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I resteeped the leaf from last night to have as a breakfast tea this morning, since I enjoyed the cup so much last night. The only thing I switched up for steeping was the steep time: I went with 8 minutes this time because I noticed the smell of the leaf was significantly less strong.

The liquor steeped up to be about the same colour as it had been last night. However, in so far as the taste it was a considerable amount less flavorful. That said, it didn’t taste bad. I still got a bit of the juicy fruit flavor, but the rooibos base came through much stronger and the pepperiness contributed by the peppercorns was a little stronger as well. One thing I don’t like about peppercorns is when they scratch at your throat with the spiciness and this almost did that – but not quite.

Overall, not a bad second steep but not nearly so great either. I don’t think I’d normally put in the effort to resteep this unless I was really craving it and maybe getting low. I’m not even going to try pushing for a third steep.

Might as well try the last sample from RiverTea tonight – that way I can place my order as soon as possible! Yay!

I think they picked this one out for me because I requested flavoured teas, and cherry was one of the flavours I particularly named (they sent two cherry teas and a lychee tea – both of which I named specifically as flavours I was interested in). Although, even though this is described as a cherry tea, interestingly enough cherry is not directly named as an ingredient. To me that says that the cherry is part of the “flavouring”. I’m still game, though!

Visually, this tea is stunning. The colours are so vibrant and fun, and there’s some really great contrast. As far as the dry smell goes, it’s a kind of woody rooibos smell (you know, characteristic rooibos) with a jumbled fruit smell – nothing so specific I’d be able to name any of the fruits in the blend with confidence had I not already looked at the ingredients list. And, speaking of the ingredients list – it semi concerns me there’s peppercorns in this? I don’t really smell any spice, but cherry/peppercorn/orange doesn’t sound uber appealing to me?

I’m following the steeping guide set by RiverTea, so the following: 1 tsp. of leaf for 8 oz. of boiling water, steeped for six(ish) minutes. The smell of the steeped tea is significantly more fruity with clear orange notes (like an orange creamsicle), strawberry notes, and cherry notes. There’s also a very mild and subtle spiciness to the tea, and some creaminess that I think the cornflower is contributing. It smells VERY good.

Tre distracted me for a few minutes, and then kept touching my tea tins (the tins don’t like to be touched!) so it was a while before I actually got to start sipping away at my tea! Boo :(

However, when I did finally sip it, I was just blown away by how delicious it was! The fruit notes are very full and well defined – and also quite well balanced. I’m not totally sure why this is being marketed as a cherry rooibos tea, because while I do taste the cherry clearly (I’m pretty confidant that if I was blinding tasting this I’d be able to name it as cherry), I also get clear notes of orange, strawberry, and subtle hints of raspberry. It works very well. Nothing medicinal about the cherry, and all the fruits tastes sweet and juicy – but not cloying. There is a nice creaminess to the tea and a thicker sort of mouthfeel, and the peppercorn makes itself known in a very subtle and gentle was as this sort of very feint kind of spicy “tickle” that greets you in the end sip and aftertaste, without lingering long enough to become uncomfortable. I don’t think I had any reason to be concerned.

As far as the rooibos base goes, I definitely get nothing that could be considered medicinal, and the woodiness that is there is super subtle (hardly even present, really). So if you’re not typically a fan of rooibos, this might be worth checking out anyway.

I think this might be my favourite RiverTea blend yet – and it really does taste exactly like the website describes it. I feel that this is very well done, and I’m glad to have tried my sample prior to ordering, because this is something I definitely want some more of!

I received a sample of this as a prize for winning RiverTea’s “What would you do for the last 100g of your favourite tea” contest! I’ve been slowly working through trying the teas they sent me during my days off, since that’s when I feel I have time to sit down and properly enjoy them. However, I wont have a day off until Christmas Eve and I do have all evening now, so I figured I’d give this one a go!

Actually, I had planned to try out Prairie Berry for the first time today, but after getting paid today I was able to pick up a prepaid Visa card for some tea orders, and now that RiverTea’s website has launched I really wanted to try my last two samples so I can see if it’s ‘imperative’ I include larger quantities with my first order from them. Because of that, I changed my mind and brewed this up instead.

Dry, the smell of this one is kind of subtle, with some super light fruity notes that could be considered cherry. I did take a picture of the leaf for this one a while ago (on my cell, so it’s a sorta crappy picture) so I’ll edit that into my tasting note a little later on tonight. I have to find the usb cord for my phone first…

For preparation, I stuck with the guide on the sample package because, thus far, the provided guides have yielded good results, IMO. That meant 1 tsp. of leaf, in boiling water for four minutes. This is actually the first tea I’ve made from RiverTea to have a liquor that, visually, might be considered unappealing by some. The reason for that is that there’s a considerable amount of oily bubbles on the surface of the liquor. I’m not bothered by that, but I know there are other people who would be, although that happens with most chocolate blends.

