Butiki Teas

As usual the Good Morning Sunshine wins the prize! absolutely tasty :D

I have 4oz so every morning I get to have this great tea!

I just can’t stay away from this when I need something yummy to wake me up :D the cider one is nice but this one is the best in my opinion :D

I got called in for an extra shift and was like “YAAAY more money for tea!” then realized I almost have enough money for my second and final payment for school and decided the money would go to that. As soon as that’s covered though (evil grin) buying tea is next :D

I needed a pick-me up this morning and thank goodness I still have some of this left :D

mmm… after my Cantaloupe & Cream I needed something to help wake me up for my shift so I thought I would have some of this creamy lemon goodness. :D

mmmm… just what I needed creamy lemon caffeine kick :D

mmmmmm… creamy lemon…mmmmm :D

I smell lemon pie! It’s my first guayusa :D It tastes of lemony goodness nice and creamy :D

Thanks to Stacy of Butiki teas for sending me this free sample!

Hmm, my experience with tamarind has been somewhat limited but I’ve had it before with Indian food. It has a very fruity, slightly sour type of taste. This tea actually does have an almost fizzy quality on your tongue. I’m getting a bit of vanilla and not a lot of cacao, but that’s ok. The tamarind flavor here is so nice! A very unique and interesting tea, I’d like to try this iced someday too, I bet it would be really good that way! :)

I did try it with a little turbinado sugar and I think the extra sweetness helped to pull this together quite nicely. I say: YUM!

This is a sad sipdown. This tea will surely be missed. Maybe if there is a Black Friday sale, I will order more!
Brewed almost double strength with some milk and vanilla creamer…amazing!

Had this in the afternoon and it was delicious as usual. See previous notes

Mmm, I had this again with a splash of vanilla creamer, it truly is awesome this way!

Oh man, I added a tiny bit of vanilla creamer last night to this and it was so delicious!! Yum yum

This is so good. Upon first sip, it is a little bit earthy. In the aftertaste, and further into the mug, mango comes through. As I near the bottom of the mug, the mango has more staying power and tastes very natural. There is also just a hint of spiciness somewhere.

I don’t know how you do your flavourings so well Stacy, but they are phenomenal!

I made 2 cups and have put the remaining into a to-go cup to have cold tomorrow. I will edit tomorrow after I have tasted that brew!

EDIT: the cup that I cooled in the fridge was so good. So refreshing and mango. This was probably even better cold than it is hot!! Might as well increase the rating a little bit!

So, I accidentally waaaaay oversteeped this. I made my tea at the tail end of a storm. I set the timer and ran outside because the clouds were looking super crazy cool. I had to get some good photos!

Anyway, this tea is fairly good as is. I am getting a slight mango note, but mostly just rooibos here. I will have to try this again some other night and steep it properly. I am not going to give a rating because it wouldn’t be fair to the tea.

I can’t believe I didn’t try this the moment I opened my Butiki order. Seriously, it’s so many things I love put together! Chocolate and raspberries and black, oh my. However, after a bad experience with Adagio’s Raspberry it wasn’t a flavor I really wanted to go at again for a while. It’s a shame, but sometimes a bad cup can temporarily “ruin” a whole type of tea for me—like after an icky green, I don’t want any other greens for a week or so.

I was feeling chocolatey the other day though so I decided to finally give this one a go. I love the huge chunks of raspberry and chocolate chips, it’s nice to see right up front the ingredients listed. The chips are teeny tiny though and my cup brewed up surprisingly clear (a pale amber, clearer than I expect from even a regular black), so I was worried there wouldn’t be a big chocolate punch. I was so wrong! This is REALLY chocolatey, not just in taste but in feel as well. It’s kind of heavy rich and and you can almost feel the chocolate coating your tongue.

The raspberry is subtler, coming in at the end of the sip with a hint of berry sweetness. It’s definitely not as strong as I thought it would be, and I was surprised (but pleased) that chocolate seemed to be the dominant flavor. Well… that might be a bit inaccurate, since I think the base black was the dominant flavor. It’s strong and at the very beginning of the sip it’s all you taste. Personally, I like when you can pick up all the nuances of the base tea—if you’re going to do super heavy flavoring, it doesn’t really matter what you use, but with this tea (and all the Butiki blends I’ve tried) the base really shines and compliments the other flavors. Definitely one of the best chocolate teas I’ve tried!

Sample sip down!

