Bird & Blend Tea Co.

After opening the zip-bag you can only smell the bergamot oil.
After steeping the aroma is mellow, with only a bit of bergamot plus malt, a bit of sweetness.
But it’s the taste that reveals the complexity of this blend. Three kinds of the black tea complement each other really well, creating a rich effect, only slightly enhanced with the bergamot oil
I don’t add sugar to my teas and I very rarely use milk, but I guess this blend would go well with both these things.

Wonderful aroma from the zip bag – just like a very high quality pipe tobacco. A hint of smoke (much lower than in the pure lapsang souchong), caramel, toffee, dried apples.
Very rich, complex aroma after steeping, with mellow smokiness, caramel, toffee, burnt sugar, fruit pie and burnt twigs.
And the taste? Slight sweetness that really complements the rest, smoke, maltiness, earthiness of the good base black tea.
That’s exactly my kind of a flavoured black tea. I would like some more of the smoke character, but it’s still great.

First of all, this blend looks so pretty – green tea mixed with dried apple cubes and blackberry pieces.
Out of the zip bag it smells herbal and fruity. Nice but not overly spectacular.
Brews into a pale color, obviously.
After brewing it smells mainly with apples, but more in the baked apple than cider way., plus some herbal and leafy notes.
The taste fits perfectly to the current first days of autumn: dried apples, a bit of base green tea in the background. I could use some more tea character, but it’s not bad.

Very strong aroma after opening the zip bag with a lot of bergamot, strong floral accents, a bit of vanilla and woody, ashen undertones.
After steeping it is much more mellow, malty, earthy, with only traces of those aromas present in the dry form.
And the taste is also very mellow, full-bodied, with very slight astringency.
I like this tea. It’s a mellower version of the classic Earl Grey, perfect to sip while reading, not overdone with the bergamot oil.

(Thanks to Martin for sending!) Brewed for 3 minutes in a makeshift gaiwan while attempting to watch the presidential debate. Flavors and smells may be affected by how disoriented I am by Trump’s blabbering, it was nice to have a hot cup of tea to stabilize myself. I notice a strong peach smell and sour peach taste. The rose smell blends strangely with the peach. Rose always tastes a little soap-y to me so it might be different for other people. A very different-tasting tea overall, not my favorite, but might try it with milk and sugar and see how it tastes later :)

I ordered this tea because the list of ingredients sounded unique. Unfortunately, during my first cup with only sugar added, I really, really didn’t like it. It’s an unpleasant flavor, and it’s so strong. The pineapple is super acidic and the chilli is harsh and not great in tea. Those are the only two flavors, and they’re way too much. With milk, it tastes fine, but then it’s basically just spicy milk with a bit of pineapple. So it’s perfectly fine to drink like that, but it feels like it could be accomplished another, better way. I was considering getting rid of it, but since it’s fine with milk added, I guess I’ll keep it, but certainly not repurchase.

Wonderful smell from the zip bag, Rhubarb, vanilla, fruit pie. After steeping it becomes much more mellow, in a liquid, custard-like way, just like a sweet vanilla custard poured over the soft, baked rhubarb pieces. Base rooibos notes remain in the background.
And the taste is barely sweet (which is good), with distinct rhubarb/vanilla character.
Very warming autumn tea, really matches sweet desserts.

I’m not actually a fan of herbal blends, but I like the world created by C.S. Lewis and I love Turkish delight sweets, so i decided to give it a go.
The aroma coming from the opened zip-bag is terrific, because the tea definitely does smell like rose-scented Turkish delights with chocolate added.
However, after brewing it is not as tempting. It is seems very floral, rosy, with only a bit of cocoa. Too much like perfume and soap.
Fortunately the taste is better. The blend really tastes like Turkish delights in a liquid form, a bit sweet, rich, not too rosy, with slight citrusy notes in the background.
All in all, I like this tea and I don’t regret buying it. But one sample zip-bag seems enough, I’m not planning to repeat it.

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Today’s #septembersipdown prompt is about making a pot to share. Personally, I don’t live with tea drinkers and I don’t usually drink from a pot, however, I pulled out my mini pot for this prompt. I couldn’t convince someone to share though so I am drinking the pot by myself. Oh well.

When deciding what to make, the bottom of the pot said to use your favorite English tea and enjoy it in the English teaware. I don’t have any English Breakfast blends but I do have this tea which is an Earl Grey (which I associate with England – though that might be incorrect) from an English tea company. Good enough!

This tea was a free sample in my last Bird and Blend order. It was not something I have been enthused about so I figured why not just have it and it be done. So, I tossed the tea bag into my teapot and got to brewing. Of course while pouring the water, I managed to not catch the tag on the end of the string before it fell into the pot and then I had to fish it out. I also might have spilled both while pouring into and out of the teapot. Like I said, I don’t use a pot often.

