Daylon R Thomas Send Message

Thank you derk for this one sooooo much. I have been staving off my roastier oolongs for cooler weather. Michigan had a whiplash of 80 degrees to 50 degrees and 40 in the same week. SEMCO fixed a gas leak, and now, my house isn’t getting heat properly, so any tea that’s on the more savory side is well welcomed.

I plopped this into my strainer mug for 3 minutes, took it out, and it smelled like cookies, butter, and autumn leaf piles and cedar. Tasting it, I thought I was drinking a black tea. It’s got a caramel chocolate thing going on for my palette, more specifically bakers chocolate or older chocolate with fresh caramel. There are times it reminds me of those endangered species chocolate bars with dried fruit plopped in for some flavor.

Anyway, I’ll come back to it. I’m loving mugstyle. I wanted to try this one for a while, and I’m very happy to have a sample. I can already tell I’ll rebrew it a few times yet I’d only use it for special or needed occasions. The tea would be too heavy on it’s own for my palette, but it’s super soothing and tasty so far.

Thank you Leafhopper! I got the box, and I’m stoked at everything. This will stave me off other tea impulse buys for a while. I tried the 2023 and not the 2022 yet. I did it western, but really liked it. Had a grassy pineapple poundcake feel to it. Later steeps had heavy magnolia and then some lychee in steep 3 as it cool down. Loved it. I will do note for it on its own, but I will do it here so I can come back to it. Cheers!

Wanderlust from September. This one is not fully a masala chai, but the nutmeg and cinnamon give it a chai character. The flavor is pretty strong, but not overly as cakey as I’d imagine. It’s more bready than anything else underneath a healthy serving of floral tannin and light astringency of sweet spices. The black tea and green tea make it medium bodied like an oolong, but has the touch of malt and green astringency to make it more on the medium side, or first flush side. Shorter brew times makes the green tea more apparent, and the longer steeps makes the black tea more apparent.

I liked this one because it was different from most other blends, and I honestly liked it better than some, but not all of the pumpkin spice blends. Definitely a good fall option. My girlfriend loooooves it, and some of my students that saw it at work were really into the smell. I personally would still add sugar to sweeten it to make it more palatable, which is the big thing against this tea for my preferences other than the astringency. It is also more pastry/candle bordering than potpouri like the other blends. If you really like rose and cardamom though, you might really like this.

Really liked this one. I dig the flavor combo. Too expensive to own other than the sample, but it kept changing on each rebrew and it lasted very long western and tumbler style. The cardamom would actually be more prominent in the later steeps with the almond and pumpkin flavors giving off nice balanced natural sweetness with the persimmon. Really dug the persimmon almond combo personally. I feel lame, but I agree it is a bit too pricy. It’s easily a winner compared to the other fall blends. I had the highest hopes for the Pumpkin Caramel Oolong, but it was too dominated by the cinnamon to be distinct. The other two were also overpowered by cinnamon. This one was balanced.

I was planning on just reviewing the sampler pack and rating them, but people actually tried these teas! I’m not the only one either wowed by the taste and irritable about some of the prices! YAY!

I’ve already commented my thoughts on this one for a few of you, but here’s the gist. I sipped this down the quickest out of all of them for easy transport and basic white girl vibes. For whatever reason, Pu-Erh Black tea blends are easy for me to like, so I got Clove, vanilla, nutmeg, and a wi bit of pumpkin are prominent in the flavor under the malt of the black tea and pu-erh. I personally would taste the pu-erh more with more leaves, but the black tea was more prominent, though less so than the power of the flavors.

I personally really liked the eggnog custard vibes and thought this tea was the pumpkin spice version of Thai Temple. I’m not always a huge fan of cake teas, so I’m happy with a more custardy version of one. It’s good with a little bit of cream and sugar, but I liked this one more straight. Felt good on my throat and felt good with the fall vibes. I’m not sure if I would pay for the full price for a large serving of it. I wouldn’t mind having it around since I thought it was better than a lot of other pumpkin spice teas I’ve had before, but I would probably only want another sampler portion.

I dumped the rest of this unceremoniously into my teapot, let it sit for a minute, and drank it. Thankfully, it’s not as strong as it used to be, but my cup leans into the lemon apricot fruit range of grassy tea. I’ve been contemplating on getting a fall order even though I’m waiting on a swap of so many teas. What-Cha has some cool experimental varieties, but I’m also in basic white person flavor mode right now. I have so many teas, but I only have one chai out of all of them. The fall mood is hitting me HARD the past few days.

It was nice to have a black tea bordering on white and oolong. I’m still going through moods with black tea. My gong fu ones have been a little bit too brisk or tea drunk potent for me lately for western. I still plow through my oolongs, but western or tumbler. I’ve been a hair more involved in work by setting up a chess club and managing to teach all grades of social studies for high school.

