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Tre left today for his Christmas trip with his Dad (although, not before they had both sat down for some tea first) this morning, so I now have the apartment all to myself until about the 30th. That’s kinda exciting!

He also left his bus card for me to use, so that’s almost equally exciting! Now I can take the bus to work and downtown without worrying about using up all my rides

However, as soon as I got to work things turned around really fast, and now I’m having a kinda crummy day. First off, my most incompetent employee (honestly, she’s so nice and hard working, bless her soul, but she just doesn’t understand how to do ANYTHING on the till and has the worst cash handling skills I’ve ever seen) screwed up a whole bunch of refunds and didn’t keep any of the receipts so I have NO CLUE what was and wasn’t supposed to be refunded and I have no way of fixing anything. It
s infuriating, really, because now out till is thirty dollars over which means I not only have to report all the stock/inventory/refund issues to head office (my boss) but have to fill out a giant stack of paperwork because are till is (significantly) off. I’ve explained how to do refunds to her at least six times and each time I tell her that if she doesn’t understand she needs to let me know so I can keep going through things with her, and each time she says she understands but then the very next refund she does she completely fucks up the very next refund she does! Urgggg!!!

And, someone also sprayed a WHOLE BUTT FUCKING TON of cheap, perfume right next to my stand and now I can’t stop sneezing and everything smells absolutely disgusting. Urghhh…

I received this tea in my very first swap with VariaTEA and I’m only just now having it. Ultimately I had wanted my first time drinking this to be as a direct comparison with Della Terra’s Cherry Cola and Cake but I kept putting off brewing them up at the same time and now I’ve swapped away all of the Cherry Cola and Cake so there was nothing preventing me from brewing this up other than my own procrastination.

So, for 8 oz. of boiling water I used 1 1/2 tsp. of leaf steeped for five minutes. That used up about half my sample. Smell wise, there was definitely a cola scent and some mild cherry notes too – but everything was very chemical smelling. Ultimately I’ve heard only bad things about this tea, so I’m only trying it to have tried it – I had low expectations well before brewing it and do not expect to love this.

Taste wise, I am very right to have kept my expectations super low. This tastes God awful. The words that comes to mind are “burnt” and “tobacco” with some very butchered and nasty cherry/cola taste. It’s SO chemical, and just… no.

So, not a great addition to my lousy work day but at least I wasn’t expecting it to be. I’m definitely not finishing off what’s left in my water bottle, and I doubt that I’ll be the one drinking the rest of the sample I have. I guess, when he returns, this was be something I make for Tre and get him to choke down…

Genmaicha is just about the only straight green tea I’ll willingly drink, so I’ve been taking the opportunity to get different Genmaicha teas. Currently, I have the version from McQuarrie’s Tea & Coffee Merchants, this one and Genmai Hojicha from DAVIDsTEA, Marshmallow Treat Genmaicha from 52Teas, and will be receiving the Butiki take from a swap. To me that seems like a fair bit of Genmaicha to get through, so I thought I’d start tonight.

The only other Genmaicha I’ve tried that wasn’t from a restaurant was McQuarrie’s version, and comparatively the leaf in this one seems to have a more equal ratio of brown rice to green tea leaves than the McQuarrie’s version did. McQuarrie’s version seemed to have more leaf and less brown rice. As far as the smell of the leaf goes, this is just a touch less seaweedy in smell – so already this is loing fairly promising.

For preparation, I’m using 1 tsp. of leaf in 8 oz. of water that’s roughly 70 degrees celsius. I left it to steep for three minutes. The smell of the steeped liquor is very toasty, and a nice pale yellow.

As far as the taste goes, I get little green tea (which is nice) and lots of toasted rice! I’m heavily reminded of straight puffed wheat. It’s a very nice, comforting cup. No bitterness, either. It’s been awhile since I had my McQuarrie’s blend, but just going on memory I think this is just a touch better? Both are readily available to me, but the McQuarrie’s blend is cheaper. Hmm, I think I’ll need to have the McQuarrie’s blend later tonight or some time tomorrow so I can do a more accurate comparison.

