momo Send Message

Following the preparation done by others, I am not getting chocolate at all.

I did enjoy this with a salted caramel chocolate biscotti, and I would have thought even that could have helped with chocolate but not really. I can get it a bit in the aftertaste.

On the plus side, it’s the new black tea base so it’s pretty good even if I’m not getting chocolate.

Oh why did I only get a sample of this?!

I like Earl Grey but I prefer a lighter bergamot flavor, so this is already off to a great start before I even drink it. It brews up a very pale yellow and smells full of flowers.

It’s citrusy, like you know there is bergamot, but at the same time it doesn’t really feel like it, if that makes sense. The floral notes are even better. Jasmine goes so well with orange, I want to seek out more teas with that combination…it especially goes well with the tie guan yin (I’ve pulled up a green tea base one, meh).

I was really curious about the frankincense. I had to try a piece from the dry tea. It’s a bit waxy and now stuck to my back teeth but it was worth it. I thought maybe it was going to taste too much like a church, but it’s a very intriguing taste. I don’t even know how to describe it…definitely is like eating incense but in the cleanest possible taste. It definitely has all the elements of this tea in there, though.

I had two steeps of it and it was amazing, and I hope to make at least 2 more cups from the sample packet. And then get more. Because yum.

So full. So full. My friend and I met up for lunch and we were going to a place called Thali where obviously they should serve thali…but they only have a lunch buffet for lunch now. Ummm…put that on your website.

So we went to a different place with thali and I was really full…but I had to go get a donut anyway. Shredded coconut donut it was! This place has the best cake donuts in the world and …they’re vegan somehow I am still baffled because I could have sworn egg had to make that donut possible.

I made this tea, obviously the tea for today, to have with the donut but it was so good that didn’t happen.

I still love this one a lot, I wasn’t expecting it in here at all…IIRC the note that shows up as my last logged because it has the most likes said April, and I was only the 3rd or 4th to review it then. But that’s okay, if this gets more people trying it, it’s delicious.

Lime and pineapple, tasty.

Ok, sheng puerh experiment comes to a close for the time being, and now I am going to something that is hardly tea, hahaha.

I have been meaning to drink this since I got it about 2 weeks ago and I’ve just kept putting it off. I was even sitting here thinking, what was it I wanted to try? Ahh yes, cookie dough!

I was surprised by the temperature recommendation but I used 195 instead because I can.

There is one massive walnut that made its way into this cup so I’m hoping I like it. Walnut just doesn’t do it for me in tea, though the other times I’ve had walnut it’s been black teas so maybe this is different.

Man, this is what I wish that Sugar Cookie Sleigh Ride tea tasted like! Except that this is definitely chocolate chip cookies. Dough, not so much. It smells like dough but it definitely tastes baked.

As it cools, the chocolate chip taste comes out a lot more. But through and through this is cookies, for sure. No need to even sweeten it.

So after realizing I didn’t buy any raw puerh earlier in the day on Cyber Monday, I really wanted to try some and so here we are.

This is the first puerh I’ve had off a cake of sorts, this coming from a tightly packed, oversized tuocha. Man, it was hard to get things rolling. I felt like a monkey that’s probably gone along forever like, who needs tools, dudes, and then a scientist thinks it’d be funny to give me a pick.

But I did it! One rinse later, I have my first cup (20 sec steep). It smells so good. Kind of like how white teas have that hay smell, but on tea steroids.

Wow I have no idea what is going on with this tea. My first instinct is to shun it. There’s so much! The hay, woods, fruits, astringency, sweetness, dry mouth, the feeling like I just might have had a sip of juice instead. The flavors are ridiculously cool though but it leaves this weird thick, dry mouth feeling that makes me feel like a dog that just got some peanut butter.

I will probably come back to this later but right now I need water. I assume it’s the small pieces that ended up in there in the process of me figuring this whole separating tea to use from the whole, so eventually they have to all end up out of the gaiwan, right?

2nd steep, 25 sec: it’s a bit better, still astringent to the point of dry mouth feels, but it is so much sweeter and fruitier. I’m taking tea to a friend tomorrow and asked if there is anything she wouldn’t like and she said she’d try anything so I feel like I should give her some of this and see what she thinks. All she’s had so far I think are flavored teas so this is probably a bit mean at this point. I must say the dry mouth is a lot more tolerable, though it reminds me a bit like hay is stuck in my mouth thanks to honey. Oddly this tastes better than it sounds.

Tea this morning! This really isn’t normally a tea I’d choose to have now, but hey, 12 teas and all that.

And then I got distracted with cleaning and made my epic kielbasa run. Kind of annoyed, people RAVE about this place so needless to say it had a massive line. All I was there for was kielbasa and pierogi, then I figured since their roast beef is so cheap I’d get some and some nice bread and have sandwiches. So I wait in line nearly an hour to get the beef and kielbasa and the girl’s like you don’t have to wait in line if you don’t want that much stuff.

Well thanks, that’s really helpful now.

