Raspberry

I am backlogging this from yesterday. It took me a week to get a little better of my cold. Yesterday was the first time I wanted tea during the week, before that I could barely breathe through my nose and everything tasted exactly the same.

I might have had this a little too early, because I still couldn’t really taste much. Thankfully it is strong enough that I could sort of make out the raspberry flavor and a hint of black tea. Tasty enough for my first cup of tea after a long week in bed recovering from the worst cold I have ever had… So glad it seems to be coming to an end! On a positive note, I got towatch a lot of Dr. Who!

If you want a proper tasting note on this tea, where I can actually taste it, please see my precious note! :)

Backlog 6/10

I got this one in my swap with darby, thank you! Last weekend I went on a craaazy spree realizing that I could ice any tea I had…. I know that seems stupid but I just don’t know why I never made that connection.

So, I made some of this up double strength and then poured it over ice. This one is…. Okay. I found that I mostly tasted black tea so I added some sugar and it tasted the same so I added a little more and then all I could taste was fake raspberry :( Sigh. I have another raspberry black from brandy and I’m gonna try that one soon to see how it compares.

ADAGIO RASPBERRY I EXPECTED MORE FROM YOU!!!!

My New Tea Shipment is HERE! YAY! I randomly chose – out of the ones I ordered – to sip first – and here it is! It’s the Raspberry Flavored Black. At first sniff this tea reminds me of Raspberry chocolate almost. It seems to steep quickly and the aroma lingers. The coloring is that of a regular black tea. The taste is a medium flavored black tea with slight raspberry flavors throughout. I know I will enjoy this tea most mornings! First sample – a success!

This tea is… disappointing. The bf asked for “something raspberry” tonight and this ended up being what we settled on: I remember it being so-so the first time I tried it, but tea is always worth a second cup! However, it didn’t really end up much better this time. It’s very fake raspberry. Not in a bad, icky, artificial way, it just tastes like raspberry hard candy rather than fresh fruit or a jammy quality (both of which I’d find acceptable). This isn’t a bad tea, it’s just not to my taste—I usually end up mixing it with other things like Adagio’s cream to cut some of that candy quality. The weird thing is their other raspberry tea I have (Ripe for Romance) isn’t fake raspberry at all and more jammy/ripe fruit-y. I wonder why a company would use two different raspberry flavors instead of just, you know, the good one?

This is pretty tart. It isn’t as good as I thought it would be on its own. Thankfully I plan to pair it with Adagio’s cream and ceylon Sonata teas down the road! We’re having a Whovian Christmas gathering at the tea shop I used to sell my teas in and I said I would mix something up for the event. :) Excited for this, even if not so excited for this one on its own.

GRRRR! ARGH!

I’m mildly irritated at just about the whole entire world today.

I picked this one pretty much at random from the cupboard, going for something that I could finish off. I have a lot of samples left that have only one go left in them or so and I need to get around to getting rid of it. (And no, I’m not particularly interested in giving them away just because there isn’t much left. I believe in swap via wishlist or because I think someone might like a particular one (or it’s one that I like enough that I want others to try it too)). Maybe I should make a finish-this-first pile ala Bethany.

I’m rather busy spewing my irritated rant elsewhere on the internet at the moment and the tea was semi-forgotten in the process. It’s just lukewarm now and in this condition it’s fairly boring. Shame actually, because I can see from my previous rating that I’ve otherwise enjoyed it.

Maybe what I really needed wasn’t any particular flavour but just something warm to drink. I’m not in a condition to pay too much attention to flavour profile anyway. I just needed a cup of tea. The kind was pretty much irrelevant at this point.

If any of that even made sense.

My first non-teabox write up in a while (though a couple more of the teabox related ones might pop up later today). I have more of this tea at my house than I thought. Fiance really likes this, so assuming I was out, I ordered him three ounces. Of course, only to find another sealed three ounce bag in hiding a couple weeks ago.

So we made a pitcher of this last night and drank it iced with milk, sugar and boba pearls — kind of like a milk tea. It makes a creamy dessert-y tea that way and the raspberry flavor is more front-and-center. Nothing stellar, but it fulfilled its purpose. I foresee lots of this iced with how much we have now, too.

After all the trouble I had getting these flavored teas to taste right, my husband (who doesn’t drink tea, and have never made a cup in his life) managed to make a pretty good pot.

I taste the Ceylon pretty front and center today, which I hadn’t experienced before. The raspberry is just a mild, sweet, syrupy taste… not bad. Not great, but not bad.

I have had this tea before, but never posted my review of it…
Here’s my first impression:

In the bag it smelled slightly medicinal, as raspberry sometimes can. Once brewed however the smell sweetened up and was quite enticing. The raspberry flavor is more subtle than I would have liked, and the medicinal quality was a bit off-putting. It was pretty disappointing considering I love raspberries so much.

I just revisited this tea, as my husband bought me a big jar of raspberry jam. I’ve been looking at my tea box longingly, just waiting to try this tea out with a big scoop of raspberry jam in the cup. Since my nose was a bit stuffed up & I didn’t want to try out any of the delicate white tea samples that Stacy so generously sent me with my sense of smell compromised. So raspberry tea it is.

Adding the jam in this tea really made a HUGE difference. It actually tastes like raspberries this time around. It’s just as tasty as it cools down, too. Now I can actually drink this tea and not just stare at it taking up space in my tea box. I wish the tea tasted this good without the need for jam, but I’ll take it :)

This is a little too tart to have a true raspberry flavor; I was hoping for something a bit thicker and more jammy, something with the sweetness of a real red raspberry. It’s not a fake raspberry taste, but it’s not great, either. I’d like to try combining this with Adagio’s Cream and see what happens.

If that doesn’t work, this is going in the “to swap” pile.

By the way, Cofftea, I have a running list going of whole or near-whole 1 oz Adagio samples I’d like to swap – I’ll type up and send tonight!