Capital Teas

Upon re-sipping, I’m bumping this tea up a few points.
I typically wonder how much crap could get thrown into a tea to make it interesting, but this one’s good exactly as it is. It’s a nice, earthy black & white tea with some mango in it for a kick. (Is this celebrating the Hawaii part of Obama?)
I would liken this tea to a sturdy log cabin in the woods. The Hawaiian woods, I guess.

I’m not going to lie, team: I bought this tea because I have a crush on president Obama. The idea behind this tea (half black, half white, get it?) is totally pandering. Despite the conceptual contrivance, this tastes great. The white tea takes the edge off the black tea. It’s “just right.” It’s a good basic tea. I prefer nuttier/sweeter/more extreme teas, but this one is a classic I keep going back to.

Bought this at the tea festival because it was a puerh tea. Didn’t realize just how many ingredients were it it. It tastes downright weird. I guess that is the chicory root giving it the weird taste.

I brewed this one time in a 16oz Teavana Glass Perfect Tea Maker/Gravity Steeper with 3 tsp leaf and 190 degree water for 3 min.

Bought this at the tea festival last week. It is pretty good. It has a light flavor of peaches. They are but ever so slightly sour. Not enough to bother me though.

I brewed this once in a 16oz Teavana Glass Perfect Tea Maker/Gravity Steeper with 3 tsp leaf and 190 degree water for 3 min.

I get a couple of notes from this tea, I’d say two from the caramel, one note is a burnt taste and the other is a sweet caramel taste. After this I get the puerh, it is sweet I think not bitter, but it’s hard to really tell.Bought this the other day at the Coffee and Tea Festival NYC. Capital Teas unfortunately only had a limited number of teas available. I bought both puerhs they had available. Both were flavored.

I brewed this one time in a 16oz Teavana Glass Perfect Tea Maker/Gravity Steeper with 3 tsp leaf and boiling water for 2 min.

This time I cold brewed this tea to make it iced. It makes an excellent iced tea. There was already a natural sweet flavor to this but I added a sugar syrup to make it really sweet. The flavor of the almonds adds a savory aspect to this also. It was good. It had a really nice red color to the tea.

I cold brewed this overnight, 5 tsp leaf in a 32oz Lipica Handy Cooler.

This is what I would describe as a sweet and savory tisane. Bought it today at the Tea and Coffee Festival NYC and it is too late for caffeine so I am trying it first. One reviewer mentioned she didn’t like the hibiscus in this. I don’t taste any at all. I think they must have removed it from the blend. The main note is that of almonds.

I brewed this one time in a 16oz Teavana Glass Perfect Tea Maker/Gravity Steeper with 4 tsp leaf and boiling water for 8 minutes.

Tastes a lot like David’s Buttered Rum since David’s went and changed it. Not really a fan. The base seems decent enough, though not spectacular. This was actually what I was most curious about since I’ve never had Capital Teas before.

Herbal TTB

Ooo, this one is tasty! Some gingerbread teas that I’ve tried have come across as just a heavy-on-the ginger chai, but this one has a legitimate gingerbread flavor: warm and nutty with just the right amount of spice. The aftertaste is perfect…sweet and almost cake-like with none of the woody flavor you sometimes run into with rooibos. I would definitely consider purchasing more of this one!

So, so tasty. Fig and cherry and some almond. So good. This is the only tea from Capital that I haven’t been able to get a close approximation of elsewhere and I feel silly ordering just one tea. So thanks, Liquid Proust for sending some of it along in a swap awhile back!

Use All The Teaware:
http://tinyurl.com/jmhk9rj

A 16 oz Santa teapot, a thistle cup & saucer set my Aunt K brought back from Scotland and an adorable penguin plate that Mom gave me – covered in fresh oatmeal shortbread cookies! Yay!

Here’s Hoping TTB R5 #2

I’m guessing this tea may be something one of the box participants purchased quite a while ago as it doesn’t really seem to have any real flavor to it at all… although the dry leaf has a slight malty, smoky scent, I’m not getting anything at all out of the brewed tea… disappointing as the website states its a rich full-bodied tea… maybe a while ago but not anymore…boo… back to the box this one goes.

would i recommend this tea? YES!
to someone who can justify (after many days) a costly expenditure….
seriously, from wow to OW (price wise) back to wow.

canadians, don’t bother with the website call head office, the tea crew are dedicated and polite.

looks like tendrils of oolong caramelized in honey or toffee or something ridiculously decadent.
tastes like honey chocolate but not too smooth… it has a velvet aspect that makes it thicker somehow, each sip more prolonged.
resteeps well…
i still don’t get how a tea can impart ‘thickness’ without being thick but it does.
the depth of flavour is excellent.
hate to say it (although i really do appreciate capital teas)… but this crazily priced tea is worth it to me. (and i say that as a student accruing debt) perversely, you get an expositional high sometimes by saying ‘i paid THIS much and i was WRONG!’ (we are weird animals)…. but i’m not sorry a bit for buying this tea. i just have to make it last a loooooong time.

