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Sipdown (180)!!!

I’m doing great with sipdowns today! I even still have a couple things on the counter that I can sip down still, and that’s without going through sample bags. Go me!

Anyway, this came in one of the 12 Days of Christmas packages – but I can’t remember which one, so I have no idea who sent it to me which makes me feel pretty awful. If you’re the one who sent it, please let me know! I’d love to properly thank you…

For this, I just brewed up the bag in boiling water for three minutes. Though going be the taste, three minutes may have been too long despite what the packaging said because this is pretty bitter. It does still have some nice sweet notes to it: a little bit of a floral quality and a little bit of a honey quality. Decent overall, despite that bitterness.

Sipdown (181)!

I think that ties me with VariaTEA on tasting notes again? This would be easier if I had smaller teacups (as it is, I just have mugs), and didn’t have a tendency to write long winded tasting notes…

Anyway, this comes to me by way of Kittenna who was super magical and managed to provide a cups worth of this for me to try! It’s especially cool because when I first found Steepster what seems like ages ago, I was using it find blends from DAVIDsTEA to try out – and this was the first blend I found where I thought to myself “Damn, I really want to try that”, but unfortunately it was discontinued. And then, the longer I was on Steepster, the more I realized this hadn’t really been a popular blend that people wanted to hoard, so not a lot of people had any left to swap for.

But low and behold, I have a piping hot mug sitting on my kitchen table right now thanks to Kittenna!

Steeping parameters were the whole sample from Kittenna (a little more than 1 1/2 tsp.) in a 10 oz. mug, steeped in boiling water for five minutes! This has an oily surface and lots of little whiteish floaty things which I’m going to say are bits of yogurt. The smell is super creamy peaches, kind of like peaches and cream oatmeal which is my favourite breakfast food.

I’m hesitant to try it, just in case I don’t like it. That would probably feel really disheartening…

But trying it out, I’m not really disappointed at all, thank God. An initially creamy taste from the yogurt and a thicker mouthfeel is followed by a semi-sweet peach taste that mostly reminds me of fuzzy peach candy, but less sour. The black tea base it kind of most present in the end of the sip, and is pretty good. I think that honestly about sums it up: this is really good! Should this ever be brought back by DAVIDsTEA I’m definitely going to be getting some more.

Thank you so much Kittenna!

EDIT: As it cooled down it was still really good, but I managed to be able to taste the black base a little more. Just ever so slightly smokey? Still worked pretty well with the fuzzy peach vibe I’m getting.

Glad I’m finally getting to try this! All the awesome Steepster reviews (I blame you, VariaTEA) have just made me even more eager to try it out. I can’t believe this is something I’ve passed up in store because I like all the things in it, and dry it just smells rich, and coconutty with such a lovely fruity raspberry quality to it. Mmmm!

So, parameters are 1 1/2 tsp. of leaf in 10 oz. of boiling water – steeped for five minutes. It brewed up to smell very strongly of coconut, though not really an raspberry to the smell. I’m glad I’ve hidden this in the furthermost regions of the tea storage closet – if it was out in the open I might be worried about Tre using up my sample; one of few kind of tea he independently makes for himself is anything with strong amounts of coconut.

I waited to try this for a little while (was drink A Rabbit’s Garden first), so now that I’ve gotten to the mug it’s significantly cooler – though still kind of warm. I figured I’d do this one second since the fact it’s good iced is actually in the product description – so I felt like that was a better approach than trying A Rabbit’s Garden cold when it could be lousy that way…

So taste wise: Lots of strong and rich coconut initially, in a way that really reminds me of Buttered Rum, minus some of the more pronounced butterscotch candy notes that blend features. Once I got over the tons of coconut I immediately picked up on the sweetness of the raspberry. It’s quite juicy and well pronounced – sticking around for a lengthy amount of time in the aftertaste. It also compliments the coconut really well. The black base is nice here as well, and I can’t help but feel that maybe there are some floral notes here? I’m sorta picking up on something like that.

It’s really good, though! I’m not sure yet if I’d want more, because it does really remind me of Buttered Rum and I have a ton of that right now, but it’ll be well loved while it is in my cupboard.

Tasting note 450!

My replacement tea from Della Terra came in the mail today (the package of A Rabbit’s Garden from my Black Friday order split across the bottom and spilled all throughout the original package) – this time super well packaged. It was in layers of tissue paper. Since the smell from the Black Friday order has been taunting me ever since (SO peachy), I decided to open this one up and give it a try.

Honestly – in hindsight this may have been a bad pick to try out (I only got 1 oz. though) because I know I dislike vegetal green teas, and this blend even has actual vegetables in it. That’s sort of a foreboding sign, is it not? However – all I could think about was the sweet aspect I enjoy in actual vegetables: the sugary part of snap peas, the juicy fruitiness in Peaches and Cream corn, that kind of thing…

I think that’s likely what Della Terra was going for anyway. So I just couldn’t resist trying.

Parameters for this cup were 1 1/2 tsp. of leaf in an 8 oz. mug of practically 80 degree celsius water, steeped for about two minutes. The liquor steeps up to be a slightly yellow light green colour and smells like a typical green tea with faint peach notes akin to the dry smell, but toned down.

Now to taste and find out whether I made a good choice or a bad choice. Dramatic drum roll, anyone?