The steeped smell is much more cherry! I’m kind of out of it at the moment, so I’m sort of struggling with putting my thoughts into legible words. So, I’ll just list what it’s not? I don’t smell medicinal cough syrup cherry, so yay for that! And, it’s not smelling piercingly tart – so that’s good. It’s not ridiculously sweet like a maraschino cherry either. I think the best way to describe it would be by saying it’s some sort of inbetween of sweet cherry and lightly sour cherry. Like, a cherry compote or pie type filling? Anyway – it smells very good. The chocolate smells quite light, in comparison.

In taste, the first thing I noticed was the chocolate. It’s a nice kind of “milk chocolate” – very smooth. The cherry follows pretty quickly – this time as a sweeter cherry tempered by the chocolate, with a sharper kind of sour bite that quickly pierces through (I found this kind of sharpness got stronger the cooler the tea got). The rose kind of sits in the background for the most part, but lingers along with subtle cherry notes in the aftertaste.

In my mind, I’m comparing this to DAVIDsTEA’s Love Tea #7 since that tea has many things in common. Firstly, they’re both chocolate and rose teas with black bases. The difference is that Love Tea #7 uses strawberry, and this has cherry. In deciding whether or not I’ll be adding this to my eventual RiverTea order, I want to take into comparison which I would be more likely to reach for. Love Tea #7 is a tea I very much love, and one I always have on hand – but if I thought this was better I might switch things up and stock this instead. However, I do think I prefer Love Tea #7 more – it just seems much more smooth and balanced, comparatively.

However, this is still really good! I’ll happily finish the sample that RiverTea was generous to send to me, and if I was ever able to acquire this again in sample size I don’t think I would hesitate to do so.

The other work tea I had today was this one! Since I had enjoyed it a lot yesterday, I took the last of what was cold brewed in my fridge to work with me again today. Of course, I didn’t have time to drink it at work so it made a return trip with me and I’m drinking it now.

Today, I’m getting slightly stronger fig notes and rose notes, and the peach notes seem to be just slightly more mild. Still quite good though! Not much else to add since this is the exact same brew as yesterday’s…

I made this for work because I was craving Chai, but it was stupidly and uncharacteristically busy at work today so not only did I not have time to use the internet at work but I didn’t even have time to drink either of my work teas. I think a big part of that was because head office shat on me, and sent me 50 boxes of stock – which took my ENTIRE five hour shift to put away and enter into the computer inventory.

So, I’m drinking my two work teas at home now. Despite being in a timolino all day and not being opened once until my arriving home, this has pretty significantly cooled down. It’s still delicious like usual though. Very prominent cinnamon, clove, and apricot notes today. Can’t taste the ginger at all – which is a plus. I really want to try Rivertea’s version of this, for comparison.

So after a long day out, I got home and saw I had received two things in the mail today!

The first was my most recent swap with the lovely VariaTEA! Likes always she was too kind and included some extra samples – such as this one.

And like you said in your letter, I wholeheartedly agree that we’re now unofficially officially regular swap buddies! ;)

The second package was from BrewTEAlly Sweet and was the tea and teaware I purchased from her! Just like VariaTEA, she too was kind enough to throw in some extra samples (one just happened to be very high on my “to try” list – so that’s yet another to check off!).

I couldn’t resist trying something from both packages, but didn’t really think I’d have enough time to prepare, drink, and properly review two new teas so instead I decided to try one of the teas sent by VariaTEA in the giraffe mug I purchased from BrewTEAlly Sweet!

For the tea preparation, I used 1 1/2 tsp. of leaf in near boiling water in my giraffe mug (I’m assume by the size it’s about 8 oz.) for 5 minutes! The smell of the tea brewing was sweet strawberry type candy (it reminded me of something very particular but I haven’t quite placed what). Actually, what drew me in to this one was a tasting note from VariaTEA on it where she described it as tasting like “strawberry gummy candy” – and I was curious as to how the “gummy” flavor translated to tea. I then saw that it was a white tea and had silver needle in it (my favourite kind of white tea) and I was sold on trying it! Somehow I’ve just been skimming over it everytime I go in store or check the website out…

Tre just go in from work, and let me know that when he brought the tea in before he left for work earlier today, the box from BrewTEAlly Sweet containing the giraffe mug had been hanging from our doorknob outside by an elastic band… Stupid mail delivery guy

Taste wise, this isn’t nearly as subtle as I was expecting it to be. That’s not a bad thing though, and I’m really enjoying the cup. VariaTEA was right, this totally tastes like Strawberry Gummy candy! More specifically, I think it’s reminding me of strawberry gummy bears. The white tea is also quite present which is pretty helpful in maybe negating the sweet notes of the strawberry that, without balance, might be a bit cloying.

