Main Squeeze

Today this tea was my savior!

I closed last night at work, which meant I was home at around 11PM – and then today I opened and closed, which meant my shift was from 8AM to 7PM (we closed early because of the holiday). Not counting breaks, that’s a 10 hour shift! I’m exhausted…

Plus side? Stat pay! And, because my shift was so long I ended up with two hours of over time stat pay. I’m just beat right now (I ordered in pizza again… welp) but man that’s awesome!

Anyway, this was my savior because of the massive and noticeable energy boost it gave me when I drank the timolino full of it that I had brought for break. Such a tasty, tropical citrus blend and such an energy booster.

You go Mate, four for you Mate!

Backlogging from Monday.

This is very refreshing like orange juice but with a sweet tropical aftertaste. I am definitely getting hints of pineapple and papaya. Still a bit earthy from the mate base. I like that there are no artificial ingredients in this blend.

I put some in the fridge to cool, and it is good chilled too. The same notes shine through as I mentioned.

I cold steeped this…

In one word? DON’T!

It tastes so so strongly of mate. I’ve had to dump the whole jug. :(

Dry leaves smell almost like Elf Help. The first time I had this was little over a month ago and I found it to be a bit weak for my tastes.

Tonight I decided I wanted something fruity- it was a toss up between the remainder of this or Kiwi’s Big Adventure. Remembering how watery it was the first time, I dumped the last of my fourteen gram sample into my teapot and let it sit for six minutes.

Taking the wet leaves out, wooooo! Is there really no ginger OR orange in this? It smells almost exactly like my ginger pineapple orange drink that I get at the university. It’s zappy.

The flavour is more toned down than the aroma but it’s still deceiving! The leafy materiel and pineapple come together to give it a pleasant acidic citrus note but it’s mostly sweetness- like SunnyD? Safflower contributes a nice oily sweet texture.

This time around, Main Squeeze wasn’t a bad drink at all! I bet this would be good iced. Still, I can’t help but think this is some relative to Elf Help every time I take a sip. Maybe it’s the candy orange papaya notes.

1.5 tsp for 300mL water @ 95C, steeped 5 minutes.

Oranges, earthy mate, and some bitterness in the finish – as from orange peel. Tasty and potent; I’m not done my cup yet and feel a buzz already.

Dry Leaf Nose: Sweet and orangey, like orange juice or sherbet.

Liquor: Golden green with a slight cloudiness.

Flavour: The orange and mate are prominent with the papaya taking rung on the palate. The natural sweetness of the blend is refreshing and well-balanced by the slightly bitter nature of the green mate – an appealing, fresh and orangey flavour.

This one’s great! My new favourite mate, besides Chocolate Rocket, but who knows…I haven’t tried the other new chocolate-y one yet.

Hot, this basically tastes like orange juice, although it lacks something very particular to orange juice…some of the acidity, maybe? I think the other fruits sweeten it a bit. Underneath that you can taste the mate, but it blends well; although a bit of a bitter roasted flavour comes out as it cools to room temperature, so definitely drink it hotter.

Or maybe colder? I only got 10g of this, which makes about three gourds, so I haven’t iced it yet; but I imagine it’s going to be amazing iced. I’m definitely going back for a tin of this to have in the mornings with toast and eggs!

Oh yes, and I also got the little ceramic gourd and teeny bombilla DAVIDsTEA is selling right now. I’ve seen traditional ones for sale before, and never got them; mainly because I didn’t trust myself to care for them properly, and because the bombillas were severely marked up.

Then I saw this guy in DT: http://www.davidstea.com/ceramic-mate-gourd

And I thought, naw, I totally have to do this cutesy-wutesy easy version. I love it! The only complaint I have is about how the ceramic gives off heat, which makes it very hard to hold until it cools down. But it’s very easy to clean, and the teal silicone attachment holds the bombilla perfectly in place so it doesn’t go all over the place. The bombilla works fine, too; I left the mate to swirl around in the gourd, and the bombilla sucks up all the liquid without getting clogged.

Since I am internally six years old, I delight in now being able to drink tea through a straw. So naturally, I started experimenting with said straw. (Which I’m also going to have to buy replacements for, because I just know I will use this thing until it breaks.)

Back when all the stuff at my local Teaopia was 75% off, I picked up this thing which looks like a plastic coffee cup to-go lid with a removable infuser attached to the bottom. The infuser isn’t large, and is mostly kind of useless, but I discovered yesterday that the lid part fits PERFECTLY on (what else?) a Perfect Mug. And the bombilla? Fits neatly through the little drinking hole in the lid.

So I’ve now discovered a way to drink hot tea in a cup with a lid and a straw. I don’t think it gets more Westernized/Western bastardized than that.

Felt all blah waking up, figured I’d drink some mate and take a nap so I’d wake up energized.

Yeah…woke up at 1pm.

I found myself wanting this, yet skeptical when I saw it described as tasting like orange juice….but it does. It’s like that Simply Orange (that’s not simply orange it turns out) with pineapple, and papaya too.

This is definitely one of the better flavored green mates I’ve had, although I prefer to be able to taste a bit of the mate itself. It’s pretty covered up in this one by being so fruity. If this manages to still be around when I finally drink down tea, I would definitely get more. Thanks Kittenna!

I’ve been wanting to try more mate’s since I found that I love Honeydew Mate by DavidsTea. So I decided to pick up some of this one this week. The dry smell won me over, it smells like juicy oranges!

I steeped this for 5 minutes today, first cup of the day. I might be going grad dress shopping later with a friend, so I need a bit of energy to help me decide if I will do that or just stay and drink tea haha. I’m also reading a pretty good book, so that is also a factor. Anyways, tea! The liquor is a sunny yellow, matching the citrusy smell! To me, it isn’t overly tropical smelling, it’s more just oranges, orange juice like.

The taste is quite good! I am beginning to know what green mate tastes like, it definitely does have an earthiness that I enjoy. The orange flavor is a bit more tropical I suppose, but mostly this is like an orange juice with an earthy flavor added to make it almost more natural to me. It’s quite smooth and very refreshing, and I am starting to feel the mate wake up.

Overall, this is a tasty blend. I still prefer Honeydew Mate, but that might be because it has green rooibos in it. I should buy some green rooibos to mix with this just to see what it does to the flavor! This was a nice purchase though, and I might pick up more of it in the future, depending how attached I get to it.

So I went to package some of this up for momo the other day, and was curious as to what I thought of it, so I checked on here… and lo and behold, I had not ever actually tried it! Or at least, it appears that it isn’t logged. Given the amount in the bag, my suspicion is that I didn’t actually brew any of it up (in spite of Steepster’s apparent tendency to eat tasting notes). Either way, it had been sitting in my work drawer for a while, and I had no memory of drinking it, so figured I may as well give it a shot!

Turns out that it’s one of the best green mate blends I’ve tasted. Not that I’ve had many, but most seem to churn my stomach a little, but I downed two cups of this one quite happily. It’s probably because it tastes quite fruity, which disguises the flavour of the mate (which is perfect for me!) I actually think it tasted kind of like a less crazy-sweet version of Mango ’n Friends (available from multiple vendors, it appears), which I rather enjoyed when Azzrian sent me a sample of it.

Anyhow, in spite of it being rather tasty for a mate, it would still not likely be my drink of choice if I was given one, unless all the options were green mates. Haha. I imagine it would make a tasty iced beverage in the summer as well, though not sure the remaining cup’s worth of my sample will last that long.