Culinary Teas

A little too bergamoty, at least natural bergamoty, but I quite enjoyed the strog black tea base.

I’ve only tried a few chocolate mint teas, and this has been my favorite so far. I’m afraid to go out and try others when I have this security blanket good tea! It smells like a minty snickers bar when dry. I wish the chocolate was a bit stronger than it is, but otherwise, this is a delicious dessert tea.

I made up some for my mom and I. This is one tea that she always likes. I give her plenty of teas to try, but I think most of them she just goes along with because she’s my mom. But this one she really does enjoy. I think I’ll leave the rest at home when I go back to school for her

I drank this yesterday and haven’t had time to log it since school is currently kicking my butt.

I haven’t had any other chocolate mint teas to compare this too, but I think this one is great! Neither of the flavors drowned the other out. The chocolate and the mint blended together very nicely.

New tea of the day…… (AKA SRP #1 in Sample Reduction Plan 2012)

I got this one in my foodzie box from LiberTEAS. I missed out on this when Culinary Teas had it available for a short time in February. I was so glad that Ann was able to include this one in my box.

I get mostly rose tea with a hint of chocolate. It is really very good. I do think I could do with a bit less rose and a bit more chocolate flavor. It is amazing how much this reminds me of Upton’s Rose Congou but with a slightly bigger hint of chocolate. From the description on Steepster, it is a blend of rose tea and chocolate tea. I have Harney’s Valentine blend which is chocolate tea with a hint of rose. Really, I think I would like something in between the two, but I will happily drink this one until it is gone.

Usual teapot method.

The aroma is out of this world! Amazing sweet and juicy strawberry and sugary chocolate! Very nice! The taste is darn good, too! It’s a pretty good balance between strawberry and chocolate and I have already had several cups over the last 2 weeks! Thanks to LiberTEAs, that is!

This is VERY tasty! Just the right amount of rose and chocolate with a perfect black tea base for this flavored tea! The chocolate is more of a darker chocolate! I had this twice last week and twice today so far but it’s the first time I have been able to log…sorry about that!

Special thanks to LiberTEAs for this! It’s FAB!

This is quite yummy! Not the most complex sencha I have ever had but the floral flavor does not kick ya in the face which is good as I am not a huge fan of florals but it is present and very nice to support the yummy cherry flavor that is not cloying at all! Cherry is one of those flavors that is so hit and miss for me! Its pretty right on!
I could see this in my stash again! I used 2 teaspoons as I wanted more flavor and I steeped 2 minutes (recommended 2-3)

Thank you to Emilie for this big sample! This really smells like candy canes and a bit of cherry…like the chocolate gooey cherrys from Christmas that you pop in your mouth as a kid and almost get sick on…yes those ones!
Well, today it LOOKS like rain. We had 81 degrees yesterday and today it might rain for the first time since the end of August!!! Skiers will be glad to get some new powder snow in the higher up’s! Good weather for peppermint tea. I brewed this fragrant pot up and took a big sweet slurp (add sweetening please). Tasted like a paper dry peppermint stick with a cherry finish and was less cherry than expected. Fell kinda flat. This tea needed something more. When a recipe needs tweeking you tweek it right?! I KNOW you guys add stuff to your not-so-great tea. Spy’s are watching! I add things too. The comments about “Oh I wish it had a little more lemon”, or “Why isn’t there some chocolate?”…well, I see you scurring to the cupboard for the chocolate and to the frig for lemon. Can’t fool me! I went to the DARK SIDE! (where else would you expect me to go?) I added a pinch of Lapsang Soochong. I wanted to make the peppermint cherry SMOKIN! It was just small enough an amount to make it interesting and give depth. I liked it. This is something I have done before to play with my tea. Call me crazy. (I know you do!)

Quite good. The strawberry was excellent – not chemical or fake like a lot of strawberry can taste. I agree with the other tasting note that a little more cakey flavor would be nice but once I added some milk and a touch of sugar in the raw it really came out nicely. Very YUM and I was so in the mood for something decadent!

