French Breakfast

This is a very lovely cuppa! At first I was put off by it but once it cooled down I LOVE the strong vanilla that comes through:) It’s smooth and strong. Not as strong as an assam but quite good. I thought being a Ceylon it may be very astringent but not much if at all. I love everything I’ve tried so far from Silver Tips Tea…thanks for this free sample guys! I love your company so far:) Generous sample sizes are great:)

2020 has just been the worst of years, it’s a surreal rough one.  I thought the world was handling a global pandemic hopefully well enough, I thought more negative things would be happening during a pandemic (as it doesn’t take much in normal times) but then it takes an utterly bizarre heartbreaking event like the death of George Floyd to really set off a powder keg to everything else.  So many similar things happening to so many people along these lines all the time.  George Floyd is certainly one of the more obnoxious deaths in all aspects here.  Everyone should know better by now how to treat other human beings, let alone law enforcement.  Watching the older man be shoved to the ground for no apparent reason by law enforcement, and just passed by bleeding, when they KNOW how many cameras are out there… These are not the people who should be supposedly protecting people.  Sure, being a cop is a tough job that most people could not do… but if you can’t do it RIGHT, choose another field.  A few bad apples, etc… and that goes for all aspects of these events… a few criminals shouldn’t be used to ruin every person of color’s life.  Every bad cop shouldn’t make it more difficult for every good cop.  Everything being so one sided either/or republican/democrat. Everything is just so generalized all the time!! It’s just been a grieving type of year for so many things.  Anyway… I might just be talking about tea most of the time, but there is so much else in my brainpan, as I’m sure is the same for all of you.

I bought this about a year ago with a handful of other teas from Silver Tips Tea. The name of this one sold me on it — I love the idea of a great FRENCH BREAKFAST tea.  It was really the name because now I’m wondering why the heck I would buy a Ceylon base vanilla that doesn’t even have vanilla pieces in it?  Any decent vanilla tea MUST have vanilla bean IMO.   Ceylon is my least favored black tea, personally the flavor is just not for me. To my tastebuds, Ceylon is just boring and flat. There is vanilla flavoring here but it is faint and the Ceylon that I don’t really like detracts from the vanilla anyway.  The second steep has even less vanilla… So this one isn’t for me… but I’m on the lookout for the best vanilla bean tea….
Steep #1  // 1 1/2 teaspoons for full mug // 18 minutes after boiling  // 2 minute steep
Steep #2  // just boiled //  3-4 min
2020 Sipdowns: 39 Teavivre – Jasmine oolong