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Also had a few nights ago on the couch (I needed a good laugh so we were rewatching our favorite holiday-centered Seinfeld episodes). So far this has been the only major miss for me (husband too) from the Georgia Tea samples (if you can call them that…I see now the only other note for this tea mentions how honkin’ huge the sample sizes are, ha…more like an ounce) we’ve tried. I don’t get any pumpkin at all, just overwhelming spices whose heat grows as you drink until it feels pretty much practically as spicy as that one ain’t-playin’-around Butiki one (which I love, but expect to be chile-oil-in-a-cup unlike this) but without any balance. It wasn’t totally undrinkable, but it’s too unbalanced in the “hot spice” direction given what you’re expecting. I think I’m going to mix the rest with other tea to try to mute the heat and add some complexity. If that doesn’t work I’ll take the resulting bend and grind it up as a rub for meat and side dishes.

EDIT: Clove! Yes, that’s it. Reading through other reviews of this (it’s apparently likely identical to/relabeled from a Culinary Teas blend with the same name and description), I see Dexter3657 pointed out how overwhelmingly clove-y it was. Yes. And clove is one of those spices where just a smidge too much can ruin things. (I know firsthand—there’s a special Rochester-style “hot sauce” recipe, a regionalism in that it’s not hot sauce as one thinks of it, the bottled kind, but instead a loose warmly spiced ground beef mixture similar to Greek-style Cincinnati chili that’s used to top the local “split and charred white hots” hot dogs and thin-pattied, caramelized onion-focused burgers…my family makes a version of it in vat-sized amounts to freeze and the secret ingredient that defines it is the clove but one time I put a pinch too much in and it 100% ruined the entire huge batch!) That’s the weird off-putting kind of metallic heat source in this. A-ha!

Had this a few nights ago, the first of the Georgia Tea samples we broke into. Was pleasantly surprised and relieved that this is definitely cooked apple flavor, not the tart juicy fresh kind I for some reason dislike so much in tea. There’s the to-be-expected baking spice profile too, augmented with almond but without overwhelming the fruit. And it may be my favorite Georgia Tea so far, funny enough (have only tried about 5 of them, but). Husband loved it too. The raisins add a juicy cooked/stewed sweet fruit quality.

This was a super thoughtful surprise bonus Dexter3657 threw into my swap box! Awesome pick given I’ve been pleased with many of New Mexico Tea Company’s offerings and cardamom is one of my all-time favorite flavors. Thank you! You really put a lot of thought into the teas you sent me. :D

A while back I tried American Tea Room’s version and while not bad, I didn’t really find it compelling on any level (so much so that IIRC I forgot to log it here). I’m hoping that was a fluke though—I was distracted at the time by a lot of things—and plan to revisit. But anyway, I worried maybe it was a case where oddly sometimes I love flavors in general but find I hate them in combination with certain tea base types (this happens a lot with black tea for some reason). Given this opportunity to try NMTC’s I don’t think so though—I quite enjoyed this. The smell is not clobber-you-over-the-head cardamom, that unique both-cooling-and-warming quality, but there is a nice hard-to-describe generally soft aroma with a peppery bite at the tail end once it steeps. As for taste, the black tea presence is quite upfront while the cardamom gradually trails in on its coattails. This is a nice comforting cup that doesn’t demand a lot of your attention; it isn’t crazy complex, quite straightforwardly “black tea + cardamom and that’s it” but thanks to cardamom being nuanced itself it isn’t disappointingly one-note. The cooling quality comes in especially toward the end of the sip, with spiciness preceding it right in the middle. This is a good choice to close out a long dreary day. The more I drink it, the more I appreciate that the black tea flavor doesn’t get lost. I’m so glad I’ve had the chance to try it finally!

