Cuppa'T Specialty Teas

I was so happy today to go to my local tea shop, because I hadn’t been there in so long. I ended up getting a lot more tea than I intended (of course). The owner is always so nice and helpful. As an added bonus, I got a free tea today from my reward points!! Yay free tea!

This tea was woodsy from the rooibos and almond. The vanilla is more in the background, adding a tad bit of sweetness. I wish the vanilla was just a bit stronger but overall I like this cuppa. I would definitely buy this again to have in the evening.

Sad Sipdown (97)

Thank you Roswell Strange for sending me this delightful tea. It’s a consistent cup of Creme brulee deliciousness. Never has the base been noticed which means the flavors are free to take center stage. Even hanging out in a tiny ziploc bag for like a year, this has remained the same as it was the first day I had it. Amazing and definitely one I am sad to see go.

EDIT: This isnt on their website anymore. Does that mean it is gone forever?

OMG Roswell Strange, I think you found a winner!! This is amazing! First off, it smells awesome and though the smell doesn’t 100% transfer to the taste, it still has this amazing vanilla silkiness that takes over. Pair that with a nutty/almost burnt caramel and you have one big cup of delicousness. Thanks for the share!!

Cold-brewed the last of my sample. It was much better this time around than hot. The coconut became more present and the cinnamon and citrus hung out in the background.

Thank you Roswell Strange for the sample! I set this tea up in my ingenuiTEA to brew in the morning, and I didn’t check to see what kind of tea it was so I used just boiling water. Which could be worse, considering it’s a darker oolong and can take the heat :P I got a nice big hunk of orange in my sample from Roswell that I threw in. There was such an odd myriad of potpourri ingredients tossed in, rose, coconut, orange peels… I feel like none of them stood out to me. It was like drinking the inside of a craft store. There was not enough mouthfeel or ‘why hello, it is I, tea!’ kind of sensation I usually get. Ah well, you win some, you lose some.
Sorry, this one just isn’t for me.

CURSE YOU INTERWEBS! I was looking at this note to see where the company was from, and I couldn’t find it anywhere. Like it had been eaten by the levatious tasting note gods. Le sigh I am so lucky I write my notes on my computer and then post them. … usually.

First of my swap with Roswell! this was the first tea I dug into, because it was late and I all I wanted was some dessert. I have given Rooibos a bad rap in the past, and I think I needed to give it another chance.

This was a good second chance! The nutty honey Rooibos was accentuated by the other goodies inside. Or rather, I should say that the goodies were accentuated by the Rooibos. It was as crème Brulee as it could be. Silky, Creamy, and vanilla bean-y. As much as my chefs at culinary school made me want to hate this dessert… shouting in a French accent in my ear about how I am not using the right temperature to temper my egg yolks and cream… I go ahem apeshit for that delicious dessert.

Yay for swaps! when I got the package last night, I squealed at the stickers and promptly stuck r2d2 on my dog’s forehead. Man, Ros, I demand a re-do! If only a purple glitter monkey lamp would fit in a bubble mailer….

Drank a mug of this tea while watching the midseason finale of HTGAWM and dammnnnn that episode had be feeling some time of way! I mean, HTGAWM has always been an emotionally charged series and fuck if they don’t know how to build up a suspenseful and emotional finale – but that’s probably the one that’s hit me the hardest and I’m still upset about it like three days later…

So, the tea was ok – but it’s fruity floral potpourri deliciousness was kind of tainted by the salinity of my tears and the uncontrollable sobbing.

We’ve had a lot of rain this week, so I’ve found myself craving this tea quite a lot – not surprising since I’ve essentially trained my body to want this tea during heavy rainfall. It’s practically a tradition, at this point.

As far as the infusion goes, this really just tasted like fruity potpourri – in the same deliciously awful way it usually tastes. However, I think it’s VERY worth noting that in measuring out the tea leaf for this cup I found a GIANT piece of vanilla bean. That’s fucking cool! I mean, I know there’s like a million ingredients in this tea and I vaguely remember vanilla being one of them – but I’ve never actually seen vanilla in the dry leaf before (and I’ve had a lot of cups of this tea) so I’ve kind of always assumed it was like a vanilla flavour!?

Vanilla pods are fucking expensive so it was cool to see such a GIANT chunk of one in my infusion. There must be a really low percentage in the overall blend though, because this was a pretty darn cheap tea to pick up from the local to Regina store I bought it at; which I know selects their teas through the catalogues of several larger vendors (the more hands a blend passes through, the greater the mark up – everyone wants to turn a profit).

