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Today’s Matcha: a 1:1 combination of Watermelon Matcha and Boysenberry Matcha (both from Red Leaf Teas).

This is one of my favorite Matcha blends thus far. I really liked the Caramel Cheesecake too, but as far as fruity combinations go, this one rocks. The boysenberry was a bit more like boysenberry, and the watermelon was a bit more like watermelon here… tastes very true to the fruit, and I loved the flavor of the matcha too.

Very good… my mouth is still all tingly from the tangy boysenberry. Love it!

My Matcha of the Day… I do have five new Matcha that I’ve not yet tried, but, I also have quite a few opened Matcha that I want to use so that I do not have 513 containers of Matcha going at once. So I made myself a deal (or ultimatum) … finish off at least one opened Matcha before opening a new one. This will definitely put a bit of a halt on my Matcha purchasing, since I need to write reviews of new teas to get my gift certificate updated. This will probably ALL change once Read Leaf Tea puts up a new sale of a Matcha I’ve not yet tried. LOL

Anyway… today’s combination of flavors is fig and caramel. I loved the fig, I loved the caramel, so I was interested to see how well they went together. Answer: very well! I prepared this traditionally – that is, not as a latte, but with hot water, whisking in my new chawan – and it tastes really good. The Matcha stands out as the strongest flavor, but that’s alright. I’m drinking Matcha. I want to taste it.

The fig and caramel compliment each other nicely. Sweet, vegetative, and delicious. I love how the caramel goes with the fig, although, I do think I prefer these two flavors separate. Good, but, separately, these were even better. I’m thinking tomorrow, I’ll combine the fig and the boysenberry, and see how that goes.

I’ve been putting together some sampler boxes over the last couple of days (I still have one available here: http://liberteas.teatra.de/store/products/petit-amuse-sampler-box-upcycling-a-box-sharing-some-tea/ ) and I had just a little bit left over of the Caramel Praline Delight from Ovation Teas so I combined it with a bit of my Blend of black teas. The result is really yummy… It still tastes quite a bit like the caramel praline delight but this might be even better because the blend of black teas seems to fill out the background even more.

I don’t have any new Matcha … yet. I don’t know if or when the postal carrier will arrive today. It seems like once every two weeks or so, the mail completely skips our block, and I’m thinking today might be our day to be skipped. sigh And even if we aren’t skipped, I’m not entirely sure that my package from Red Leaf Tea will arrive today.

Oh well… it’s not like I don’t have a ton of tea just waiting for me to consume it, because well, I do have a ton of tea waiting for me. So much so that I think I’ll be adding a couple of sampler boxes to my tea trade blog soon.

Anyway… today, I was in the mood for strawberry and vanilla… so I combined some of the Strawberry Matcha from Red Leaf Tea and the Vanilla Cloud from Domo and turned it into a latte. But, I wanted to drink it from my new chawan so I’m drinking a milky, creamy latte from my chawan and it looks kind of weird to me. Oh well.

It tastes yummy, but I think that this combination of creamy strawberry will taste better once I have the bavarian cream Matcha … so I think I’ll save the bit of strawberry matcha that I have left for that.

And in the few moments that it took me to type this out, I have finished the chawan full of creamy strawberry Matcha latte. YUM.

Yummy! OK.. so interestingly enough, somehow, by making this Matcha latte with both the caramel and cheesecake flavored matchas from Red Leaf Tea, the cheesecake flavor really has emerged. The first flavor I tasted was the buttery crumb of the crust! I tasted the crust flavor previously while preparing the cheesecake flavored Matcha by itself, but it’s much stronger now. And the creamy, tangy flavor of cream cheese… the sweet, decadent caramel. YUM… so good!!!

I’m glad I was feeling like trying something a little different today… this is heavenly!!!

Caramel and Peppermint matcha. Shaken bottle method. Not bad! not my fave, but that’s only because I’m looking forward to trying every single other combo out there ;P
For some reason this was buttery, more than with just caramel. In a good way!
Can’t wait til I have some time for latte makin