Husband was sweet enough to watch Upstream Color last night with me ‘cause I watched it the night before alone and loved it so much I wanted someone to talk to about it with, ha—and this was after dragging him to the second Hunger Games movie earlier the same day!! Anyway, we drank a pot of this on the couch during it. He loved it, had the good ol’ involuntary “Mmmmm!” commercial-type reaction to the first sip, haha. The coconut gives it a creamy mouthfeel similar to the many beloved coconut oolongs I’ve collected, and there’s a definite amaretto-y almond extract-y flavor as well. Nice without being too complicated, and resteeps like a champ. I must say, my foray into sampling Georgia Tea Company’s many flavored blends has been pleasant so far and I’m really wowed by how huge the samples are and how promptly my package arrived. I love when sales/promotions make trying someone completely out of nowhere feasible and it works out well.

I’ve had such a great holiday week—tons of quality time with the husband, finally got around to trying a bunch of the new spots that have popped up around town pleased to discover they’re all great, watched movies both obscure and zeitgeist-y (I enjoy when we can, makes me feel “like a real person”, hard to explain but I love those rare moments when I feel “normal” and connected to pop culture in a good way), slept in, cuddled, ate delicious food both in and out (the winner this year was waffles made out of leftover stuffing, coated in leftover gravy…YUM!) including swapping holiday plates with the upstairs neighbors (they’ve got a pro baker friend so they gave us some of her three-tiered cookie crust banana pudding cake and I tell you, my eyes rolled back and I did not want to share!), met that cat’s owner finally (she leaves for Ohio with her Sunday morning), all that good stuff. That said, I can’t wait to get back to my regularly scheduled programming/life after Monday for a bit, so I can log teas and chat on Steepster like usual. I’ve tried a bunch of teas this weekend but haven’t had time to log them, and it’s kind of ehhh timing considering many are from the awesome swap Dexter3657 kindly initiated a couple weeks ago. Can’t wait. Until then, just want to say I miss you guys!

Backlog, from before this tea was in the Steepster DB!

Yowza, the smell is everything you want it to be both dry and steeping. I’m only guessing and knowing me I’ll be wrong, but I think this has mallow in it maybe (?) as it has the same luscious cake-y smell that’s a huge part of my obsession with the (sadly discontinued for now :( ) Birthday Cake. Drooooling. Once again it’s abruptly cold as a witch’s tit (is that too racy for Steepster? Ack) tonight—says it’s going to feel like 7F, I’m shivering by the window (the best place to get a wireless signal in our apartment) and worried about the feral cat in our foyer (I fed her extra today, she’s in her roughneck home and I put a thick blanket over the top of it…still…). Got horrifying news this morning that R’s grandmother’s home burned down (his sister has been occupying it, long story there) with the dog in it (… seriously, there are no words), R gets evaluated at work this week, and tomorrow begins the insanity that is Thanksgiving week. Teas I’ve been mega excited about seem the thing right now (also, I want to know if I like the teas Stacy sent as samples before the Black Friday sale!).

This is exactly what I was expecting from a Butiki tea called Irish Cream Cheesecake—dreamy smell, subtle but uncanny flavor, good mouthfeel (and that hug in a cup any good tea can provide in a time of dark cold weather and stress!). G’ah, the smell. Oh so good. I could be imagining it but you even get the liquor aspect in the finished cup. The cheesecake tang is the subtlest component, coming out mid and late sip alongside the black tea flavor, but it’s great and dead-on too. What’s neat about this one is it feels like it’d work well as a morning tea, not just a dessert one, because there is true yummy strong black tea flavor, not just the cream and cake (though there’s that too, in spades, and nothing that feels artificial or cloying). As someone who just had chocolate pie for breakfast, I approve of a tea you can drink for breakfast that feels like a dessert treat at the same time! I think I will definitely be ordering more of this. It’s perfect when it’s freezing cold first thing in the morning and you need something to comfort you and tastes rich, sends that signal to the body that you’re putting on padding to stay warm.

