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I made a small, concentrated amount of this last night which I diluted with club soda (yay pear flavoured tea soda!). I probably should have left it like that though, but instead I did the thing that I never ever do: I added about 1/2 tbsp. of sugar to the large 10 oz. Stein I was drinking.

Bad idea!

I took a nice, light pear flavoured fizzy drink and turned it into an ungodly sweet pear soda that tasted like corn syrup and candied flower petals. Bleck. Basically, I ruined my drink. I got most of it down, but it was just too cloying and a large part was dumped. So, I definitely recommend this tea – just not how I made it last night.

Sipdown (200/202)!

I did say this would be an easy sipdown, did I not? It was sweet, it was kinda caramel, the base wasn’t drowning… I think it was accurately candy corn?

See previous note for description of my limited experiences with candy corn

All in all, this was pretty alright. I wouldn’t buy it, but I’d drink it again if it was offered. It did get a little close to my sweetness thresh hold, though.

I have some backlog from yesterday to get through…

Had this while watching old episodes of Bones. I added some milk into the leaf because I thought that might drown the weird floral/orchid notes I was strongly getting last time (it tasted strongly like Vanilla Orchid), and it sort of did that. I still don’t get as much banana as I would want to, though. To me, this just doesn’t live up to the hype at all.

Anyway, this finishes off the sample from Janelle, though I still have BrewTEAlly Sweet’s sample (which is untouched) to go…

So, I’m just going to put this out there because I know this is an amazing community of people and I thought someone here might be able to help me out. For those who only care about the tea reviews, I’m sorry but I’m not really going to talk about this one at all so feel free to skip over my tasting note/review.

Groundhog’s Day is a really, really difficult time for me as well as the day after because it marks a pretty significant and difficult passing for me. It’s the anniversary of my cousin Luke’s death. However, I grew up with him my whole life and he was the closest family I’ve ever had – it would be more accurate, in my eyes, to call him a brother. It may be a horrible thing to say, but I was closer to him than my own brother.

The thing is, every time this day comes around I get really frustrated with the lack of closure I have and I always seem to “re-investigate” certain things. It’s very important to me that I find his obituary and the plot he was buried in, but I can never find this information because there was not much reported about his death (for reasons I’ll explain a little later) and he lived in London, Ontario at the time of his passing, which is not where I live so I can’t exactly go searching through archives and wasn’t really ‘around’ at the time it happened.

The reason there was hardly anything reported was because his death was a suicide and the typical news policy regarding suicides is to not report anything publicly for fear it will inspire others to commit suicide in the same means. Additionally, he was only 17 so his name wouldn’t have been released regardless since he was a minor.

I would ask his father (his mother is deceased) about these things, but that’s problematic in and of itself because after Luke’s passing he stopped what little communication he had with our family to begin with, and since we’ve not heard once from him personally. The last we heard was from a student doing research on Luke’s mother who had been contacted by my uncle. Luke’s mother, Cheryl Hohner, was murdered when Luke was very young and the case is a very famous one because at the time she was murdered she was pregnant so they sought to press charges for both her murder and the unborn child’s murder.

http://www.owjn.org/archive/gender2.htm

The student who contacted us told us that my Uncle, Len, was apparently in and out of mental hospitals (He’s schizophrenic) and was living on the streets. So ultimately, I can’t contact him for information.

It’s very important to me that I find his obituary, should he have one, and where he was buried so that some day I can visit his resting site. So I guess what I’m ultimately getting at/asking is if anyone from the Ontario area remembers hearing anything anything regarding his death or would maybe (and I know it’s asking a lot) would be able to search Ontario obituaries better than I can on the internet? I’ve scoured the internet for any kind of information, but ultimately can’t find anything.

This information may be helpful so I’m just going to leave it here:

- Luke Jeremy Hohner
- November 3rd 1992 to February 2nd 2010
- Father: Lenard Hohner
- Mother: Cheryl Hohner (Died Dec. 26th 1996)
- Born in London, Ont. and passed away in London, Ont.
- Killed by an oncoming train

Thank you to everyone who read that all the way through, and I realize it’s a lot to ask for help but it’s something I needed to post/share as I continue to search.

Sipdown (201/203)!

I really want to get under 200 today – so I scoured my sample drawers/bags looking for things that could be easily sipped down. The slash in my sipdown count is “Number of Teas”/“Number of Teas/Teaware”. Maybe I’m over complicating things now that there’s teaware in my cupboard, but it seems weird to me to include that number in the number of teas I have. However, I also want it represented that I own those things…

Stupid overthinking mind.

Anyway, thanks VariaTEA for the sample of this. It’s the perfect amount to get one good taste of this tea to decide whether it’s worth seeking out more. I’ll admit, dry it doesn’t smell like the most appealing mint tea. I think I actually prefer the smell of DT’s Peppermint Amour. But we’ll see how the taste holds up.

I don’t know – taste wise this is sort of just normal to me? Like – don’t get me wrong, it tastes really good and definitely has a nice mint flavour and hints of chocolate. But I think I thought it’d be a bit more or that the marshmallow root would really significantly add to it? Anyway, it’s a nice solid tea and I’m liking it but out of all the mint/chocolate options this isn’t really the option for me or the one I would most highly recommend over other mint/chocolate teas like I’ve seen some people do.

I don’t know, I guess I just had super high expectations that weren’t necessarily met.

In other news, I heard something at the door and rushed over instantly to see if I had mail – but then I, sadly, remember it was Sunday and that other people live here too so it was likely just the landlord or landlord’s daughter leaving. No mail.

