Bird & Blend Tea Co.

Sipdown (932)!

The other free sample from my most recent Bird & Blend order – can’t recall if I’ve had this one before. I definitely over steeped it a little bit, but I thought the flavour was pretty nice. Tannic and full bodied/strong, with more of baked bread/grains and autumnal leaf kind of vibe. Lacked some sweetness, but milk and sugar would definitely fix that right up.

This tea wasn’t that great hot, but cold, it has a really unique, authentic sour cherry flavor. I taste no hint of mascarpone. Really the only flavor is the sour cherry. I also don’t really notice the tea itself even though there’s quite a lot in the blend. So I appreciate this tea for its originality of flavor, and I quite enjoy the taste. Not a favorite though.

I didn’t get around to drinking this yesterday on my actual birthday, so I finished it off tonight instead as a latte while we did the virtual pub quiz over Zoom. Usually this isn’t something I get excited about because it’s vanilla, and my dislike of vanilla is well-documented. As a latte though, it really shone! I mean it’s still just vanilla and not very exciting, but it was sweet and creamy and indulgent, which is all you can really ask for of vanilla. I had a break from actual birthday cake today since I had so much of it yesterday, and this was a good substitute so that now I’m ready to overindulge again tomorrow! My cake has fresh cream, so I’m going to have to finish it all in one go. Wish me luck! (There’s not actually that much left).

Sipdown 242/402

SIPDOWN

Well, kinda sad one.
It is delicious blend, though today prepared somehow too strong. Used 3 heaped teaspoons and even I have used bigger mug (400 ml) it was just overwhelmed with black tea. It was quite astringent and tannic, not much of peaches, but there were sweet notes for sure. And creamy. Not that much smooth as my morning tea, but this thick black tea with sweet notes and hints of peaches was good in the early afternoon.

Need to try the dessert with same name. Another thing in my TODO list which I try to keep in my mind, but I think I will start an Excel file with it. The idea / group (baking) / priority / notes. Sounds good.

Today it was good again :)

Nice black tea with weet notes of vanilla and peaches. Maybe way too sweet for me, but I don’t mind; it was good.

Indeed very vanilla and peaches, give me some fresh ones :)

Today morning tea was bit diffent than prepared last time.

I just put sime random amount of tea into tea bag and apparently it was more tea than peaches in. It was quite astringent, no vanilla notes but peaches were nicely present though.

It was nice combination of base tea, which was quite strong but I don’t mind as it is morning; and peaches. Ripe, fuzzy peaches.

Yummy

Another tea from June 2020 subscription.

Yesterday… a day without a tea. I wasn’t even in the mood for some!

But today my tastew buds were craving for some tea again, and this sounded pretty much what I wanted. Bold black tea with fruit notes.

Well, it is quite sweet based on dry aroma. If peachy, honestly I am not sure. Quite fine tea itself.
Two teaspoons per 300 ml, basic 3 minutes steeping time.
Well, pretty nice! Base tea is present well with nice peach-vanilla notes. Somehow sticky taste, but it worked well together!

TIL Peach Cobbler is a dessert, more over looks super tasty! I wonder how much similar is it to this tea!

I thought I had reviewed this before, but a Ctrl+F of my steepster.txt file proves that my memory is atrocious as ever. And since I’m working on sipping it down, I’d better rectify that before it is gone. I received this from tea-sipper in a cupboard sale in early 2018, so thanks, tea-sipper! I’ve prepared it as a cold brew, letting the leaf soak in a glass mason jar overnight before straining and then drinking ice cold.

The tea is a purpley/crimson hue, and has strong aromas of berries (a bit of a blueberry/muscatel scent), citrus (heavily lime), and pine/sage. And the flavor reflects the aroma. I’m getting hit with a strong lime flavor, and this nice, fresh pine note from the juniper and find this sort of cooling effect left on my tongue from the citrus and pine. The fruity notes are more muted against the strong citrus/pine, but there is a berry sweet/tart note beneath that, and it can be tasted at the back of my tongue, especially as the citrus and pine starts to wear off. The berry flavor tastes more like red berries in the brew, while the aroma smelled more like blueberries/grapes on the nose.

It’s a nice iced tea, and I always like the inclusion of juniper in a blend. I’m not sure how I’d feel about this tea as a warm brew, and am kind of content to just drink it as a refreshing iced blend during these warm months.

Sipdown (264)

I tossed the rest of this into my swap box. There is nothing inherently wrong with it but I never reach for it and today was a whole lot of hibiscus and not much else. It’s a fine tea but not something worth hanging onto any longer.

i wasn’t sure i’d be ok with this one as i’ve been REALLY off of “peach” for a while. However i actually didn’t mind this one though that’s likely because it didn’t taste like peach at all lol. Just a fruity melange of some sorts haha Thanks variaTEA

June 2020 subscription

Interesting tea. Their small pouch for 20 grams, which is usually full to half, sometimes little bit more than half is now completely full.