Also, I’m fangirling so much right now! I’m watching Doctor Who and Andrew Garfield is in this episode! Eiiii! I love him so much!!! :D

EDIT: Resteeped the leaf right away – I just needed another cup of toasty goodness. The second steep was ok, but significantly greener in taste. If memory serves, I think I prefer the second steep of McQuarrie’s version to the second steep of the DAVIDsTEA version. Hmmm…

EDIT: Ooohhhh :( Well, that didn’t last long. Poor, sweet, cutie pie Andrew Garfield’s character Frank with the lovely Texas accent just died…

EDIT: Urghhhh… This episode is an emotional roller coaster. Turns out the pig things hadn’t killed beloved Andrew yet! Eeeiii! More Andrew Garfield <3

Just got home from work and microwaved the stir fry that Tre ordered me last night but I was too full to actually eat. I was trying to think of what to pair it with, are green tea seemed like the best idea. Except, I don’t really like green tea and the only unflavoured green I have in Genmaicha which seemed a little light in taste to pair with this. So, I decided to try one of the matchas I haven’t dug into yet. Initially I was going to go with Pineapple, but Tre said this sounded more unusual so I went with this instead.

I decided to try it out as a tea soda, so to prepare it I mixed 1.2 tsp. of powder into about an oz. of hot water which I mixed it into the dissolve. I then let it cool off and finally poured in a can of club soda. The smell is only faintly bubblegum (both dry and mixed up) so I’m wondering if maybe I should have mixed more in? All the other matchas I’ve encountered have smelled very strong in flavour.

Taste wise, I get bubblegum but only a little. Mostly, I taste very vegetal green tea (which is weird carbonated). It’s drinkable, but I definitely don’t enjoy this as much as either of the last two matchas I’ve tried (orange and eggnog). I’m not sure if I’ve tried any matcha that I feel like I need to order, and this is no exception.

Overall, just mediocre. Regardless, thanks VariaTEA for sending a sample my way! I’m slowly learning more about matcha thanks to everyone’s generosity.

So this is another tea I received as an early Christmas present, again in a 30g amount. However, prior to receiving this little did I know that VariaTEA had sent a sample my way as well! As always, she was too kind. I thought this would be a good tea for my to try because I like caramel/maple teas and have been becoming increasingly fond of woody rooibos tea – which is sorta exactly what this promised to me.

I’m using the leaf I received from VariaTEA up first before opening the 30g bag I have. Today this came with to work in my timolino, and for preparation I used 2 tsp. in boiling water. I was aiming for a 4 minutes steep, but I got distracted by something online and ended up letting this steep for 14 minutes. Oops, my bad…

The smell is about 50/50 woody rooibos and maple. As far as the taste goes, I’d have to same it’s basically the same, but with lighter caramel notes too. Honestly, it’s good and I’m definitely enjoying the cup but it heavily reminds me of a few of the other rooibos blends I have in the house right now. There’s nothing super special about this that makes it stand out from the other blends I choose to restock – and I just prefer those ones more.

So I’m going to gladly finish up what I have left, but this wont be a reorder because it’s just too similar. That’s another DAVIDsTEA blend checked off and tried, though and I certainly can’t complain about that or the generosity of both my family and all you fabulous Steepsterites.

So, I received an unprompted 30g sample amount of this as an early Christmas present from my Grandmother. Unprompted meaning it wasn’t one of the teas I had included on my list of teas I wanted for Christmas. Apparently my mother stealthily spoke to Tre, however, and had him send her a list of the DAVIDsTEA blends I already had so that she didn’t double up on something. It actually worked out rather well: this had been on my shopping list anyway.

I wanted to get this so I could try it out for cold brewing, so that’s exactly what I did! I used roughly half of my 30g sample to make a small pitcher of this cold brewed (about four cups worth). That sat in my fridge cold brewing for about 20 hours before getting strained yesterday and then being drunk today. I brought this in my water bottle so that I was still able to bring another hot drink for work today.

The smell is very true mango, without oodles of added sweetener. Just a straight forward fresh cut mango smell. There’s also the faintest hint of chamomile to the smell. It smells neither good nor bad to me.

The strainer I use for cold brewing is fairly fine, but still managed to let through a whole bunch of the finer bits of chamomile which wouldn’t bug me, expect I keep feeling them as I drink, and it’s just… weird.