Man, that smell. You think you’ll get saturated in it and stop being able to appreciate it, but then it wafts up when half the cup’s gone and your heart lights up all over again.

I probably shouldn’t be drinking tea right now—stuck in bed with some kind of funk bug fatigue I don’t know what, really just need to sleep and let my stomach heal—but I couldn’t resist trying something from the box Dexter3657 sent me (Thank you!! It is the best possible first un-secret swap I could have hoped for, truly…made my whole day turn from blah to yay). She was super thoughtful and sent me some Fauchon (!!!!) as she knew I loved the company, and it was all the sweeter because I spent the cold dark weekend hunting TJ Maxx and Marshall’s stores for some to no avail. Dexter3657 noted in her letter that this one “smells amazing” and whoa, that’s no joke. It is heady, the most true-marzipan aroma I’ve ever gotten from a tea and probably even a candy or baked good. Wow. And it does that thing the other Fauchon teas I’ve tried so far do, where the aroma doesn’t translate into over-the-top flavor so much as it drifts and haunts the taste of smooth light but not watery (this is where I think Kusmi and Fauchon differ) black tea in a way that isn’t disappointing (at least not to me!) at all, rather elegant and exquisite. The aroma turns into a lingering aftertaste at the tail end of a sip full of nice ladylike black tea. Love it! My infatuation with artfully perfumed French teas shows no sign of letting up. Thanks again Dexter3657!

Made this last night in my glass teapot for an unexpected marathon of Mad Men season 6 (once a month my husband doesn’t do band practice on Saturday and instead agrees to spend the day with me…ever since he started teaching and he barely has time to sleep or eat let alone hang out with me I treasure these days. We went all over town looking for odds and ends, tried a new Cuban place for downtown dining week, and stumbled upon MM at Target on the way home). Picked it ‘cause I wanted something I could make a bunch of in a teapot to keep me going all the way through our couch session, sweet but not too demanding/complex, that could steep forever without being ruined as my 3 cup glass teapot uses a tea brake instead of a removable infuser basket. Did the job nicely, being sweet treat-y with some coconut richness and graham cracker crust, but I really ought to relog this when I can devote more attention to it (as a huge veteran fan of Freaks and Geeks, I find Linda Cardellini in a wig quite distracting!). Was good, agree with Lariel and others that it seems more like coconut cream pie than cheesecake in that, like other 52teas offerings hinting at cream cheesiness, I don’t really taste cream cheese tang so much as whipped cream sweetness. And I think Strawberry Pie’s still my favorite, but so far the notion 52teas is generally good at blending honeybush is ringing true for me.

Soooo excited Stacy threw in a sample of this with my last order! It is a pretty blend, peppered with pink and white. Dry you can really smell the rhubarb (impressive!) and the vanilla. I wondered if it would inevitably conjure up pie to me complete with pastry, if only because that’s the major association I have with those flavors. But no! Dry and steeping it smells a bit more like the baked rhubarb topped with vanilla cream I sometimes make in the winter, a mix of rhubarb’s unique tang and sweet cream. A fizzy quality emerges with the tanginess of the steeping smell. Altogether the aroma reminds me a bit of cream soda with the vanilla and fizz but way less saccharine sweet, with that sweet-sour quality of rhubarb.