More aromatic than flavorful, unfortunately- scents of marzipan, cherry, and fig abound, but a mild, woodsy, somewhat cherrywood-forward flavor is all I got. I’m impressed with the innovation of CT’s blends but this particular flavor just did not impress.

wow. this is totally creamy.

It has a lovely aroma, the cream mixing with the magical Oolong floral-ness in a unique way. It really is wonderful.

quite thick, really leaves a layer of cream on your lips. Taste-wise, its nice, theres a slightly fruity burst when it first gets into your mouth, and makes my head feel nice, with obviously a long creaminess at the end.

I like the mix of milk with oolong, its my first one ive tried, makes a nice change from the usual oil/butter thing that oolong has going for it. I didnt get as much vegetal as others, was just overwhelmed by the creaminess.

will buy again, for sure.

The flavor of this tea is spicy bubblegum and I’m not sure how anyone can taste anything else. I had to write a review because I was so disappointed in the flavor. I thought I was going to love it and it would taste like dried chili spiced mango slices, but it quite literally tastes like a gumball sprinkled with cayenne. I’m trying to find a way to get through it.

This was a really rich-smelling tea, one that reminded me of Christmas puddings and dark fruitcake. Nice rounded flavor (I steeped mine for four minutes) and added vanilla creamer, which gave it a deeper flavor with figgy, very slightly plummy undertones.

This tea looked nice, it smelled fantastic, and it also tasted great. Not sure of all individual tastes, but the combination was great!

Wonderful and unique. The oolong flavor really comes out, and there is a definite and pronounced creaminess I’ve never gotten in another tea. It’s also bit sweet. I’m not generally one to find tastes of other foods in my tea, but I was certainly reminded of butterscotch while drinking this.

I’ve had this three times since I received Nicole’s package (thank you!) Am I just a sucker for mint/chocolate combinations? It must be the blends I end up drinking the most. This one is fantastic – cocoa shells!! Plenty of mint. A great black tea base. And some coconut for some reason, though it doesn’t impart too much flavor to the blend. But the mint and chocolate is well balanced. The black tea is slightly robust. Two teaspoons for this one works best. Love it!

Edited to add: the description mentions white chocolate and not coconut so maybe what I think is coconut is actually white chocolate? It also mentions vanilla! Yum!

A sample from Roswell Strange. I was really curious to try this one, as gingerbread teas are typically among my favourites. This one smells good to start with – just like a freshly baked gingerbread man. I used 1 tsp of leaf for my cup, and gave it 5 minutes in boiling water. I added a splash of milk.

The flavour is spot-on wonderful! It’s sweet, but not overbearingly so, with a pleasant edge of ginger and a touch of almond. It’s definitely “gingerbread” more than “ginger” – it has that wonderful cake-like quality that’s so difficult to capture in a liquid (and equally hard to describe!) The ginger is sticky and sweet rather than strong and sharply spicy. I’m really enjoying this one — I only wish I had more!

The smell of this tea is very tropical; an image of an island in the South Pacific comes to mind.
The taste is very smooth, but I was missing tasting the amazing smells a bit, but I do confess I might have underestimated the volume of my mug. I’ll update next tasting.

There is something vaguely exotic about this tea. I would imagine this is the kind of tea Indiana Jones is drinking when he’s in a marketplace in Egypt or maybe Turkey. I mean when he’s not shooting bad guys or chasing after treasure, of course.

The figs and the nuts combine to give this tea a naturally sweet taste that does not need any sort of sweetener. The pistachios give the tea a depth of flavor and a little more complexity than I would expect and I love it.

The base green tea is just that. There’s nothing particularly special about it, but there’s nothing bad about it either. The one nice thing I will say about it is that I have steeped this tea using water too hot, too cold and for too long and the green tea never gets burnt in a way that is offensive to the tea. It is very durable that way.

The other thing I like about this tea is it works almost all the time. I like to drink a cup of flavored tea on the way to work in the morning, and my tastes change with the season. I wouldn’t want a pumpkin spice tea in the middle of the summer, for example. I have found this tea to be perfect for any kind of weather.

I have not tried this tea iced, but maybe it’s not such a bad idea.

Sipdown (124)!

First time I made this I was very underwhelmed. I cold brewed the last of it earlier in the week to drink during class and while I can’t say I was overwhelmed it was a big, big improvement. Maybe I was just ‘whelmed’.

The biggest change was that I tasted such a strong, orange citrus note. Each sip was practically bursting with it! I’m not entirely sure how that relates to ‘gingerbread’ but it was very pleasant. The taste of cinnamon, cardamom, and nutmeg was present too. Obviously ginger, as well. Then there’s this almost clove-like spicey note that, combined with the powerful, aromatic orange made me think of Pomander Christmas balls. You know, this kind of thing:

http://www.simplebites.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/untitled-1-820×380.jpg

When I was a part of the SCA they used to pass these around at the end of festivals/feasts and you’d have to pluck a clove out using your teeth. I didn’t realize until much later that was something of a Christmas tradition for many people, and I’m only just now realizing what a great way to get Mono that would be…

The final thing I’m tasting is the marzipan sweetness of the almonds. What a wonderful, strong improvement! Preparation method can make such a big difference in taste, it’s not even funny.