As far as the taste goes. the first taste is the mango with a touch of soft vanilla. It reminds me of one of those no name brand mango juice boxes my mom used to send with my school lunches. I always found that those tasted a little off – not quite sweet enough, and kind of too natural. Personally, I have a love hate relationship with most mango things. I dislike the taste of the actual fruit, generally speaking, but quite enjoy mango candy or “mango flavoured things” – such as mango icecream. So, ‘mango purists’ would likely enjoy this but as someone who doesn’t really like “true mango” this hinders my enjoyment a fair bit.

Immediately following the mango notes and lingering in the aftertaste is the chamomile in the blend. Because the smell is rather faint in the liquid, I was hoping it would be around as faint in the taste. Not so much – the taste is quite pronounced, and as someone who doesn’t really enjoy the taste of chamomile (but also doesn’t strongly dislike it) this is doing zero for me. Honestly, thinking about it, I don’t like true mango flavour and I’m neutral (at best) towards chamomile so I’m not really sure why I thought I’d enjoy this.

Well, glad I tried it cold brewed and I have enough left to try it hot to see if it fares a bit better, but I think this will be a pretty easy one to rule out as something I’d ever want to keep stocked. I’m going to hold off rating it because my opinion is relatively biased and I don’t want to throw the rating off. If I was going to rate it, though, it’d probably be low to mid 40s…

EDIT: Is anyone planning on making an Adagio order any time soon? There are two blends I’d love to get my hands on (but, alas, horrible shipping costs)…

Sipdown (133)! This is actually my first time drinking it though, so I guess that’s kind of sad? Well, I guess we’ll see if it’s sad depending on whether I like it or not…

I received a one cup sample size from Janelle when I purchased a bunch of tea samples from her. I had sent her an initial list of what I was interested in and halfway through working things out she asked if I wanted anything else, and on a whim I added this to the list. I’ll be honest, I was a little disappointed that the sample amount I received didn’t actually have any jellybeans in it. I feel like they probably would have been large flavour contributors.

Also, it amuses me slightly that I ended up having a strawberry tea in order to make room in a teaball for this tea, which also happens to be a strawberry tea. After a day of not trying anything new though, I figured I had better at least get a sipdown in. Turns out that out of what I have set aside in my sample drawer (the rest is in the closet, in storage) this is the only thing in a small enough size for a sipdown – and it happens to be new as well (well, new in that I’ve never had it before).

I’m not really sure what steeping parameters I should be using, but I’m just going to go with the sample amount sent to me in a 10 oz. mug of boiling water – since herbals typically go with boiling water – for however many minutes feels right. Turns out that worked out to about five minutes.

The smell of the tea is sweet strawberry candy with a kind of tangy, hibiscus undertone. There’s very much a candy quality to it. In so far as the taste, the first thing I noticed was hibiscus, and not in a pleasant way. Even though it only lasted for a split second or two before fading into a much more pleasant taste, I was hit was an extreme pulse of puckering sour strawberry – like strawberry kool aid before it’s been sweetened or those sour Warhead candies. But like I said, it was only for a split second or two and then I was met with a much more calm but still candy sweet strawberry flavour that was, true to the name, much like a strawberry jellybean.

But that said, I’ve tried and own much better strawberry type teas (just today I had some of DAVIDsTEA’s Sweet Strawberry which is like strawberry candy). And, I’m not overcome with a need to keep sipping at my mug because each time I go to take a sip I have to mentally prepare myself for the unpleasant wave of sour about to come my way. Despite being “rewarded” with a nice finish to each sip, I still don’t think it’s worth it.

Not disappointed this is a sipdown, and this is definitely not something I’d get again. I am happy I got to try it, though. If I hadn’t I think I’d still be nursing a nagging sense of curiosity about it.

So, I actually wanted to make another tea, but all of my teaballs were filled with various different teas that I wanted to resteep later or felt bad tossing out without resteeping a second time, mostly because they were nearly all white teas that I either had very little left of or that I knew I could get a good second steep from.