I initially complained about my schedule, but I have really good groups. Luckily, I’ve taught Civics, Economics, World and US History for nearly 6 years, so I mostly know what I’m doing. Civics and Econ alternate semester to semester, so it’s not too overwhelming, but I’m trying to move away from lecture and use more collaboration/student driven discussion. Shifting to more active learning also requires waaaay more prep time and work, so I’ve been juggling what I have with what I can borrow from other teachers, what I can improve. It feels like driving manual though since I have to shift my gears from class to class.

It’s nice to finish a straight black tea and enjoy it for the flavors as I go back into a productive work mode this Saturday.

I pushed back opening this big bag, but as fall’s coming around, my cravings for something more level and spicy rolled in. It’s more than doing the job before I impulsively get chai teas. There’s a few others from Magic Hour I’ve eye balled yet again. The shipping and my need to budget have restrained me, and unfortunately, there are teas I have bulk of that I’m not enjoying nearly as much as certain samples I’ve ran out of or that I’m about to finish off. I’m half tempted to add bread to the notes for this one, making me think of an orange cranberry biscotti with just enough spice. Upping the rating for sure. 90 is a more accurate score for cost ratio and quality (nevermind the whole pieces of vanilla pods that land my pot), but I keep coming back to it, then I hold off so I don’t guzzle it in less than a month.

Now, it’s time for me to grade and watch some Wheel of TIme. I’ve weirdly enjoyed the series even though it’s not book accurate, though I had a hard time with Robert Jordan’s writing style. His alternation between a modern writing voice, contemporary religion, and fantasy tropes and cliches threw off my suspension of disbelief several times as I was reading. I know I’m a total hypocrite because I like Tolkien, Herbert, Weeks, and Gaiman, but the blended world building doesn’t sit right with my brain every time I read it. The TV show has issues too, but the blended cultural aspects are more cohesive to me. I’m thankful they just refer to the Dark One generally instead of lambusting you with the different names for Satan in Arabic, Chinese, and so on.

I wonder if anyone else on here has read Wheel of Time, and I’d be open to comments and debate about it. I know it’s considered to be on of the greatest fantasy series of all time, and a huge personal favorite for many people, so I know I may have upset a few people, but preferences be preferences.

4 grams backwards Western, starting out with 4 minutes, than 2, than 3, and than that was it. My first cup was heavy with corn and florals, tinged with apricot, melon, and honey. Second brew was more vegetable, tasting like buttery green beens, lettuce, spinach, jasmine, and some typical gaoshan clean green qualities with a little bit of darker aspects not making it too green. Last steep was vegetal, floral and sweet, but layered. The fourth cup was after a bit of time, and I mostly got cabbage.

I’ll say it’s pretty good, but I’m clamoring towards my blended or typical tea favorites despite the generousity and customer service of this company. This one is a little bit acidic for me, which I know is a weird way to describe an oolong. It almost makes the water harsher for me with it’s greener tannins, so I’ve stayed back from it and the Dayuling. I don’t know if I’m just imagining it. I’d be happy for input from other people on here.

Sipdown of the Audacious Root Chakra tea. I decided to do it Chai stlye by boiling a generously unmeasured amounf of the carob tea directly in a Turkish pot. I slowly added some sweet cream as I boiled the leaves and water, lowered the setting to medium to let it heat right. I put in a cup, sipped it, then added a splash more of the sweet cream to cool it off. This is the best way I’ve had this particular tea, so I’m concluding the best way to have chai is by making it in a boiling pot .

This morning I only did it long in a hot water then added the additives, and good, but not as thick as the boiled version, hence my new conclusion about chais for now…until I get the Chaibot machine….if it ever comes in October. I’ve waited 2 years for that thing, so I hopes it will help me plow through some tea for work quickly in the morning. I’m open to see if anyone else saw that on kickstarter and was smart to not get into it, but you know me-I’m always curious to see what the new things go. I admit it is kinda fun reteaching myself Econ by using this industry, and then helps me teach that subject when I have to in the classroom.

I loved this one, avoided it, and now I’m one cup away from a sipdown. This is a current tasting note as I write as well as a backlog. This tea can be extremely malty either gong fu or western. Sometimes I crave it because it’s got the reason why I started drinking unflavored and unsugared black teas with a little bit of osmanthus for fun, and other times there’s a little bit too much tannin. Sometimes I can get cocoa, other times I get wood, malt and tannin overpowering the osmanthus.

I’ve been on a latte kick as of late trying to cut back on coffee for less acidity, plus adding collagen protein to justify the calories, so I decided to do it with this one. I went friendly with about four teaspoons, four minutes, and then just sweet creme and collagen. It was malty, cocoa-like, with just a wisp of peach and osmanthus lifting beneath the malt and cream. This was a good decision to get through more tea in a faster amount of time.

I rebrewed it again straight, and it was a perfect cup of malt, tannin, cooca, and florals. So nice for the morning.

I still have no idea what to rate it. I stand by it having one of the best black bases I’ve had in a while compared to some other hongcha’s I’ve had. Some of them are just malt and berry for me. I haven’t tasted anything resembling a caramel note in a while like I used to, except for the Smoke and Mirrors Lapsang I got. I hope I remember to come back for a sipdown note of this one.