Bird & Blend Tea Co.

Phew, spents a chunk of the day dealing with crochet commissions. I get some interesting buyers for my cutesy, big eyed crochet amigurumi dolls. Today was a violent neon pink giant squid for someone’s office.
Though, weirdest I’ve had was squids, to be thrown at each other at a LARP and foxes, in various colours, to match each person’s furry costume. Never a dull moment!

Tea time! Wow, this came out nice and spicy! The apple pops right at first sip and is lightly sweet! yum!

See previous notes for review.

Turkish spiced apple tea? Yes please! I love Bluebird Tea co’s lineup – so many cool teas, I think I might need to order from them again!

Very lovely spiced apple tea! I love the sage here as it really sets Ankara Apple from other apple spice teas. The savory green tea compliments the sage, cinnamon and clove spice, with the natural juicy apple makes this tea nice and snuggly! Oh, how I’d love to have a cup of this tea in the winter with apple slices and cinnamon sticks!

I prefer this tea with some sweetener! It makes the apple pop much more! I was wishing this one had more apple flavor, but sweetener fixes it.

Full review on my blog, The Oolong Owl http://oolongowl.wordpress.com/2013/04/15/ankara-apple-from-bluebird-tea-co/
I’m a tea bird!

Another sample from Bluebird Tea Co, possibly the cutest tea co in existence.

Wow, great job with this tea!
I really didn’t know what to expect. Not counting Davidstea’s Strawberry Rhubarb Parfait (which I love, it’s the rhubarb tea next to which all other rhubarb teas must be judged), I’d only ever tried one other straight rhubarb tea before, (Rhubarb Cream, by Tin Roof Teas)it was black, and if you hadn’t told me the flavour I never would have guessed rhubarb.

Not so with this tea! It’s definitely rhubarby.
I’m fussy with rooibos because I don’t love tasting it, but this blend is definitely manageable, it all seems to work together nicely. I’m getting a hint of sweetness which is likely a combo of the rooibos and whatever flavouring was used for the “custard” aspect.

I would definitely recommend this to a rhubarb fan! It’s not as delicious as the aforementioned Davidstea one, but it could be close with the addition of strawberry!

A pleasant surprise :)
Not bitter, feels thick bodied and satisfying.

(Is it weird that I write these reviews using a British accent in my head?? Haha <3 just trying to get a little closer to my history. I am 1/4 English after all!)

Thanks again, Bluebird Tea Co!

0.9 tablespoon for 248

Candy green apple flavouring. Slightness of blunt astringency or smokiness. Toasty rice flavour. Green tea flavour complements the apple taste very well. Green tea flavour is mild and sencha-like.

0.9 tablespoons for 248 ml

Predominant flavour is lavender with chamomile in the background. Hibiscus is very well blended- I can’t pick it out in the blend. There a slight lemony zing which I’m sure the hibiscus is accentuating.

Made this Friday night, another sample from one of the cutest tea companies out there, Bluebird Tea Co. Thanks guys!

I love the smell of lavender. I probably have an 85 yr old lady living inside me telling me to buy everything lavender scented. Hand cream, lip balm, perfume…last summer I planted my very first garden which included two lavender plants. Exciting, but I still haven’t figured out what to do with them, haha. This year I might try them in my dehydrator and play around.

Anyway, I love earl grey teas, and given my obsession with lavender I thought it was worth a try.
You know how some things smell better than they taste? Lavender smells like heaven but not surprisingly I’m pretty sure it kind of tastes like a plant, haha. I didn’t like it enough to have two steeps, but I am glad I tried it. I had it at night so maybe it helped to relax me. Who knows.

my third time tasting a sample and being the first to give a quick review of this tea!

All things nice, sure sound nice! Jasmine flavored white tea combined with liquorice root lemongrass and cinnamon. I like alot off the ingredients. Being a white tea i’m going to brew this with 80°c water and for about 3min.