So in my DIY tea bag is in: two rose buds, two big pieces of strawberry and raspberry, some raspberry leaf, lots of rose petals. Fuller than usual.

After 5 minutes of steeping it is bright and pink. Naturally it is very strong in rose aroma and beneath of it there are fruit notes, probably mosty strawberries. When sipped, it is actually rather fruity. There are raspberries and strawberries and in the background there are roses. Purpose of raspberry leaf is probably giving some “depth” of flavour.

I have to try this one iced, after all night steep. That would suit this tea better I think. But it is tasty nevertheless.

Today’s smoothie was strawberry, mango, peach and banana. I don’t pick the fruits, my sister does and then I’m left enough smoothie in the blender for me to doctor up with whatever matcha I want. Since today was the first time they used peach, I decided to highlight that flavor with this matcha.

Tbh I just used 1/2 tsp and I wasn’t actually expecting it to come out that strongly through all the fruit. So, I was super surprised when my first sip of smoothie was not just a whole lot of peach but copious cream notes as well. Like this matcha must be extremely strongly flavoured because it took over. The grassiness of the matcha came through one but mostly it’s the flavouring. It’s nice and I now look forward to trying this plain.

A SIPDOWN somewhere in the week. I think it is Friday or Thursday.

For last brew I really take care about temperature so it was indeed around recommended 80 °C water and after that I added the bag in.

It brings nice aromatic tea of jasmine and spearmint buut in taste it is bit weird to be honest. It is light tea in taste though and overall okay I think. Not the best, but calming blend .

I don’t need to have it around. But it is nice tea!

Although I am nonewhere near to Nirvana I decided to brew this one. For those who want to know results from my mathematics exam from Friday — I failed. I failed and I want to see my results because I just don’t believe it! I know I did not solved all the problems, but that amount of points is just… weird.

I don’t want to hear “I am sorry Martin, you did your best…” and similar. I did not. I was, ehm, lazy! This is not something I could learn in few days, moreover some days were really days I did nothing! I am always excusing myself this or that disturbed me, or I don’t have mood for that or … excuses, excuses, excuses!

Tea itself is pretty nice. Blend is made from nice-looking teas, jasmine is nice and present. Spearmint is adding little bit of cooling notes, which is nice in today hot day (in 10 am it reaches up to 25 °C, but it is sultry weather and I had problems to take groceries back home which was 400 metres away. During next week I have three another exams, in Tuesday — road transport technology and managment, Wednesday — International transport, Thursday — Theory of Graphs.

Tea itself… back to tasting note
is actually pretty nice. Jasmine and spearmint don’t work perfectly, but tea itself is nice and light, quite refreshing. Maybe it reminds me bit some cookies, but it is as well nicely grassy, though in aroma it is rather hay.
Nice thirst-quenching drink :)

Iced Latte Sipdown (265)

This makes for a good iced latte but it requires a caramel drizzle to really coax out the butterscotch flavor. Consequently, it’s not something I need to keep around but I wouldn’t turn it down if someone offered me an iced latte of it.

Bird and Blend has a terrible habit of sticking hibiscus into things that should not have hibiscus. For instance, I saw Affogatea and thought that made sense for an iced latte until I looked at the ingredients. Hibiscus, rose hips, Apple – all present and then mixed with things like coffee beans and black tea. That just seemed like curdling waiting to happen so instead I used this.

Normally I line the cup with chocolate syrup but this time I used caramel syrup since it seemed better suited to the flavor. Now I don’t know if it’s the syrup or the tea but this is hitting the spot. Just a whole lot of caramel/butterscotch creaminess. Personally I think it’s a combo of both because when I first started drinking this and the two were more separated, the sips I got from the bottom of the cup where the syrup was was too sweet and the sips from higher up that was more of the latte was more mediocre black tea. So I doubt this is good plain but made this way, it’s good.

I enjoy licorice root in tea, but I didn’t like the way this tea achieved the licorice flavor. It was very sour/bitter. But you know what, I probably just overbrewed it, so I won’t rate it. It’s too bad because I was looking forward to trying this one, and I used up my whole sample. Thanks to tea-sipper for the swap!

The flavor here reminds me of B&B’s birthday cake tea, one of my absolute favorites. However, this blend is somehow weaker and faker. The blueberries are fun, but not strong enough. It just ends up tasting kind of old and strange, which is a shame because this is one I was positive I would love. It’s not bad, but I also had high expectations for it. It’s still a decent rooibos and a bit cakey, but much too muted. I’ve had it both with and without milk.