So I’ve been trying to use up all of my old black teas from when I had a black tea obsession. Don’t get me wrong, I still enjoy my black teas! It’s just that I don’t require them as often now and so I am stuck with a bunch of tea that’s fading fast and too old to give away. This, for this cup, I went straight to my oldest. Dimbula from Teaopia. I had gotten so sick of it at one point I thought it might have to be tossed (hiding now! ok ok, you’re right I could never throw out tea unless it was reallllly bad)
Anyhow… I might have come across a method of saving it! The answer (for me) is… CINNAMON!! yup. I bought me some sticks to play with… but I need to grab some powder as those won’t last me long.
Oh, I should also mention that I added a touch of Golden Fleece just to see what it’d do, along with milk and no suga’!
Well the result was pretty darn tasty. Not much depth compared to what I remember but I’ll take it! only one steep of course, which I expected. Which meant I made an extra big mug :D
Ingredients: 1tsp Dimbula, 1/2 tsp Golden Fleece, one cinnamon stick, milk
Rating: 85

Used this to make Cream of Wheat this morning. I have no complaints whatsoever about the maple-and-blueberry taste I ended up with, but I have to note something odd…which is that my CoW did not thicken. At all. Not even slightly. Not even after having the crap boiled out of it.

I was so confused that I tripled-checked the amounts of everything I had used, and they were correct. Hell, I even used the deep-bowled TEA spoon to scoop out the CoW from the box, rather than the flatter kitchen teaspoon which spills it everywhere, so it should have been even more accurate than usual. It’s not that the CoW is old, because it’s a relatively new box…but I’ve made it from this box before with no trouble. And I’ve made it with Oh Canada before with no trouble. The only new thing is Teavana’s tea. Surely there’s no ingredient in it that would cause the CoW to fail to thicken? I will have to experiment.

This is weird, though. It’s cooked and everything, but 10 minutes after I made it…still soup.

I made this once before and it didn’t turn out very well, but this time I quite enjoyed it! somehow it ended up tasting rather creamy even though I added no dairy. Will definitely try this again soon.
Rating: 87

Harney & Sons Black Currant with a bit of Cafe Vanilla brewed for my sister and brother-in-law while getting our Abbey on tonight. One might call this blend Lady Mary ;) Followed by shortbread and bourbon, like you do.

Call me crazy but I just made Wild Strawberry Genmaicha and it was delicious! These two teas by Tea & Bloom came by way of the 12 Days of Christmas day six from tattooed_tea. She had mentioned fruit and cereal (Genmaicha) and I was inspired. The sweet and savory work well together and this reminds me of Kashi with strawberries or flavored rice cakes or drizzled popcorn balls. Yum!

Ohhhh yeah delicious chocolate hazelnut blend from using up Adagio’s Hazelnut, Zen Tea’s Bossa Nova and Teavirve’s Bailin Gongfu Black Organic cold brewed overnight (and most of yesterday). Soooo good, have to save some for the husband. Not exactly sure how I taste mint but there is definitely a mint chocolate chip and caramel and hazelnut feel to this. Also toffee which I realize is what I expected out of the hazelnut teas, not terribly fair of me, but there it is. And Nuttella this time in the taste as well as the smell. Well that was fun, but I think my adventure in hazelnut blends is over, for now.

Was writing a note when my laptop shut down, then had a hard time logging on to steepster and by that time I had moved on to the wonderful sheng I am drinking now. But earlier I brewed two blends. One an Upton Assam with chai. It was okay, I enjoyed tasting the Assam but the chai was a bit thin. I ended up using the liquor to make pancakes and they were quite nice, smelled like pumpkin when they hit the griddle but were very mild, enhancing the pancake taste just a bit.

Second combination was a blend of Upton’s East Frisian Sunday Tea with Vanilla, Sacher Blend Scented Darjeeling and a smidge of Extra Bergamot Earl Grey. Twas rich and smooth and charming. Now just as I finished brewing, Rowan asked for “tiny pancakes” (the first batch was small and I was still hungry as well". So I used up the rest of the pancake mix and poured some of this tea in for the liquid. The result was pretty awesome and the toddler agreed, we enjoyed it without butter or syrup. Would definitely remake both the tea and the pancakes!

Ha! I just made a Teavana blend out of two other Teavana teas. Just got home from Dairy Queen, where we didn’t get ice cream because the toddler wasn’t behaving, so I was jonesing for some desert tea, ideally an oolong based one but really my choices were chai or Gardens of Anxi and while the later is amazing, it’s not what I was craving.

Earlier today I had thoughts of using up an Upton Assam with a Teavana chai. I have a handful of little tins of various chai from errors at work, be they people over filling a canister or accidentally mixing two teas, the chai was always given to me. Anywho in one of the little tins was not-a-chai, it was Teavana’s one straight pu-erh from the Forbidden Kingdom collection. Low quality straight pu-erh with overly powdered spice oolong? Sure why not?

