New Tasting Notes

I added the tea to the database and forgot to add it to my cupboard, so once again my number goes up! This was in the more recent box sent by Youngest – many thanks!

I used to eat a lot of popcorn with the kettle corn seasoning they sell at the grocery store. It was especially good drizzled with melted butter and coconut oil before the seasoning was added. I loved the popcorn but was hesitant about how it might translate to tea.

The main flavors I got were the caramel and toffee type flavors, but the popcorn and salt kept it from being cloying without making it taste like salty tea, which was what I was worried about.

Tldr: delicious! Thank you, again, Youngest!

This is interesting! It’s a little spiced and a little fruity. I’m enjoying it cold. I’d say it tastes the most like spiced raspberry. It’s a little reminiscent of pastries, which is what it’s going for. Yeah, this one is definitely desserty in a baked good fashion. One of the better Trader Nick’s teas I’ve tried for sure! The rooibos is the perfect base for it.

I wasn’t a particularly big fan of this tea. I tried it using a bunch of different changes to the parameters over the course of several sessions, and I wasn’t able to get much more than a light cereal milk-tasting soup. The bark is certainly more present than its bite, and that disappoints me quite a bit given my general appreciation of the Jin Xian cultivar.

Cold brew sip down.

I think this was a mistake. The roasted flavor is dominant and this is not the kind of flavor I like in a cold drink at all. I though at first there was an almost raisiny like aftertaste, but that was only brief and hasn’t showed up again.

Now its just all roast.

Sipdown! (4 | 123)

I tried this one a few different ways – warm, iced, cold-steeped – and it just never really lived up to my expectations. I think it’s just a little bit too light on the apple, as I end up mostly tasting the hay notes of the white tea. And I do like white tea, but this isn’t really the type that I would want to drink plain, since the leaves are quite broken.

Anyway, it’s not bad, but just meh for me.

Sipdown (2660)!

I thought this was a sachet but it was actually loose leaf tea just in the overwrap that T2 usually used for sachets. Anyway, I’m currently sipping on this mug and it’s really enjoyable. Though the hibiscus is strong it’s not unpleasantly tart and is instead contributing more of a berry-like brightness that works really well with the sweet, soothing floral rose.

The overall profile is very slick and syrupy with a round and coating feeling on the mouth. Honestly, I think it’s the exact right amount of rose. Not perfuming but with a strong enough rosewater taste that the hibiscus doesn’t drown it out. I could see it working very well chilled too, were this not a sipdown. Simple, but if you’re not adverse to either the rose or hibiscus/rosehip flavour I think quite well balanced.

Just finished a mug of this and, for a bagged Lapsang, it was pretty nice! Definitely had a mineral/metallic kind of twang to the smokiness, but the body was good and I thought the overall intensity of the smoke notes was the exact sort of campfire-adjacent punch I was looking for.

Only real downside, in my opinion, is that it’s so smoky that it actually permeates the overwrap the tea comes in – so definitely not something I’d want to store alongside other teabags. Instead, it will probably go in my special storage area for all my other smoked teas.

Sipdown (2660)!

Definitely a little bit of a shou pu’erh kind of funk to this, which is usually the case of the pu’erh not being aired out properly after wet piling. It makes the first few sips come off with that dreaded fishy quality, but it’s also not nearly as aggressive as other pu’erh blends I’ve tasted in the past. After a couple good sips I got pretty used to it.

The chocolate and orange were nice! More chocolate than orange, but I like the brightness that the citrus provided to offset some of that richness. For a few moments I could have sworn I was tasting like a ricotta type flavouring which was a little weird, but not unwelcome. Gave me cannoli vibes in a pretty positive way. It’s a shame that Almost doesn’t exist anymore – I think cannoli (and Italian desserts in general) would have been such a great theme for them.

Ashmanra’s sipdown challenge – September 2024 Tea #3 – A tea from Africa

I always forget this tea is around. It’s ALMOST gone now.  I also forget how finely chopped these ingredients are.  I wish I could distinctly tell it is houjicha.  I also usually forget that it IS houjicha as it usually tastes like an unroasted green tea, even if it is hiding under all those spices.

New tin! I’ve always been a little curious about the name: I don’t normally associate rich, plummy fruit flavor with the execution of Anne Boleyn, but I suppose she could’ve been drinking a cuppa with her ladies in waiting when the warrant arrived…

Another delicious and complex brew. Hints of nuts, cocoa and wood, low-level and fitting bitterness, distinct maltiness in the back, long wooden, oxydised finish.

Beautiful, very complex tea, with lots of flowery notes (elderflower, lily of the valley), a bit of spices (allspice, juniper, cinnamon), slight green walnuts undertones. Aroma is much more intense than taste, but the latter is also intriguing, with a touch of maltiness and no astringency at all. Very interesting.

Single-serving sipdown. I think this came with last year’s advent calendar? I’m not entirely sure how it came to be in my possession. I am sure that “carcadet” is really fun to say, so automatic points for that. This tastes like creamy raspberry jam. Like the filling in raspberry cookies, with an added creamy quality. The cream element is more pronounced when it’s hot, I think – as it cools, the creaminess fades into the background a bit. Would happily have this again.

