Strawberry Meringue

A sample from VariaTEA. Dry, the leaf smells so sweet and meringue-like, so I’m hoping that some of this translates into the flavour. I gave 1 tsp of leaf 3.5 minutes in boiling water, and the resulting liquor is a medium golden-brown. No milk.

Brewed, the scent is still sweet and meringue-like, with a hint of strawberry. The initial sip of this one reminds me of a strawberry refreshers bar – sweet, candy-like strawberry, almost a little sherbet-y. There’s a underlying sugary creaminess that does remind me of meringue. The black base makes itself known at the end of the sip, where it stops the flavouring lingering for very long. It’s not bitter or astringent at all, but it does round the sip off a little abruptly. I’d been hoping that the strawberry-sherbet-meringue flavour would stick around a little, but instead it ends almost on a dry, flat note.

I’m glad I didn’t add milk to this one, as I’m not sure I would have been able to taste the flavouring as well. It’s not that it’s subtle, but I do think milk would have drowned this one a bit. As it stands, I’m enjoying this one a fair bit. I like the flavour, although it’s a little artificial tasting, and I’d happily drink another cup if the opportunity arose. It’s not world-changing, but it’s a sweet, pleasant afternoon treat.

Thanks again to VariaTea for sharing this one with me.

Er…. I don’t remember who sent this tea to me :( It was whoever the last person I swapped with was… who I also got some 52teas from…. maybe if I check my Steepster messages I can figure this out…

Anyhow! My first tea from Cornelia Bean, and unfortunately I’m not overly impressed. The strawberry flavour is very similar to a bunch of other strawberry teas I’ve had previously, which is ok (of course, I’m completely blanking on their names. One I had a sample of from *Sil*… and sometimes teas with this flavour are labelled as “strawberry + papaya”, I think… bad memory today, it seems.). It’s kind of light though, but that’s to be expected as a consequence of old age. I’m more disappointed in the meringue bits – they didn’t even fully dissolve for me, so I have no idea what they really add. I may try a second infusion in less water, adding the other half of the packet into the infuser, and see what results. Otherwise, this tea is probably very similar to those other ones I mentioned, that I’ll have to look up.

ETA: I believe the tea I was referring to would be “Yaya Strawberry” by Steep City, and I believe the swapper in question was Courtney, although I am nowhere near 100% sure about that.

ETA2: This also ended up being a sipdown. Loved the strawberry flavour, but didn’t find any real meringuey-ness, and as I’ve had that same fruitiness before, this is a bit of a miss for me for sure.

another from VariaTEA this one was also a miss for me, but not as badly as the previous one. There’s almost like a vague memory of strawberry here, and i’m not sure i’d pin point anything as “meringue” A fairly uneventuful cup of tea for me, but again, i dDO like trying teas! so thank you Variatea!

Sipdown (140/147)!

Thank you VariaTEA for the sample! I decided the best way to use it would be as a cold brew, so that’s the method I went with. It had a relatively long cold brew time of like 18 hours…

Honestly, I don’t remember much about what this one tasted like so I guess I’ll have to default to the notes I wrote for myself:

- Fairly Smooth
- Creamy/Vanilla Notes
- Mild Strawberry Notes
- Decent Overall

So I guess I had positive enough things to say about it, but I suppose the fact I hardly remember it probably says something too, right?

Maybe I don’t recall it too much though because I drank it during my extended cleaning shift at work which was until around Midnight, and I was actually pretty busy. It was an interesting night; I closed the store with my Manager (the Witch) who I guess hadn’t closed in like half a year (she typically just works mornings). I had to walk her through the closing process and basically reteach her how to do everything.

Hopefully it gave her some perspective into just how much she’s asking of us every night when we close: it’s not so much that her tasks for us are hard or challenging, it’s just that she assigns so many of them that it’s not realistic for a two person team (one of which HAS to be on till) to accomplish them all without either doing a sloppy job or sacrificing our break times. There’s only so much time in the evening…

I enjoyed this tea when I initially had it but overtime I have lost interest. Into the GCTTB it goes, where hopefully, it will be enjoyed by others. So long sweet strawberry tea. It was fun while it lasted.