First Review. March has been awesome! The weather has been high 60’s and 70’s and this Saturday we Northern Coloradans end with a burst of heat over 80 degrees! Time to go to my garage and take my outdoor carpet out of storage and fix up a place to sit and sip tea on the patio. I have a nice table and chairs and space to grow herbs and MINT (my favorite). When it’s hot I like a good Mint Tea…usually fresh Mint in the Middle Eastern/Egyptian manner with a pot full of leaves very hot and sweet…but dry tea leaves in regular tea form is fine too. When I read about this tea it sounded like a winner for year round use. Nice for cold days in the Winter and cooling for hot Summer.
The first thing you notice is the dry scent which will knock you down it’s so Pepperminty! I cautiously steeped for 4 minutes. Hum…a first sip without additions like sugar or cream proved just a little bit sweet and drinkable but thankfully not as pungent as expected. After the first taste which is mint, there is brandy in the background.
Whoever the blending guru was for this tea showed restraint and did not overdue the flavoring. Good thing too. It would have been gross, fake, gag me bleh with too much brandy. The taste is just right and interesting! Very Flavorful and rich. I’m liking this tea! Add sweetening and cream for a very special dessert tea. I like dessert! Cool and refreshing. I want to see what happens when the temperature decreases. Can this be iced? I’d love it iced if it can be done and add a little real mint. Pretty in a tall glass!

Experience buying from Culinary Teas http://steepster.com/places/2981-culinary-teas-online-milford-indiana

Date of Purchase/Age of Leaf/Date of Steeping: I bought this in late 2011; there is no harvest date available; I steeped this in March 2012.

Appearance and Aroma of dry leaf: Smells roasted, vegetal, fresh (better than another Young Hy-son I tried in a local shop); standard appearance for an inexpensive green tea: dark green, curly leaves with a few lighter green and light brown leaves mixed in.

Brewing guidelines: Glass Bodum pot, leaf free to roam; stevia added; 6 tsp dry tea = 6 cups water.
……….1st: 160⁰F (OOPS! I was shooting for 170F); 1’
……….2nd: 170⁰F; 1.5’
……….3rd: 185⁰F; 2’
……….4th: 183⁰F; 2.5’

Color and Aroma of tea liquor: Light, yellow-green color; vegetal aroma.

Flavor of tea liquor: Not much flavor on the first steeping, but that’s probably because the temp was too low. On the second steeping I accidentally used too much water (a series of unfortunate events!), so it was weak tasting, but it still had a reasonable amount of flavor, with some sweetness; the third had mild flavor, and the forth had very little. I’ll have to do this one again with better temperatures and amounts of water!

Appearance and Aroma of wet leaf: Interesting to watch as there was lots of movement while steeping; there were a number of stems, only a few buds, and the color seemed a little faded, but almost all of the leaf was whole; standard aroma.

Value: This green tea is a great value at $7.05 for 4 OZ (That’s well under $2/OZ).

Overall: There are very few inexpensive green teas that I have come across that have what this tea has to offer: smooth, sweet flavor in the cup and leaf that is from a decent pluck (not too astringent tasting or too chopped as many green teas as this price range seem to be). I can bet this would blend well with other green teas. A final note about why I like this tea: I can buy some of it to help us get over the free shipping hurdle when we buy our next round of flavor-added black teas from Culinary Teas!

This teabag (from oOTeaOo I think) produced a rich, dark red cup this morning. I’m not sure if I’d call it malty – not as much as I would Assam anyway, but I could definitely taste some slight berry notes. It was a nice, solid cuppa that perked me up out of my usual morning zombie state.

My first experience with Ice Wine tea was a Design a Tea Sample.
I got this because I LOVED the Design a Tea Iced Wine and well I was giving Culinary Teas a sample go around.
I am at that stage of deciding my favorite teas but also which vendors I like best.
I must say Culinary has some wonderful teas but I feel they are a bit hit and miss at times.
This is a very good tea.
Fruity, Sweet but not overly so, and I get the ice wine flavor I was hoping for … but … I do prefer Design a Tea’s ice wine over this one.
There was just a bit more flavor to it. I got far more of the wine flavor.
Now I will say the grape flavor in this is very very good – absolute NO artificial flavor at all and no astringency! There is nothing wrong with this tea at all so if you are going to make an order with Culinary Teas and want an iced wine go for it!
It smells very good – grapey but not fake grape like most soft drinks and juices!
Now I did end up adding a touch of sugar to this and it did help bring out the flavors nicely which they suggest.
I did not however have to add any sugar to Design A Tea’s Ice Wine.
Its all a matter of what one likes though. If you prefer a little less BAM in your tea I would suggest this one.

