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Backlog from yesterday.

This one’s always a favorite, but I haven’t had it in a while. Strong black tea with a nice caramel accent. Always fabulous for breakfast with milk and sugar. I think if I was forced to choose only one or two teas to have ever this would be it (this and Blueberry Cream Cheese Danish, anyway). Absolutely my perfect breakfast tea.

Boiling water, discarded first rinse. 4.8 g. leaf into 4 oz. gaiwan. This will be my first time having this gong fu style – and I went to the Verdant site to check instructions and found that it’s been archived.

1st steep – 10 seconds-ish because I was slow getting myself situated to pour out from gaiwan to cup. This steep has the buttery texture and nutty flavor of an avocado with the lingering sweetness of apricots that is a signature dan cong flavor for me. It is reallllly smooth.

2nd steep – about the same steep time (I’m slow this morning). At first I almost got a sour note, but then I realized it was the floral undertone. I’m not a huge drinker of the flower teas for this reason, but if you look hard enough the apricot is hiding beneath the flowers. I hope this resolves itself in further steeps.

3rd steep – yes, better. Now more of a cocoa powder flavor is prominent, the fruitiness has disappeared but the buttery avocado texture remains.

Well – I planned poorly. I’m out of water after all the rinses and small steeps. I’ll keep the leaves and have some more tea later since I know this has quite a bit of life left in it. It was great for a leisurely weekend breakfast!

I swear this tea’s log is just a record of my stomach bugs. :/

But it does do a really good job of calming it down so there’s that. A sick time staple for sure.

Backlog from yesterday.

I wanted this after seeing the most recent www.smittenkitchen.com recipe. So many good things on the internet these days!

With a little bit of sugar (no milk, sadly, as we were out) this did give me a little inkling into what that cake might taste like. Definite notes of plum and cake batter, a little bit of cinnamon. I enjoyed it with a slice of apple pie before heading to sleep after my night of work.

I was just about to write how surprised I was that I fell asleep so easy after drinking a black tea, but then realized it was an oolong blend…so I guess that explains it, haha. Oops, and I just realized I’m lucky it turned out as well as it did, considering I probably burned the leaves. :/

Glad this still has retained it’s flavoring, as it’s getting ready to be the time of year to start drinking it regularly!

Backlog from yesterday.

With milk and sugar this actually completely transforms into liquid candy corn. And this is even when making sure I didn’t put one of the candy corns (there are whole ones in the blend) to steep!

So, flavor accuracy is there. The only thing is, it is really WEIRD to have liquid candy corn in your mouth. I really like that chewy texture of the candy corn and apparently that’s a big part of the experience for me. Brain is having trouble computing the whole drinking when you should be chewing thing. Which is even more silly because some of my favorite teas are things that you CHEW (Blueberry cream cheese danish, pancake breakfast, etc).

All that is to say I’ll drink this and it’s perfect for this time of year, but clearly I’ve got a mental short circuit that I need to work on. :) This is not one I’d reorder, but its a fun one time blend to try!

What a delicious Thursday morning.

The air is crisp outside and I have the day off. I’m trying to psych myself up to make an apple pie and chose this tea to get me motivated…and I think it worked! A little sugar and milk and I’ve got cinnamon apple amazing in my cup. There isn’t a note of crust, per se, but the cinnamon adds a sort of pastry note…. its heavy and comforting and complements the chill in the morning.

Had with some homemade waffles and maple syrup for breakfast, because it just seemed like the thing to do. Now off to go make some pie crust! I love fall!

My whole body hurts. I did a 4 hour cave tour yesterday and a 5.5 mile hike the day before that. I got so muddy my jeans turned into khakis and I had to pressure wash them before doing laundry. Good thing I don’t work until tomorrow, because OW.

Before I left to go underground though I had a quick cup of this. The dry leaf smell REALLY nailed french toast yesterday, it was sweet and bready so I decided to have some with cinnamon toast. I added milk and sugar to 10 oz. of water at the below parameters.

SUCCESS! I don’t know if enough time has passed that everything has just finally blended itself together, or if I finally just nailed the right ratio of leaf to steep time, but THIS cup tasted like french toast with just a hint of powdered sugar. I got the toasty bread flavor!!!

It really hit the spot yesterday, for whatever reason. Now I’m just hoping I’ll be able to duplicate it!

Whenever I think of Butterbeer I think of the first time Harry had it – when he snuck down to the Three Broomsticks in his Invisibility cloak. I remember the way J.K. Rowling described it – the way it warmed him down to his toes on that cold night. She was so good with writing things in a way I could feel. I think that’s why I’ve never been able to do the movies – they just paled in comparison to the fully fleshed out story she gave me to play out in my head.

I say that because this particular cup, this morning (with milk and sugar as additives), really managed to capture that warmth and comforting feeling. It took me right back to the middle of book 3, and for a tea called Butterbeer there really can be no higher praise, can there?

I have the next few days off, and I’m thinking I really should do myself a favor and spend it rereading some of those books. For the umpteenth time. With plenty of tea by my side.

New tea to try! YAY! And it was the tea of the week last week, but it actually came out on my birthday (last Wednesday) so I am just self absorbed enough to pretend it was Frank’s birthday present to me! A birthday present I paid for, but I’ll go with it, haha. :)

It was really tempting not to eat that candy corn sitting so innocently, all whole and pretty, on top of the leaf. But I was good, and for the full experience, I let it just do it’s thing and melt into the hot water as it steeped at the below parameters. I did 1.5 tsp., no additives for my first cup.

Dry leaf smell – kind of musty, kind of vanilla-y? I feel like I’ve smelled this before. Maybe it’s the caramel flavoring Frank uses? Anyway, it wasn’t bad it was just familiar and not immediately discernible as candy corn.

Taste wise it did actually evolve into candy corn as the tea cooled off. At first it was just a generic sweetness in a black tea but then I did pick up on a caramel/vanilla flavor. I will try it with additives but it was good without – I’ll have to be careful if I do add sugar because I don’t think it would take much to make this overly sweet.

Pretty yummy, though – and I love how well timed it is for October!

Backlog from a few days ago. I am so bad about starting these reviews and then just leaving them for hours lately.

This one was good. I just added some sugar, no milk, and a little more leaf than usual because I’ve had this a while and was worried about flavor loss. Nope. I mean, there’s strawberry, anyway. And it was still pretty creamy without creamer, and zabaglione is a kind of custard so that’s where that comes from.

I’m just in a tea rut, I think. It was a good cup but since it’s not really new to me I’m not really saying anything I haven’t said before. I do think it’s aged really well, though, because it has good flavor to it and it’s probably well past the age it should!