Blackberry Custard Tart Green Tea

AJRimmer Advent Day 6

I’ve never sprung for the 52Teas Advent calendar, so it was fun surprise to get to try this one that was all over Steepster at this time last year. :) Personally, I would call this one “Blackberry Jam”. I don’t really get custard or pastry from it at all, but the blackberry flavor is strong and sweet and the green tea base is nice and smooth. This was tasty hot and I think it would also be lovely iced!

Advent Day 7

I love a 52Teas blackberry blend. I prefer a black base, but this is still absolutely delicious.

52Teas 12 Teas of Christmas: Day 7!

As I mentioned in a previous tasting note, this Monday Monday-ed pretty hard! So I made sure to carve out some time after logging off from work to savor this tea while diving into the latest installment in one of my favorite series.

I’m not quite getting custard, but I am getting a gently creamy blackberry layered on top of a slightly grassy green. There’s also a vaguely floral note, which I enjoy. Overall it’s tasty and comforting and calming, and it provided a few moments of quiet before Monday decided to Monday again and we discovered that our not-even-two-year-old hot water heater is not, in fact, heating water. Sigh!

52 Teas 12 Teas of Christmas Advent: Day 7
Made a cup of this for my grandmother in the morning and had a few sips of hers before re-steeping the leaves to make myself a cup. I liked this one but she didn’t care for the blackberry flavor. I think it was a bit too candy-like for her. I didn’t really get custard vibes from this one more just candy berry ones. It’s closer to a cotton candy profile than a custard one. The green base was smooth and not very grassy so it worked well with the blackberry. More in-depth review of this one will come later after the holidays.

The 7th Tea of Christmas! I’m happy to be enjoying this tea again. It’s been a while since I last reblended it (Holiday Box 2018). I love this blend.

I definitely prefer our green tea blend as a green tea base versus Chinese Sencha, although sometimes, Chinese Sencha does work well & I think it would have worked well with this particular blend since Chinese Sencha has a natural creaminess to it – so it would have worked well with the custard-y notes. Maybe sometime, I’ll try it like that. I do recall that when it came time to first create this blend, I was kind of “anti Chinese Sencha” because I felt like that was the only green tea base that Frank used (it wasn’t – he did occasionally use a different base but it would usually be a VIT blend & that was something I wanted to change . . . & I did! So, that’s why this blend ended up with the Chun Mee & Gunpowder base.

Probably more than you wanted to know about why I used this base.

Anyway, this is tasty: sweet, creamy, custard-y notes with a delightful berry note. I love the berry tingle at the finish – it lingers. Very tasty, indeed.

Happy International Tea Day! Today the prompt is… to drink tea! Any tea. Yup, that’s it.

TEA!

This is from the 2018 52Teas advent. I filled up a work thermos to sip on today (it’s starting to get really cold here… my car doors were frozen shut this morning!)

The tea has that lovely blackberry flavor that I always enjoy from 52Teas. I even fished the big blackberries out of the used leaf and left them floating in my thermos. The tea is quite sweet, but I’m getting more of a “fruity cotton candy” sort of taste (like the Boo Berries one) than a pastry. There is a light vegetal/grassy note from the green tea in the background, but the aftertaste is all sweet, jammy blackberry.

I will enjoy nursing this thermos today.

I forgot about it and overly steeped it in a major way. =( The result was both tart and bitter—totally my bad. It’s very pretty, though: it’s all dark and stormy and purply while steeping.

2021 Sipdown #33
I’ve been away for a while due to traveling and health issues (mine and family members). Hopefully I’ll be drinking more tea as the weather cools down.

This was an old tea so I didn’t get much out of it. My fault for letting it get old, nothing wrong with the tea itself

Adventaggedon Day 19: Tea 8/8

Cold Brew!

I’m glad this is my last tasting note for the day because I have a really bad tendency when I’m tired of either skipping words, only writing half a word, or writing a different but similar sounding word while I’m typing because my brain is running both too fast and too slow to notice the mistakes. I’ve done it a bunch tonight and I’m trying to catch them all but I’m sure tomorrow I’ll see a ton of errors riddled throughout my notes…

We recorded for Geek Steep today so I wanted to make sure I had at least one cold brew prepped to sip on in between recording because the apartment gets wicked hot since we keep the air conditioning off for noise control. I picked this one because it seemed like it’d work – blackberry is nice and refreshing cold! It’s not bad but I think that’s mostly just because in general the blackberry flavouring that Anne uses is really quite pleasant. I’m getting a lot of green tea though which isn’t my thing, even though it’s also not ‘bad’. Did the trick of keeping me feeling cooled down during the afternoon though – which was the goal.

I think this is maybe my least favourite of the 52Teas advent so far this year; but I want to stress that that does not mean it’s a flop/failure. I feel like so far everything has been so strong though and there is just kind of in that sweet middle ground for me.

Also… I think I’ve mentioned it in a past tasting note (but maybe not) but I still REALLY want to see a tea from 52Teas with both her banana and blackberry flavourings. A Blackberry Banana Smoothie could be really good! So I’m throwing out my bid for that flavour combo yet again!

I am bingeing the new Netflix Halloween series, Daybreak, and randomly thought about the 52 Teas Christmas teas from last year. This one specifically. I have no idea how one thing so clearly connected to Halloween triggered the craving for a Christmas tea but here we are.

The tea is simultaneously quite good but also quite subtle flavorwise (despite two large blackberries being in the filter). Perhaps it is age? I like what I am tasting but I just wish I was tasting more because I get the base and some faint blackberry. Maybe a hint of pastry. Mostly it is just warm.