4170 Tasting Notes
Mastress Alita’s sipdown challenge – November Tea #4-A smoky/roasted tea
I really didn’t want to finish this tea… though it is one of my earliest teas. It may very well be the smoky tea that did NOT shove me away from smoky teas in my early tea drinking days. If it wasn’t this smoky tea, another one might have pushed me away from smoky teas forever. Perfect with a blueberry muffin. Word to the wise if you’re ever in Bangor, Maine looking for goodies to eat, try Bagel Central!! The name is such a travesty as they have a billion AMAZING desserts and not just bagels (though the bagels are also my favorite that I have ever had.) They should be called Dessert Central. I will miss this tea. HOWEVER, I did not expect a google search for this tea to tell me that this shop still exists! Wow! Though I doubt this tea is still the same now… Looking at some of their other tea names, they might source some of their teas from English Tea Store…
2022 sipdowns: 106
Mastress Alita’s sipdown challenge – November Tea #3 -A tea the flavor of a favorite cake
Can’t say I have ever tried a Black Forest cake, but with my love of berries and chocolate (and cake), I’m sure it WOULD be a favorite. This tea however, is not. It’s too light and thin to represent anything like a Black Forest cake. The cocoa shells are a nice addition though. It works as a chocolate tea, but it really needs more richness. Happy to have tried it though! I’m back at home with my tea stash now. I really need to work on my sipdown goal before I start visiting the holiday teas. (However is it almost December?!!?)
2022 sipdowns: 104
This one is from Kawaii433! Thanks very much! I hope you are well! This is a bit of an intriguingly odd tea — the combination of matcha and buckwheat could be either really good or really bad. It was hard to tell before tasting it. To these tastebuds — really good! While sipping this, I had to do further research on buckwheat – it’s not a wheat or grain, it’s actually a pyramid shaped seed harvested from a plant related to RHUBARB. Very surprising. It doesn’t taste like rhubarb though! Two tasty steeps. I would say the flavors of matcha and buckwheat were evenly balanced in the first steep, with obviously more matcha in that first cup. The buckwheat tastes like the Honey Smacks cereal, while being a little nutty and toasty flavored. The matcha is a nice addition for a more interesting flavor profile. It was fantastic to try this — though to me it makes sense for my personal drinking to have the buckwheat without matcha, so it doesn’t have caffeine as I would rather have that lovely buckwheat flavor profile before sleeping!
Steep #1 // 24 minutes after boiling // 2 minute steep
Steep #2 // 24 minutes after boiling // 3-4 min
Mastress Alita’s sipdown challenge – November Tea #2 -A weird tea
I’ll count this as the weird tea! Not only is the book that this tea is based from very weird, but the blend is weird itself with an odd combination of ingredients, making for a unique flavor combination… but it works. I’m not sick of it yet! I finished what I brought with me, but still a large amount remaining, so not really a sipdown.
Mastress Alita’s sipdown challenge – November Tea #1 -A cranberry tea
And here I thought I didn’t have a cranberry tea with me! I had this tea before from a different shop, and it was on sale when I placed an order with Tealyra, so I had to buy this old favorite. So definitely not a sipdown anytime soon. I like it mainly because it’s a fruit tea without hibiscus. Tart enough, but not TOO tart. With hints of cherry, cranberry, coconut from those huge pieces of coconut… and I wish more kiwi. I suppose that is why you don’t see too many kiwi teas.
Mastress Alita’s sipdown challenge – October Tea #9-A pumpkin tea
It’s Halloween! Time to choose a pumpkin tea for the pumpkin prompt! Of COURSE it’s this tea. I think I’m one steep session away from finishing my oldest pouch of this from a group order… it’s aging wonderfully. This tea never fails, gets old, or steeps badly. Yum. It’s amazing I brought enough teas with me to magically fill almost 30 prompts with barely any doubling up!
Mastress Alita’s sipdown challenge – October Tea #8-A Chinese tea
As much as I didn’t want to finish this tea, I figured I would for this prompt. I do love this one. It’s rich and long lasting for its age. I don’t think it was prime parameters for the way I was steeping this away from home – the flavor seemed a bit more muted than usual. But it is always funny how that sipdown steep session is almost always more delicious than usual, making you want to search out the tea and buy it again. Teas are already impossible to sipdown as it is! But this is a CLASSIC Chinese tea flavor profile – probably my favorite black tea type. Thank you again, Meowster!
2022 sipdowns: 103
So I really needed more (any) ripe pu-erh for my time away (I really underestimated how much ripe puerh I should have brought with me.) SO I really took a gamble on this pouch of tuochas from Tealyra. I was real worried they would be gross. BUT THEY ARE GREAT. Really, they are exactly what I look for from these tuochas. Very dark, very deep, tastes like dark chocolate, coffee and rich dark bread and NO negative flavor characteristics. Three great full mugs — I really should have tried for a fourth. Interestingly, EACH steep had this dusky silt of puerh in the bottom – not sure if that means it’s a lower quality for Puerh People, but to me it made for a richer cup and exactly what I wanted. The tuocha also immediately lost its shape on the first steep, which I also don’t know if that means it’s a high or low quality tuocha… but VERY happy with these! They are perfect for my flavor preferences! I would gladly buy more of them. I think there were 15 tuochas in the 100 gram pouch I bought for $10.50 (but there was a 25% off sale). They are a larger size tuocha compared to most.
Flavors: Bread, Coffee, Dark Chocolate, Rye
Mastress Alita’s sipdown challenge – October Tea #7- A nutty tea
New tin! So definitely not a sipdown. So I was looking at Harney’s sale items and this happened to be on sale. I bought it because it sounded like one of my favorite teas from WAY back in the day: Specialteas Vienna Winter Green. And regardless of one tea having a green base, and one tea having a white tea base, the flavor profiles here DO seem a little bit the same. I imagine it is the closest flavor profile of any existing tea to Vienna Winter Green. It’s a very unique type of flavor that I don’t think I have ever otherwise found. Also a hard to describe flavor! But the closest thing is a sort of nutty flavoring with also a hint of a dessert quality. The blends use different nuts but I’m pretty sure the chamomile in this blend is even the unusual Roman chamomile that the Specialteas blend also uses. So if I can never have that amazing Specialteas blend again, I’m glad this one was on sale. Nothing can ever reach the pure magic that was Vienna Winter Green, but it does fill a bit of the craving for that blend. I’m glad I took the chance on this blend.
Mastress Alita’s sipdown challenge – October Tea #6-A dessert tea
Another excellent prompt option – this is one of my favorite dessert teas. Not a sipdown of my full stash of this blend, but a sipdown for the amount I brought with me. I wonder if this is a blend that Angry Tea Room sourced from Adagio… or I think Tschgwendner has the same blend…