Portsmouth Tea Company
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See All 8 TeasRecent Tasting Notes
Quite a strange tea this is. the leaves are broad (it is made from assamica leaves) the color of the tea for the first infusion was almost a limeamber. the first taste was reminiscent of cheerios (just plain ones) flavor was subtle but lingered creating a fuller body overall. not bad, I’ll have to get some more and have it gong fu and see if I can take her 6-7 infusions deep.
Preparation
It’s a cool, rainy day and I just wanted to curl up with my cats and a warm drink. This is the first time I’ve tried this tea. It smells AMAZING and it’s quite nice to look at, too. There are big chunks of cranberry and apple. You could almost use this as a potpourri. When brewed, the liquid is an attractive pink colour. One of my complaints with fruit tea is that it often SMELLS so good, and then just tastes like water. It is true that the flavour of this herbal infusion is a bit underwhelming in comparison to its smell. However, it is much better than some other fruit teas. The rose hips give it some actual flavour, that when combined with the cranberry and apple aromas make this quite a nice fruit tea. I drank it straight, but it might also be nice with a touch of honey which I find gives fruit tisaines more of the flavour you expect them to have based on their smell.
Preparation
UGH I HAVE AN ESSAY DUE IN 13 HOURS AND I HAVE LIKE NOTHING DONE YET AAHHHHHH
Um. Yeah, in case it wasn’t clear, I have severe essay anxiety and can never get anything done before the last minute because I get so freaked out. Sigh. I still have 4 more pages to write….
So I went over to my tea chest to procrastinate (!!!) and I was shuffling around some tins and my tin of Earl Grey Le Creme opened up on its own and emptied itself out on the floor of the chest. I managed to salvage most of it, though, yay.
Anyway, I prepared this in my new 12 oz. Bodum coffee French press, which I am liking so far, despite some kinks at first…my filter is a little bent and hard to plunge up, so it doesn’t form a total seal and some leaves can leak through the gaps. Anyway, I made myself a cup of this and added in some Rockstar Recovery, which is a lemonade-ish energy drink that tastes surprisingly good (it’s made of 3% lemon juice, and only as 10 calories per serving but tastes like it’s made with real sugar). The mixture turned out rather nice! Kind of like a very citrusy Arnold Palmer, which I guess it technically is.
Anyway, WHAT AM I DOING ON STEEPSTER I NEED TO BE WORKING ON MY ESSAY AHHHHHHH!!!!
Preparation
Ah, the good old days of stewing on an essay until the last minute and pulling an all nighter to get it to come out. Let there be tea!
(sigh) if only I had discovered just how joyful tea is back when I was in college. Back then, I was only just discovering it, and doing so quite timidly… Most of my tea consumption back then was left to when I would visit a tea room (which would be on the weekends with my little girl… who is now 17!) Memories…
Just found a tin of this, which had somehow migrated to the bookshelf! I’ll have to write a thorough review of this some other time, as it is one of my absolute favorites. This morning, mixing it with some English Breakfast (Twinings), milk, and sweetener. Simultaneously floral and cozy.
I’m not sure if this tea has gotten spoiled or not…but there’s kind of a weird smell to it. Perhaps the chocolate bits or white bits (coconut?) went rancid? shrugs
Intrepid tea drinker that I am, I went ahead and steeped up a cup, and added some milk and sugar.
At first, I was like :x but then I was like :D
Hot, this is meh. There is a slightly fruity-almost-tart-but-not-quite-tart taste that’s throwing this off for me. I can kind of taste chocolate, but no coconut. It’s just sort of average-to-strange tasting tea.
But then! I left my nearly full cup cool, and came back to it. And oh, mah, gawd. It tastes JUST like chocolate milk. It looks like chocolate milk. It smells like chocolate milk. But best of all, it TASTES like chocolate milk! :O
But, alas, I am not looking for chocolate milk, I’m looking for tea, so I’m giving this a middling score.
