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Thanks to mtchyg for the sample! I adore you and hope your power out there in Michigan is restored soon.

TO THE TEA. I’m a bit wiped out, so I picked this high-caffeine blend. I’m petsitting an 8-month-old dog who whimpers at night. I don’t know what the dog’s mommies usually do (let him sleep in the bed?), but crating him and leaving him alone is apparently not it.

So ahhhh, a nice chestnut caramel blend. (There’s also allegedly vanilla here. I’m not sure.) I don’t know what a chestnut tastes like, but this is a fairly flat, deep-note caramel/molasses black.

It’s a nice blend, and I’m enjoying it, but I am unlikely to write home about it.

There are other teas for which I would definitely get a nice notecard, an envelope, a stamp, a fancy pen, and craft a letter to my mom. (Please don’t call my bluff on this.)

That said, this caffeine is a blessing this afternoon.

Here’s the puppy, in case you were wondering:
https://www.instagram.com/p/BRepAQLD054/

I tried this hot, and was unmoved — but it’s pretty good cold.

It’s got the creamy vanilla flavor that tends to accompany rooibos, plus a little bit of citrus.

Does it taste like a smoothie? Nah. (That might be because I’m the bomb at making smoothies.)

Does it taste like a creamsicle? A little!

This is a very nice after-diner sweet-treat. It’s not life-altering, but it’s tasty.

Sipdown.

Thanks for the sample, mtchyg! And for mixing it.

It’s a deep black tea base with some creamy chocolate and a hint of brown sugar/caramel sweetness. I want to say that it has bread notes and raisin notes as well, but I might me crazy.

I think I’m going to have to buy a bag of this one. It’s a great dessert tea.

And tea is also ZERO SmartPoints, which is a thing I didn’t give a shit about until yesterday, when I told my husband it was GO TIME on a diet (“lifestyle change”) and I was JOINING WEIGHT WATCHERS DAMMIT and he said “okay.” (He is the chillest person alive.) (And I am, as you may have surmised from my tea blog, a flea circus of cray-cray).

So now tea is going to be my fallback substitute for EVERYTHING, all the time. It’s going to be my alcohol substitute. My soda substitute. My dessert substitute.

I already tried to use it as a beer substitute. I brought a bunch of iced tea to a party in a big to-go tumbler to drink instead of beer.

But the party was a beer-snob microbrew kind of crowd, and they kept asking me what the heck I was drinking. I said tea, and they asked why.

Doesn’t it seem gauche to ask people why they aren’t drinking alcohol?

Maybe I’m pregnant.

Maybe alcohol interferes with my medical conditions or medicines.

Maybe I’m watching my calories.

Maybe I don’t like alcohol.

Maybe alcohol doesn’t like me.

Maybe I like alcohol TOO MUCH and I’m in AA.

Almost ANY RESPONSE to “why aren’t you drinking?” is going to be personal. And I’d just met the people who were asking. (People who know me know that I carry tea around with me everywhere.)

I think it’s a young-person thing. People who are older tend to know the downside of alcohol a little better, are past the “party!” phase, and also, I think, just care less about what other people do.

Feel free to weigh in on any or none of this. Just getting it off my chest.

Thanks to my wonderful friend mtchyg for this yummy sample!

Part of my preparation for this tea was yelling “Earl Grey! Black!” like Jean-Luc Picard from Star Trek. One of the comforting things about Earl Grey is that it’s such a classic it probably WILL make it to 2364 (the year Next Gen is set, according to Wikipedia).

This particular Grey wields the bergamot like a battering ram. I kind of like that, but if you aren’t into aggressive citrus notes, you probably should back off. Like Captain Picard’s voice, this is a very rich and deep tea. It has a sturdy dark base. The caffeine level on this was four black diamonds (out of… how many?). Watch out, tea-drinker, you’re about to plunge off the deep end. Into… the final frontier.

AND NOW FOR A DIGRESSION. Who was everyone’s favorite Next-Gen character? Mine was Data. I’m not trying to influence you. I’m just saying: he was the obvious best.

Now you go.

A million thanks to mtchyg for this sample! And the crazy box of samples that will have to be reviewed forthwith.

This tea is green and black and orange and vanilla. All tumbled together. Just like poor, confused Jon Snow, with his ambiguous parentage and torn loyalty.

I guess. I don’t fully understand fandom teas sometimes. I enjoy trying to figure them out.

This tea is messy, unstable, but the collage elements do form a good composition. The spice against the vanilla totally works here.

