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Mango seemed like a nice afternoon tea idea and I kinda wanted to pace myself from blacks. For whatever reason I’m a little anti-black (that sounds so bad without context) this week, which is very out of character. I guess they just seem very heavy/weighted to me right now and I was struggling to think of why that is but it hit me this morning/early afternoon; I’ve been sleeping horribly this last week, so “lighter” teas have seemed more gentle/like they could nurse me back to sleep.

Heh.

Anyway, mango tea. That seemed like a good idea, and this one was really reachable (literally sitting in my tea bag chest on the dishwasher not a foot away from me) so I went for it. Dry, it does smell almost solely of mangoes, but now that it’s steeped up coconut is much stronger than initially anticipated. I actually am really happy about that though; partnered with the juicy mango this has a very nice tropical feel to it.

Thank you Kat_Maria, I’m really enjoying this one! Super happy to have lots more.

Thanks MissB for the sample, I broke it out today because it’s a size I should be able to sipdown relatively quickly. I wasn’t sure whether I should stick to the steeping directions you wrote out because the temp. was rather high for a blend containing white tea – but I figured you knew what you were doing and I went for it.

My thoughts based on my first few sips are kinda “eighyhh” (which is totally a thing starting now, just because I say it is). The problem I’m encountering here is that the caramel tastes really weird paired with the base teas, which are terribly reminding me of vegetable stock. Vegetable stock/broth and caramel? Eww…

And berries? There’s supposed to be berries in this? Sorry, but nope.

Actually, I just looked up the ingredients list… And what the fuck!? I’m starting to wonder if I’m drinking the wrong tea – except, I totally double checked to make sure I’d grabbed the correct TARDIS tea (I’ve got the Cara McGee one too) – because I don’t taste any of this shit?

Blueberries? Nope
Ginger? Nope (thank God…)
Cinnamon? Maybe, if I push really hard?
Bergamot? Even this one – which is typically a hard flavour to miss – is hiding on me.

The only thing I get is vegetable stock and caramel. Yeah, this is a miss for me…

A really, really weird miss; but hey, at least I have one TARDIS tea I enjoy, right?

Something fun and “fandom” for “breakfast”.

Decent enough mug, but it always bothers me a little that this one isn’t quite rootbeer. So close, yet so far.

Sipdown (192/194)!

Apparently I can’t type right now – my fingers are all fumbly. Anyway, this one comes from Boychik, and I took advantage of the easy sipdown this afternoon (it feels like morning, EG is morning tea). I even got another “sipdown” in from adding tea to a bunch of stuff eventually going out to VariaTEA (she’s gonna get the last of my Demain). Pressure’s on to sip down some stuff before more things arrive – I don’t exactly feel excited about maybe getting over 200 again.

Dry, this some lightly of Bergamot and strongly of vanilla. Mmm! That could certainly be a winning combination for me!

Now that it’s steeped up, it’s a little more 50/50 between the two but it really is very delicious and well balanced; a great EG Creme. I seem to be drinking lots of EG lately, I guess due to having received a fair bit of it this week (last week?) and I’m a little tired of it at the moment – so I think it may be a little while after this cup before I have some more, though.

Still, very nice.

tigress_al’s tasting note on this yesterday really put me in the mood to have it, and I thought that’d it’d be just amazing cold brewed so that’s how I prepped it yesterday and am now enjoying it (it’s 3 PM and I’m only just starting my tea drinking for the day) now. I must say, it’s DELICIOUS!

It feels like I’m drinking Spring or early Summer picnics. Maybe that’s a weird way to put it – but basically this reminds me of something you might have on a refreshing and just warm enough (not sweltering) Spring/Summer day when you’re with your family and have fruit and vegetable plates and all that yummy picnic type stuff.

I think I actually like this better cold brewed than hot, too! Yummy.

Total cold brew time was four and a half hours, and I think next up I’m going to try Cold Brewing some of Rivertea’s Boatsman…

And we have a winner!

This is the cup that finally relaxed me enough to fall asleep, at a miserable three in the morning. But it was just the right balance of flavours; sweet lime and cream with the smallest touch of noticeable rooibos.

So, this is the point in the evening/morning (2 AMish) where I just went: “Fuck it, I’m not getting to sleep immediately, I want a black”. This was in my sample drawer (there are a lot of blacks in my sample drawer I need to sipdown/want to try and I keep going for other things for whatever reason) and looked promising, so I went for it.

I can see how it has the same base as Boston (or at least similar), which I adore, but I don’t think it really works with this one so much. Like, the base was present and it kept distracting and detracting from the fruits. It tasted… Mapley? That’s not right, but it’s the word that comes to mind. And as far as the fruit goes, I really taste the cherry and then get weaker notes of plum. But it’s also fairly muddled.

I have a decent amount of this because I received it from Keychange and Rosehips so I am glad that it is drinkable and that also gives me some room for experimentation – but I can’t see myself falling in love with this one unless I can produce a really different cup. Meh.

I really wanted this to be a sipdown, but it wasn’t. This one comes from the little prepackaged samples from online DT orders – and I was hoping that there’d just be enough for one cups worth but it looks like there may be two more cups on top of the one I had already. I even tried pawning some off on Tre last night to get him contributing to a sipdown, but it was midnight and he basically told me to fuck off because it was too late for tea (despite it being caffeine free).

Anyway, I brewed this one and it smelled decently (not like “Stinky Feet” anyway, like I’ve seen mentioned in reviews), but taste wise there’s something rather hard to describe about it that really put me off. The rooibos itself was really strong and about a 50/50 between very woody and very medicinal. Yick. And then, the vanilla seemed almost pudding like, but in a really over the top (like they’re trying to completely mask the rooibos and failing hard at that) way that was too much.

So, overall not the tea for me. That’s ok though, I suppose. I don’t really want to love them all; that’d be way too much tea.

Oh, and this was tasting note 800! Not really anything monumental about it because I didn’t ever realize I was about to hit it – but hey, look at that.

At this point I was back to wanting to sleep, so I switched back to caffeine free teas and picked this one out because it’s floral and relaxing and I thought maybe it’d do the trick. And while it was super tasty and very comforting (I swear, this may be the only tea where I really enjoy the lavender in it) it didn’t really help all too much with making me sleepy.

Prepared with the cold milk method, and twice as much matcha (so, 1 tsp. total) as I used last time – in an effort to get a little more flavour out of this one. It sort of worked, because this time it tasted very salty and vaguely nutty but I think that actually was worse for me; I’m not really a fan of salty things, and I like creamy peanut butter which I think I was closer to first time around…

So, I’m probably going to go back to 1/2 tsp. of matcha or try going right in the middle and using 3/4 tsp. of matcha. I don’t know, maybe this ones not for me because I have to play with it so much…