Preparation
This tea (dry) smells SOOOO GOOD! (Teen Girl Squad reference, anyone?) Sweet and chocolately, but in a honey-ish way rather than a refined-white-sugar, Nestle chocolate bar way. I’m not really good at picking out coconut flavors (I dislike coconut “flavored” things like candies and pina coladas, but like plain coconut, coconut milk, and thai food) but I suppose that’s in there as well. And yum, cream—perhaps that the coconut? If I didn’t already know what flavor this is, I would guess some chocolate-honey-cream combination, which I suppose is pretty close.
Alright, let’s get down to sipping…
The liquor itself isn’t sweet, and is even a little bitter. The bitterness works, though—it just reminds me of chocolate, which is yummy when it’s a tad bitter, right? Surprisingly, honey doesn’t work with the tea very well—it drowns out the tea’s flavor.
Second infusion – lower temp, less bitterness, Splenda – good, but not great.
Maybe this tea needs milk? I don’t have any in the fridge at the moment, grr.
This tea is almost flawless. No bitterness; just the dreamy, delicious combination of strawberry, papaya, and pineapple, and green and black tea. Lovely without sweetener. Without a doubt, I will repurchase this tea. For a more thorough review, see my last tasting note.
After yesterday’s awfulness and Orange Dulce experiment, I knew I wanted something reliable and delicious. Enter Mid-Summer Night’s Dream. I’ve been up all night, and now I have to rush to the library to return an overdue book (which charges $0.02 per minute it’s overdue…eff you Lamont, you stingy bastards). Anyway, I need some caffeine, stat, and MSND always delivers. Plus, it tastes amazing.
I’m not a huge fan of tropical flavored things, but this tea is delightful. Actually, I’m not sure tropical is the right word to describe how this tea tastes. It certainly has bits of tropical fruits in in, but the blend overall doesn’t really taste “tropical”, I guess. It just tastes…dreamy.
I can see cubes of dried fruit (most likely pineapple) and what I think must be dried strawberry mixed in with the green and black leaves. It says to brew at 195 degrees for 3 minutes, so I set the Zarafina to green tea and strong. The resulting liquor is amber with a hint of red.
What I love about this tea is how well the strawberry, papaya, and pineapple notes blend together into something unique. No single flavor is predominant, but if you concentrate especially hard you can pick out each of the flavors. I could sit here all day, inhaling the sweet (but not too sweet), tangy (er, not sure that’s the right word…this isn’t sour or tart, it’s just “exotic”), swirly scent of this tea. Mmm, strawberries…no, wait, pineapple….no, wait, papaya….no, wait, strawberries again.
Although the dry leaf looks like it has more black than green tea in the mix, the liquor tastes mostly like green tea, with a little something extra added. I love that the tea flavor isn’t drowned out by the fruit. I’m not a fan of teas that taste just like their flavoring (once again, boo to Orange Dulce).
One thing I dislike about this tea is that it can be finicky. That’s the trouble with black-green blends—it’s very easy to oversteep the greens. Oversteeping means bitterness, but that can thankfully be fixed with a little sweetener. This would be great with honey, but unfortunately I don’t have any sitting around at the moment, so Splenda will have to do.
Now, off to return that damn book. And to pick up some raw honey to stir into the next infusion.
2nd infusion – even better than the first. lighter and sweeter. Added newly purchased honey for the heck of it – turned into ambrosia. Yum.
It’s not that bad at some places…plus it seems to last forever! :P I don’t use anything in my tea but I use Agave nectar for other things in place of honey and just because I like it!
I read online that it tastes more “neutral” than honey. Maybe I’ll buy a small bottle. Honey does change the way the tea tastes, but that’s okay with me….I LOVE honey! Nom nom nom nom nom.
Steeped it longer and used a bit more leaf in an attempt to get it stronger. Unfortunately, it was a bit too long and it got bitter. Next time I’ll try the regular 5 minutes, but maintain the increase in amount of tea.
Prepared in Adagio IngenuiTEA teapot.
Preparation
Pretty good, but not strong enough. Will steep longer next time.
Steeped 5 minutes at 212°F. Prepared in Adagio IngenuiTEA teapot.