308 Tasting Notes
I cold-brewed this overnight last night for iced tea today because I knew it would be very hot today. I’m so glad I did because this is so good iced!
The lemon is bright & refreshing, with an invigorating bite from the ginger & a vibrant kiss of black pepper & cinnamon. The black tea base is smooth & flavorful. The overall cup is not overly spicy/peppery, but there’s enough kick to it that the taste buds are doing the happy dance. I did add some sweetener to it to enhance the overall presence of the spices & I like the way it brings out the flavor of the spices without making it taste too sweet.
This is a blend I had contemplated for a while now, I’m glad I finally decided to just make it!
I crafted this tea to try to be an improvised version of Black Silk Chocolate Milk Qu Hao from Frank’s era because trying to source the Qu Hao at a price and/or minimum purchase within my budget was proving an impossible task for me. Frank’s source for the tea no longer carries it, and one of my sources was able to locate it for me but I would have had to purchase so much of the tea that I wouldn’t have been able to store all that tea, much less sell all of it at a price that would have even allowed me to break even. So, reblending it is not going to happen, at least not for the foreseeable future.
so, instead, I decided to try to improvise and create something similar, without being exactly that tea. The blend of teas I used for this blend is one of my favorites: Gu Zhang – which has a natural chocolate-y tone to it, then I added a small amount of Yunnan & Assam to it to help round out the flavor just a bit. I like the base, it is really rich & flavorful.
It’s been AGES since I last had the Black Silk Milk Chocolate blend from Frank, but, I think this tea hits the mark. It’s chocolate-y in a way that reminds me of chocolate milk when it’s chilled & lightly sweetened, but when it’s hot as I’m drinking it right now, it tastes a lot more like Pinwheel cookies, hence the name. (I hope those that make the cookies will not notice little old me and want to seek legal action, I just like the name, really.)
Anyway, I really love how this one turned out!
It’s back – for a very limited time! It’s a great wake-me-up kind of tea. A very bold, rich CTC Assam blended with marshmallow root & vanilla bean. It’s so good!
Please don’t click on the “buy now” button on Steepster’s page for this tea as it won’t take you to my website to purchase this tea, it will instead take you to a tea from Adagio that is not at all like this tea. Instead, visit my website if you’re interested in this tea! Thanks!
Another one, please message me.
Hey, @derk! I did message you on it already. :) Thanks!
Where did my comment go?
Hi @ashmanra – did you comment on this note? I didn’t see it. :(
I am wondering if Adagio deleted it? It was an observation that putting their link there was disappointing and not the actions of a good tea company.
I had actually typed a much more strongly worded one, backspaced it and put a nicer version, but it seems to have disappeared.
@ashmanra – Interesting. Yes, I agree with you, it’s not the actions of a very good company.
Perhaps I made a mistake and didn’t post it properly. It was rather late. I will try to give the benefit of the doubt.
To be honest they are so inactive with ever doing anything involved with this site (look at how much we have to beg any time the dashboard goes down!) that I can’t imagine they would take the time or effort to delete a single comment, especially one posted over the weekend.
I expect you are right, Mastress Alita. It is quite possible that after I deleted my rather heated comment I may have typed the second and thought I sent it but didn’t. My apologies for jumping to a conclusion that was almost certainly wrong.
Sipping on a glass of this – cold-brewed! As delicious as this tea is served hot, it’s even better as an iced tea! I cold-brewed it overnight, and it tastes so good. It reminds me a bit of a Moroccan mint blend with a twist of cantaloupe!
The mint is forward, but not overwhelming or in a toothpaste-y way. It’s just a crisp, refreshing note of mint with a juicy note of sweet melon. The green tea is smooth & earthy. A really lovely blend, I think this is going to be a perfect beverage during these hot days of summer!
This tea is so good (If I do say so myself!) It’s so good that my s/o has declared it’s one of the top 5 teas I’ve ever crafted. I don’t know if I’d go that far, but it IS really good. The base is a Yunnan grown Assamica black tea (and it is beautiful!) and the natural flavors of the unaltered leaf is that of stone fruit & caramel/molasses so it suggested to me that I create a blend with stone fruit & something that would be enhanced with those dark, burnt sugar notes. Since I happened to have some freeze dried apricots on hand, that’s what I went with. I also added some peaches because I thought – a drunken apricot isn’t gonna notice that a peach came to the party.
The brandy plays so well with the caramel-y notes. It’s really a beautiful blend – and it tastes so good!
Currently sipping this tea. When I first decided to craft this tea, I was surprised that it was not a tea that we had currently blended before. We had created the Banana Coconut Cream Pie Houjicha & then later the version with white tea & houjicha – but never just a Banana Cream Pie tea. How could that be, given my love for banana teas?