I actually like that this isn’t super complex and is relatively straight forward in the flavouring. Sadly, I used half the sample VariaTEA sent me to make my mug, so I might be hoarding that last bit for a while. I can definitely see myself restocking this though! You can never have too many silver needle teas (plus, my “permanent” white teas, in general, are pretty few between in comparison to other tea types).

Also, the giraffe mug is too flippin’ cute! All I think in my head when I look in the mug is “peekaboo!”. Even Tre admitted it’s adorable!

So a pretty good friend of mine from Regina that I went to highschool with recently moved to Saskatoon so we went out for tea tonight!

Since the DAVIDsTEA downtown has a nice lounge/sitting area, that’s where we chose to go (well, I suggested going). It was actually the first time she had ever been to a DAVIDsTEA which I didn’t realize when I had suggested it. It was kind of neat seeing someone experience all the selection for the first time.

With my help and the salesman’s help she settled on an iced Pink Lemonade (said it was really good) and I had this, as a latte. Mine was just ok – for some reason I kept getting raspberry notes which makes me wonder if there was some kind of contamination. Overall it wasn’t bad though – just very weird with the raspberry notes.

And of course, if I was going to DAVIDsTEA I had to pick some tea up for myself. So with my friend’s help (I picked out ones I was kind of interested in and she smelled them and picked the “top three”) I ended up with sample amounts of Genmaicha, La La Lemon, and Forever Nuts.

So I bought this from Mcquarrie’s about a week or so ago? I went in with the intention of finding something that I could cold brew to make a nice, fruity drink. Somehow I settled on this even though it didn’t particularly scream “cold brew me!”. I think, mostly, I wanted to see if I could find a fog tea better than the Spiced Fig at DAVIDsTEA (the only other fig tea I’ve tried) that was so disappointing and neither smell nor tasted like fig. This one had a very strong smell of fig (very, VERY strong) so I thought it was worth a try.

I did end up cold brewing it though – for Christmas (well, my early Christmas) because I thought it might be neat having a fig drink around (I associate figs as Christmas fruit, for some reason). I set up 2 and a half tablespoons of leaf in about 5 cups of water which cold brewed in my fridge for around 12 hours. I didn’t end up drinking any of it on Christmas though because there was just so much around to eat and drink.

So I’m having it now at work, the day after. The strained colour is a very nice sunset kind of pink and smells strongly of fig and peaches? McQuarrie’s doesn’t post ingredient lists (they have an ingredient booklets in store, but I didn’t check it) so I’m not one hundred percent sure what was in the mix. I remember seeing LARGE chunks of fig, whole rose buds, a little bit of hibiscus, but nothing quite resembling peach.

Taste wise, this is uber refreshing and actually way fruitier than I thought it would be. The first thing I notice is the fig, which I’m super happy about! That was the whole point. There is also a considerable amount of peach type flavour to me but I’m all for that – it pairs quite nicely with the fig and gives this a little more dimension. I’m finding the rose most noticeable in the aftertaste (along with a milder fig flavour), and it’s a nice kind of way to end the sip.

As far as the hibiscus goes (because I know it’s dreaded by many a people) – to ME I’m finding it’s present but not overwhelmingly so. Mostly, I think it’s contributing a sort of sharpness to the peach that cuts through what might otherwise be a sort of overwhelming amount of straight fig and rose.

I have enough leaf left to maybe maybe one hot cup and another pitcher of this cold, but once I’m out I think I’ll strongly consider repurchasing this! It was very nice to have as a cold drink.

So, after organizing all my teas a whole lot better and only leaving 20 or so (I think it was 25) out, this was one of the ones I kept. I was trying to limit the chocolate teas out so that I’d have more variety and could rotate through them – but I kept this one out because I wanted something more subtly fruity last night – but then wound up being way too full to make some.

So instead this came with me today for work. I prepared 1 1/2 tsp. of leaf in 8 oz. of water, for a short steep time of 2 and a half minutes. I actually thought that it had been steeping longer and panicked and took the tea ball out of the water, but when I looked at the timer on my phone it hadn’t been nearly as long as I’d thought.

