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Aaaaaahhhhhh!!!

I just finished watching Sherlock Season 3 Ep. 1 via Livestream!!!

I definitely don’t want to spoil anything for anyone who didn’t get to watch it ‘live’ – but OH MY FUCKING GOD!!! It was so amazing, and so perfect!

And Christ, PHILLIP FUCKING ANDERSON!

(Oh, and the tea was nice and stuff… Soothing on my throat and what not)

I’ve pulled out all of my sick teas now to kind of rotate between. If I start to maybe feel better then I’ll move on to my tea for the Christmas exchange and, eventually, “The Woman” from Adagio in honour of the return of Sherlock today. I have a sample size of Reichenbach Recovery too, but I don’t want to use it up while I’m not feeling my best and can’t properly enjoy it. I have lots of The Woman, though…

I’ve resigned myself to the fact I’m not going to get through nearly as many of my new teas as I would have liked to before I go on vacation. Oh well; I did include some new things in the tea I packed and I’m sure to be picking up some new things too while I’m there.

Anyway, for this I’m using one teabag for ten oz. of boiling water, steeped four minutes and then with lots of added honey. It’s nice and soothing on my throat, and tasty enough. Definitely one of the better bagged lemon teas I’ve had, by far. It’s a really good sick tea! I may have some more today in between other teas. I think next up will be DAVIDsTEA’s Bravissimo, though.

Backlog…

Happy New Years! I hope everyone on Steepster rang in the new year in a memorable way! This was my official first tea of the year – and it seemed liked the perfect tea to start the year off with!

I received my sample of it from Janelle’s tea sale, and for my preparation I used the entire sample steeped up in about 2 oz. of water at 85 degrees celsius for four minute. Basically, I made one very concentrated cup! I then diluted it with a can of club soda so that I was drinking some actually bubbly ‘Bubbly’!

The smell was rather interesting; mostly pineapple with some champagne to it. A little bit of unpleasant green tea smell. Taste wise, it was almost entirely green tea with a bit of pineapple taste. Hardly any taste of champagne. It’s pretty gross, honestly. Too vegetal and kind of seaweed-like. It didn’t sit too well either, and I don’t think the carbonation did anything to help my sore throat.

Anyway, even though I didn’t enjoy this tea I’m still happy it was my first one for the year because it was just so appropriately festive! Thank you Janelle!

Received this one from Keychange! I’m quite excited to make this my official first Harney & Sons tea!

This was in the big pile of black teas sitting on my kitchen table waiting to be tried already, but I selected it was (probably) my last tea of 2013 mostly because it’s got bergamot in it, and bergamot often seems to be nice on a sore throat – and I’m quickly noticing that it seems like I am going to be starting the new year absolutely sick!

My lips are horribly chapped, swollen, and cracked and my throat is terribly sore. I also appear to be losing my voice, which Tre so lovingly called a “New Year’s Blessing”. Hah. So, I’m eating a large bowl of maple pecan frozen yogurt to soothe my sore throat while waiting for my tea to cool.

This one is in sachets – so I just used one satchet for 10 oz. of boiling water, steeped for around three minutes? To be totally honest, I didn’t really looking up the suggested steeping parameters before starting to make it. My bad. I guess after looking them up, it seems like if nothing else my brewing method will result in a watered down/slightly under steeped cup. I’d take that over an oversteeped one 9/10 times.

The smell is delightful; creamy caramel and fruity bergamot mingling joyously together. It’s very strong, and so aromatic! Yummy! I can hear Tre moving about in his room, and I wouldn’t be totally surprised if it was because he can smell this one! It’s one of those kinds of teas…

Taste wise, it’s definitely fruity, creamy bergamot. I was having a little trouble placing what kind of fruit exactly; it was so familiar! So, I went back to the Harney site and did some reading. They describe it as black currant; and yes, it’s that exactly! The black currant especially lingers in the aftertaste. I was expecting a little bit more caramel – yes, there’s caramel but it’s more subtle than I was anticipating.

