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Second tea from the subscription box. It was great, but not as nice as the Silver Needle. I’ve discovered I don’t really like orchids, which is a problem for this tea.

It has a nice stone fruit flavour, maybe peach or apricot. It’s sweet but not as refreshing as I’d hoped. Strong orchid aroma and slightly nutty with a hint of wet oak.

I had a horrific migraine after drinking this tea. I can’t rule out this tea as a trigger, so I’ll sip the next cup tentatively!

The first tea in my teapro subscription box. Yep, I’ve decided to do a tea subscription to see what it’s like. When it comes to “real” tea with beautiful complex flavours and many many steeps revealing new layers… I’m kind of lacking in knowledge. I read the awesome detailed reviews here on Steepster (particularly those from Derk and eastkyteaguy) and I feel inspired to kick the supermarket/grocery store tea habit and explore more. But I’m on a budget and I need a little help with detecting flavours sometimes.

So, this “exploring tea” subscription seemed perfect. A chance to get the basics down at least. With a fairly empty cupboard (apart from the box of tea bags) it’s not like I’m going to run out of space.

Anyway, the actual tea. It’s excellent although I don’t have anything to compare it to at this point. The buds are so fluffy! They smell pretty good too, very fresh and fragrant.

I steeped 1 generous teaspoon for 3 minutes, managing to get 3 steeps out of it in total. The aroma is very fresh melon – but not quite ripe melon. It’s not sweet enough to be ripe but it’s very strong in aroma.

Flavour-wise, melon again. But it’s gentle and a little bit creamy. Slightly floral too – honeysuckle perhaps. In my last steep which lasted 9+ minutes, I had this hit of white chocolate. The description card that came with this tea (very helpful with determining flavours) has it down as “floral, melon, honey, cucumber” so I got 3 out of the 4.

I had the first cup at about 7pm and the last around 10pm. I slept very very well, this tea made me feel very peaceful.

I’m going to try the other 3 teas and then write up a combined blog review for the subscription box. In the meantime, I’m definitely looking out for more silver needle teas to try.

Not a good tea. 100% toilet cleaner. I’m very disappointed as I love their bottled iced lemon tea… even though it doesn’t really taste of tea I enjoy the sugary refreshing flavour. But nothing about these black lemon tea bags was pleasant.

The flavour is like they’ve taken a real lemon and stripped away the bitterness, sourness, tartness and natural sweetness, then added a dash of artificial sweetness. They’ve stripped away the character of the flavour. Now it’s just nasty.

Ah well. At least I can say I’ve tried it and reviewed it. https://www.immortalwordsmith.co.uk/lipton-lemon-black-tea-review/

I thought this would be very nice – single origin Darjeeling with real bergamot oils, rather than bergamot flavourings. It was a bit bland though. Neither were strong enough for me to feel really satisfied with each sip.

The tea sachet was also very lacking. The wrapper states there’s 2g in there but I’m not sure. Should have weighed it before brewing but I forgot.

It was pleasant and if I had more of this tea (I don’t) I’d probably keep it and try it again. The quality of the tea, how it’s selected and picked, doesn’t really mean anything if the resulting cuppa doesn’t taste anything special. Flavour is the most important part and this tea was just average.

Reading my review so far that sounds pretty negative…. it’s just easy to pick out the bad things about this tea. There are certainly good things (I still recommend this tea especially if you enjoy Darjeeling) but they’re just average-good. Not shout-worthy good.

Full review nonsense: https://www.immortalwordsmith.co.uk/pmd-planters-earl-grey-tea-review/

A nice tea, but it’s a bit too much for me. I can never finish a cup, or if I do, I get odd stomach feelings for the rest of the day. I do love the aroma though. Dry, it’s very minty with green tea and pomegranate notes. There’s also this lemonade and vodka aroma – I swear, I’m not imagining it. After some bad experiences, I rarely touch alcohol.

Flavour is just mint, really really strong mint. It doesn’t taste like peppermint to me, it’s more like spearmint with extra menthol added. Any pomegranate flavour is lost on me.

Personally, I don’t like it iced. The Superberry Samba is far better iced. Full tasting notes, method, pics etc.: https://www.immortalwordsmith.co.uk/zest-tea-pomegranate-mojito-review/

This arrived as a sample in my order – it’s not something I would have ordered myself… but I enjoyed it nonetheless. I brewed it up Western style and managed to get 3 steeps out of it.

Steep 1, 3 mins 20 secs: slightly savoury/salty, wood, nuts, cream, malty and a naturally sweet aftertaste.
Steep 2, 6 mins: savoury but less salty, delicate notes, minerals, eucalyptus, camphor and steamed green veg.
Steep 3, 12 mins: subtle black tea, green veg and gentle honey sweetness.

Savoury tea is a new one for me, but it was still nice. It took me a long while before I could name the eucalyptus/camphor flavour. A good challenge for my tastebuds.

