SpecialTeas
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One of my BC vacation haul teas!
There’s something wildly familiar tasting about this tea to me, but I can’t place my finger on what it is specifically – I do think it’s another tea, though. It’s very pleasant with a thick toffee type of flavour that’s kind of equal parts richly sweet and also dark and slightly tasting of burnt sugar. It’s well balanced with the orange, which is more of a cooked down type of orange flavour verse something fresh and either sweet or zesty. It reminds me loosely of an orange zest infused creme brulee, even though there’s not actually a whole lot of a creaminess going on in the tea.
3 tbs, 10 minutes, 600 mL
It is very woody (as expected, this is literally tree bark), but has a very interesting flavour. I think it would pair well with another herb like orange peel or lemon peel. I personally find this extremely bitter in the aftertaste. My friend thought it was great, but the bitterness was too much for me. Maybe a shorter steep + some other flavours.
Flavors: Bark, Bitter, Wood
Preparation
Strong lychee flavour, but the tea base is too strong for me. I brewed for about 3 minutes and the water was not boiling, yet somehow it ended up a bit tannic and bitter.
Flavors: Bitter, Fruity, Lychee, Tannic, Tannin
Preparation
I feel like some teas are just destined to make bitter tea. Nothing you can do will counter it, it is just a bad base. Sometimes they work iced, but mostly its one of the “nice flavour, but will use it up and then never buy it again” sort of teas.
Heavy on tannin but lacking in flavour. It’s just kind of sour and bland. I think this sample is too old. :(
Not gonna rate it because I think it’s age-damaged. It seems like a popular variety, so I’ll have to see if I can get a fresher sample from somewhere.
Preparation
Continuing on the journey through my ancient stash of SpecialTeas packets, this one is a bit of a conundrum. The flavour is nice and has a bit of sweetness, but it feels thin, somehow – lacking that fullness I like in black tea. It’s not bad, and I’ll enjoy my pot of it, but it wouldn’t have been one I would buy again. I may overleaf with the remainder of the sample and see if that helps to enrich the flavour.
Preparation
For my birthday, I considered Birthday Cake rooibos, but definitely needed caffeine in my morning, so I opted for this. Maybe birthday cake in the afternoon. Anyway, I’m sure this sample is pretty stale, but it was nice and mellow, smooth and satisfying. I have always adored Ceylon, and this is no exception. It doesn’t bowl me over, but soothes and envelops, while waking me up gently. A nice cup!
Preparation
Yet another in my dwindling supply of ancient SpecialTeas samplers. This tea smelled malty and a little tart while brewing – almost reminiscent of vinegar, but not in a strong or unappetizing way. The taste is light and soft, however not weak at all. It’s got ever so slight a hint of citrus in the aftertaste. Really liking this tea. I might get some from elsewhere so I can try a sample that isn’t many years old and see how it compares. I’ll be sad to see this one go. SpecialTeas had pretty nice sample sizes, so I should be able to get another 3 small pots out of the bag.
Flavors: Citrus, Malt, Tea
Preparation
Well, finally getting into some samples I’ve had in my cupboard for years. Shame!! They have at least been in hermetically sealed bags, but I don’t know how they’d compare versus when they were fresher. My tea neglect phase went on far too long, and now this company isn’t even around any longer. Too bad; they had great prices and lovely sampler packs. I’m sure there are great alternatives.
Anyhow, this is a nice black tea with some fruitiness and a bit of a tartness to it. Reminiscent of red currant a little. The main flavour is a bit malty, and just a very satisfying black. I’ve always been partial to Ceylon blacks in the past, so it’s nice to try a different non-blend. Quite enjoyable!