The base is kind of… I don’t know. It’s nice? I’m not totally sold on it, though. Actually the whole tea is kind of the same way; it’s nice but I remain unsold. I still have two more sachets from the generous Keychange though, so hopefully that’ll be enough for me to wrap my head around this one. I’m also taking into consideration the fact I’m relatively sick and might be tasting this kind of oddly.

Urgh… One hour left until the new year! And, I just want to sleep…

Anyway, Happy New Year everyone!

I’m so stupidly exhausted and tired…

This actually wasn’t on my list of teas to try tonight, but I was too tired to make much of anything else and talking about tea soda/matcha soda kind of put me in the mood to make some, so I decided to finally try this one out! I recieved this from the so kind VariaTEA and I know she received it from someone else initially, but I can’t remember who :(

Pineapple is my favourite fruit of all time and a flavour I heavily enjoy in tea, so I was very excited about this one! I don’t know what the specifications for this matcha are; I think maybe it’s robust? Or, at the least, distinctive? Dry it smells genuinely like pineapple; super sweet and yummy and fresh and just perfect.

I used 1/2 tsp. dissolved into about an ounce of hot water, and then diluted with a can of club soda. I’m getting pretty comfortable with the colour of matcha now when I’m drinking it (I had this weird mind thing going on about drinking icky looking green beverages) so I didn’t even pour this one into my water bottle to hide the colour while I drank it!

And taste wise, it was so good! Definitely a distinct pineapple taste that was just sweet enough and still maintained a natural quality. It reminded me a lot of the smell of Butiki’s Flowery Pineapple Oolong, actually. The green tea was still a little present, but not a lot and not nearly enough to overshadow my beloved pineapple. This was just a natural fit as something to try as a soda.

I’ve found a couple flavoured matchas now that I really enjoyed but was unsure about ordering, but I think this is the first where I can definitively say I would want more around and therefore would actually order some more.

This was my other to go tea for my errands/interview today. I’ve read good things about it and about how it’s really good iced or cold, so I asked Janelle for a sample during her tea sale, despite it being a green tea.

I used 2 tsp. of leaf for 10 oz. of water today; boiling steeped for I think five minutes? That was hours ago, and I’ve sort of forgotten at this point.

Hot, it was really gross. The green was super vegetal and grassy and just icky, and the lime tasting artificial and kind of chemical and just really irritated my throat. I drank most of it cold, just because it was so awful hot – and it was significantly better cold. It was a little creamier, but still tasted chemical and irritated the hell out of my throat.

Definitely not a restock but I am thankful I got to try it if only to rule it out. I have enough leaf left for one small cup and I’ve added it to my vacation bag. Maybe I’ll make it for my Dad or something…

Today has sorta turned out to be a subconsciously “green tea” type of day; how odd, I almost never have “green tea days”.

Anyway, I started the day by opening up the package for the seventh day of Christmas tea exchange; which was so cool and cleverly thought out! I decided to pass on trying it though because I’m already heavily out of order and I figured that I would rather wait until I had milk to add to it; I’m like ceylon teas, but often find they’re better with a bit of milk.

So, I made this instead because I thought it’d be a good tea to take on the go with me for my day of errands/interview. I made it like normal, and it taste pretty much like normal except slightly more green and vegetal tasting than it usually is. This is practically a herbal, which is why I think I like it despite it being green – so more green tea taste isn’t really that heavily welcomed. Like I said, it was only slightly though.

Among all the errands like stopping at the bank, I managed to make it to Tea Desire where I picked out three new rooibos teas to try out! I’d like to hopefully try at least one of them today, but I also have a ton of other blends in mind to juggle/get through. I think after this tea, I’m gonna spend the rest of the day and all of tomorrow just trying new things.

I also stopped at DAVIDsTEA and picked up a couple of tea tins (mostly black ones for my Butiki blends), and 30g of Fantasy Island – purely because of VariaTEA’s tasting notes on it. She loves it and we seem to have similar enough taste in tea; plus it was a flavoured black I haven’t tried yet. I also got a new 12 oz. timolino – so now I have two! My first one is black, but this second one is like this almost white colour but with maybe just the smallest touch of mint green. It’s super pretty!