Still can’t make up my mind on what food I’d eat this tea with. Would more savoury food make it overwhelming? Would sweet food clash horribly? Unfortunately there’s no tea left to test out my theories. Undecided if I should buy some more of this… I’ll think about it.

In the meantime, here’s the longer review with more detail and a few pictures, in case anyone is interested :) https://www.immortalwordsmith.co.uk/what-cha-yunnan-golden-tippy-black-tea-review/

Enjoyed this one more than I thought I would. I’m usually guilty of overbrewing this tea and then quickly gulping down the bitter liquor to finish it as quickly as possible. But, as this is review time, I made sure to time it perfectly. 1 minute 30 seconds was just right.

The aroma is tantalising. Dry, it has a lemon and lime zest aroma – like when you’re zesting a lemon and that fine spray goes everywhere. Pour over water, and suddenly it’s smoky and earthy which was completely unexpected but I love smoky so I was breathing that in deeply. About 2 or 3 minutes after removing the tea bag, the aroma switched back to bergamot, citrus and floral notes. The smokiness just evaporated but I’m certain I didn’t imagine it.

The flavour is delicate and refreshing. It’s a pretentious tea in my opinion. Supposed to be eaten with tiny sandwiches and cakes. The texture is silky smooth and I love how it glides over my palate – sometimes citrus sticks to my throat and gets a little tingly, but that didn’t happen here.

The body is medium-light but the floral and citrus notes are undeniably pungent – it’s a weird light/heavy combo that upsets my stomach if I drink it without food. It’s also weird that this tea contains a mix of black, green and oolong teas. It works!

The 70 score is accurate though. I’m not falling in love with this tea or craving another cup. A once-a-month tea when I have to be in the mood for it.

Full review with some nice pictures: https://www.immortalwordsmith.co.uk/whittard-afternoon-tea-review/

Having this tea cold brewed as it’s getting quite warm today. Aroma is even better than when hot, lots of juicy passion fruit notes going on. The taste is a little bitter but has a smooth texture. Just green tea, the fruits are just an aroma. I only left it to brew for 3 hours in the fridge so I guess that’s why. I’m too impatient to wait for it to brew longer.

The bitterness and extra caffeine/l-theanine is making my stomach feel a little funny. I should have rinsed the tea bag to shake off some of the tea extract that’s added.

Weird tip for this tea. Inhaling through the nose while you sip somehow adds the fruit aroma to the flavour and diminishes the slight bitterness.

I’ve been taking some time to “sipdown” many of the teas in my cupboard, hence so few reviews being posted the last week or so. No point repeating myself unless there’s something new to add.

This was a nice tea. Very simple, but still nice.

The apple aroma changed a lot from dry to wet, going through stages of bitter granny smith apple to sour sherbet to sweet apple laces. The taste was a bit of a mix of them all.

I appreciated how full the black tea base is. I thought a rich tea base might clash with the vibrant, sweet and sour apple, but actually it works really well. A lighter black tea or green tea would have let the sourness take control of the blend. It’s balanced well.

Not much else to say about this tea, other than it’s not refreshing in the slightest. I’d rename it “Apple Boost”.

Review with pictures https://www.immortalwordsmith.co.uk/ahmad-tea-apple-refresh-review/

I’ll finish the little box I’ve got of this tea in the early afternoons. I’ve been carefully cutting the wrappers to save them for Martin, storing them in an envelope that probably won’t be big enough by the time I’m finished! It’s highly satisfying seeing my tea bag wrappers cut perfectly and left whole – not sure why. I’ve always been a bit like that. I like order and symmetry and organisation and keeping careful records. I’ve been known to create a spreadsheet organiser just for fun.

I’m wondering if maybe I did something wrong with this tea. It just doesn’t taste good at all. Yet this blend won a Great Taste Award in 2013, with judges saying:

“Lovely delicate liquor. Happy marriage of delicate flavours. Gentle and well blended. An apple note coming through, along with really well-managed flavours.”

I didn’t get any of that at all, it’s very bland and generic. I brewed as recommended and there was no flavour to this tea other than a hint of herb. The black pepper stung my tongue and the ginger actually made my eyes water. There’s no way I’m going to brew this for longer next time – even if the cinnamon, cloves and green tea are finally detectable, I think the pepper and ginger will kill me.

I’m disappointed :( I’ve now reviewed 2 out of the 4 teas from this company. The first was meh, this one was bleh. Really hoping the last 2 will save the day.

My scoring system for teas includes the quality of the ingredients, as it’s important to me that I’m drinking something real, organic or healthy, not artificial. That plus the dry aroma (which was actually alright) and my overall score has been bumped to about 50. The flavour score column is 1/10 though. If there was no flavour at all or it physically made me ill, I’d be giving it 0 for flavour.

I’ll finish the last of these tea bags with an unhealthy dose of honey, or maybe have a go at making a masala chai with them.

https://www.immortalwordsmith.co.uk/ayurveda-pura-cinnamon-ginger-spice-tea-review/