So what I ended up with essentially is Teavana’s French Spice Pu-erh. I was one of the few people who actually liked blend, it reminded me of Aveda, not Aveda’s tea mind you, but of there shampoo and such. It also gave me a nice warm buzz. Sure this is missing some subtle nuances, the clove and black pepper aren’t as pronounced yet I still can taste mint and even vanilla even though there may be none in here.

It’s not bad, actually. It would be a nice winter warmer and will probably be how I use up the rest of the Nan Nou Shan Pu-erh and Maharaja Chai Oolong. Also today I used up the rest of Upton’s Ceylon Select Earl Grey and brewed it with a teaspoon of their Extra Bergamot Earl Grey, twas nice.

So after seeing many Steepsterites participating in a Matcha-thon intiated by TeaEqualsBliss I was inspired to imbibe. I don’t have any variety of matcha at home, just the free expired tins from work (boss lady insisted they were fine for consumption since they are sealed) but I had flavored matcha envy and folks’ tasting notes on Red Leaf Tea’s Watermelon Matcha particularly made me salivated. Since we have a large bowl of watermelon in the fridge I decided to make my own!

I placed 1 tsp of matcha in the bottom of a wide mug, slowly poured a small amount of a 170F water while whisking, then poured the chilled juice from the bottom of the bowl of watermelon (I could have pre-poured this into a measuring pitcher but it worked out fine). The result, surprisingly delicious! Watermelon and matcha are a great pairing and this was refreshing, smooth, sweet, creamy and juicy. It needed absolutely no sugar but I did pour my second small cup over a splash of milk and a daresay that was even better. My only concern was the matcha itself, it was quite a bit darker and murkier than normal (I do normally use more water and I suppose the pink could muddy the green but it seemed odd) it did turn a nice sage green with the milk though.

I do plan on ordering from Red Leaf Tea in the future and participating in their reviews promotion but it won’t be this summer so I will have to wait till next year to compare. I am excited about such combos as apple and caramel matcha for the fall and of course would love to try black and white matcha.

Teavivre Lapsang Souchong + Empire Tea Services Earl White. My plan was an uptown cowboy earl – rhinestone earl? lol :) Yeah, that was the plan. It smells lightly smoky and bergamot. The taste is kind of too little of everything. I steeped 3 minutes. This shouldn’t happen. It is like the two teas cancelled each other out. Both teas are very flavorful on their own but the combination is less than amazing. I be sad :(

Zen Tea Pheonix Pearls and Celestial Seasonings Sweet Harvest Pumpkin
For the pearls, this was there fourth steep. I brewed for 5 minutes, then poured into the mug over the pumpkin bag. I steeped maybe two minutes. Gmathis said she thought adding black tea to this bag helped it. Maybe i picked the wrong black tea but this tastes like the smell of one of those craft stores, that sell dried flowers, candles and crap, yeah, I am such a guy. This is definitely not my thing.

Funny add on to this review. I went in to the next room in the office to pass along some job information. As I was leaving, he asked, “Did the ladies spray something to make the whole office smell like that?”
“No, it was just me making some tea. Kind of smell like a dried flower craft store?”
“Yeah.”
“Don’t worry I will gulp it and make it go away as quickly as possible.”
He is such a guy.

I don’t have any matcha, (I have never tasted any that I know of) and besides I really need to sleep tonight. So I took some white monkey and mixed it with homegrown tulsi. This is the second time I have mixed white with tulsi and it is a great combination.

While this was steeping I decided to strip the rest of the dried tulsi flowers off the stems. Afterwards I planned to put it in a sealed glass jar. As I started to pour, the bowl slipped out of my fingers and I dumped the whole bowl in the floor. Maybe I will get another picking of flowers this season and maybe I won’t :(

Last night I had some really good white peony leaves that had already been steeped several times. I added some home grown tulsi. I loved this combination. The melon and fruity of the white tea melded perfectly with the highly floral and clove like tulsi. The result had no clove flavor instead it was fruity and floral, almost like a mild rose. it was dripping with honey type flavor. This was a really good idea!

Under the heading of You might be addicted… All weekend I kept thinking about was getting back to work where the bulk of my stash is stored and trying a mix of Zenjala Coconut Almond and Chocolate Mint Fusion. Both are so good on their own.