But first the dry leave look very appealing big chunks off that liqorice root and a lot off lemongrass/cinnamon and whole rose its a nice blend!

When i brewed it the first thing i’m noticing is the cinnamon smell and the vibrant lemonade like green/yellowish color. Upon letting this tea cool down a bit i’m tasting first and all jasmine flavor combined with cinnamon. The lemongrass isn’t in the face but its there in the background. This tea is very very sweet probably because off the liqorice root (in the discription they say its sweeter then sugar) and its true… maybe its even a bit to sweet for me!

Its a special blend that any white tea lover needs to try, its got alot off different things going on all at the same time. So its a bit hard to understand this tea, but thats a good thing… my personal opinion is positive but i’m not sure if i order it again due to being a bit to sweet to my taste…

First cup of the day and it’s a herbal. The liquor is a pinkish red and it smells like citrus laced red berry jam, or strawberry rhubarb pie. Hot, it tastes jam sweet, with a smooth, floral rose bridge, and a tart hibiscus/citrus finish. I’m liking this a lot more than I though I would, particularly for the citrus, but it’s not going to win over those wary of hibiscus. It’s also not distinctly strawberry at this stage.

I’m going to put the rest in the fridge and revisit this note later. This tastes like it would be just the thing iced or cooled.

Update cold cup- now it’s cold and I’m getting the sour and citric lemonade aspect from it. When it comes to teas I’m not a sweetener person, but this is unsweetened lemonade and would probably taste great with some syrup or agave. The flavours are still more berry citrus hibiscus than strawberry but it’s an enjoyable, refreshing cup. I think I prefer it hot though, for the pie jam.

I had to sample this one. Thanks, bluebirdteaco.com! Earl Grey and lavender! I’m trying to adjust to Bluebird’s black tea base. It doesn’t have a strong flavor, but their blends have such nice ingredients that it would be terrible to have a stronger black base to mask those flavors. After a three minute steep with just boiled water, I didn’t taste much earl grey, but there was a ton of lavender flavor even though I didn’t see much in the blend (they floated!). The lavender is delicious and it may have just blended really well with the earl grey. The second steep at four minutes had more earl grey and less lavender, which was a fun switch. I really like this one! It is simple and elegant!

once again i’m the first to review a tea from Bluebird Tea Company! I’m very curious about this one Skinny Minny, funky name for a very cool looking blend. Puerth and oolong combined? Ginseng and ginger with fennel seeds and orange peel? Woooh thats loads off different stuff! i like cooked puerth, i’m in love with oolongs, i love ginger in my tea… very curious indeed!

Brewing the whole tea sample for 3min with near boiling water. The brew is a nice dark brown liquor. I’ve got a hard time smelling this because i’m still suffering from a cold. So i’m going to skip the smelling part…

Anyway onto sipping the cup. While its still to hot to get subtle notes i can clearly notice the ginseng because it got a distinct taste (if you ask me, not sure how others think about it). When its cooled more i can find the orange taste, the ginger and whats probably the fennel seeds (never had fennel in my tea i think).

The oolong and puerth base for the tea is exellent in flavor. This skinny minny almost taste like a good chai and thats a good thing! I’m very mutch enjoying the first cup, going to do a second brew in a while!

Another delicious sample from Bluebird Tea Co~

Mmm. I’ve never had mate before, so I don’t have much of a reference frame. This is pretty good though. It’s very lemon-gingery, and leaves a nice clean feeling. I’m not quite getting the caffeine kick mate is supposed to have, but that’s just because my body is weird. Very refreshing. I quite enjoyed it. Thanks for sending it my way, Bluebird!

I tried to take of a sip of this after eating a bag of frozen blueberries and it was just bitter and awful; I thought I had wrecked this tea sample and would have to dump it. Luckily it was just the contrast of the blueberry sweetness, and rinsing my mouth helped. Yay for half blunders and commonsense! Lesson learned: never eat something sweeter than the thing you are drinking.