I added milk to the glass since I thought a earl grey would need it. It does. The bergamot is strong but calmed slightly by the milk. It’s not bad this way. And I kept topping up the glass with the tea from the pot as a drank so it got less milky as I drank. It was still tolerable even as the milk:tea ratio got closer. Overall, I think maybe it is decent. I just don’t think its for me.

Noticed I had half a cup of coconut milk left and I wanted to use it up, and I had some Golden Milk mix in the past that I quite liked in coconut milk, so I thought I’d try this matcha tonight, since it uses a rooibos base rather than green tea and thus is caffeine free (I switch to herbal-mode after 6 pm). Wisked up half a teaspoon as a warm latte with 50/50 hot water and coconut milk.

While I have enjoyed other flavored matcha by Bird & Blend I’ve tried in the past (granted, they were with actual green tea matcha), I am not a fan of this. The separation is pretty bad, leaving a sort of “cinnamon grain” texture to the sip. And it doesn’t taste like turmeric to me at all? It tastes very strongly of rooibos and cinnamon spice. It’s a strong cinnamon flavor too, with a bit of that honey/woody red rooibos taste beneath. It is quite heated, which is likely the doing of the multi-spice blend used, but other than getting the hot sensation in my mouth, I’m just not getting the flavor. And then the coconut from the milk, which was meant to compliment the turmeric (as I like that flavor pairing), but since I’m not tasting any turm at all, the coconut flavor seems very strange juxtaposed with the rooibos and cinnamon.

I mean, I will be able to finish the cup… but meh. Big pass for me, and I will definitely be finishing off the little sample tin by dumping it into a pumpkin spice smoothie this weekend.

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I liked this. It had all the nice pumpkin spice flavor but with an interesting custard quality. Don’t recall much else because the dog and the baby made things a bit nutso when I tried to drink this.

Am I freaking out here, or does this taste like mint chocolate? checks ingredients Yep, I’m just going crazy. Maybe I’m tasting the licorice. Regardless, this one is quite good. It tasted good without milk, but it tastes even richer and fuller with some milk. I don’t usually love B&B’s chocolate blends, but I’m pretty impressed with this one. It tastes like thin mints to me – it just does! But I love the way this tea is balanced and flavored. Nice black tea, chocolate, and flavors. Thanks for the share, tea-sipper!

A sample from the sale!  What a magical blend this sounded like: oolong with the unique combination of pear, raspberry, orange blossom.  Sadly hibiscus.  I can tell the hibiscus is TAMED though, as the brew always results in a gorgeous blush pink color and not the bright red of hibiscus overload.   The brew is lovely to look at in a clear mug.  However, there is a bit of tartness that tends to take over anyway. I hope some of this tartness is from the raspberry. I can’t really taste pear or orange blossom which is a shame.  The aroma of pear is certainly in the blend and I know B&B can do pear teas well (Jasmine Poached Pears).   It reminds me of another of B&B’s blends —  I’m not sure which, but it’s another blend with the promise of great flavors but the result is just a slight sour fruit flavor… no hint of oolong… there are so many big fruit pieces here, so I’m just a bit disappointed.  Two teaspoons should be plenty flavorful for a mug. Full disclosure: I’ve never had prosecco.
Steep #1  // 2 teaspoons for full mug // 20 minutes after boiling  // 1 minute steep
Steep #2  // 13 minutes after boiling //  2 minute steep
Steep #3 // just boiled // 3 min

This seemed like a unique blend I didn’t mind trying from the sale (and still available on their VIP page).  For some, this might be a mix of many ingredients that people aren’t usually gravitating towards: rooibos, smoky lapsang black tea, pu-erh, mint and chili!  To me, it’s just balanced enough for the flavors to really shine together.  I was curious what the mix of bases are and it looks at least 60-70% rooibos.  So it’s a bit difficult to tell what the caffeine level is here with some lapsang souchong and pu-erh leaves mixed in.  But I love the flavor – balanced between a bit of smoke, sweet creamy mint (I love B&B’s mint), and really not too much chili.  The color of the brew looked more like rooibos scarlet than a black tea or pu-erh tea.  I like this though I would have liked less rooibos.
Steep #1  // 1 1/2 teaspoons for full mug // 20 minutes after boiling  // 2 minute steep
Steep #2  // just boiled //  4 minute steep

I’m pretty disappointed in this one. They only had the 150g bag, so I have a ton of it too. I don’t taste anything pancakey. It’s only weird lemon. I guess that’s from the fermented lemon. So this just turned into a not very pleasant lemon tea. It’s not refreshing since it’s too heavy. The lemon sort of just attacks your throat. Shorter steep for this one.