I had to cut this with a little Good Morning Sunshine as my sample (from a trade) leaked leaves a bit on the bottom of my tin. Yum! Nice and orangey and grassy!

So tired, but this tea is perking me up! Slept all weird as my tummy was angry I ate so much!

Shout out to Emilie for a sample of this tea!

Butiki Teas – we meet at last! I’m thinking I wanna do an order with them, but I’ve been procrastinating. I was emailing my husband at work about trying this tea and said “I’d order from them, but right now I got enough tea” and he was like “WHO ARE YOU AND WHAT DID YOU DO WITH MY WIFE????” Oh boy, maybe he’ll pay for the next tea order, hahahahahah!

And I just realized that I don’t think I’ve had guayusa before. I’ve probably had it mixed in blends, but not the main tea. This will be interesting!

DRY: DROOOL! Amazing creamsicle smell. I’m imagining a yummy orange creamsicle ice cream all melty and delicious.

STEEPED: Transformed into a grassy smell and with a hint of that yummy orange creamsicle smell. It’s like my drippy ice cream fell onto a freshy mowed lawn. Rest assured, it still smells delicious! Steeps up a brown-green.

TASTE: Tangy (almost spicy) citrus with a delicious hit of cream at the end. Earthy, dry, vegetal aftertaste. As it cools, the creamyness is stronger and less grassy taste. No tartness.

Sounds gross when I make tea burp comments, but this one is a burp of strong orange creamsicle taste!

WHO’D LIKE THIS TEA: A tea drinker that wants something a little different. Citrus lovers.

COMMENTS: It sounds gross that I think this tastes like I ate my ice cream off my lawn, but it is really good. I was worried this would be tart but Butiki did a great job in flavoring this tea.

Oddly, I feel full after drinking this tea – I’m not sure why, maybe all the creamsicle burping. With that said, I want to try more guayusa teas so I can compare with this. Overall, very tasty and different than other teas I’ve tried.

EDIT:
After feeling full for 2 hours and satisfied after drinking this tea, I gave in and made an order with Butiki teas. TAKE MY MONEY! RAWWWRR!

After multiple attempts at drinking this tea I’ve finally decided that it’s just not the tea for me. However, I won’t hold that against the tea. It is a GREAT tea. The balance of flavors, the smell…everything about the tea says love me! But I don’t. So I will leave this tea for others (Helena) but I’m happy that I got a chance to try it and still think that this is a tea many will enjoy.

Writing tasting notes on the iPad doesn’t always work so well. Finally got a chance to sit and relax and try this one. I’ve been trying to get through all of them before my next two orders show up :) the strawberry in this one almost seems to be hiding only to peek out when you least expect it. A very nice mellow tea for this evening m

I found this tea to be better on the second steep so perhaps giving it a rinse is key to getting the flavors to be more “robust” however this is not a robust tea by its nature.

If I had more of it as it was a sample Thank you to Kittenna I would keep trying to play around with it.

Steep one was good – light peach notes, subtle flavor all around, juicy, clean, fresh, light.
Steep two far more of the peach notes coming through and a sparkly mouthfeel!
Both steeps provided a buttery flavor but I believe the first steep was more buttery than the second. This tea develops more flavor as it cools slightly as well.

I like this one but lately white teas have not been my favorite. I tend to go in spurts as to what my palette desires.

There is an interesting spicy sort of flavor as well as a slightly earthy flavor although it is again subtle.

I will say this tea does have some flavor layers to it though if it really focus on it.
Almost this earthy like dirt flavor which I find interesting indeed!

I enjoy this tea for its subtle complexity.

My first infusion of this lovely tea from Stacy at Butiki (thank you!) was very light. There was a slight silky, butter like quality to it and a hint of fruitiness. I think that perhaps the leaves not having been fully submerged (which I noticed after it had already steeped for 3 minutes) may have lessened the strength of this tea, as it was a little too delicate for my tastes. The flavors were beautiful, just very light.

With my second infusion, I rectified the previous issue of the leaves not having enough contact with the water & it improved things greatly. The resulting tea had a little more color and the weakness of the first infusion is gone. There’s a juicy peach hint to the flavor as well as an underlying floral quality. Still delicate, but more more flavorful. I definitely like this infusion and feel like I have a better understanding of this tea than I got with my first try.

I am usually a fan of more robust darker teas, but I think that I may end up liking the gentler white teas just as much! :)