Flavors: Malt, Red Fruits, Smoke, Tart, Tea
Preparation
this tea is the whole reason i headed in to special teas originally! i met a woman who works on campus who saw me carrying tea which started a conversation……. lol. ‘the rembeng!’ she said. ’that’s all you need to know…. that and they’re almost always out of it!’
i have never had a tea even remotely like this. it looks like tiny perfect ball bearings….. THIS is an ASSAM in vietnam? i wondered? okay. finer than any coffee grounds— believe me, i managed to spill it. we became intimately acquainted!
the second i poured water over it the water transformed into a charcoal colour. no waiting.
it didn’t smell like anything particularly familiar… a vegetal assam…. but i was missing something. that said, it was early yet, the steep was only a minute into three.
honey, yes. malt yes. sweet caramelized seaweed, yes. a perfectly smooth black base, oh yes. evolves over the span of degrees, each flavour taking its turn as the lead separately. it’s like they caramelized the tea….. how do you caramelize a tea? astonishing.
for the record, i had to call this morning and have them HOLD 100 grams of this for me. by the time i got there their entire supply was exhausted. i absolutely see why. i picked up a friend and offered her a sip….. i didn’t get much of it after that and i still have lipstick all over my travel mug, LMAO. (she apologized but didn’t stop stealing sips, ha ha ha)
would i recommend this tea? HELL YES! prepare to have your mind blown…..
Preparation
Sounds like probably a CTC tea http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crush,Tear,Curl
;0) yup. says so in the name. not like any ctc i’ve ever had in my life. not in taste, not in physical texture.
This is another tea I’ve been saving up knowing that once my tin is gone there’s no more where it came from. :(
The smell is incredible – it made me think of freshly-baked shortbread cookies and it made my stomach growl it was so good. The flavour is just as wonderful with a distinctly cookie-ish taste with just a hint of sugary sweetness and almond flavour is that of lightly toasted almonds rather than fresh (or almond extract).
I think I might be in love…which is problematic. Has anyone managed to find an alternate supplier?
Preparation
I’d check to see if it’s the same ingredient list as TeaGschwendner; they supply many teas to North American companies, and have one by the same name. I’m going to hazard it is; same ingredients, and the pictures look the same. http://steepster.com/teas/simpson-and-vail/21388-almond-sugar-cookie
I liked the Almond cookie by Simpson and Vail but I’ve never had this tea before, so your results may vary :)
Sipdown no. 90 of the year 2014! Yay! Now of course, I’m so close to 100 I can taste it—pardon the pun—and want to get over the 90 hump. It remains to be seen whether I can do that today without setting myself up for failing to reach the at-least-one-per-day goal later this week. Thank you President’s Day.
I tried steeping a little cooler and longer today. 205 for 4 minutes.
The thing that makes this less than excellent for me is that it’s just not quite sweet enough. It’s not that the caramel itself necessarily has to be sweeter. A sweeter tea base would, I think, work just as well. I could, I suppose, put sweetener in it, but I’d be afraid it would take several tries to figure out what kind and how much works best. Since this is a sipdown of a tea that is no longer made by a company that no longer exists, I think I’ll spend my efforts elsewhere. ;-)
So I have a bit more time now and I thought I’d give this another shot to taste properly after my failed attempt yesterday.
I am going to follow the package directions for time and temp for this go round.
I described the dry leaf’s caramel smell yesterday as syrupy, and that seems right again today. After steeping, the tea smell is primary, with caramel around the edges. There’s a briskness to the tea’s scent. It has a chestnut colored liquor.
The flavor is a more toasty caramel than the American Tea Room’s (which was more milky) and I generally prefer toasty. It’s not a strong flavor, though, and strangely, not very sweet. I wonder whether this is because my steep this time didn’t have many caramel pieces, and I’ll have to watch out for that as I work through the sample.
It tastes less like a surface flavor when drunk hot. It’s more integrated, but I don’t think the balance is quite right. It needs a bit more oomph on the caramel side to balance out the tea, and a bit more sweetness. As it is, there’s a tiny bit of bitterness around the edges that I’m not crazy about especially with a confectionary tea.
I like it better than the ATR version, but it’s not breaking my heart that it’s no longer available. I would choose both the Kusmi Caramel and the Dammann Freres Caramel-Toffee over this. But I’ll enjoy experimenting with it and trying to get the best flavor out of it while I still have it.
Flavors: Caramel
Preparation
http://www.americantearoom.com/
I don’t know about buying from Canada because I’m in the states.
I just can’t seem to get a break today—I put this on to steep before a conference call and by the time I poured it it was no longer hot. Accordingly, I’m not rating this one just yet either.