Received this tea in an exchange. I absolutely love the atmosphere of Christmas time and all the yummy edibles at that time. So I love finding teas and other drinks that bring back that feeling at any time of the year. I had high hopes for this tea. However, when I opened it, I wasn’t hit with the minty smell I was expecting. No, there was a very strong smell of cherry cold medicine. It turns out, there are dried cherries in this tea. The cherries overwhelm any sense of the peppermint. After steeping, the mint smell was just detectable over the weakened cold medicine smell. However, the taste is quite the opposite. The very first taste is an overwhelming minty-ness. The mint fades away right at the end, so that I barely get a taste of tea. The aftertaste is just barely fruity, but I wouldn’t have noticed if I hadn’t already known the cherries were there. Very pepperminty, but doesn’t have that candy cane flavor. I think this would be good just as a mint tea, but I went in expecting candy canes, which I did not get.

Backlog from last night….

I don’t think it’s fair for me to rate this. To start off with my mom had a lot of this, and by the time I could get to it it was at the bottom of the cup and it was cold and slightly bitter. I had some of it while it was warm and it was pretty good. To top off the cold bitterness, however, my mother added a full pack of stevia because she likes her teas horribly sweetened and so I couldn’t really detect all the flavors. For now it gets a rating from what I tasted, but when I get a chance to make more, I will definitely re-review the tea.

Really nice! I love roses and I love chocolate, so this is a nice combo. The roses taste sweet in this blend. The taste is very floral – I get more rose than chocolate, but the chocolate is there, keeping the rose from tasting of perfume. At 5 minutes the taste is perfect. I am slightly allergic to roses, so I get the sniffles when I drink this, but occasionally it is worth it!

Not bad… pretty much tastes like what it says (with milk and sugar, because who ever heard of bitter white chocolate?) I’m not excited by it, but it certainly is drinkable. The tea base is perhaps a touch astringent, but milk smooths it out nicely. I wouldn’t buy a full size, but I will finish my sample.

I thought I would enjoy this tea, as I enjoy jasmine and earl grey, but it was not to be. The initial aroma of the dry leaves is mostly of bergmot. Upon steeping however (4 minutes at boiling) the jasmine rears its head and dominates completely. This is exactly like drinking perfume, and not in a good way (I do like floral and scented perfumes, so I was surprised at my reaction!) I would have liked a tea that was more about the bergmot, as promised by the dry leaves, but the jasmine is too much here. I’m willing to try again iced, as I usually prefer jasmine on ice, but I’m not too hopeful. I also think that a shorter infusion might be a good idea – following the package instructions nets a really strong brew!

This tea may be a little lost on me, as I add milk to almost all black teas. It has a warm, malty character that is not overwhelmed by the touch of creaminess. I wouldn’t say the cream is vanilla exactly – it just rounds out the boldness of the tea. It did taste just a touch artificial towards the end of the cup, but overall I thought it was very nice – bold, but still polite for difficult mornings.

Second steeping… not bad! There is a little less bite, but overall this holds up well to reusing the leaves.

Chai seems to be a pretty individual thing. I myself prefer a chai that’s heavy on the black pepper and cardamom, but I wouldn’t mind if there weren’t any cloves at all. I also want the tea itself to be robust, able to stand up to stovetop preparation (and the accompanying milk and sugar!) This is a great chai for my preferences. The smell is strongly of black pepper and cloves, but when brewed the cloves take a backseat to the pepper and cardamom. I gave it 5 minutes, and it’s perfect! The pepper has bite, but it isn’t too much. I really like this – it reminds me of Tazo’s chai, for reference, but it’s better!

I was sick when I last tried this tea, so I was curious to see if my tasting.note held. The answer is yes – I still get a strong candied violet note! I really love this tea – its perfect for the spring weather today! Even at 6 minutes it doesn’t get bitter!

The smell of strawberry candies hits my nose when I open the bag. This tea certainly smells more fruity than I was expecting! I can smell the assam as well, which makes me happy – perhaps it won’t be all fruit!

Steeped for 5 minutes at boiling. Without additions the black tea base is strong and a little bitter. The fruit flavors come in at the end, making me think this would be lovely iced.

I added my usual milk and sweetener and tried it again. The addition of sweetness changes the character of this tea a great deal, but not in a bad way! It doesn’t taste of strawberries or lemon – instead it tastes exactly like candied violets. I love that taste, so I’m pretty excited to get violets from what I assumed would be a standard fruity tea. It’s definitely floral – I’d recommend this to anyone who loves rose tea or earl grey (though it isn’t as sharp as either of those blends.) I gave my husband some as a blind test, and he hated it (he hates floral tastes) but definitely did not identify it as being fruity. I really like this one!