This went into my water bottle, and by the time I was drinking it the tea had gone pretty cold. Taste wise, it was fine – very smooth and creamy with no bitterness of astringency. Today, the chocolate notes tastes a lot more fudgey and the strawberry was subtly sweet like I had been craving. Normally I don’t get much rose out of this blend despite it having rose in it, but I actually did get some pretty distinct rose notes. Maybe all it takes is a short steep time to keep them from being buried.

Only complaint I have today is that I only made one cup for myself. As soon as it was gone I just wanted much more…

This is a sipdown!

I recieved this from VariaTEA in the package of herbals she sent me to try out, and since I had inquired primarily with the intention of finding something to use for cold brewing that’s exactly what I did with this. Actually, this likely isn’t something I’d have bought for myself except that part of the proceeds actually go to KANPE. However, I just think the flavour combination is kind of weird, so it’s not something I’d have specifically jumped at the chance to pick up.

I’m not going to look a gift horse in the mouth, though.

So anyway, the entire sample she sent me went into the jug of water (about five full cups of water), and it was cold brewed that way for about 24 hours. It was actually all strained and ready a few days ago, but I was waiting until ‘Christmas’ (I had an early Christmas with my family) to try it.

Steeped, the liquor is a nice hibiscus-y quality, but with some more brown type tones to it. The smell steeped is prominently mango, banana, coconut, and cinnamon. It’s kind of weird smelling everything together – but for sure not in an unappealing way.

I’ve been slowly sipping on this all day in between all the Christmas food we’re having (and some glasses of Eggnog too). I’m finding it quite filling and relatively refreshing. Taste wise, there’s a lot going on but it does work in a very strange way. I get strong flavours of mango, papaya, and banana initially which is a pleasant enough combination. Actually, if I recall those are a good chunk of the fruits in my Boatsman blend from RiverTea so I’m wondering if that’s happy coincidence or whether that one is also inspired by Haitian origins? The idea behind Boatsman is something I’ve been dreadfully curious about since I received it. In comparison to boatsman, this one has a much stronger taste of banana.

Following the fruit is a pretty decent meld of coconut and cinnamon with some fruit notes (more mango than anything else) in the background. It’s weird drinking a cold brewed cinnamon fruit drink – but I’m not totally sure why that seems weird? I don’t think it’s just because I’m drinking this on ‘Christmas’ – but there is SOMETHING about this tea that makes me think of it in seasonal terms. Perhaps Autumn, and definitely winter. That makes no sense because it has tropical fruits in it typically associated with summer or maybe spring, but I honestly don’t think this is something I’d strongly crave outside of winter. And actually, come to think of it, Boatsman has cinnamon in it too. Hmm, more coincidences…

Another nice thing about this one is that even though it has hibiscus in it and even after an especially long brew time – the hibiscus doesn’t even come close to making things overly tart or drowning out the other flavours. In fact, if nothing else, it really takes the backseat and is more of a forgotten note with not a whole lot of contributing flavour.

I don’t know if I’d restock this. I’d certainly drink it again, that’s for sure. It’s just very weird and feels oddly seasonal to me so I think the leaf might just end up sitting around and not getting a whole lot of use. Plus, I have Boatsman which I’m drawing many similarities to – and that one is a black tea, which is more preferred to me. I think I’d need to try that one cold steeped to see if I could draw out somewhat similar flavours because right now I’ve just had it hot. It’s not a good feeling to be having a sipdown with no idea whether I want more of a tea or not, though…

Also – Tre finally blew up at my for taking over his table with tea tins and pouches, and after receiving Christmas tea there was honestly no room on the table for anything at all (barely and room for more tea). He was probably right to get upset – my storage system was lousy and everything was getting excessive in quantity. So I spent an hour or so clearing out the shelves in the living room closet and making space for two “tea shelves” for tea to be stored.

So, I think what I’m gonna to is keep 20 or so of the tins out at a time on the table (that takes up only a fifth or so of the table) and then rotate what I have out on a biweekly basis. I think this might actually help with my drinking down the larger quantities, too. I also reorganized my sample drawer and made several smaller bags of samples organized by tea type which were brought to the cupboard along with any tea I’m hoping to swap out.

So, now I have 20 tins of assorted tea types which’ll rotate biweekly (on the table), a tidier sample drawer with 10 samples at a time (things I currently am interested in trying) left in it and the rest stored on the ‘tea shelves’ in the closet, my chest of teabags in its normal spot on the counter, and all my matcha on its own shelf in the freezer…

Yay for organisation!