I think sometimes tea people try to throw random ingredients together to be avant-garde or what-have-you — but this contrast is successful.

Just so you know, I drank this concoction out of a Quaker Steak n Lube mason jar with a handle.

I mention this to maintain my reputation as the Classiest Bitch On Steepster.

I went on a sample-buying binge a while back (stop judging me, I can feel you judging me). This is one I picked up that I liked pretty well hot, and then forgot about.

Today I was struggling with my attempts to quit soda (hellllp meeeeeeeeeee) so I decided to make an iced tea instead. I was sifting through my basket and spotted this.

“Blueberries, raspberries, and coconuts, plus black tea, iced? Sure. That probably won’t suck.”

And lo, it did not suck. The raspberries and blueberries were sassy buddies, and the coconut laid a sweet blanket over the whole thing. As a warning, though: if you don’t like coconut, don’t make this iced. Cold, this tea is super-coconut-y. It tastes a lot like the coconut-milk-infused curry I had with lunch, bringing my meal full circle.

I miss soda, but tea is helping.

This super-distinctive light tea is a weird delight.

It tastes like a county fair — a little bit of kettle corn; a little bit of salty, over-crisped chips; a little bit of wafted nuts drifting through the air into your nose.

It’s a gravelly voice, whispering.

It’s the setting sun over a carnival. The sideshow carnies are dancing in front of a fire. Spinning yarns about their lives before the circus.

It is outside in late summer.

This is a weird post, but this is a weird tea.

[ Edit: This tea started out as a 77, but the cup actually gets even better as it cools and I reach the bottom. So now it’s an 80. I might bump it up a few more points if I continue to like it in subsequent steeps.]

I’ve been whittling away at my samples the last few days, and today’s afternoon chopping block features Red Velvet by Herbal Infusions.

This wasn’t my favorite. A woody, malty, thick rooibos hits you first. Then there’s a cloying syrup/molasses sweetness with a hint of chocolate and a bit of rhubarb-ish tartness. Hibiscus, I guessed?

I just checked the listing. Turns out there’s some raspberry (the tart) and vanilla (the sweetness) in this mix. My palate, though not as bad as it once was, still isn’t perfect.

Although I wasn’t particularly moved by this blend, the girl I share an office with is besotted. She took one sip and whispered “wow.”

So I gave her the rest of my sample. She’s taking difficult classes this semester, and deserves some nice tea.

I’ve been spending the morning catching up on my Steepster ratings, which means you’re going to be seeing a LOT of posts below this one from my work with the Sororitea sisters. I tried to grab a snippet from each post which indicates the general feeling each tea evoked. (Or a snippet that I think is funny. I like to believe I’m funny.)

This post, however, is a full post. A STEEPSTER EXCLUSIVE, JUST FOR ALL THE FANS OUT THERE, Y’ALL. REPPIN’ THE ORIGINAL STEEPSTER.

I bought a bunch of teas from August Uncommon on a whim. I had a lot of overtime money from work, and hey, gotta blow it on tea. Better than, like, um, hard drugs or more shoes. Or whatever it is other people spend their money on. (I don’t know how “hard drugs” or “more shoes” were the first options that came to mind. Am I okay?)

There’s a part of me that felt despair about ordering from August Uncommon. Am I cool enough to be ordering anti-establishment, edgy teas? What if it turns out I really am just a tool of the system? The Celestial Seasonings of human beings? (Reppin’ some fine grocery store blends!)

My first pick from my samples was “The Metropolitan,” which according to August Uncommon’s site, “feels like sparkling conversation on a city terrace.” It also (among other things) tastes like “neroli flower.”

I’ve never had “sparkling conversations” on city terraces (REPPIN’ THOSE ‘BURBS), or tasted a neroli flower. But I enjoyed this VERY STRONG brew. If you want an end-of-day wind-down, this isn’t for you.

It’s mostly a very tart fruit/berry flavor with with citrus notes and spices. It doesn’t back down.

If I were going to liken this tea to a movie franchise, it’d be The Fast And The Furious.

Vroom vroom. Caffeine + a low tolerance for sweetness.

PS — How many things did I “rep” this post? At least three things.

“Calling all fans of citrus, vanilla, and sugar! Come on, come all, to this lemon-meringue delight! So sweet that if it weren’t a tea, your teeth would fall out and your waistline would be DESTROYED!”

The entire post is carnival-barker style at: http://sororiteasisters.com/2016/12/11/limoncello-from-the-necessiteas-a-hand-blended-treat/