There’s a nice black tea scent with a hint of caramel in the packet. Stronger tea than caramel. The caramel smells like syrup. This carries through in the aroma of the steeped tea. It’s a medium brown orange tea.
The flavor is fairly light on the caramel, similar to my impression of the vanilla from yesterday. It’s more of a surface flavor than one with richness to it, but it’s definitely caramel and pleasant enough.
Will revisit soon, without interruption (I hope).
ah, surface flavor…don’t you hate that? i always hope for a rich, full-bodied experience where the flavor components are perfectly integrated with the tea. (well, who doesn’t?)
another thing i can’t stand is when the aroma and the flavor are two disparate entities. makes me so. sad.
Agreed. I tend to prefer the flavors that are well-integrated, but I can enjoy a more surface balance as well if the flavors are rich enough and play off against each other well.
Sipdown no. 89 of the year 2014. So close to 90! I’m going to have to find a way to get there today without totally messing up my nascent sipdown strategy. I haven’t completely figured it out yet, but it involves trying to position a number of teas of different types so that they have at most a serving or two left in the hopes that I can keep up the pace of at least one sipdown a day for the foreseeable future.
This isn’t my favorite black vanilla or even close to it. It’s somewhat underpowered and the more I taste it, the more the vanilla strikes me as borderline into that fakey bakey vanilla that I experienced in the Numi decaf and the Adagio vanilla oolong. It’s trying to be something other than that. It’s trying really hard, but falling short, as it is neither creamy nor vanilla bean rich (like the flavor of French vanilla ice cream), either of which would have been fine with me. Sometimes creamy vanillas are really well done, but I’d rather have a rich bean flavor. Unfortunately, this is neither. Which is great because it means I won’t have to miss not being able to order it with SpecialTeas out of business and all.
Made some of this, put in in a tumbler and took it with me while we ran errands today. I used less leaf this time and also a bit lower temp and longer steep time. The flavor did seem to have more vanilla that way, but something still wasn’t working quite right for me in the balance. As the tea got cooler, the vanilla came out more and more and actually became almost too sweet toward the end.
Second to last SpecialTeas sample. Since I started today with an Earl Grey crème, I thought I’d continue with the vanilla theme.
There’s not a strong vanilla scent in the packet. In fact, it’s almost chocolaty (there’s that vanilla-chocolate continuum thing again). I can see the little pieces of vanilla bean in the tea. The liquor is a pretty russet color. I get mostly tea in the steeped aroma, and it’s a hearty smell, deep, a little woody, a little fruity.
I used a lot of leaf as directed on the packet. It said 2 level tsps. for 6 oz of water, and I used a little less than that but still more than I’d use ordinarily. The result is a very strong tea with a beany (as opposed to creamy) vanilla flavor around the edges. I think it would be better without so much leaf, and I intend to try it with a normal amount next time.
There’s a definite beany vanilla in the aftertaste, but it doesn’t envelope the tea the way I wish it would. It’s a fine line between overpowering the tea and underpowering it. This one seems underpowered in the vanilla department. It’s still tasty, but it’s not a top vanilla pick.
Maybe that will change with a different amount of leaf. We’ll see. As with all of these SpecialTeas samples, I’m mildly relieved that I didn’t fall in love, given that the company no longer exists.
Flavors: Vanilla
Preparation
Sipdown no. 92 of the year 2014! Three down, two to go on the SpecialTeas samples.
Taking off a small number of points because the last couple of days this has been heavier on the coconut oil than it needs to be, probably because I was getting to the bottom of the packet. The flavor was still good, just a little on the oily and heavy side unlike the initial taste.
I have a lot of other coconut teas, so fortunately, I won’t miss this one.
Not quite a palate cleanser but a nice, calm, well-implemented single flavor after the Buttered Cinnamon Raisin Toast.
Coconut is a flavor I can quite enjoy if I’m in the mood. Sometimes it’s really heavenly. I feel as though today I’m pushing the mood a little. That’s what comes from feeling the need to tee things up for sipdown I suppose.
I think I would have been more in the mood for a toastier coconut today, but this will do.