And then, to kill time before my interview I stopped at the local foods store on a whim, and wound up finding my favourite bagged black tea; Saskatoon Berry from Riverblend Plantation! I had all but resigned that the only way I’d ever get more was if I went back to the art museum in Regina! Woot! So, I just got a small 5 Bag “sample pack” of it to top off what I have at home. Now that I know where it’s sold I don’t need to buy in huge quantity. They had a few other teas there too, but none of them looked super intriguing or worth buying.

And, I think my interview went well. The manager who interviewed me was very point blank about the fact he was interviewing multiple people today, but I’m choosing to think that’s because of my manager experience and the fact I hopefully didn’t come across as naive. Only hiccup might have been that he asked me to tell him a joke, and the first one to come to mind and the one I said was rather inappropriate. He laughed at it though – a lot.

How do you know you’re at a gay picnic? All the weiners taste like shit.

And now I’m packing for my trip (clothes, not tea; the tea is already packed…)

Last tea of the night! This one came today as part of my Della Terra order and I thought it’d be a good, no caffeine way to end the night! Plus it just smelled so good…

So, 1 heaping tsp. in 10 oz. of boiling water, steeped for three minutes. Super creamy and yummy with a strong lemon flavour. A little bit peppery.

Anyway, really good :)

Ah! I totally forgot that I still had a cups worth of this sitting strained in the fridge up until I looked in the fridge for perishables to use up about five minutes ago…

So, drinking that up now. It’s really good still despite sitting there for however many days it was. I probably wont be cold brewing anything else now until I leave for my trip – though I did pack a couple teas to take with that I can cold brew! :)

One more Butiki tea ticked off the seemingly endless list of blends to try!

This one didn’t make it into my first Butiki order because I was hesitant about the supposed “raisin” notes. I love caramel, but I also absolutely hate raisin and I wasn’t so sure it’d be worth it if the two were just going to cancel each other out. However, a lot of fellow Steepsterites assured me this was worth trying anyway and so during Black Friday I took advantage of the free tea and included this as one of my freebies.

As far as the dry smell goes, it’s exquisite! The caramel and vanilla smell super rich and indulgent and ooey-gooey! I love when things smell ooey-gooey! I kind of waited to try it over a few of the other teas I got, but tonight seemed perfect since I really just wanted a black tea and was already craving caramel sweets.

So, my preparation is 2 tsp. of leaf in about 10 oz. of boiling water (just shy of that) steeped for about 3 min. 45 seconds. I didn’t mean to steep it that long, but I got distracted by scalding hot pop tarts and left it in a little bit too long. Also, I wasn’t really thinking too well (I’m gonna blame the exhaustion for all the physical labour I did today – which I’m not super conditioned to doing) and I used my giraffe mug, which has a giraffe in the centre, and a really large tea ball so the teaball itself didn’t submerge too well. However, that said, the smell is very nice: it’s rich caramel and strong black tea with only a little but of vanilla coming through. Also, maybe a little touch of citrus?

I had to wait a while for this to cool before drinking it. My first taste was just stupidly hot and mostly I tasted “burning and assam”! No thanks. But once cooler, this is so fucking good! It’s uber creamy caramel with such smooth, flavourful vanilla highlights and a well balanced base that’s present without being too bold and overshadowing the caramel! I get the faintest of citrus notes, which are nice and add a bit more depth. The aftertaste is a lingering sweet caramel with touches of vanilla and a little more citrus.

What an amazing tea to relax to after an exhausting day of work!

And thank God I don’t get raisin notes!

And, all that amazingness is with a relatively crappy steeping method (hardly submerged tea leaves) and a bit of oversteeping. Just imagine how good this would be if I had done a more spot on job! Of course this is going to be a reorder for me; bring on the caramel!