So, even though this has been sitting on my counter for at least a day I figured I’d give it another steep because I didn’t want to waste the leaf since I only have about a cups worth left. Tre chipped in too and let me make a second steeping of Cantaloupe and Cream (from the leaf I used this morning) for him, which freed up a second tea ball. Both were brewed the same ways I used the first time around, but with slightly longer steep times.

I’m drinking this while greedily scarfing down some rye bread basically slathered with creamy spinach dip. There’s actually a kind of funny story to that, too. When I got off from work and I could think about was Safeway Deli’s creamy spinach dip so I stopped by the Safeway in my mall and picked up a tub of it. However, when I was going through check out I felt highly judged by the sales clerk for only buying spinach dip so I panicked and blurted out “it’s for my highly pregnant roommate”.

For those who don’t know, my roommate is definitely not fit to be a parent. Also, he happens to be, well, a he. So, when I got home today with my spinach dip I broke the (rather shocking) news to Tre that he was with child. He took it better than expected ;P

Anyway, I think this pairs nicely with the spinach dipped bread (dear lord, I’m on pieces number six – I really need to stop, especially since Tre ordered Thai food and got a vegetarian stir fry for me). The tea itself holds up extraordinarily well for the second steep and tastes almost exactly as flavourful which makes me happy I didn’t just toss the leaf. It’s less “gummy” in taste today, though. Really, it’s more like a strawberry preserve or jam. So, slightly more natural tasting.

I was totally in a white tea mood this morning when I was making my work teas, so I wound up taking this and Cantaloupe and Cream. I kinda like both of them hot and cold, so wasn’t too sure which to bring in my timolino and which to take cold – but ultimately took this as a hot drink.

I received some of this as an additional sample from BrewTEAlly Sweet in the package I got last night. I already have an ounce or so from LovellyLotus but because I now had more, so I didn’t feel so bad about making some today, since I was craving coconut. The entire sample amount BrewTEAlly Sweet sent me was added to the brew basket of my timolino (I didn’t measure, but I’d guess it was around 1/2 tbsp.) and steeped in just under boiling water for four minutes. The smell of the tea steeping was very strong, and Tre was able to smell it from the living room. He actually asked me to make some for him too (he loves coconut), but I just sort of flat out said no. I was feeling a touch stingy with my leaf, and I didn’t want to dig out the other bag from the closet where it’s being stored.

I think my pallet must be off today; I was picking up brown sugar notes in the Cantaloupe and Cream, and now in this tea I’m picking up honey graham crackers. It still tastes very good, and actually the unusual notes I’m picking up are, in a way, making this tastes a bit better because of the added dimension. There’s some lovely vanilla and natural coconut notes to this too – much like hot coconut water, without the weird coconut pulp.

Mmm!

Took this to work with me today! I was in a white tea mood, so both of my work teas today are white ones. I ordered more of this in my first Butiki order after really liking the sample that Lala generously sent me. However, this is the first time since receiving my Butiki order that I’ve taken the time to make some for myself.

Personally, I actually prefer Watermelon Xylophone (maybe because I naturally prefer watermelon to cantaloupe or maybe because my favourite kind of white tea is silver needle) but this is still amazing. For preparation, I used 1 1/2 tsp. of leaf for 8 oz. of water steeped at 180 degrees for four minutes. It smelled really lovely as it was steeping, and I snuck a few sips from the cup right before I pulled out the teaball I was using.

I poured the cup into my water bottle so I could drink it cold (which I’m doing now) because I just slightly prefer this cold to hot. Taste wise, it’s a nice creamy cantaloupe with a thicker sort of mouthfeel. Oddly, I’m getting brown sugar notes despite there being zero additives to this – not that I’m really complaining. There’s also just the tiniest touch of bitterness that shows in the aftertaste – but I think that’s my fault for letting this steep for just a touch too long.

Also, I’m having some Steepster issues today :/

It appears that 90% of my likes aren’t sticking today, which is the first time I’ve ever had that problem personally. And also, my “mail” icon in the top right is just missing. Visually, there’s just a black gap where it should be (no broken image icon). Hmm…

Also, my debit pad has been broken for the last few days, but the repair guy finally showed up, and now I have a working debit pad! Yay!

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.