Ok – initial feelings on the taste are mixed. Yes this is predictably strong in vegetal green tea taste, though thankfully it doesn’t immediately scream “grass” or “seaweed”. More so, spinach or something else sort of like that? I actually do feel like maybe there’s some sugar snap pea in there – but the carrot is pretty lost, and I think the corn is weak at best – though strongest sort of end sip. However, the peach! It’s actually really truly there! And it sort of saves this from being an unholy cup of unpleasant green tea. It kicks in about mid sip, and then kind of floods all the crevices of your mouth: it’s sweet and juicy. Also, not at all bitter.

So really, as someone who doesn’t typically like green tea at all but who ordered some anyway, I’m pretty satisfied with this tea. It’s vegetal – but you have to expect that from a vegetable tea, there’s a nice kind of buttery quality to the taste (buttered corn, anyone?), and the peach is fresh and sweet and just awesome. I think this tea does exactly what it’s trying to do.

Would I order it again? Likely not – but I don’t think it’ll be horribly hard to finish, and I’m pretty pleasantly surprised.

Very close to making this a sipdown. I now have 1/2 tsp. left to enjoy some other time – perhaps I may make a second glass of this later, just to finish it off…

Thank you Lala and Iridium for disliking this enough to both pass it on, consequently leading to it making its way here, to me. This was the first matcha I found that I didn’t absolutely hate – and that opened me up to wanting to try many other matchas.

Right now, I’m drinking this as a matcha soda. 1 tsp. of matcha dissolved into about 2 oz. of hot water, and then mixed with a can of club soda. Just like drinking one of those fizzy vitamin C drinks! Yummy!

Sipdown (181)!

Thank you Isaila for adding this into our swap – it’s something I’ve been curious about for a while, so I’m very happy to be getting the chance to try it. I never know whether this is officially discontinued or not because it’s no longer up on the DAVIDsTEA website, but sometimes the two local stores in my city (and then one in Regina) have it in stock…

Parameters were about 2 tsp. (a little less than that, actually) in 10 oz. of water, steeped with boiling water for three minutes. There are several floaties and bits that managed to escape my strainer, and the water is n oily, murky brown that smells like rich cinnamon dusted chocolate. Mmm!

Taste wise – this is totally hot chocolate in a cup. The chocolate is sweet and creamy, albeit slightly watered down from where I usually make my own hot chocolate. I like strong flavours. The cinnamon is about equal to the chocolate in flavour, and I’m impressed at how it managed to stay present and sweet without bringing in an undesirable amount of heat. There’s a light earthiness in that taste that I’d attribute to the mate.

Tre made breakfast this morning, so I’m drinking this with my breakfast and it’s the perfect accompaniment. Toast, over easy eggs (perfectly done) and absolutely nasty hashbrowns. Honestly, the hashbrowns would probably be great except he added so much salt to them that I can feel it crunching when I take a bite. Yuck! I don’t like salt. And, apple pie as ‘dessert’!

Overall, this is surprisingly good and I would happily drink more and, perhaps, would even buy a small bag (30g?) of it to enjoy a few more cups.

Thank you Isaila!

Sipdown (182)!

Now that I have my (admittedly small) Teavivre order from Tea Jail I don’t feel so bad about sipping down one of the few Teavivre samples I still have kicking around from the care package Lala sent me when I was brand new to Steepster.

This final amount of leaf was just a little bit more than a tsp. worth of pearls, which I steeped in 80 degree celsius water for 1 min. 30 seconds.

The tea was very light and delicate with a tolerable green base (vegetal, but light and buttery too) and the jasmine was just a touch sweet and perfect. This was a very, very nice tea to calm down and relax to – especially since I’m watching the most recent episode of Supernatural and it is an emotional rollercoaster. I definitely needed something to anchor me to a nice feeling of “zen”, if you will.

I got two lovely resteeps out of this. What a beautiful sipdown!

After the recent string of tasting notes on this and a mediocre/weird tea day I decided that it just felt right to brew up a mug of this.

I steeped using Butiki instructions, but 10 oz. mug instead of 8 oz. I also added a large splash of milk because I figured that might make it creamier, and it appears there’s milk to use up in the house.

I was right about the creaminess: this was a super amazing cup and extra yummy and creamy with the addition of the milk. I really enjoyed slowly sipping it while packing up swaps (it’s so fun picking out the extra goodies).

Sipdown (183)!

This was the third and final roadtrip tea. My parameters were the rest of the sample sent from VariaTEA in a 12 oz. timolino steeped with boiling water for three minutes.

My first cup of this was pretty much average, but a good average. However, this cup was super gross! I’m not sure why this was so different when I’m pretty sure the steeping parameters were quite similar to last time – but this was like drinking highly tart and kind of “turned” (rancid?) orange juice.

I can’t really describe it…

But it was just bad – and NOT the good cup I had earlier on my vacation. I don’t think I can solely blame this on funny taste buds either. How disappointing. Anyway, I didn’t finish the timolino full, and dumped the rest when I got home.

Lowering my rating…

And, right now, not really so disappointed that this is a sipdown.

Another roadtrip tea! Needed something sweet and minty…

So, 2 tsp. of leaf in a 12 oz. timolino steeped with boiling water for three minutes. Taste wise, started off as well balanced perfection. There must be something off with my tastebuds today though, because once I got to the last few slurps in the thermos I started to taste something oddly fruity in addition to the regular notes.

Like, fruit rollup fruity…