At least I guess because they feel bad about lines on weekdays, they give you a chocolate bar when you pay. I’m so psyched because I got a white chocolate one. It was so far out so idk if I really want to go back ever, it was just stuff for Christmas and it kind of sucks that the majority of people have gigantuan families and I’m buying 3 pounds of kielbasa to cover 6-7 people.

So, I very much love this tea. I also love spearmint so that makes it even better. It’s like drinking a spearmint marshmallow with hints of green tea. Still such a hauntingly good blend! I really wish my mom had sent me the paper with the coupon code from the box….then again I don’t because I don’t need to hoard full packages of stuff I still have…bah.

After a lovely bout of phone anxiety, it is time to write this note from last night.

I love the snowflake sprinkles in this, they are so cute and festive. I steeped this up for about 10 minutes or so.

It’s a bit more like a spiced caramel creme to me than eggnog, but that’s okay. It’s still very tasty. There’s also an almost buttery taste to it, but it’s just overall not too much like custard. I mostly get cinnamon, I really have no idea what “nog spices” are other than nutmeg? I just looked up an article where some eggnog know-it-all says cinnamon and clove are unnecessary to eggnog, because clearly everyone should just suck it up and follow tradition. Jerk.

I’d love to try this as a latte. It’s also not super rooibos tasting so that’s another plus.

This is another one I have been meaning so desperately to drink again, so for the sake of 12 teas of Christmas, it’s good to open it up!

(skip to the bottom for the tea but I can’t not share my day!)

Today has been RIDICULOUS. Yesterday afternoon, my coffee brewer friend messages me to see if I can help him out with another of his coffee ambushes today, at CNN. HECK YEAH. So that was a bit more difficult to get pictures of around the place because I was told I couldn’t get too close to things. We were in with like all the editing and stuff, so there were like 200 small screens in this one room and it was amazing.

And then when everything was done, one of the people who got us in took us on a legit tour. There’s a paid tour you can do but this was like 3987529 times better. He took us through the area where if an anchor is in the CNN world headquarters, that’s where they are. It’s like a giant room of people with a billion more TVs and they’re just watching what’s going on everywhere and trying to find out more stuff.

Then he showed us the control room and we watched how everything is put together, like seeing what’s going to be on before it’s actually on TV, that the captions on the screen go on with a guy in there, etc. Then there is one studio here, it isn’t like the big spot with Anderson Cooper or Wolf Blitzer or anything awesome, but they’ve got one, and the guy thought it would possibly not be in use w/everyone on the scene in CT, so we could actually go in it, but that was sadly not the case. So we stood in the area where a normal tour group goes, until they came in, so he had to one-up that.

We actually got to go into the control room for the studio and FURTHER into the studio in the back, where there’s a bunch of desks for people monitoring the weather and that is basically behind and to the right of the anchor.

SUPER NEAT.

So I didn’t get any caffeine (like their coffee is the only coffee I drink and I forgot to ask any of them for some, fail) and got home and went to sleep. So now I probably have 7 hours to be awake and drink my day’s teas and do it all over again and go back to Cartoon Network tomorrow. This has seriously been the best month ever.

Back to the tea: I am super excited that I somehow prepared this one in such a way that I don’t even feel a need to add sugar and milk. I guess if I wanted more caramel that would do, but as is, I’m definitely getting delicious pumpkin with spices, drizzled with caramel. I guess it’s not too cheesecakey, but I’m okay with that.

This is definitely one of my faves from 52Teas over the past year so I’m glad it showed up in here. I only have the next two days with me before I head up to Tennessee where the rest of them are, so hopefully on Friday I don’t catch spoilers :O (I won’t have time to look at Steepster until I have it open hahaha)

Soooo I only got started watching Doctor Who a couple months ago and when this tea came out I did not yet know of Weeping Angels. I might have still been in the second season? So I decided that when I got to Blink, I would enjoy it with a pot of this tea. (Must say, 9th doctor is still my fave.)

That day was clearly today! Flawed bubble teapot (good god I don’t even like the design of this teapot, if the lid is a certain way it forms a vacuum so then you just drip tea on your pants) and I sat down to watch. I have to say it was one of my favorites so far, and everyone is totally right…terrifying monsters these Weeping Angels are.

This tea is not terrifying on the other hand. I don’t really get the popcorn taste from it, but it is most definitely buttery toffee/caramel, and delicious. Sweet enough on its own to not need anything added, so you can down 24 oz of it in the span of one Doctor Who episode (I was thirsty though I’m pretty sure that this is going to be a regrettable course of action shortly).

fourth day of Christmas~~

I do not like how this one smells, which is kind of weird because I love black currant. I guess it’s the bergamot combined with it, because my initial thought was like day 3: citrus.

I agree with Dinosara, it’s definitely more like candy than a black currant flavor. It doesn’t remind me very much of black currant, like the black currant bai mu dan from 52 teas (and I believe I have one from ZenTea). It’s just not very enjoyable for me.

I’ve let it cool down now and it’s a bit better, but the floral notes of the white tea kind of make it a bit too much for me. I suppose this works better in the summer but I can’t say I’m really a fan. At least I got to try it, I was tempted many times before about maybe getting a pouch.