Anyway, it was high time I remedy that! I slightly overleafed this particular pot of tea and I must admit that it’s even better when a little overleafed (sorry!) It’s really good when prepared according to package parameters, however, when it’s overleafed, the black tea base tastes a bit more robust while not sacrificing the flavor of banana cream pie.
I taste banana, I taste the creamy custard and a hint of pastry. I even get a note of the whipped cream topping. So nice. An ideal breakfast tea when overleafed like this. While conducting taste testing sessions with this tea, there were a couple of times when I had forgotten that I had a cup of tea somewhere (lol) and I’d return to it gone cold. It was really good cold too! I also tried it cold-brewed and it makes a really nice cold brew.
This one is almost gone although I will be adding a couple more pouches to the website later this afternoon – so if you go to the website looking for it, please be patient with me!
How could I forget Banana Coconut Cream Pie Houjicha?!?! Is that one eligible for future holiday box polls?
Hi tea-sipper: Actually, no. Houjicha is a difficult to package tea because it’s very “bulky” – it takes up a lot of space in a package without adding much weight. 9 grams of Houjicha takes up twice the room of 9 grams of most other teas (the same is true of most white teas). That’s why I don’t include white teas in the holiday box as well.
Ah okay. I knew that rule was for white tea, wasn’t sure on houjicha! I probably knew this in the past at some point, which is why I didn’t vote for it. :D
However, it’s important to still mention it because anything that I can’t (for whatever reason) add to the poll, I will add to my reblend list for the next year, and when it comes time for me to decide what to reblend at any given time (I generally do 1 reblend every month, some months I do a whole month of reblends, others, I don’t do any reblends but usually at least 1 per month) I turn to my reblend list. :)
okay. I will remember this. :D
I knew I was planning on preparing tacos for dinner tonight, so I decided to cold-brew this tea overnight so that I could have a delicious iced tea today that goes really well with tacos! (I’m sure that it goes well with other foods too, but the mango/lime combo screams tacos to me!)
Anyway, this blend is so good. The combination of mango & lime is a winner. The mango is pleasantly sweet-tart & the light green rooibos base is really refreshing, while the lime brightens the sip. It’s light, sweet/tart & thirst quenching.
This tea is really good hot, but I prefer it cold-brewed. It doesn’t need sweetening, but I find that with a little bit of honey – it just brings it to a whole other level. Amazing!
I finished measuring out this tea last night & I decided it was time to have a cup! The aroma of this tea was absolutely INTOXICATING as I measured it out. I truly adore this tea.
I have to admit that when it comes to cherry teas, I tend to be just a little timid about it, because there’s a very thin line between cherry flavored & tastes like medicine & if I’m going to be totally honest, more often than not, one person’s cherry taste is another person’s medicine. So, putting a tea out there that tastes of medicine is a bit intimidating.
I’m happy to report that – there’s not a hint of medicine in this cup. Just sweet black cherry notes, hints of fluffy vanilla marshmallow & of course, a rich, chocolate-y note from the Fujian base. I love how well this one turned out. So good!
This tea is back in stock (although it’s going fast!) & I’m so happy I decided to reblend it before the hot days of summer have arrived – because it makes a spectacular iced tea! It is one of my all-time favorite blends of 52Teas, and it is – in the very least – top 3 favorites from Frank’s era.
Green tea, marshmallow root, limes & pineapple – when cold brewed – amazing!
When Roswell Strange ordered a Create-a-Blend tea & told me that they wanted a Rhubarb blend – I was just a little thrown off because I’ve never worked with rhubarb before. I’ve never cooked it, I’ve never even eaten it. The closest I’ve ever come to a rhubarb before working on this tea was spotting them on occasion in the produce market.
So, I asked Roswell Strange if they wouldn’t mind if I took some time to familiarize myself with the flavor – and allow me to play around with the components that I’d use to create the tea to figure out the best path forward with a previously very unfamiliar flavor profile. (I would say that I’m still somewhat unfamiliar with it, but far less now than I once was.)
But after having taken the time to work with it, I’m really glad that Roswell Strange ordered this blend because it’s not only really delicious, but it has also inspired additional rhubarb flavors.
This blend starts with a blend of black teas including some Lapsang Souchong. The smoke isn’t overwhelming here, but it’s strong enough that you’re not going to miss it in the sip. The Rhubarb flavor is tart, a little sweet & quite pleasant. It melds really nicely with the hints of smoke & the touch of cinnamon. The cinnamon notes develop as I continue to sip, they were barely noticeable in the first sip or two, but as I continue to drink it, the cinnamon continues to pop. It adds a pleasant roundness to the overall cup which is smoke, sweet-tart rhubarb & a gentle warmth of cinnamon.