For there to be any significant vanilla in this blend, it would 100% be selling for more than what I paid for it given both the cost of vanilla as an ingredient and the mark up from the retail location purchasing from a bigger vendor…

Nifty, though. I wish I would have taken a photo.

Picked up 50g of this back in Regina from Cuppa’T right before I moved out to Montreal.

This tea is kind of like crack to me; I know full well that it is an awful tea & I’ve shared it with people before and they’ve given me that “this is garbage tea; it’s SO BAD. Why do you drink it!?” kind of reaction and really, I don’t blame them. However, there’s something about it that presses the right combo of buttons for me that I’m able to look past its shittyness. Like, it tastes like potpourri in a really artificial/forceful way and there was FAR TOO MANY ingredients/competing flavours.

Cranberry, coconut, orange, pineapple, roasted oolong, cinnamon, rose, pomegranate, vanilla… It’s entirely too much.

The best thing I can think of to compare it to is that super, super cheap vodka or tequila that you probably drank in excess amounts during college/university. You got sloppy drunk or blackout drunk, threw up on yourself or a stranger. Woke up with the worst hangovers. Swore you would never touch it again! …but came right back to it the next big party. Now, years later, you’ve graduated to classier alcohols but every now and then you have a shot of the shitty vodka. Both because you’re a bit of a misogynist, but also because it fills you with this weird nostalgia for the shitty college parties.

This tea is that, for me.

Cold Brew Sipdown (215)!

I didn’t have much time today to drink tea at work, ironically enough given I work at a tea store. We had a fire alarm go off midday though so we were all evacuated for around half an hour. Then, I spent a few hours in the back stock room gabbing stock so no tea then. Finally, our close was really hectic/demanding because we were short staffed someone didn’t come in for serious medical reasons.

So this was my ride or die tea today. Sip or die?

I really do love this tea, and I know I’m going to feel the absence of it in my cupboard a lot more once the rainy season hits because it’s very much my go to bad weather tea. I fully intend to restock it though next time I visit Cuppa’T if they’re still carrying it. It’s just so unique…

Cold brew, and the final oolong from my oolong weekend.

I’n not really feeling this one tonight, which is odd because normally I really enjoy it. I’m wondering if maybe the reason it’s not vibing as well with me today is the weather? That seems like such a weird thing to be such a deciding factor in whether or not I’m going to enjoy a tea, but I’ve just become so accustomed to this being my rainy day/stormy weather tea that now that it’s just straight up snowing and cold it feels sort of like… c

Well, like cheating, I guess? To be drinking it, that is.

It’s also very floral tonight, and in a kind of fake-y way. So, probably going to dump out the bulk of the cold brew. It’s just not working for me tonight, and that’s ok. It’s just better to not waste my time with bad tea, is all.

This is a queued tasting note.

Cold brewed this time around. I definitely like this one hot better, but there’s something nice to the cold brew as well if you can strain it before it gets too potent. Let it go on steeping too long and it becomes a little like a hellish potpourri. This brew was lovely and very tropical. So, essentially, very strong pineapple and coconut notes. Still had great supporting floral notes though.

For this to come out especially tropical in taste is just a bit off beat from what it usually is, so what better song to match it with that something equally off beat with the same “floral” tie ins.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_eQQKVKjifQ

I think this has just become my unofficial, ‘official’ rainy day tea. It’s my instant go to! I think one of the things I like most about this one, though, is that it brews up fairly consistently but because of the big range of ingredients in really varied sizes it’s still not the exact same drink every time because it still depends a little bit on what you scoop up.

This cold brew (yes; cold brew for a rainy day – not a hot tea) was mostly cinnamon, rose, cranberry, citrus and pineapple – no real flavour from the coconut shreds because I didn’t get any significant amount of them scooped up in the leaf. And no pomegranate or vanilla, either.

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WK-vRhz9xs

Yeah, this is kind of an obvious one…

Commute tea on a windy/rainy day – pretty much my favourite time to pull out my tin of this and whip up a hot cuppa. Seriously, if you were to skim my tasting notes on this tea I think about half of them would incorporate rain or bad weather of some variety…

This tasted magical: lots of cranberry in this brew particularly, but in general the fruity notes present in this blend were more prominent than usual and they definitely out weighed the other notes like cinnamon or coconut. Very lovely!

Commute tea!

It was a really windy and on again, off again drizzly day today, especially earlier in the morning. So drinking this tea, which is like a pina colada with a whole bunch of floral notes and tart but sweet cranberry undertone, was kind of the perfect thing to lift me out of such drab weather. You know, ’cause of the tropical vibe of the pina colada notes…

Mmmm!

