Bio
I used to drink coffee, but it started to hurt my stomach so I switched to tea. A friend of mine introduced me to DAVID’s TEA and I couldn’t stop after that! I’ve now been expanding my scope beyond DAVIDs away from “candy-like teas” into more natural teas or flavourings. Current favourite stores include International House of Tea (iHOT) and Verdant Tea.
When it comes to tea ratings, I usually only ever rate them once. I know a lot of people on steepster do many tasting notes for the same teas depending on their mood, but I prefer to rate once and if my opinion changes, I will delete the old note and rate again. How I rate teas goes as following:
1-49: Teas I won’t buy again. Either the taste is disgusting to me, or it’s too bland, etc. I’m most likely not even going to finish the tin/bag.
50-59: Teas I wouldn’t buy again; I have to force myself to drink the whole cup to not waste it.
60-69: I’ll finish the cup and even the bag/tin, but I wouldn’t buy these teas again. Teas of this rating are “lacking something”.
70-79:Teas that are pretty good and ones I might buy again. Usually these teas are ones I have to be “in the mood for” and drink occasionally.
80-89: Great teas! Ones I will drink several times a week and often have in my stash :).
90-100: Favourite must-have teas!
My favourite types of tea are green tea and different types of “natural” herbal tea (different herbs, natural flavourings, etc). I cannot drink black or oolong teas due a sensitive stomach. I don’t really go for white tea due to its cost and the fact that it has just a little caffeine (if I want caffeine I’ll just go for a green tea and if I don’t I’ll go for a herbal-no sense on just having a little caffeine). I also like to do iced teas in the summer time, and then I’ll gravitate towards herbal fruit blends that are bagged to cut costs and convenience (it’s easier to throw out bags than clean a filter). Flavours I don’t care for include anything too tart, bitter, artificial, overly spicy or overly sweet.
Also, when I have time (usually when I’m not working much) I like to make tea lattes out of different rooibos blends.
My everyday green tea is Gunpowder since it is strong and not sensitive to temperatures or steeping time which is something I cannot be bothered with when I’m getting ready for work. Other greens I enjoy are dragonwell, sencha, and different Chinese greens. I’m not the biggest fan of yunnan greens since they are so finicky (although I do like gyokuro)
On a day to day basis I usually have 2-3 cups of green tea and several more cups of different herbal blends.
Besides tea I also work at a couple libraries (I am finishing my library tech diploma),am in my early 20s and got married in Oct 2014.
Location
Northwestern Ontario
Try steeping with cooler water: 195-185.
this cup was done with 190 F water (taking your advice from a different pumpkin tea compared to my usual 200F). With this tea, the dry leaf didn’t even smell like any pumpkin flavoring, unlike even pumpkin cheesecake from DAVIDs. Ingredients are rooibos, safflowers and flavoring; it must be light flavoring at that. Gunna try pumpkin cheesecake (DAVIDS) around 185, but this tea is just plain disappointing :(
:(
Might be a good one to mix with one of DT’s more exuberant pumpkin teas if you have one on hand.
I am thinking of one with either killer cinnamon or clove or both.
That carrot cake tea with the strong licorice root may work!. I may give some away too.
Sounds like a plan. I’ve had success with blending things that just were not joyful on their own.
Can’t remember who recommended this to me, but whenever I have a tea I want to get rid of I tend to post it up for grabs either on here or on reddit.com in the forun “cup on me”. That’s what I did for this tea, so I hope the next person enjoys it.
I will, however, use up Pumpkin Cheesecake from DAVIDs by mixing it with other teas for lattes.