornings get colder, I’ve been turning to this one more than I have over the past few months. Its fruity caramel taste is just the thing when I arrive at work feeling cold and shivery. It’s not as good at waking me up as my normal morning mate, but it’s certainly a yummy tea. I’ve come to like this one a bit more as time has gone on. AAt first, it was just a confusing mess of flavours, but now I think I understand it better. Red fruit and caramel are a bit of an odd combination, but not terribly so. Somehow, the cinnamon helps to bring them together. Unusual, but I like it!

I last drank this long enough ago that I don’t actually remember it at all. High time for another try, then! As this is the last of the Yumchaa reds in my stash for now (except Red Christmas, but I’m saving that for…Christmas), I’ve moved it to my tea drawer at work. I usually go for teas I don’t need milk with at work, as I don’t trust our old and ancient fridge. As I’m so cold today, perhaps this is just what I’m looking for.

Brewed, it smells spicy and hibiscussy, and for some reason it’s made me think of mulled wine. I guess it was a good choice after all, in that it feels like winter has suddenly returned. The taste is similar. I can detect the hibiscus (what is it doing here anyway?), but it is thankfully quite subtle. I can also taste cinnamon, and something like caramel. The kiwi plonks itself down right in the middle of the sip. I remember thinking last time I tried this that it really was like an adventure for the taste buds. This tea brings together all sorts of random ingredients and somehow makes them work. It’s not like any other tea I’ve ever tried, and, surprisingly enough, it’s nice. For all that, though, it’s not memorable. I’ve never drawn a complete blank on a tea I’ve tasted previously before, and yet I did here. Maybe the ingredients are too diverse? Maybe I just haven’t tried it enough compared so some others? I’m not really sure at the moment. It’s definitely a nice, welcome drink on a day like today, though. One I’ll have to try and get to know better over the coming weeks and months.

My third and final Yumchaa red for today. I have to say that these are taking me by surprise quite a bit. The ingredients I think I’m least likely to be able to pick out are the ones that seem to come across most strongly. This tea is a case in point. It’s got a lot of ingredients, some of them, like hibiscus and rose hip, quite powerful in terms of flavour. Despite this, it’s the caramel and apple that I can pick out most clearly in the brewed tea. It’s no bad thing, I’m just surprised that they come across so well in quite a complex blend.

Anyway, that said, the dry mix is another busy, pretty one. There are quite large pieces of apple, kiwi, hibiscus, and rosehips, and generous fragments of almond. The smell is quite spicy — mostly cinnamon or nutmeg, I think, although neither are explicitly identified. It’s quite a clean and refreshing scent despite this, though, and if I inhale deeply I can definetly identify the apple and kiwi.

Similarly when brewed, the spice is the first thing I can smell, and then a slight frutiness. The biggest surprise is the taste. Looking at the ingredients list, it’s the kind of tea that shouldn’t work at all. Somehow it does, though. There’s a mild, background tart sweetness from the hibiscus and rosehip, and then a decided frutiness from the apple and kiwi. It all ends with a savoury, nutty twist from the almonds, and the deep richness of the caramel. All of which is held together by the spiciness that runs over and above it all.

I’m glad I saved this one until last, because it’s certainly an odd, complex tea. There are a lot of facets to the flavour, and I feel like it’s taking me a lot of time and concentration to absorb and appreciate them all. It’s so aptly named, because it absolutely is an adventure for the tastebuds. A unique and interesting tea, this is one I’m going to take the time to get to know properly. A great, if intriguing, first acquaintance!

Sipdown! Finished this one off last night. I don’t know whether it’s just me, but the last few cups of this took on a slightly smoky taste. I have no idea why — I don’t have any smoky teas stored near this, and I know it for a fact because I don’t think I have any smoky tea in my stash at all right now. Maybe one, in Smaug, but it’s not even in the same box. It’s been open a while and is a little old, so it might be that. Or it might just be me.

Whatever, though. This was a pleasant raspberry rooibos. With milk and a little sugar, it’s just like a raspberry milkshake. This is one I think I’ll be missing a little.

Drinking this at work right now. It’s sweet and comforting, as always, but I think on the whole I prefer it with milk. It seems to lend this a milkshake-like flavour that I can really get behind. Anyway, there is no milk, so black it is. I’m having a hard time staying awake today for some reason. I can’t think why I should be so majorly tired, but I am. I think I’m going to switch to something caffeinated for my next cup or two. Honestly, 5.00 can’t come quickly enough!