Another garage sale tea! This one is pretty lame. The chai spices are way too muted. I want it to be spicier or more distinct. This is just super meh. Nothing stands out; it’s just weak.

Sipdown! (3 | 122)

This wasn’t a favorite for me. It’s a pleasant tea, and it was nice enough for mindless sipping while working,. But I was disappointed that I couldn’t taste much bergamot, and really almost no jasmine at all.

Anyway, definitely preferred the Queen Victoria for a similar tea with more of a citrusy lean, and perhaps a touch less smoke.

I might be wrong, but I think this is a pretty old/discontinued T2 flavour but I found a sachet of it at work today in the back of a drawer (along with a few others) so I figured I’d try it. A little bit of old tea never hurt anyone, right??

Honestly, it’s pretty good for being God knows how old. The lemon is stylistically very sweet and candy-like instead of something more natural and either pithy/acidic. Very much channeling lemon flavoured lollipop or gummy bear kind of vibes but in a pretty soft kind of way. Despite the candy-type flavour it’s really light bodied and delicately flavour. Unclear if the tea was always like that, or if it’s age.

It’s always a good day when you break out one of those beloved Butiki blends and, considering this tea must be coming up on a decade old, it’s actually aged very gracefully. The fact those flavourings have held on enough that you can still distinctly taste grapefruit and an almost brown sugar-like caramelized note is nothing short of impressive. Black tea base is still very brisk and snappy, with a really malty midsip. Still a treat, all these years later!!

Such an incredibly oily mouthfeel from all the fat in the coconut pieces steeping out into the cup, but in terms of body and taste I found the more light to medium body worked very well with the nuttier, toasted rice notes and that sweet and mouth coating maple. Decadent but not heavy, coconut fat not withstanding.

Cold Brew Sipdown (2661)!

This was a nice, refreshing cold brew and I slightly bittersweet sipdown. The red cherry notes are muted in a gentle, pleasant sort of way and the whole infusion has this almost powder-y, soft icing sugar taste and texture throughout that goes so well with the medium bodied cherry and vanilla flavours. It’s hard to describe because in a lot of ways it’s as much about mouthfeel as the balance of flavours and the fact the sweetness hits in such a different way compared to any other cherry tea I’ve tried.

I won’t be ordering from Trader Nick’s any time soon since I already placed such a massive order earlier this year that I’m still sipping through, but I would 100% repurchase this blend. It’s up there with my favourite Trader Nick teas, for sure.

I typically like a good Arnold Palmer but this one was a let down to me, and also kind of confusing whether it was half strawberry and half black tea or half strawberry and half lemonade or, like, a mix of the three? I couldn’t even tell when drinking it because it really just tasted like a super sweet, thick strawberry juice. Not an unpleasant strawberry note but just far too sweet for my tastes. Also, I don’t think this is the first time I’ve had a strawberry flavoured iced RTD and felt this way so I’m wondering if maybe I’m particularly sensitive to strawberry as a chilled flavour…

Idk. Just wasn’t for me.

Holy shit I loved this!

Like the Orangeade, this kind of tastes like what I’d imagine a flat Pineapple Fanta/Crush would taste like but at only a fraction of the sweetness. It is sweeter than the Orangeade was, but still not quite soda levels. The only difference here is that I adore pineapple flavoured sodas so this was very, very up my alley. Rich and tropical with that golden pineapple sweetness and just a bit of playful acidity/tang.

I really wish this was something more readily available here in Canada because I would replace my borderline pineapple soda addiction with this in a HEARTBEAT.

Pretty on par with my expectations.

It reminds me a lot of a flat Orange Crush or Fanta but waaayyy less sweet tasting. Still pretty sweet, but not soda levels. Very juicy and bright orange without the acidity of an actual orange juice. Sort of Kool-Aid vibes too, I guess. In the spectrum of Arizona beverages it’s pretty middle of the pack to me.

I’ve wanted to try this Arizona flavour for a really, really long time but it’s not actually sold through normal retail channels here in Canada – I had to get it (and a bunch of others) from an importer that supplies for a specialty snack foods/soda company here in MTL.

I think it’s such a brilliant twist on the nostalgic rocket pop/ice pop flavour that’s been popping up everywhere the last two summers – very much hitting that “newstalgic” macro trend of the moment. Can design is really, really sick too.

Taste wise? It’s a little “whelming” to me. I thought, for an Arizona drink, the sweetness level was actually pretty good and it definitely nails that sort of generic tropical profile that just feels like the embodiment of a sunset orange colour/hue. Mango, papaya, and pineapple leaning, perhaps? But I guess I just expected the flavour to at least hint at some of the notes in a rocket pop profile – cherry, probably, but also maybe the very sweet lemon or blue raspberry notes too. I didn’t get that. It felt very segmented from a rocket popsicle profile to me – really just doubling down on the tropical vibes. Still delicious, but not quuuiiittteee up to the hype.

There’s now a second “Chillzicle” flavour from Arizona – so I’m definitely curious to see if I can get my hands on that one too.