Ceylon is a very cutting, bright base as is apparent here. Not my favourite, and I was expecting something smokier, but this cooled off cup does yield a pleasant caramel apple flavour that I enjoy. The Ceylon makes the apple a tart green one but the cinnamon and sweetness rounds it out a bit. It’s actually a little bit like the baked, cinnamon, brown sugar apples my mom would make for dessert every once in a while.

So, not much bonfire from this one, except for a little cinnamon spice. The Toffee caramel is there though, and that’s the important part (for me). Thanks for the sample, Bluebird Tea Co.

Received this with some other samples from Bluebird Tea Co. First can we please discuss their adorable presentation and packaging??? Their tea photos with the little ‘cut here’ graphic, the samples came in these little glassine type packets SEWN closed with baby blue thread, their website and graphics and logo and everything is just so freakin cute. Goes with the name. I notice stuff like that. And love it. So good job guys!!! I always appreciate an artistic/creative display.

The only thing I couldn’t find were steeping instructions?? Perhaps those could be added to the teas on Steepster also.

Now for the tea, I was interested in this one based on the description, sounded different.
Hmmm. This was different! I did two steeps, first time around was boiling water for 2-3 minutes. I’m at work, no timer so I wasn’t too picky since it is black tea.

The tea was very roasty. I did not get any banana taste though, possibly a very mild hint which served to soften the tea a bit. There was nothing fake about it which was nice. I imagine if the tea was more banana-y it would also taste more fake. I bet it’s hard to achieve that balance when making a tea.

I was thinking this would make a nice breakfast tea because there was a satisfying coffee feel to it. I think teas that taste like coffee are gross (ever use water from a Keurig machine to make a cup of tea?? Ew. Don’t.), but this was more the feeling of satisfaction you get from a good cup of coffee duplicated in tea form. Serious coffee fans know what I mean, there’s just something substantial about it. I drank it black but milk would probably have been nice.

It was relatively dark yet mild, and subtly sweet on its own. Probably thanks to the banana.

So that being said, steep two (5 min or so) had not much flavour, zero banana, just kind of like a black tea. I didn’t finish it because I decided to make something more satisfying instead, that’s how I roll.

Based on steep 1 I will rate the tea pretty well, points off for no substantial banananess, but the lack of fakeness was appreciated. Happy to try my other samples soon!

Thank you for the sample, Bluebird Tea Co!

What can I say? I can’t say no to free samples. They sent me a nice assortment of teas, and oh so nicely packaged. I’m eager to try all of them. ^^

Mmmm this is one of those that keeps getting better and better as it cools. I don’t know why I’ve been so wary of raspberry flavored teas, because this is delicious. As it cools the raspberry flavor comes out more and more. It almost reminds me of raspberry yogurt. This was absolutely delicious.

Anyways, gonna hold off on stocking this until I try some of their other teas, but wow. What a great first impression.

So, I received this in a sample. (I wish the samples were a big bigger to be able to experiment with how to take it, etc., but that’s another story.) The smell is nice citrus with the mix of chocolate. With one of my favorite chocolate treats being those orange chocolate things (I cannot recall the names of them), I was excited for this. However, after this was steeped, I was a bit depressed to it. I couldn’t really get any taste out of this. And after I added milk to it, but it started to taste a bit off? It was a bit better when it got cold, though, not by much. The directions on the website were a bit vague for how to brew as well. (Or I thought so at least). I might request another sample of this at some point when I have the money so I can try it again and alter a few things when I have money, but I’m sad to say I was disappointed in this.

Just rediscovered TV Tropes. And the sun. It’s a wonderful sunny day in the lower mainland- a perfect day to study for finals inside.

I was worried about this one since it mentioned hibiscus. That particular ingredient tends to overwhelm certain teas for me and, while I don’t dislike tart hibby I do get bored of it quickly. It doesn’t take center stage here, thankfully. It shares the spotlight with the pepper zing, lime, and other fruity notes, much like a well prepared spicy sweet and sour soup manages to balance itself out and keep things afloat.