Stacy thoughtfully reiterated through email the suggestion to add a wee bit of sugar to bring out the rhubarb and vanilla, but not too much lest the hops get drowned out. Initially the finished steeping smell made me wonder if the black base was going to be a bit bitter or do that thing with the rhubarb like black tea often does with strawberry, where a distinct tartness comes out that (for me) doesn’t mesh well with the base. Added the pinch of sugar, took a sip, and no! Surprised to find it so round and creamy, a perfect dessert cup. But again, it never goes into pastry territory, which is great as again it’s not billed as pie but something else. The hops are there with a tinge of spiciness, but subtly so, not bitter at all. More like a gentle glowing warming quality than anything approaching fire. Holding the sip in one’s throat, letting it bathe the sides of one’s mouth and coat the back of the throat, the beer aspect comes out more in a really yummy way. This is lovely. I suspect it has a versatility to it, where if you want the sweet creaminess you can focus on that with sugar, and if you want more of the hoppiness and tang you could try without. A little to get the best of all worlds was a good suggestion; you can taste all three elements by focusing on each in different parts of the mouth and the sip. Personally, I’m really digging the hops, which are more prominent at the end of the swallow and the cup as it cools—just a hint of earthy bitterness and a tingling warmth left in the mouth. I like that the lingering mouthfeel is similar to the one you get eating rhubarb that’s barely cooked, like in Pesach fish poaching sauces, that lightly grainy astringency (I’ve never before thought of how tea tannins are similar!). Never would’ve guessed keemun would work well with these flavors, but then I’m not the flavor wizard Stacy is. (;

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I’m going to log the new Irish Cream Cheesecake here until it gets added to the Steepster DB—I’d add it but I don’t see it yet on the site so I figure Stacy will once it’s there. Just don’t want to forget about it! I’ll move this to the appropriate spot later, with any luck.

1 1/2 tsp, 212F (boil), 4 min (no idea if these are optimal/recommended steeping parameters yet, just guessing)

Yowza, the smell is everything you want it to be both dry and steeping. I’m only guessing and knowing me I’ll be wrong, but I think this has mallow in it maybe (?) as it has the same luscious cake-y smell that’s a huge part of my obsession with the (sadly discontinued for now :( ) Birthday Cake. Drooooling. Once again it’s abruptly cold as a witch’s tit (is that too racy for Steepster? Ack) tonight—says it’s going to feel like 7F, I’m shivering by the window (the best place to get a wireless signal in our apartment) and worried about the feral cat in our foyer (I fed her extra today, she’s in her roughneck home and I put a thick blanket over the top of it…still…). Got horrifying news this morning that R’s grandmother’s home burned down (his sister has been occupying it, long story there) with the dog in it (… seriously, there are no words), R gets evaluated at work this week, and tomorrow begins the insanity that is Thanksgiving week. Teas I’ve been mega excited about seem the thing right now (also, I want to know if I like the teas Stacy sent as samples before the Black Friday sale!). This is exactly what I was expecting from a Butiki tea called Irish Cream Cheesecake—dreamy smell, subtle but uncanny flavor, good mouthfeel (and that hug in a cup any good tea can provide in a time of dark cold weather and stress!). G’ah, the smell. Oh so good. I could be imagining it but you even get the liquor aspect in the finished cup. The cheesecake tang is the subtlest component, coming out mid and late sip alongside the black tea flavor, but it’s great and dead-on too. What’s neat about this one is it feels like it’d work well as a morning tea, not just a dessert one, because there is true yummy strong black tea flavor, not just the cream and cake (though there’s that too, in spades, and nothing that feels artificial or cloying). As someone who just had chocolate pie for breakfast, I approve of a tea you can drink for breakfast that feels like a dessert treat at the same time! I think I will definitely be ordering more of this. It’s perfect when it’s freezing cold first thing in the morning and you need something to comfort you and tastes rich, sends that signal to the body that you’re putting on padding to stay warm.

Man, that smell. You think you’ll get saturated in it and stop being able to appreciate it, but then it wafts up when half the cup’s gone and your heart lights up all over again.

Husband’s show is tonight! Drank this to try to give myself some energy (up real late planning my Thanksgiving strategy next week), augh.

Finally having this in my gaiwan (I don’t appreciate it enough…it’s so beautiful!). Wow, so much better (and it was tasty already). Dang. Always overwhelmed by the thick creamy, almost pudding-ish quality of the mouthfeel in the first couple steeps, and the caramel-y sweetness which I don’t expect given the barley grain aroma. Mmm. The rock and clean sweet melon come much later. I do really love this one!