Holiday Tea-son! Today the advent calendar was Earl Grey Creme, which was my morning cuppa today, but I’ve reviewed it on Steepster previously. I don’t really do the whole “tasting note for every cuppa” thing as that just isn’t my style, but if you missed it previously and don’t want to dig through my notes (who’s got time for that?), I’ve got you boo: https://steepster.com/mastressalita/posts/380417 (Ah, it’s so nice having all my notes on a nice big NotePad file outside of the site. I so do love having Ctrl+F search functionality of my own tasting notes… fufufufu~ This is why I write everything offsite and just copy-paste it in when I’m done~)
So for my ritual nightly tisane today I pulled out the last of my discontinued Bird & Blend holiday teas from their Bluebird Tea days; I also got this one from a cupboard sale of tea-sipper’s last January, so thank you tea-sipper!
I admit I have a few trepidations about this tea, because it is quite old now, and contains coconut, but the spearmint and eucalyptus have such a strong aroma that I can’t give it the “has the coconut gone off?” sniff test before brewing. I have terrible luck with coconut, and have had so many teas (even ones that were not very old!) get the bad coconut Russian Roulette draw that I feel nervous sniffing my brewed cup. Is it supposed to smell like that or am I psyching myself out? Because I think it smells a little acrid, but I also have admittedly never once had eucalyptus in tea form, only in bath products, and its aroma steeped up may be a bit different, especially mixed with the pine in the blend…
There definitely is a eucalyptus aroma there, though. It makes me a little excited, because that was always my favorite aroma therapy scent, but I’ve never tasted the stuff before. I can smell the spearmint and pine, too. Coconut, though? I’m not getting that at all.
The tea does have a strong spearmint flavor, that leaves a cooling menthol sensation on the tongue, with a slightly citrusy, pine note on the aftertaste. There is a slight bit of bitterness mid-sip which had me initially concerned about the coconut, but having never had eucalyptus before, I did a little searching and it is described as having a bitter flavor… At this point, I’m just considering it Schroedinger’s Coconut.
The slight herbal bitterness doesn’t make this my favorite, but I don’t dislike it, either. I do like the heavy menthol attributes of the tea, and find it quite relaxing. I’m certainly curious to try more eucalyptus teas in the future.
Flavors: Bitter, Citrus, Eucalyptus, Menthol, Pine, Spearmint
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I hadn’t considered writing my tasting notes off site and importing them – that might just change the way I handle Steepster. :)
I’m just one of those people that has a policy where I always want a back-up of my writing. Even in my short time being on Steepster, I’ve seen this website go down a lot, and every time it does, the admins aren’t exactly on the ball informing of people of what it going on, why it is down, ETAs of when it might be back up, etc. Each time made me glad I had backups of my writing because then I knew if I had to start a tea blog elsewhere, I had my writing. Doesn’t hurt to be prepared… cough
But it is also quite handy since Steepster has next to no decent sorting/searching features. I Ctrl+F through my Steepster Notes file to find things I wrote in the past all the time!
I hadn’t considered writing my tasting notes off site and importing them – that might just change the way I handle Steepster. :)
I’m just one of those people that has a policy where I always want a back-up of my writing. Even in my short time being on Steepster, I’ve seen this website go down a lot, and every time it does, the admins aren’t exactly on the ball informing of people of what it going on, why it is down, ETAs of when it might be back up, etc. Each time made me glad I had backups of my writing because then I knew if I had to start a tea blog elsewhere, I had my writing. Doesn’t hurt to be prepared… cough
But it is also quite handy since Steepster has next to no decent sorting/searching features. I Ctrl+F through my Steepster Notes file to find things I wrote in the past all the time!