It’s fruity, floral, spicy, and sour… pretty much everything except bitter and salty. The cup is a fresh, clean-tasting tea, without the mouth-drying puckering that’s usually associated with some of the more citric ingredients included here. A big thanks to Bluebird Tea co. for sending this my way!

Oh hello, another B&B tea I’d already tried. Did I seriously not look up my own reviews beforehand? (I did, and deliberately ordered some I’d had before, but I might have passed on this tea, given that I’d rated it 52…)

Anyhow, wasn’t a big fan of this one. I actually thought it was an herbal, as I couldn’t taste any oolong at all. I drank it a few days ago, so can’t really describe it anymore, but it was watery and herbal-y, not very strong. I’m not sure what I expected, but something with a bit more flavour, and certainly a bit more of the base tea!

Sipdown, 784. Thanks again to Bluebird Tea Co. for this free sample :)

Although this tea certainly didn’t look like it contained any oolong at all, it does almost have an oolongy sort of flavour to it… Apparently it’s supposed to be a green oolong, which makes more sense (I was thinking dark oolong).

Anyways, the aroma is very herbally. A bit fruity, a bit of lemon verbena. Reminds me of some other tea I’ve had recently-ish (maybe Feng Shui from Tealux?). The flavour is definitely herbally, with touches of lemon and sweetness, and a flavour that I’m not quite enjoying (I’d say mint or chamomile, but I’m not sure if either is in here??) Or perhaps it’s the hibiscus I’m not enjoying? (Although it’s not a tartness issue here, just a flavour thing.)

I think, actually, that it might be that this reminds me to some degree of either Earl of Anxi (Verdant) or Citron Oolong (DavidsTea), both of which I like… but at the same time, had a bit of an aversion to that I couldn’t figure out. Something about flavouring a green oolong??

I’m not sure, this isn’t a bad tea at all, but something about it isn’t quite clicking for me. Perhaps I infused it incorrectly (I just went with my standard oolong parameters)? Oh well, they can’t all be winners! Don’t let my review discourage anyone from trying this tea though! It’s just not for me :)

i had a second cup off this one later in the evening but forgot to mention this in any off my notes. The second cup was orange/yellow in color due to the hibiscus stopt giving the pink color. It was a very sweet and fruity cup, i even enjoyed the second brew alot more then the first!

Looks like i’m the first to review tis funny named tea Retro Ted!

Seems like this blend is made up out off many fruit ingredients like coconut, orange, pineapple and alot off lemongrass and hibiscus. The smell of the dry ingredients is very sweet and fruity. So i’m going to brew a cup for 3min with near boiling water.

The color off the brew turns out the be a pink/red like liquor and still smells great! My first few sips are when the tea is a bit to hot, but it tastes very sweet. my taste buds can seperate the hibiscus and lemongrass pretty good but the sweetness really comes from all the other fruits in there.

A very nice cup sweeter then i expected but then again i’m not used off drinking alot off fruit infusions. This is infact why i so appreciate to be able to sample 5 different blends from bluebird company. If the other samples are just as good then this one i’m going to order there for my summer fruit blends!

I don’t know why I don’t drink more mate, I like the kind of mellow alertness it tends to leave me with, different than the buzz I tend to get from coffee or strong tea. I suppose It has to do with a bad experience I had with a jarring tasting lemon mate I had once, where it tasted harsh and unpleasant. However my other experiences were positive. My first experience with mate was at the debriefing after a contract I had in Ecuador. One of the other people I was with had been in Rosario, Argentina and she shared a pleasant sweet tasting mate with us while sharing stories of riots in the streets after the bank collapse there. In Ecuador I had very little tea but I did have some great coffee, even the chain coffee was great. Anyways that first experience was pleasant and mate is a really nice tea to share among friends.