This is a queued tasting note.

First tea in the new place! I don’t think I could have picked anything better either; it tasted just like home! Comforting home…

Yes, I did pick up more of this tea…

It’s kind of funny how much it’s grown on me given the weird jumble of flavours. However, when I was shopping at Cuppa’T I saw this on the shelf and instantly knew I needed another 50g. This weird floral, fruity potpourri tea has a really comforting quality to it!

Notes of cinnamon, rose, coconut, pineapple, and cranberry kind of meld together in a way that I want to describe as “a hug from the inside out”. A hug that’s reassuring/comforting after something upsetting and a hug that’s more in line with “welcoming a loved one” after a period of absence. It’s weird because often I associate tea/the flavour of certain teas with emotions and for me this one is a cross between melancholic stillness/peacefulness (that kind of beautiful, nostalgic sadness) and the feeling of butterflies in your stomach on a first date with someone you really like.

I’m slowly sipping on this mug, and reacquainting myself with this tea has me very emotional and tearing up. I mean, to be fair I’m also listening to a playlist I’ve titled “melancholy” and the music itself makes me fairly emotional – but I’m a borderline sobby mess right now…

And I love it.

Sipdown (124)!

I was really enjoying this cold brew up until the point where I got off the couch to answer the phone and came back to see that in my short 10 minute or so absence two fruit flies had inhabited my mason jar of tea, essentially ruining it or – at least, ruining my desire to drink it. I guess they liked it too.

Overall; I have to admit this is far from the best tea out there. There are many things wrong with it, not the least of which is the overwhelming amount of ingredients and flavors but one thing is certainly true and that’s that the more you drink this one the more it does grow on you.

So while I may have initially regretted buying it, I definitely don’t now.

Tre made some sort of seafood dish last night, and the whole house just stinks of fish, so when it started heavily pouring outside this morning I made a hot cup of this with a little bit of cashew milk added in and just stood in the backyard in my t-shirt and boxers, barefoot getting rained on while sipping tea. It felt like it could be a scene from a coming of age movie,or something of that nature.

I kind of hated this tea at first; it’s grown on me a fair bit now. It’s a weird jumble of flavours: cinnamon, rose, coconut, cranberry, pineapple, vanilla – all present but none commanding. Though I’m tasting all of the fruit elements more directly with this most recent infusion. The cashew milk just adds even more to the mix. It’s peaceful though, and almost makes me sleepy with how relaxing it is.

I’m back inside now, and all dried off but it’s still raining and I really want to head back out. The fresh air and rain, combined with the warmth of the tea created such a lovely moment of stillness and calm and I need another fix of that.

Cold Brew!

The flavour of this brew was mostly comprised of cinnamon, coconut, cranberry, and rose – it bordered a little bit on over the top, flowery/perfumey potpourri but actually managed to be drinkable in a way that wasn’t totally offensive or overwhelming to the palate. Maybe this tea is just an “acquired taste”? You know, you have to try it enough times to actually wrap your head around it.

So, at work I’m a cashier – and recently I became the ‘engagement committee’ representative for my department; I think I may have written about that in a previous tasting note? Well, part of that is meeting up monthly with the representatives in every other department to hash out the issues the store has alongside our store manager and try to come up with ways to resolve those issues, be they departmental or store wide. Doing this has opened my eyes up to a lot of issues other departments are facing which mine isn’t; the fact most are understaffed without enough hours to either hire more employees or give existing employees more shifts is just one of many.

It frustrates me though; for one my department is constantly overstaffed to the point where it becomes necessary for people to be sent home – those are hours that we aren’t using that could be going to departments that need them; namely Deli or Fresh Cut Produce! They NEVER have enough time to do all their work, and are always rushed/overwhelmed. And then, we’re not typically allowed to be cross trained for multiple departments – I’m already sort of an exception because on top of being a cashier they’ve cross trained me in File Maintenance, and I sometimes volunteer to help out Chef Darcy in the event room with his classes.

Well, yesterday I kind of got frustrated with that. We were so over staffed and it was so quiet in our department that instead of sending me home I convinced Corey, our store manager, to let me work in Fresh Cut Produce for the rest of my shift. So for three hours I worked non stop cubing honeydew and cantaloupe. The sleeves from my white work shirt are actually stained orange from all the cantaloupe I cut.

