The dry tea has a very fresh, sweet peppermint aroma. As the tea steeps, in addition to those notes I’m also smelling a somewhat dry herbaceous aroma.
I am getting a cooling peppermint, and there is a sweetness there that isn’t present in a straight peppermint tea (of which I drink a lot, for health reasons!) But I feel like it needs a bit more… oomph. It isn’t sweet/creamy enough to really mimic peppermint candy, and while I normally love green rooibos, here it feels a bit out of place, since I am tasting a dry, hay-like flavor beneath the peppermint. I’d be okay with this as a mint rooibos blend (it’s something different than the abundance of choco-mint red rooibos blends), but candy cane? I am just not really getting candy cane from it.
This was my only advent this year (I did purchase the Bird & Blend and DAVIDsTEA matcha ones, but did not “do them” as advents, I just ripped them open, yanked the samplers, and stuck them into my cupboard for smoothie purposes, heh), and also my first time doing the Plum Deluxe advent. Since I don’t care at all about advent packaging (which is probably obvious considering what I did to the B&B and DAVIDsTEA ones), I only got the teas in the closed envelopes, and I’d say it’s a good price for samplers considering most Plum Deluxe teas sell for $7 an ounce, so $35 for 24 different tea samplers is a pretty good deal as far as money. I found the flavors to be pretty varied as well (though it did seem a bit nut-heavy early in the advent… that tapered a bit later on). The majority were herbals, which would be either a pro or a con depending on your preferences (though maybe that changes from year to year?) I’d say the biggest con for me was inconsistent amounts of tea in the packages — some herbals made very weak cups, and some blacks came out incredibly astringent, because the leaf portions/ingredient distribution was so iffy from day to day. My personal favorites of the advent this year were: Decaf House Blend, Fogcutter, Porch Sippin’ Pecan, Coconut A La Creme, Kiwi Coco-Cherry, Holiday Embrace, Blood Orange Reflection Tea, Winter Wonderland White Chai, Raspberry Linzer Cookie. My most disliked? Not counting the inclusion of a banana tea (which I can’t drink due to severe food aversion issues), I’d say Buttery Shortbread! Banana tea aside, none of my cups were undrinkable, though!
Flavors: Herbaceous, Hot Hay, Menthol, Mint, Peppermint, Sweet
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I found the inconsistent amounts weird too. I wonder if they did them by weight, and that’s why there was so much less of the heavier fruit teas?
The few times I did try weighing them, they always seemed to be between 4-4.5g, so that is likely the case. I am actually the kind of anal person that does weigh my tea leaf on a tea scale to get my cuppas the way I like, with certain leaf-to-water ratios that work for me for different tea types. When it comes to herbals, especially heavy fruit teas, I don’t bother weighing and just use a heaping spoon or two depending on the cup size.
It was a pleasure reading your notes about this Advent Calendar. I have noticed that company earlier, but had maybe one or two? Certainly there would be some teas I would like to try as well :)
Shame that some were disappointment for you.
I found the inconsistent amounts weird too. I wonder if they did them by weight, and that’s why there was so much less of the heavier fruit teas?
The few times I did try weighing them, they always seemed to be between 4-4.5g, so that is likely the case. I am actually the kind of anal person that does weigh my tea leaf on a tea scale to get my cuppas the way I like, with certain leaf-to-water ratios that work for me for different tea types. When it comes to herbals, especially heavy fruit teas, I don’t bother weighing and just use a heaping spoon or two depending on the cup size.
It was a pleasure reading your notes about this Advent Calendar. I have noticed that company earlier, but had maybe one or two? Certainly there would be some teas I would like to try as well :)
Shame that some were disappointment for you.