Anyways, I think this tea has helped to cure me of my mate aversion. It is really quite a pleasant and balanced tea. Once brewed the tea has a scent of green tones from the lemongrass and the mate, and hints of ginger, lemon, and of something floral from the calendula. It brews to a nice light amber yellow.

Flavour wise it has top notes of lemongrass and lemon (creating a toned down baked lemon flavour), and ginger. There is a sweetness provided by the mate and calendula. These notes are all over a sweet and savoury vegetal note. Everything is done to a nice balance, neither the ginger, nor the lemon or the mate over power each other. Ginger provides a light bit of warmth but not too much heat and the lemon and mate help to create a sense of alertness and clarity. I am quite enjoying this cup and it would probably be nice cold as well.

I’ll start this tasting note by saying that I love the name of this tea. So great! Onto the tea itself.. the dry leaf smells of rooibos and tart raspberry. After water has been added, the raspberry scent still remains.

Sipping… this tea is surprisingly creamy! I was expecting there to be more rooibos + plain old raspberry, but this is more of a raspberry dessert tea. It might just be the characteristic of the rooibos… it’s not terribly woody, but creamy and sweet instead. A great pairing!

I think that I like the birthday cake blend a bit more than this one, but this is certainly yummy. Thank you, Bluebird Tea!

This is a really nice banana flavoured black tea that avoids the traps of
tasting artificial or overly sweet. Throughout the cup it tasted of green fresh bananas, a banana smoothy and a good quality banana muffin. It’s really tasty, but still lets the qualities of it’s base shine through. Thoroughly enjoyable.

A more thorough discussion of this tea is below.

The dry leaf is black and wiry with pieces of fruit and some pieces of calendula petals. It smells lightly fruity, but not of distinct banana, and has an almost chocolate like smell.

I steeped this tea for around 3 minutes.

Brewed tea is a copper colour.

There is a scent of chocolate, a slightly savoury spice like rosemary from the calendula, and dried banana.

At first sip there is a taste close to slightly green fresh bananas, or the flavour of a banana smoothy, or good quality fresh banana chips. It is not artificial tasting and not overly sweet. The tea base is smooth, sweet, with a faintly vegetal undertone melding into a taste of a semi-sweet chocolate. The calendula lends a brightness and a spicy taste to the tea and makes it taste like fresh banana. The tea has just enough tannin to give it some body. It leaves a slightly drying feeling in the mouth but is not overly astringent. The flavour compliments and blends well with the tea but does not overpower it. There is a hint of raisin and biscuit in the base. It tastes a little bit like really nice banana muffins towards the end of the cup.

The re-steep has an indistinct sweet baked good flavour with a hint of floral, and chocolate. Pleasant but not really banana. The base looses its astringency.

Tasty.

Thanks yet again to Bluebird Tea Co. for another free sample :)

So one thing that I’m very thrilled about with this tea company is that none of the three teas I’ve tried so far taste anything like a tea I’ve previously had. They taste unique, which is great (but also terrible) because that means that I’m eager to try out more of their flavours, particularly ones I dismissed as likely being “too similar to other teas I’ve had before”.

So this tea? No exception. I was expecting generic chocolate/florally rose black. Nope, not here. Yes, there’s certainly some chocolate. Dark chocolate. But it’s unlike any chocolate flavour I’ve previously had in tea… darker and more satisfying. And there’s rose, a bit of fruit (strawberry?) and a sort of creaminess…. this kind of is tasting to me like a gourmet truffle of some sort. Like… a truffle I would like more of. There’s almost an alcoholic taste here as well, like a liqueur-filled chocolate… but not too intense that it puts me off.

Uh… so this one’s really good… debating just drinking up the other sample of two I have of it that were technically supposed to be for other people… (I kid… kind of… :P)

ETA: Like Tealizzy, I didn’t see any candy hearts in my sample – but I would really prefer it that way, as I dislike their presence in tea. The rose petals make this one pretty enough!