Pretty similar steeped regular Western style to how it is as a latte. Coconut and cardamom, a slight hint of pepper and ginger heat, and not much else. The base tea isn’t the most robust, but not totally weak either and it somehow still manages to be astringent. DAVIDsTEA’s Coco Chai Rooibos is way better imo. That one executes the flavour profile I imagine this tea was aiming for so well.

Sipdown 234/400.

I was craving a Coco Chai Roobios latte from DAVIDsTEA but I didn’t have enough of that one left so I went with this instead. It doesn’t hit the spot in the same way as that does, but it’s still pretty tasty. This one is cardamom heavy with a coconut background. Not much of the other chai spices coming through, which I would have preferred. I’ll probably stick to drinking this regular western style in the future.

Cold Brew Sipdown (267)…sorta since I just put the rest in my swap box

This cold brewed for almost 48 hours because I intended to drink it yesterday but had a shitstorm of a day. Back in December, I left my mom’s house to come stay with my sister due to a lot of drama I am sure I have previously mentioned. My brother arrived a few days later after my mom kicked him out. Since then, my brother has been quite difficult to live with because despite being 30, he hasn’t learned the basic skills of an adult. For instance, he can’t even seem to get his plates from the sink to the dishwasher (In London, I don’t even have a dishwasher so I have to hand wash everything so I feel like this is not asking much of him). Given his age and the fact that he has a full-time job and no debt in addition to the fact that he doesn’t pull his weight around the house, my sister told him a few weeks ago that she thinks it is time he starts looking for a place of his own. She gave him a deadline of August 1 seeing as she is expected to deliver her baby in September and wanted to get things settled and ready in her house (which includes moving me out of the room I am currently sleeping in which is meant to be the nursery to the room my brother was using, which was always meant to be for me). My brother didn’t want to move out though so he was not actively looking and since he refuses to live with a roommate or in a basement apartment but still has a fairly low budget, any decent place that fits his requirements is (and has) gone quickly. Given his laziness and apathy, we have continuously had to push him to search and yesterday my sister lost it on him when she caught him lying about it. His response to this was to decide he’d rather live in his car than with the “abuse” he experienced here. Both my brother-in-law and I tried talking to him but his arrogant attitude led to us yelling at him and he left. Of course the guy who won’t even live in a basement apartment wasn’t actually going to live in his car so he went running back to our Mom’s place.

If that wasn’t bad enough, my mom decided to call my sister and give her shit for telling my brother he had to move out. She first said that we (my sister, brother-in-law and I) were ganging up on my brother and that we were too harsh and he was sensitive. Then when she couldn’t present positive arguments for why my brother should get to stay, she questioned why my sister would let me stay and not him. Then my own mother went on to attack my character to try to show my sister why it was wrong for me to stay and not my brother. Then she told my sister that her and I were the true disappointments because we dismiss people from our lives easily like her, her brother (who once was found standing over my sister in only his underwear while she was sleeping despite her locking the door to the room she was in before she went to sleep…oh and she was a teenager at the time), and now our brother (who chose to leave). So yeah…shitstorm.

Actual tea review starts here

Today is a new day though and as things have calmed in our house, I can get back to the important things…like tea. This tea in particular which I hoped would be better cold brewed but alas it is not. I think it might actually be worse so I am getting much more rooibos than I did in the regular cup. Plus, the coconut is coming off a little more lotion-y than it did in the hot cup and the hibiscus is definitely stronger. Stupid me waiting as long as I did to try this…

I had high hopes for this, mostly due to tea sipper’s love of it. Alas, I also didn’t get to this for over about a year (this is from July 2019 and I just broke the seal this morning) and given the coconut, it’s already showing signs of age. When I steeped it up hot, the coconut smelled rather lotion-y, which to me indicates it is starting to go rancid. Thankfully that doesn’t translate to the taste though. Taste is mostly hibiscus for me with a touch of rooibos. It’s fine but not really my thing. Tea Sipper, if you want 50 more grams of this (less some tsps), let me know. Fair warning on the age though since it’s almost a year old.

meh. I know what they were going for here, but i never seem to really love teas that add coffee beans to the brew. I think it’s because i’d rather drink coffee not tea trying to take pieces of coffee in to it.

Thanks SO much to amandastory516 for sharing this tea! It’s one I’ve really wanted to try. So the main flavor is rooibos, and I love the rooibos that B&B uses. The next flavor is a bit of coconut. It tastes better when it’s a little warm, as the flavors become a bit muted with cooling. I think I prefer B&B’s birthday cake flavor since that one has more depth and cakiness. This one is certainly a good rooibos, but not absolutely amazing like that other one. The second steep was almost as flavorful as the first.