Also, this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2X_2IdybTV0 is the song I woke up humming today. Something tells me that, in addition to dreaming of having the best apple pie tea ever, I was also dreaming about one Dean Winchester – whom I’m sure would be down for some apple pie tea too.

First thing I’ve prepared as a cold brew in my mason jar, and I think it was a fantastic success! It’s the perfect cold brew amount and clean up/straining was incredibly easy! Much better than the crappy pitcher/strain through a fine mesh brew basket (my normal straining device was accidentally left in Regina) method I was using this month.

Anyway, I’ve had this cold brewed before and I really liked it (I’ve yet to try it hot) and it seemed like a good tea to test this out with! So, it sat cold brewing for 11 hours, and then I took the basket out last night but am just drinking it now with breakfast.

Taste wise, this is definitely strongly fig/rose like the name implies it should be, and then has some sweet peach notes and a little (just a small touch) of hibiscus tartness. It’s really refreshing and yummy, and I think this is something I’m going to want lots of come summer time. Thankfully it’s super affordable ($4/50g). If I was worried that my love of the last cold brew was a fluke, I don’t have that concern anymore.

Last tea of the night, and an extension of the craving for caramel that I had going on. When I prepared it, I couldn’t help but be reminded of MissB’s son declaration that it was/is his tea. No – my tea. ALL MINE.

Not really. I just feel protective of my Tea Desire blends. They’re my precious.

Anyway, I kept the steep time pretty short and the resulting cup was decadent and sweet and like liquid caramel with hints of hazelnut. So freaking delicious! I immediately wanted another cup, except I was already cocooned on the couch old watching old episodes of Bones so I fought my cravings and left it with that one ridiculously yummy mug.

Tre and I finished off the last of my cold brewed pitcher of this last night. Normally he wont drink cold brewed teas that aren’t, for example, bright fucking blood red, because for whatever reason he associates those as more flavourful (more juice-like, perhaps?) but I talked him into having half a cup of this.

Mostly I wanted to see if he could taste the coffee too – because it’s driving me crazy that this tastes like raspberries and coffee to me when there’s no reason at all this should taste like coffee.

Seriously…

Peach – yes.
Raspberry – yes.
Coffee? What the damn hell!

But anyway, this was his flavour description: “It’s green tea with some kind of fruit and a whole lot of dish soap”. Doesn’t taste soapy to me, but at least we’re agreed that it doesn’t taste like it’s supposed to. Although, I don’t dislike it – I just find it really weird. Does anyone know what wool flowers are supposed to taste like!?

I’m really having a difficult time getting used to the new layout of the tea pages. I’m sure that I’ll eventually just adjust, but I’m having a really hard time grasping certain things like why the ingredients are being sorted alphabetically. Like this one shows “Artificial Sweetener” as the first thing and I’ve been taught the first thing shown is what there’s the most of. Well shit, I don’t want to drink something that’s mostly made up of artificial sweetener. It’s simple things like that with the layout that bug me the most because it’s not just having to adjust how I’m used to the Steepster layout but how I’m used to the layout of ingredients in general…

Also, the “recommended steep time”. How the balls is that decided? Because this is recommending to me that I steep up 16 fucking ounces of this – and I know that’s not what DT recommends. Their brewing guidelines are based on 8 oz. measurements.

But anyway, I made two cups of this last night: one for myself and one for Tre since I was in the mood for caramel and he also wanted tea. I’ve made this for him in the past and he really liked it, but last night all he did was complain about how it was weak in flavour/tasted funny. I would have defended my precious tea, except I sorta really agreed with him.

I have a lot of this left, but I’m finding increasingly that, while I’ve mastered the best way to prepare so there’s no bitterness/astringency, it the taste isn’t really doing it for me anymore – and I do think I know why. It’s the salt. When I first got this I couldn’t taste it at all – but I was brewing this in a less than satisfactory way. Now that I’m brewing it better (and have a more developed palette) I pick up the salt and I dislike it. Then again, I’ve always loved caramel but disliked salted caramel.

So ultimately, I kind of prefer to reach for a plain caramel tea over this salted version. And, for that reason I doubt I’ll be restocking when I run out…

Also, I lowered my rating a little bit.

And I’m assuming my measurement is going to round down, so for clarification I used 1.5 tsp. of leaf not 1

So, 8/10 times I’m extremely happy with my timolino(s) – both of which are 12 oz.

I find most things travel really well in it, and in my black timolino the heat is retained exceptionally well. However, for whatever reason my white timolino (which is the newer of the two) holds in the heat noticeably less and I can’t figure out why. The seal isn’t broken and the lid screws on the exact same. I’ve typically been able to make it work for me, though – I just make whichever tea I want to drink first in that timolino.

Ideally, I’d like for the brew basket to be a bit larger but it works for what I use it for and I’m normally pretty happy with it. I just sometimes have issues with, say, oolongs which can’t expand as well. Also, the first one I bought (the black one) came with a broken brew basket which would sink to the bottom and cause things to be steeped for an ungodly long time – but the DAVIDsTEA store I got it from provided me with a new brew basket, no questions asked and I haven’t had issues with it coming unattached during brewing since.

The only other thing I would maybe complain about is the fact that sometimes they pick up the scent/flavour of previously brewed teas (I had lots of issues with Currant Affair) even if very thoroughly cleaned in between use. Not really a huge deal, though.

Overall a satisfied customer – enough so I bought a second, right! ;)