SEPTEMBER 2020 subscription envelope
Among two other teas I was lucky to try last year, this is a new for me

I needed to coat my nerves with sugar a bit, as driving in rush hour even in my small town is getting more and more tricky, grandma who I drove to shops and hairdresser was sad that everything it getting more and more pricey, she needed to buy milk in other shop which is almost inacessible by car now, because it was in sale; people using direction signals in last second; just too many things that annoyed me greatly today.

The tea was, well, pretty sweet. But it wasn’t typical sweet as from sugar, just it was the caramel sweetness. It is interesting that there is not toffee (what’s the difference, can anyone explain, please?) in the blend, nor sugar and yet it is so sweet. There were as well chai notes which were pretty interesting and mild — but pronounced, mostly cinnamon and bit heat from ginger and that typical cardamom notes was there pretty much noticeable as well. The rooibos base wasn’t noticeable though, all covered with the sweet notes.

Interesting tea, I think I will keep that for moments like those, when I would like something sweet, but actually without sugar.

The main flavor here is roses. It’s quite a full, rich flavor. The second steep tastes similar to the first. Thanks to tea-sipper for the sample! I don’t usually love floral teas, but this one does its thing super well. If you want a really rosy, yet slightly complex tea, this might be the one.

Oh noooooo. I didn’t notice that this had coconut in it, and it turned rancid surprisingly quickly. It’s sad because I can tell from the initial flavor that this one is pretty tasty! Lovely cinnamon, and I know the coconut would have gone with it very well. I had to dump the cup because the coconut was too bad. I appreciate amandastory516 for sharing this one with me regardless! I’ll have to sample a fresh batch sometime because I love the cookieness that this one promises.

I got one sachet of this as a sample with my Bird & Blend holiday set and never got around to trying it until now. Although I love earl grey, the ones with vanilla added don’t tend to be my favorite, as the vanilla and bergamot flavors combined often comes across as soapy to me. This one was a pleasant surprise, though! The flavor is smooth and light (it actually worked for me without milk, which is rare for earl grey) and the vanilla and bergamot are well-balanced, with neither overwhelming the other and nothing that’s reminding me of body products (thankfully!). While it will never replace my beloved Letterbox Picadilly as my favorite earl grey ever, this may be the best earl grey cream tea I’ve tried!

Huh. Apparently I haven’t wrote about this tea although I had it before. The pouch was opened, but I haven’t wrote the tasting note. Weird… but probably I wasn’t in mood writing. I just hope it wasn’t deleted (accidentaly).

Anyway, prepared grandpa with two teaspoons of the blend.
It wasn’t easy to drink it as blueberries, some lemongrass was floating on top of the brew, but I took them out with a spoon and then it was nice.

Very nice actually. As I don’t know the difference between Key Limes and “normal” limes I just thought it is just lime-blueberry tea. It works well together! Blueberries were like fresh and full of taste — I just should smash them to relase all the flavour next time, and refreshing as it was indeed lime flavoured. And that citrusy feel from lemongrass was nice too today. We had quite high temperatures (around 26 °C) which is unusal for September here.

First off, this tea smells amazing. It has cracked the code for tart berry, meringue cream aroma. Steeping up a cup is the best room diffuser ever. It smells like lush sweet summer: picnics in the park, fairs and carnivals, grandma’s berry pie in the garden, cream soda on a porch kind of good vibes.

The flavour is pretty on par with the aroma, but regardless of whether or not I cold steeped or had a hot cuppa I was never left fully satisfied. This tea is pretty thin and veers on tart over cream (still good cream though); I just want it to be thicker and maybe sweeter!

So tonight for my last cup I decided to have it hot, then changed my mind and poured that hot steeped cup over ice, and… then came the Eureka moment! I can’t add milk because the hibiscus will curdle it, but whip cream sits on top of the liquid so minimal curdle. This turned out to be a wonderful idea and made the abstract meringue a physical reality. Now I’m sad this is gone so I can’t do this again. And again. Forever.

Also, I’ve never had Eton Mess or heard of it before so every time I see that I unfortunately think of Elon Musk. Thank you, brain. (Edit: Turns out Eton Mess is essentially strawberries, meringue and whipped cream? Nailed it).

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I like the spearmint. I don’t like the jasmine. One is minty and refreshing and crisp. The other starts off nice but then gets drying because of the floral aspect. So this is not a tea I’d get again.

I cold brewed this yesterday. I had some with dinner and the cardamom was overwhelming and sort of out of place in a summer Sangria tea. Today the fruits have come out more but this is more mulled cider than sangria to me. And with that said, it’s not as good as their actual mulled cider tea. At least not as a cold brew.