And it was surprisingly really hard work; keeping up with the pace they’re used to working at was not easy – and it was absolutely non stop work. But I enjoyed doing it a lot; I wish they could solve their under staffing issue by just cross training some of the cashiers in different departments. I understand why it’s not feasible in some departments like Kitchen, Meat, and Deli where there’s more to learn but Produce/Grocery would be easy to do! They’d just need relief cutters and stockers and that’s easy enough to pick up.

Cold brew that I came home to Sunday morning after drinking with Billi and the gang…

I’ve been kind of mixed about this one; it’s got good qualities but it can also feel like too much is going on because of the vast ingredients list – and some of the flavours are a little weird together. This cold brew was under leafed specifically to try and avoid that.

It still came out tasting heavily of potpourri; cinnamon, rose and coconut in particular. However, with a very mild hangover there was something super, super appealing about that to me and I guzzled it down. In a normal “state of mind” I think I likely would have found it too intensely floral and perfumey. Maybe it was good I was kinda hungover?

Downside to having a hangover on a Sunday though? It happens to be the landlord’s day off too and lately his new renovation project has been replacing all the tile flooring in his half of the house. So from noon until about ten thirty at night (dear God; regardless of being hungover WHY is it necessary to be doing construction THAT BLOODY LATE!?) it was just constant hammering, pounding and drilling. Would’ve been annoying on its own – but was made that much worse by already having a slight headache.

Cupcake binge…

Tre gets back in from Regina sometime tomorrow so I thought it’d be nice if I made cupcakes tonight so he’s coming home to something sweet. It also doesn’t hurt that it’ll probably help with him feeling less ticked off that he was gone a whole week and a still haven’t done the dishes. For anyone curious, I made Butter Pecan Zucchini Cupcakes with a chocolate frosting! Instead of a cup of water, I used 1/2 of milk and 1/2 cup of Southern Butter Pecan creamer, which has only made them even more over the top rich and indulgent. Mmm; moist and yummy!

I am both the best and worst roommate.

Anyway, this was the tea I brought with to work today! I’ve only had it once before; cold brewed, and I think I felt pretty impartial to it – you know, it wasn’t necessarily really good but it wasn’t awful either. Hot was quite nice though!

There are a lot of ingredients in this blend, and so the combination of flavours is a little bit overwhelming. You’re tasting so many at once, and in different proportions – but it comes together to make one nice flavour. For me, I greatly tasted the sweet, floral rose among other floral notes from the oolong base and cinnamon, pineapple, coconut and a dulled down cranberry flavour. It kind of reminds me a little of DAVIDsTEA’s Alpine Punch blend if I’m being honest – but a touch more tropical and with no marzipan flavour. It’s like drinking a really, really good potpourri?

I’m confused about what time of the year/temperature it’d be appropriate to drink this though; it has the sweet fruity flavour of a summer tea (I mean common; Pineapple/Coconut) but the warm, snuggly comfort factor that a good winter tea also possesses. Have I sent this one out to anyone else? I’d really like to see what other people think of it…

Anyway; it was better the second time around! Gonna play around a little more with hot preparation styles since I have lots left and now know I prefer hot to cold with this one.

This is one of two new teas I picked up for myself in December when I was down in Regina. For my first time having it I prepared it as a cold brew; I actually wrote out much more thorough jot notes for this blend than I tend to typically do, and since I wrote out a lot of them I’m just going to paste them straight into the note instead of expanding on each point. I still have quite a lot of this one since I had to get 50g, so I can write a more structured review at some point down the road…

- Definitely not quite what I was expecting
- Notes of cinnamon, roses, cranberry, and pineapple are most present
- With lesser notes of coconut and vanilla and other less descript floral qualities
- With so many additives, the oolong base was well masked
- It seems, really, more like an afterthought
- I was expecting a more fruit heavy tea similar to Pina Colada but with a twist
- That’s definitely NOT what this is, though it wasn’t bad either
- Curious where the name comes from: none of the ingredients scream PINK to me
- And the liquor was more an amber colour than anything else
- So far not something I’d want more of, but happy to have tried it!
- And will try it again several ways because this seems worthy of exploration

…from the weekend, I think.

I just remember I was drinking this mug while talking to VariaTEA and doing some online tea shopping; we’ve been pretty bad influences on each other this summer and really enabled each other to place A LOT of tea orders – I have more outstanding right now than I want to admit.

This was a lovely cup though – it’s essentially a vanilla rooibos, but really one of the best ones I’ve ever had. I feel like I just have to attribute that to the tonka. It’s such a magical ingredient and I wish it was more commercial.