Ok, do you remember in science class when you did the experiment with waves. When the amplitude of the waves heading at each other became equal the waves cancelled each other out (or something like that).

Anyway that is what happened here. Despite this sounding like agreat combination, what really happened is they muted or muddied each other. Sad, but wiser. I still have a couple great teas to drink on their own :)

I am posting this under someone else’s melange, but they are similar. You may ask yourself, “Why is ashmanra drinking so much tea today?”

I am mortified at myself for placing THREE SEPARATE TEA ORDERS this weekend. I have to either make room or get one of the kids to move out, so I am making room. I am making a box for a friend who is new to loose leaf tea and I will be drinking a LOT this week. Also, I will be buying an extra storage box. Sigh.

This is the last bit of H&S Earl Grey and their Sally’s Secret with a couple of teaspoons of Organic Qu Hao from A Southern Season added. I made a big pitcher and sweetened it because it will mainly be used as iced tea, probably exclusively by me because I am the only Earl Grey Drinker in the house.

I decided to taste a cup hot before chilling it just to see if the strength was good. I think it is. It is very good hot and the bergamot is more pronounced than I thought it would be with the amount of plain black tea I added. I think I will enjoy this iced. Next time, though, there will be more plain black and less Earl, in hopes of getting others to drink it.

1 part Pumpkin Pie (52 Teas), 1 part Chocolate Tea (Newby)

Whaaaaat! This is heaven. Unabashedly so. I didn’t think it was possible, but this is even more like pumpkin pie now. Moreso as the cup cools though. Piping hot, the chocolate comes out weak. Cooled, the chocolate really rounds out the pumpkin and gives it a solid base. (with milk and sugar of course!)
A little too astringent, as I accidentally let it steep for six minutes. I suppose washing the dishes while I wait for my tea to steep isn’t the best way to pass time :)
We are moving for renovations next weekend so guess what I’m doing today? purging!! and packing. and procrastinating on Steepster. kicks self in rear
Rating: 88

helloooooooooooo

Long time no post, I haven’t really been drinking tea much anyway beyond typical iced tea.

Graduated, still at Starbucks, in this horrible limbo of hoping I get a real job in the next 2 weeks because my lease is up 9/30 and I may have to go back to my parents’. So be on the lookout for a lot of tea going up for sale because if I have to go back there, I am going to have to seriously, seriously downsize my stash.

Anyway I had to run to mall-bucks to ask for more hours next week (I was given 16 at my store. THAT’S IT. Now I’m up to 27 after that visit.) and my manager told me about Teavana’s new chais so I decided to grab a cup of the two mixed.

One is a caramel chai, rooibos based, the other is a chocolate chai, Assam/Kenyan black based. They are really just called Caramel Chai and Chocolate Chai.

I had them mixed with just a little sugar in hopes that would coax out the chocolate and caramel flavors. It did not. While the tea was good as hot as I could drink it, as it cooled the cinnamon got so bad to the point it was all I could taste and it numbed my tongue with each sip.

Both of them are pretty strong offenders with a high amount of cinnamon, which is really disappointing. I already dislike Maharaja Chai because it’s overpowering with the cinnamon and it seems they took these same steps with their new chais. The caramel I think has more potential than the chocolate so I’m going to try that one again by itself.

Teavana Champagne Sangria Punch + Cranberry Singapore Sling

I was clothes shopping on Tuesday and the mall was a fruitless endeavor other than tea buying…thank god for my 30% discount cause that sales associate overpoured my 3 teas for a total of 1.7 oz in excess. SERIOUSLY?

I came really just for Champagne Sangria Punch but then the two of us realized we had similar tastes and that’s how I ended up with three teas. It was funny because I said “it’s a new tea” and he’s like “passion berry!” “oh no, I am well aware of Passion Berry…I bought a tin on the day it was in my Starbucks.” Well he had already gotten a tin of it from Starbucks too – and I was about 12 miles from home where they don’t have Teavana in their stores yet so that was too funny…in fact he already finished his tin and had it with him to refill. SO YEAH you guys, Passion Berry is here and you need it http://www.teavana.com/the-teas/herbal-teas/p/passion-berry-herbal-tea

So this combination is pretty tart. But when I smelled Champagne Sangria Punch it reminded me of Cranberry Singapore Sling. Combined it’s pretty fruity, very much like fruit punch but with a little rooibos and a little black tea. I can get the sangria in here but not really the champagne.

This is like my first time making tea in a week it’s so sad.